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Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson becomes the first black player signed to a major league team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, leadiing to the desegregation of baseball and a push for desegregation in other aspects of American culture -
Brown v. Board of Education
Landmark Supreme Court case reverses Plessy v. Ferguson, which ruled that separate but equal facilities were constitutional, instead declaring separate educational facilities inherently unequal; demands integration of public schools and strengthens the Fourteenth Amendment -
Emmitt Till Murder
Emmitt Till is brutally beaten and killed by two white men for flirting with a white cashier; an all-white jury found the murderers not guilty and an open-casket funeral united hundreds of mourners and Civil Rights supporters -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks starts a year-long, city-wide bus boycott by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person; led to the integration of the Montgomery bus system and the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr. as a Civil Rights Leader -
Crisis in Little Rock
President Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne to escort the famous Little Rock Nine to their classes at Central High School, as precedented by the Brown vs. Board of Education school integration Supreme Court case -
Greensboro, NC Sit-Ins
Four black students (Blair, Richmond, McCain, and McNiel) start the sit-in movement in Greensboro by refusing to leave an all-white lunch counter; influenced by the Freedom Rider movement -
Freedom Riders
The bus integration movement is started right around the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education by blacks who ride from Washington D.C. to the deep south on interstate buses; is organized by CORE and including women; met with opposition and violence -
James Meredith and Ole Miss
A riot breaks out at the University of Mississippi as federal and state forces both try to assert their stance on integration vs. segregation of the school; with the aid of President Kennedy's personally ordered troops, James Meredith becomes the first African American student to enroll -
Civil Rights Protest in Birmingham
"Project C" lunch counter sit-ins are started by the combined Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the city's local Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to protest segregation in public places through peaceful protesting, resulting in King's imprisonment and many violent acts of police brutality -
March on Washington
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference join forces to organize a 200,000-person march on Washington D.C. for "jobs and freedom" to advocate the passage of the Civil Rights Act; Martin Luther King Jr. gives his famous "I Have a Dream Speech" -
Birmingham Church Bombing
Homemade bombs detonated at local church with a mostly black congregation that served as a Civil Rights movement meeting place kills four young black girls in one of the most prominent locations for racial discrimination in America -
Freedom Summer Project
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Congress of Racial Equality organize a voter registration drive in Mississippi throughout June to give blacks their political voice; face abuse from the white population and the KKK -
Civil Rights Act
President Johnson, influenced by the March on Washington, passes the act prohibiting discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, or sex; later expanded to the elderly and female athletes; led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act -
Selma March
Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference lead nonviolent demonstraters on a 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, to protest voting discrimination; movement to get as many blacks to register to vote as possible; contributed to the passing of the Voting Rights Act -
Voting Rights Act
President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act as a follow up to the Civil Rights Act and a federal response to the March on Selma to prohibit discriminatory voting barriers and strengthen the Fifteenth Amendment
