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1865 13th amendment
The 13th amendment abolished slavery and was ratified December sixth 1865. The 13th amendment is what protects the rights of all people. -
1868 14th amendment
The amendment had been rejected by most Southern states but was ratified by the required three-fourths of the states. Known as the "Reconstruction Amendment," it forbids any state to deny any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law." -
1870 15th amendment
The 15th amendment, enacted in 1870, appeared to signify the fulfillment of all promises to African Americans. -
1896 Plessey V. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson was an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case started because in 1892 incident in which African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for blacks. -
1948 Truman desegregated military
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military. -
1954 Brown V. Board of Ed.
Brown V. Board of Ed. was a landmark in 1954 when the justices ruled that public school should not be segregated. -
1955 Rosa Parks/Montgomery bus boycott
Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. -
1957 Little Rock Crisis
The Court reiterated its ruling calling on school districts throughout the United States to desegregate their public schools “with all deliberate speed.” On September 20, 1957, Federal Judge Ronald Davies ordered Governor Faubus to remove the National Guard from the Central High School’s entrance and to allow integration to take its course in Little Rock. -
1960 Sit-in Movement
On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists' strategy. Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local WOOLWORTH'S store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. -
1961 Freedom Riders
The first Freedom Ride took place on May 4, 1961 when seven blacks and six whites left Washington, D.C., on two public buses bound for the Deep South. one of their buses was burned, and in Birmingham several dozen whites attacked the riders only two blocks from the sheriff's office. -
1962 James Meredith and Ole Miss
James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to enroll at the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962. Chaos soon broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested, after the Kennedy administration called out some 31,000 National Guardsmen and other federal forces to enforce order. -
1963 Letter from a Birmingham jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail and The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
1963 March on Washington/"I have a Dream" speech
The March on Washington was a massive protest march that occurred in August 1963, when some 250,000 people gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Also known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the event aimed to draw attention to continuing challenges and inequalities faced by African Americans a century after emancipation. It was also the occasion of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s now-iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. -
1964 Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, also known as the the Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive sponsored by civil rights organizations. On June 15, 1964, the first three hundred arrived. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both from New York, and a local African American, James Chaney, disappeared. -
1964 Civil Rights act
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. -
1965 Selma march
The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil-rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. -
1965 voting rights act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
