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In 1908, a deadly race riot rocked the city of Springfield, eruptions of anti-black violence – particularly lynching – were horrifically commonplace, but the Springfield riot was the final tipping point that led to the creation of the NAACP. Some 60 people, seven of whom were African American (including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell), signed the call for the NAACP, which was released on the centennial of Lincoln's birth. -
Inspired by Gandhi's protest strategies of nonviolence and civil disobedience, in 1942 a group of Black and white students in Chicago founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), helping to launch one of America’s most important civil rights movements. Taking a leading role in sit-ins, picket lines, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Rides, and the 1963 March on Washington, the group worked alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders throughout the 1950s & mid-1960s. -
Malcolm X was a leader in the civil rights movement, minister, and supporter of Black nationalism. He urged his fellow Black Americans to protect themselves against white aggression “by any means necessary,” a stance that often put him at odds with the nonviolent teachings of MLK. -
In 1948, on the 26th of July, President Truman issued Executive Orders 9980 and 9981, which ordered the desegregation of the federal workforce and the military. His decision to issue these orders –and his actions that led up to that decision– set the course for civil rights for the whole of the century. -
Medgar Wiley Evers was a Civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi who was assassinated. -
Thurgood Marshall led a civil rights revolution in the 20th century, he is the least well-known of the three leading black figures of this century. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, are both more closely associated in the popular mind and myth with the civil rights struggle. -
Poor People's Campaign, also called Poor People's March, was a political campaign that culminated in a demonstration held in Washington, D.C., in 1968, in which participants demanded that the government formulate a plan to help address the employment and housing problems of the poor throughout the United States. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement and pushed forward the precedent that “separate-but-equal” services were not, in fact, equal at all. -
In 1955, while visiting family in Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, was brutally murdered for supposedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His killers were the white woman’s husband and his brother. They made him carry a 75-pounds to Tallahatchie River and made him take off his clothes. They beat him nearly to death, gouged his eye out, shot him in the head, and threw his body, tied to the 75-pounds with barbed wire, into the river. -
Rosa Parks was an African American woman who was an activist and supporter of equal rights for all races. Rosa was sitting on the bus one day and was told to go to the back of the bus so that a white could sit in her spot at the front of the bus. Rosa said no and didn't move, she then got arrested and her story was quickly spread, moving others to take a stand as well. -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil rights protest during which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. -
Little Rock Nine was an event that took place from September 4th to 29th, in 1957. The event was when nine African American students went to Little Rock High School and were greeted by an angry mob and national guards. The students made their way through the crowd, shouting obscenities and even throwing things. -
The Greensboro Sit-ins were a friendly protest from February to July 1960. It was mainly in the Woolworth store, but now it's in the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. -
Ruby Bridges was part of a large movement in the south, that was trying to support integration, and get rid of segregation. Ruby was the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South. -
Freedom Riders were a group of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in the Freedom Rides, -bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals. -
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesman and leader in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. -
The Birmingham Campaign was an American movement organized in early 1963 by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the integration efforts of African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama. -
The March on Washington was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose of the march was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. -
On September 15, 1963, the congregation of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama greeted each other before Sunday service started. Right before 11 o'clock, instead of rising to pray, the congregation was knocked to the ground As a bomb exploded under the steps of the church. They sought safety under the pews and shielded each other from falling debris. -
Freedom Summer - also known as the Mississippi Summer Project- was a 1964 voter registration drive that aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. Over 700 -mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter discrimination and intimidation at the polls. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark of civil laws and labor laws. The Civil Rights Act is a law that was passed to make discrimination based on someone's race, color, religion, or sex illegal. -
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was that after the war in the southern states, African Americans could not vote because of the color of their skin. -
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (or the SNCC) was the principal for the student committee in the United States for the civil rights movement during the 1960s. -
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (or the SCLC) is an African American organization based in Atlanta, Georgia, it is also associated with Martin Luther King. -
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965. There started in Selma, Alabama, and went all the way to the state capital of Montgomery.
The marches were caused by the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson was an African American man that was denied the right to vote. -
The Watts Riot took place in the Wyatts neighborhood, it started when a 21-year-old African American was pulled over for drinking and driving. -
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Merritt College in Oakland. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality. -
The assassination of Dr. King was a tragic time for people everywhere, he was shot on the balcony of his 3rd-floor hotel room. -
Activist James Meredith, who was the first African American to enroll at the University of Mississippi, began a solitary walk in 1966, intending to walk from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi in order to call attention to racism and the voter discrimination in the South. -
Robert George Seal is an American political activist and author. In 1966, he co-founded the Black Panther Party with his activist Huey P. Newton. -
John Robert Lewis was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1966.