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Emmett Till's Murder
On August 28, 1955, 14 years, old Emmit Tills was brutally tortured and then murdered in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman. This event sparked the inspiration for many African Americans to join the civil rights movement in fear of something like that happening to them. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
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. -
Creation of the Montgomery Improvement Association
December 5, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama as a grassroots movement to fight for civil rights for African Americans and specifically for the desegregation of the buses in Alabama's capitol city. -
Little Rock Nine Crisis
September 2, the Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
September 9, this new act established the civil rights section of the justice department. This empowered prosecutors to find court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. This was signed into law by President Eisenhower. -
Greensboro Sit-In
On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworths in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats. -
Freedom Rides
On May 4, 1961, The mob followed the bus in automobiles, and when the tires on the bus blew out, someone threw a bomb into the bus. The Freedom Riders escaped the bus as it burst into flames, only to be brutally beaten by members of the surrounding mob. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This act was signed into law on August 6, 1965, by President Lyndon Johnson. It outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
At 6:05 p.m. the following day, King was standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he and his associates were staying, when a sniper's bullet struck him in the neck. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later, at the age of 39. -
Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education
April 20, 1971, the Supreme Court of the United States unanimously upheld busing programs that aimed to speed up the racial integration of public schools in the United States. -
Shirley Chisolm’s Presidential Campaign
Chisholm began exploring her candidacy in July 1971 and formally announced her presidential bid on January 25, 1972, in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. There she called for a "bloodless revolution" at the forthcoming Democratic nomination convention. -
Hank Aaron’s Home Run Record
On April 8, 1974, Atlanta Braves star Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing to break the revered record held by Babe Ruth. -
Voting Rights Act of 1975
An Act to amend the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to extend certain provisions for an additional seven years, to make permanent the ban against certain prerequisites to voting, and for other purposes. -
Barbara Jordan’s Address at the Democratic National Convention
Barbara Jordan, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, became the first African American woman to deliver the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention.