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Gandhi is thrown off of a train beginning his movement of passive resistance
On a train voyage to Pretoria, he was thrown out of a first-class railway compartment and beaten up by a white stagecoach driver after refusing to give up his seat for a European passenger. That train journey served as a turning point for Gandhi, and he soon began developing and teaching the concept of satyagraha (“truth and firmness”), or passive resistance, as a way of non-cooperation with authorities. (History.com) -
Core is formed
Founded by the civil rights leader James Farmer, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought to end discrimination and improve race relations through direct action. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Congress-of-Racial-Equality) -
Morgan v. Virginia
Morgan v. Virginia, decided on June 3, 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law requiring racial segregation on commercial interstate buses as a violation of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. (https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/morgan-v-virginia-1946/#:~:text=In%20Morgan%20v.,clause%20of%20the%20U.S.%20Constitution.) -
Murder of Emmett Till
In August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly flirted with a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/till/) -
Boynton v. Virginia
Boynton v. Virginia (1960), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregated services, such as shelters and restaurants, intended for the use of interstate bus passengers were also unconstitutional. (https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/morgan-v-virginia-1946/#:~:text=In%20Boynton%20v.,on%20economic%20principles%2C%20Morgan%20v.) -
Greensboro Four sit-in
Inspired by the teachings of Gandhi, and the murder of Emmett Till, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil stage a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. (https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/the-greensboro-sit-in) This inspired a sit-in movement across the country. -
Woolworth's integrates its lunch counter
Greensboro Woolworth’s integrated its lunch counter. -
Freedom Rides
Freedom Rides, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), African American and white bus riders tested the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morgan v. Virginia. (https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-rides)