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Young Colored Students
They were African-American, who are students at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical College. They went to a Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sat down at a whites-only lunch counter for food. They ordered coffee but got a denied service, they sit silently and politely at the lunch counter until closing time. Their action marks the start of the Greensboro sit-ins, which sparks similar protests all over the South. -
SNCC
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee holds its first meeting. -
Greensboro Woolworth
The downtown Greensboro Woolworth desegregates its lunch counter after six months of sit-ins. -
MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr., joins a student sit-in at a whites-only restaurant inside of an Atlanta department store, Rich's. He is arrested along with 51 other protesters on the charge of trespassing. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy phones King's wife, Coretta, to offer encouragement while his brother, Robert Kennedy, convinces the judge to release King on bail. This phone call convinces many African-Americans to support the Democratic ticket. -
Freedom Riders
They composed of seven African-American and six white activists, leave Washington, D.C. for the rigidly segregated Deep South. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), their goal is to test Boynton v. Virginia. -
Freedom Riders
They 're now traveling in two separate groups, are attacked outside Anniston, Alabama and in Birmingham, Alabama. A mob throws a firebomb onto the bus that the group outside Anniston is riding. Members of the Ku Klux Klan attack the second group in Birmingham after making an arrangement with the local police to allow them 15 minutes alone with the bus. -
Birmingham group of Freedom Riders
The group prepared to continue their trip down south, but no bus will agree to take them. They fly to New Orleans instead. -
Expansion of Freedom Riders
A new group of young activists join two of the original Freedom Riders to complete the trip. They are placed under arrest in Montgomery, Alabama. -
President Kennedy
He announces that he has ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enact stricter regulations and fines for buses and facilities that refuse to integrate. Young white and black activists continue to make Freedom Rides. -
King's annoucement
King announces that he is leaving Albany. The Albany Movement is generally considered a failure in terms of effecting change, but what King learns in Albany allows him to be successful in Birmingham, Alabama. -
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court rules that the University of Mississippi must admit African-American student and veteran James Meredith. -
Ross Barnett
Ross Barnett who is the governor of Mississippi, orders state troopers to prevent Meredith from entering Ole Miss's campus. -
Meredith
Meredith becomes the first African-American student at Ole Miss after President Kennedy orders U.S. marshals to Mississippi to ensure his safety. -
King's arrest
Birmingham police arrest King for demonstrating without a city permit. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
King writes his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in which he responds to eight white Alabama ministers who urged him to end the protests and be patient with the judicial process of overturning segregation. -
President Kennedy
President Kennedy delivers a speech on civil rights from the Oval Office, specifically explaining why he sent the National Guard to allow the admittance of two African-American students to the University of Alabama. -
James Meredith
James Meredith graduates from Ole Miss. -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held in D.C. Around 250,000 people participate, and King delivers his legendary "I have a dream" speech. -
Death of 4 young girls
The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is bombed. Four young girls are killed. -
Kennedy is assassinated
Kennedy is assassinated, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, uses the nation's anger to push through civil rights legislation in Kennedy's memory. -
Malcom X
Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam. Among his reasons for the break is Elijah Muhammad's ban on protesting for Nation of Islam adherents. -
Organization of Afro-American
Malcolm founds the Organization of Afro-American Unity along with John Henrik Clarke. Its aim is to unite all Americans of African descent against discrimination. -
Congress
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination in employment and in public places. -
Τhe bodies of Schwerner
Chaney and Goodman are found in a dam. All three had been shot, and the African-American activist, Chaney, had also been badly beaten. -
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
Τhe Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDM), organized to challenge the traditional state democratic party that had excluded African Americans, sends a delegation to the national Democratic convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They ask to represent Mississippi at the convention. Offered two seats at the convention in turn, the MFDM delegates reject the proposal. -
Nobel Peace Prize
Τhe Nobel Foundation awards MLK the Nobel Peace Prize. -
Malcom X
Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem at the Audubon Ballroom apparently by Nation of Islam operatives, although other theories abound. -
Six Hundred Civil Rights Activisits
They are marching in protest of the killing of Jimmy Lee Jackson, an unarmed protester who was killed during a march the prior month by an Alabama state trooper. State troopers and local police stop the marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, beating them with clubs as well as spraying them with water hoses and tear gas. -
King's Leading
King leads a march to the Pettus bridge, turning the marchers around at the bridge. -
Three Thousand Marchers
They left Selma for Montgomery, completing the march without opposition. -
Joing the Selma March
Around twenty-five thousand people join the Selma marchers at the Montgomery city limits. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act into law, which illegalizes discriminatory voting requirements, like requiring a literacy test before registering to vote, that white Southerners had used to deprive black Southerners of the vote. -
A riot breaks out in Watts
An African-American suburb of Los Angeles, California, after a fight erupts between a white traffic officer and an African-American man accused of drinking and driving. The officer arrests the man and some of his family members who had arrived at the scene. Rumors of police brutality, however, result in six days of rioting in Watts. Thirty-four people, mostly African Americans, die during the riot. -
SNCC
SNCC announces its opposition to the Vietnam War. SNCC members would feel increasingly sympathetic towards the Vietnamese, comparing the indiscriminate bombing of Vietnam to racial violence in the United States. -
King's Movement
King moves into an apartment in a Chicago slum, announcing his intention to start a campaign against discrimination there. This in response to the increasing unrest in Northern cities over prejudice and de facto segregation. His efforts there are ultimately deemed unsuccessful. -
James Meredith embarks
James Meredith embark on a "March Against Fear" from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage black Mississippians to register to vote. Near Hernando, Mississippi, Meredith is shot. Others take up the march, joined on occasion by King. -
The marchers reach Jackson, Mississippi
During the last days of the march, Stokely Carmichael and other SNCC members clash with King after they encourage the frustrated marchers to embrace the slogan of "black power." -
Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
They found the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California. They want to create a new political organization to better the conditions of African Americans; their goals include better employment and educational opportunities as well as improved housing. -
King's opposition
King makes a speech against the Vietnam War at Riverside Church in New York. -
The Supreme Court
The Supreme Court hands down a decision in Loving v. Virginia, striking down laws against interracial marriage as unconstitutional. -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court. -
Cal Stokes
Cal Stokes is elected as the major of Cleveland, making him the first African-American to be elected mayor of a major American city. -
African-American sanitation workers
African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, go on strike, a protest that would eventually bring King to Memphis several times in their support. -
MLK is assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated as he stands on the balcony outside his motel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. -
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (or the Fair Housing Act) into law, which prohibits discrimination by sellers or renters of property. -
Fred Hampton
The chairman of the Illinois Black Panther party, is shot and killed by police during a raid. A federal grand jury refutes the police's assertion that they fired upon Hampton only in self defense, but no one is ever indicted for Hampton's killing.
