1. Civil Rights Movement Timeline
Name:____________________________________________________________________ Period: __________________ Date:_________________________
Ms Phillips: US II
Civil Rights Movement Timeline
DIRECTIONS: Using the book and the list of events on the back of this page, identify the 6 most important events of the Black Civil Rights Movement. Place them on the timeline and explain why they were important/made the cut for the timeline.
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Significance
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2. 1896: The Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” laws are legal in the Plessy v Ferguson decision.
May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education Topeka case where the Supreme Court bans segregation in all public schools in the United States.
December 1, 1955: In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat for a white man, causing a bus boycott by the Black community.
February 1957: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was established by Martin Luther King, Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Charles K. Steele.
December 21, 1956: The Montgomery bus system desegregates.
September 1957: The Little Rock Central High school board votes on school integration and the “Little Rock 9” are allowed to attend public, desegregated school.
February 1, 1960: Four black students from the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in North Carolina stage a sit-in at a lunch counter where they are refused service. The beginning of the “Sit ins”
May 1, 1961: Student volunteers called “freedom riders” begin testing state laws prohibiting segregation on buses and railways stations.
October 1, 1962: James Meredith enrolls at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) by using the integration laws.
June 12, 1963: Governor Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door of the University of Alabama before being forced by Kennedy to allow black students to enroll.
August 28, 1963: 20,000 blacks and whites gather at the Lincoln Memorial to hear speeches against racism; among them is Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream.”
January 23, 1964: A poll tax used to prevent blacks from voting is outlawed with the 24th Amendment.
Summer 1964: The Mississippi Summer Freedom Project begins; civil rights workers help blacks register to vote. 3 are killed and many black churches and homes are burned in retaliation.
July 1, 1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed, which forbid racial discrimination.
February 21, 1965: Malcolm X splits off from Elijah Muhammad’s Black Muslims and their belief in integration and nonviolence; he is assassinated in retaliation.
March 7, 1965: Martin Luther King Jr. leads a 54-mile march to support black voter registration. They marched from Selma to Montgomery.
August 10, 1965: Voting Rights Act of 1965 is approved.
September 24, 1965: Executive Order issued by President Johnson to enforce affirmative action.
October 1966: The Black Panthers are founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in Oakland, California.
April 4, 1968: While outside his home, Martin Luther King Jr. is murdered by James Earl Ray
April 11, 1968: Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.