MCR - Annotated Timeline: Early Civil Rights Years Assignment

  • Thomas Brewer attempts to vote in an election

    Thomas Brewer planned an attempt to vote in a whites only primary election along with several other men. This would lead to King v. Chapman, and was one of the first attempts at protest at the start of the Civil Rights movement.
  • African Americans allowed to vote in white primaries in Georgia

    White primaries were a type of primary election held within the south that only white voters could participate in. This effectively removed African American's voting power in many elections. Eventually they were deemed unconstitutional and within no time 125,000 black voters registered.
  • Brown vs Board of Education decided

    With help from the NAACP, Linda Brown and her family took to the supreme court. The supreme court ruled that segregated schools are unconstitutional
  • NNC and the ILD merged to form the Civil Rights Congress

    The National Negro Congress and International labor defense both individually had denounced segregation and discrimination, and continued well throughout the Civil Rights movement, often with help of other organizations such as the Communist Party.
  • Atlanta Negro Voters League founded

    The ANVL was founded by John Wesley Dobbs as a bipartisan group made after white primaries were deemed unconstitutional, and it is established to increase the voting power of black voters.
  • Atlanta mayor William B. Hartsfield hires eight African American police officers for the city.

    Prior to 1948, Georgia did not have a single African American police officer, and was a result of Hartsfield fulfilling it a promise he made to Dobbs. This contributed to the furthering towards equality, although the officers were not able to arrest white civilians.
  • First racially integrated city bus available in georgia

    Following the Supreme court's ruling that the Montgomery busses were unconstitutional, city busses were forced to desegregate. Among the passengers of the first integrated bus was MLK, who participated in the Montgomery bus boycott.
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) founded

    The activist Ralph David Abernathy and Martin Luther King Jr. organized a Christian conference based in Atlanta. The conference went on to be a major participant in the civil rights movement, and would influence Georgia as well as other southern states.