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Brown v Board of Education
A Supreme Court case which ruled unanimously (9-0) that segregation on the basis of race in public schools violated the 14th Amendment. Although it was largely unenforced at first, it provided momentum for the Civil Rights Movement. -
White Citizens Council
American White Supremacy group with about 60,000 members mostly in the South, known for it's opposition to racial integration, involved protection of "European-American Heritage" from those of other ethnicities. Members used their economic and political power to intimidate African Americans who challenged segregation. -
Brown v Board of Education II
After its decision in Brown (1) which declared racial discrimination in public education unconstitutional, the Court convened to issue the directives which would help to implement its newly announced Constitutional principle. Given the embedded nature of racial discrimination in public schools and the diverse circumstances under which it had been practiced, the Court requested further argument on the issue of relief. -
Lynching of Emmett Till
He was a young boy that was African-American who was killed. A white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store. -
Rosa Parks Arrested
Rosa was arrested because she wouldn't give up her seat on a city bus. She broke the law. -
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
A protest sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks where blacks in Montgomery, Alabama refused to ride the city buses to protest segregated seating, leading the city to integrate their public transportation. MLK was one of the leaders, and he gained fame for his contributions, later becoming one of the greatest leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Martin Luther King House Bombing
On September 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.’s house was bombed by segregationists in retaliation for the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. -
SCLC Founded
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by MLK, which taught that civil rights could be achieved through nonviolent protests. Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded by young black adults, seeking immediate change, not gradual. -
Eisenhower sends in Federal Troops
The governor ordered troops from Arkansas National Guard to prevent them from entering the school. The next day as the National Guard troops surrounded the school, an angry white mob joined the troops to protest the integration plan and to intimidate the AA students trying to register. The mob violence pushed Eisenhower's patience to the breaking point. He immediately ordered the US Army to send troops to Little Rock to protect and escort them for the full school year. -
Greensboro sit ins
Four black students attempted to force the desegregation of a lunch counter in Woolworth's store. They staged a sit in which lasted several days. By the 4th day, 300 students had joined the sit-in
By the end of the week the store had closed rather than desegregated. -
SNCC Formed
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee one of the principal organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in April of 1960. It played a major role in the sit-ins and freedom rides, a leading role in the 1963 March on Washington, the Freedom Summer, and the MFDP. young people. -
White mob attacks federal marshals in Montgomery
Montgomery's all-white officials would make no concessions-a fatal tactical error. The boycott leaders raised the stakes-demanding complete desegregation. The boycott was set to continue indefinitely and a series of legal appeals were launched. -
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Freedom Rides
1961 event organized by CORE and SNCC in which an interracial group of civil rights activists tested southern states' compliance to the Supreme Court ban of segregation on interstate buses -
Albany Georgia “failure”
It was a failure because the police chief was ready for kings tactics of filling up from within. And it was a huge failure. -
Bailey v Patterson
The Supreme Court, decided that it was unconstitutional for transportation facilities like bus and train stations to be racially segregated. And they thought that is was wrong for Black people to facilities anyware. -
Bombing of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth
He was a longtime civil rights activist in the South and one of the Lead organizers of the Birmingham protests. -
Equal Pay Act
Forbids gender-based pay discrimination of people performing substantially equal work for same employer. JFK was the person that signed it into law. -
Kennedy sends in Federal Troops
When the Governor of Mississippi refused to enforce a federal court order ordering the University of Mississippi to enroll its first black student. Whites in Oxford, Mississippi rioted to protest the court order, President Kennedy sent federal troops to Mississippi to end the violence and enforce the court order. -
Assassination of Medgar Evers
He was the director of the NAACP in Mississippi and a lawyer who defended accused Blacks; he was murdered in his driveway by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. -
March On Washington "I have a Dream"
A massive march in Washington DC organized by MLK to highlight the difficulties black Americans still faced one century after emancipation. About 250,000 gathered around the Lincoln Memorial and the climax of the event was Martin Luther King's speech, "I Have A Dream". It is important because it reveals that blacks are still not free, even though they are no longer legally enslaved. -
Bombing of a church in Birmingham
A terrorist attack against the 16th Street Baptist Church organized by the Ku Klux Klan. Four girls were killed in the bombing -
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
In 1963 in Dallas, riding in a parade to drum up support for the upcoming presidential election in 1964, JFK was shot twice by Lee Harvey Oswald and pronounced dead at Parkland hopsital. -
XXIV (24th) Amendment
The 24th Amendment stated that any US citizens could not be barred from voting for any elections due to an inability to pay the poll tax or any tax. This amendment was significant because it granted suffrage to Black Americans in the South, freeing them from one key aspect of the black codes. -
Freedom Summer
A voter registration drive in Mississippi spearheaded by the collaboration of civil rights groups, the campaign drew the activism of thousands of black and white civil rights workers, many of whom were students from the north, and was marred by the abduction and murder of three such workers at the hands of white racists. -
Killing of Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner
The death of Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner also known as the Freedom Summer murders. These were workers rights activists that we killed because of speeking out. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or nationality. This monumentous piece of legislature set the standard for equality in the nation. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 while giving a speech in New York City. The assassins were said to be Black Muslims, although this was never proved. -
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Selma to Montgomery March
MLK organizes a march in Selma. Tens of thousands of black protesters petition for the right to vote outside of the city hall and are ignored. They then marched to the gov'na's mansion in Montgomery. Police meet them with tear gas and clubs. "Bloody Sunday" is highly publicized and Americans in the North are shocked. -
Voting rights act of 1965
A law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices, such as literacy tests, that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. -
Black Panthers Formed
The Black Panther Party was an African American revolutionary party founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in order to protect blacks from police brutality by patrolling black neighborhoods. They eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all blacks and the payment of compensation from whites. They gained national publicity after they marched into the state legislature, and they spread internationally, providing community help. -
Loving v Virginia
Ban on interracial marriage is a violation of the US Constitution's promise of equal protection of the laws. This took place in Virgina with Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter. -
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Minneapolis Riots
The riots were in minneappolis on the night of July 19, 1967, on Plymouth Avenue in a series of acts of arson. The violence lasted for three nights. -
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Detroit Riots
It was rooted in a multitude of political, economic, and social factors including police abuse, lack of affordable housing, urban renewal projects, economic inequality, black militancy, and rapid demographic change. -
MLK goes to a Birmingham jail
MLK was arrested and sent to jail because he and other people were protesting the treatment of blacks in Birmingham, Alabama. A court had ordered that King could not hold protests in Birmingham. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King Jr. was shot from outside the balcony of his motel room in Memphis Tennessee by James Earl Ray. The period of national mourning following the assassination helped speed up the passing of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination involving the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and sex; the act is widely considered the last great legislative achievement of the civil rights era. -
Assassination of Robert “Bobby” Kennedy
Senator Robert Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan. He died a day later. For the past 30 years, Robert Kennedy has not been recognized enough as a true civil rights leader.
