Civil Rights Timeline

  • The Congress of Racial Equality

    The Congress of Racial Equality
    The Congress of Racial Equality is a U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. CORE was one of the "Big Four" civil rights organizations, along with the SCLC, the SNCC, and the NAACP.
  • Brown vs. Board of Education

    Brown vs. Board of Education
    Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.
  • Emmett Till

    Emmett Till
    Emmett Louis Till was an African-American teenager who was lynched in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.
  • Rosa Parks/ Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Rosa Parks/ Montgomery Bus Boycott
    Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus. She was arrested, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    Southern Christian Leadership Conference
    The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement.
  • Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

    Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
    The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed to give younger blacks more of a voice in the civil rights movement.
  • Letter from Birmingham Jail

    Letter from Birmingham Jail
    "Letter from Birmingham Jail" was written in response to a public statement of concern and caution issued by eight white religious leaders of the South. It stands as one of the classic documents of the civil-rights movement.
  • I Have a Dream Speech

    I Have a Dream Speech
    "I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights.
  • 16th Street Baptist Church Birmingham Alabama Bombing

    16th Street Baptist Church Birmingham Alabama Bombing
    The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was an act of white supremacist terrorism which occurred at the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
  • The 24th Amendment

    The 24th Amendment
    The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax.
  • Civil Rights Act

    Civil Rights Act
    The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
  • Malcom X Assassination

    Malcom X Assassination
    In New York City, Malcolm X, an African American nationalist and religious leader, is assassinated by rival Black Muslims while addressing his Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights.
  • Bloody Sunday

    Bloody Sunday
    State troopers and county possemen attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas after they passed over the county line, and the event became known as Bloody Sunday.
  • Voting Rights Act

    Voting Rights Act
    The Voting Rights Act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment.
  • Executive Order 11246

    Executive Order 11246
    Executive Order 11246 established requirements for non-discriminatory practices in hiring and employment on the part of U.S. government contractors.
  • Black Panthers

    Black Panthers
    The Black Panther Party or BPP was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982.
  • Stokely Carmichael

    Stokely Carmichael
    Stokely Carmichael was a Trinidadian-American revolutionary active in the Civil Rights Movement, and later, the global Pan-African movement.
  • Martin Luther King's Assassination

    Martin Luther King's Assassination
    James Earl Ray began plotting the assassination of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in early 1968. He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March.