Important Events of the Civil Rights Movement

  • Jacky Robinson becomes the first black in the Major Leagues

    This marks the beginning of the lowering of the color barrier
  • The armed forces are integrated

  • Brown vs. Board of Education decides that segregation has no place in the school system

    This is a monumental victory for the Civil Rights Movement
  • Rosa Parks is arrested because she refused to give up her seat to a white

    She becomes a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement because of this
  • The Supreme Court rules that bus segregation is illegal

    This was due to the success of the bus boycott
  • Nine blacks attend a white school in Little Rock

    Attempts are made to stop them from attending, and this is the first time that the federal and state governments clashed over this issue.
  • First sit-in takes place

    This method of protest becomes very common
  • Thirteen freedom riders successfully integrate the buses before being attacked in Alabama

  • Federal court orders University of Mississippi to accept a black student

    When he arrived on campus, a riot ensued in which two were killed
  • SCLC starts demonstrations in Birmingham

  • March on Washington takes place

  • Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed

    This prevented many forms of dicrimination
  • An effort is made to register blacks to vote in Mississippi

    One thousand people showed up, and later three were found killed.
  • Malcolm X is killed

    This happened shortly after he renounced his beliefs and said that blacks and whites should coexist peacefully. One of his former supporters shot him
  • Martin Luther King Junior starts protests in Alabama for voting rights

  • Violence explodes in North

    This especially took place in Watts
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed

    This banned common practices that were being used to prevent African Americans from voting
  • Edward Brooke becomes the first black senator since reconstruction

  • Thurgood Marshall is appointed to the Supreme Court

  • Martin Luther King Junior is killed