1. The Civil Rights Movement

2. Jackie Robinson breaks the color line in major league baseball.
April 1947

3. To Secure These Rights, the report by the President’s Committee on Civil Rights is released. The committee calls for the elimination of segregation.
October 29, 1947

4. President Harry S Truman issues an executive order desegregating the armed forces.
July 26, 1948

5. In Brown v. Board of Education the Supreme Court declares separate facilities “inherently unequal.”
May 17, 1954

6. Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person; the action triggers a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
December 1, 1955

7. MLK, Jr. and a number of southern black clergymen create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or SCLC.
January 11, 1957

8. On the orders of Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, Arkansas National Guardsmen block 9 black students from entering Central High School.
September 4, 1957

9. Sit-in campaigns by college students in St
Sit-in campaigns by college students in St. Louis, Chicago, Bloomington, ID, and Nashville help to desegregate eating facilities.
Feb. 1, 1960: Woolworth’s lunch counter

10. April 1960 Ella Baker Stokely Carmichael
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, NC.
Ella Baker
Stokely Carmichael
April 1960

11. James Meredith files suit claiming racial discrimination after being denied admission to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss).
May 1962

12. President Kennedy signs an executive order barring racial discrimination in federally funded housing.
November 20, 1962

13. Birmingham police chief Eugene “Bull” Connor turns police dogs and fire hoses against nonviolent demonstrators.
King composes his Letter from Birmingham City Jail.
1963

14. June 11, 1963: Radio and TV address on Civil Rights
“I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was rounded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
June 11, 1963: Radio and TV address on Civil Rights

15. Over 250,000 Americans gather at the Lincoln Memorial to urge the passage of civil rights legislation and hear MLK, Jr. deliver his “I have a dream speech.” Malcolm X dismisses the march as “the Farce on Washington.”
August 28, 1963

16. SNCC and CORE work to register thousands of black voters.
Three civil rights works Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
“Freedom Summer” 1964

17. President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of which prohibits discrimination in most public accommodations.
MLK, Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1964

18. Malcolm X is assassinated while addressing a rally of his followers in NYC. Three black men are ultimately convicted of his murder.
February 21, 1965

19. “Bloody Sunday”
600 marchers outside Selma, Alabama are attacked by state troopers with nightsticks and tear gas.
March 7, 1965

20. President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of which outlaws literacy tests and empowers the Justice Department to supervise federal elections in seven southern states.
August 6, 1965

21. Rioting in the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles leads to 35 deaths, 900 injuries, and over 3,500 arrests.
August 11-16, 1965

22. H. Rap Brown
Stokely Carmichael replaces John Lewis as chairman of SNCC.
SNCC votes to exclude whites from membership
SNCC 1966
John Lewis

23. James Meredith is shot by a sniper while on a one-man “march against fear” in Mississippi
June 6, 1966

24. The Black Panther Party (BPP) is founded in Oakland California.
October 1966

25. Rioting at all black Jackson State College in Mississippi leads to one death and two serious injuries.
May 10-11, 1967

26. Rioting in the black ghetto of Newark, NJ leaves 23 dead and 725 injured.
Newark: July 1967

27. The Kerner Commission February 29, 1968
Warns that the nation is “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal”
White racism is responsible
Jobs, education, housing barriers still remained
Police brutality an issue for many

28. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee, precipitating riots in more than 100 cities.
April 4, 1968