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Civil Rights Timeline

  • Supreme court Decision of plessy V. Ferguson

    Supreme court Decision of plessy V. Ferguson
    Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation under the “separate but equal” doctrine. The case stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a car for Black people.
  • tuskegee airmsn

    tuskegee airmsn
    The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces. During their years of operation, 1940 to 1946, 996 pilots were trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field.
  • Integration of major league baseball

    Integration of major league baseball
    For nearly 60 years baseball was a segregated sport as the American and National Leagues that formed Major League Baseball unofficially banned African-Americans from their ranks. That all changed when Jackie Robinson stepped onto the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947
  • Integration of armed forces

    Integration of armed forces
    On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order banning segregation in the Armed Forces. In 1940, African-Americans made up almost 10 percent of the total U.S. population (
  • Supreme court decision of Sweatt v. painter

    Supreme court decision of Sweatt v. painter
    majority opinion by Fred M. Vinson. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the Equal Protection Clause required that Sweatt be admitted to the university. The Court found that the "law school for Negroes," which was to have opened in 1947,
  • supreme court decision of brown v. board of education

    supreme court decision of brown v. board of education
    Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the opinion of the unanimous Court. The Supreme Court held that separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal and violate the protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  • Death of Emmitt Till

    Death of Emmitt Till
    Several nights after the incident in the store, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam, who were armed, went to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted Emmett. They took him away then beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River.
  • Montgomery Bus boycott

    Montgomery Bus boycott
    The Montgomery bus boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a foundational event in the civil rights movement in the United States.
  • Integration of Little Rock High School

    Integration of Little Rock High School
    The desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, gained national attention on September 3, 1957, when Governor Orval Faubus mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in an effort to prevent nine African American students from integrating the high school.
  • Civil Rights act of 1957

    Civil Rights act of 1957
    The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote.