1. A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
CIVIL RIGHTS
A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS

2. CIVIL WAR Amendments 13th: 1865 abolished slavery
14th: established citizenship and
due process
15th: universal male suffrage

3. Plessy v. Ferguson
1896 US Supreme Court legalizes segregation in the United States
“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

4. Early Civil Rights Leaders
W.E.B. DuBois—pushed for immediate civil rights and equality. Leader of NAACP
Booker T. Washington
founder of Tuskegee Institute.

5. 1909 NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
established.

6. 1948 Pres. Truman integrates the military by executive order

7. 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas
Supreme Court rules “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. Ends school segregation.

8. 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. A boycott follows, leading to desegregation.

9. 1957 Central High School Little Rock, Arkansas “The Little Rock Nine”
Pres. Eisenhower sends federal troops after Arkansas governor Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to deny entrance to African-American students at Central High.

10. Sit-ins
College students in Greensboro, NC stage sit-ins at the Woolworth’s lunch counter

11. 1961 Freedom Rides
Volunteers, black and white, take buses into the South to test new desegregation laws, often meeting with violence and arrest

12. Freedom rides

13. 1962 Univ. of Mississippi
Pres. Kennedy sends 5000 federal troops to Mississippi to allow James Meredith, the school’s 1st African-American student, to attend.

14. 1963 Birmingham, AL
Martin Luther King and the SCLC focus on segregation in Birmingham. Protests there end in violence, riots, and arrests of adults and children.

15. Aug 1963 March on Washington
200,000 people hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington.

16. Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
Gov. George Wallace promises “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Refuses to desegregate Univ. of Alabama
Stands aside only after being confronted by federal marshals and the Alabama National Guard.

17. 1963 Bombing in Birmingham
16th St. Baptist Church, a bomb explodes on a Sunday morning, killing four young girls.
KKK member seen planting bomb, is arrested, but found guilty of possessing dynamite without a permit.
Fined $100 and six months
in jail.

18. th Amendment
Outlawed poll tax at the federal level. Black voter registration begins to increase.

19. 1964 Civil Rights Act
Outlaws discrimination based on race.

20. 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer
Civil rights activists attempt to register African-Americans to vote

21. 1965 Selma March
Demanding voting rights, 600 protesters plan to march to Montgomery.
6 blocks into march, they meet state troopers armed with nightsticks and tear gas.

22. SELMA, ALABAMA
1965

23. 1965 Voting Rights Act
In the aftermath of Selma, Pres. Johnson calls for passage of a voting rights bill.
Outlaws literacy tests, established federal Oversight, state poll taxed abolished

24. Protests—different views
KING: Non-violent, passive resistance
Influenced by Ghandi
Black Power: proactive, militant, focus on black pride and African heritage.
Term popularized by Stokely Carmichael of SNCC

25. 1965 Malcolm X assassinated
Born Malcolm Little, he learned the ideas of black pride and self-reliance from his father, a follower of Marcus Garvey and member of the UNIA.
While in prison, he converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam.
Upon release, he changed his name; the X represented the African heritage he would never know.
He preached the superiority of blacks and separation from whites; he scorned King’s non-violence saying black people should use any means to protect themselves.
Between 1952 and 1963, the Nation of Islam grew from 500 members to 25,000.

26. Malcolm X
In 1964, Malcolm X made a pilgrimage to Mecca. After seeing Muslims of different races treating each other as equals, his views changed.
At a meeting in Feb. 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by two members of the Nation of Islam, although imprisoned for their crime, proclaimed their innocence.

27. 1965-67 Urban Race Riots – a call for economic rights
Watts (Los Angeles), Detroit, Newark

28. 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr assassinated
Memphis, TN, King is shot by James Earl Ray. He was 39 years old.

29. Civil Rights Today Do we face civil rights issues today?
Are we a desegregated, equal society?
Are there other groups dealing with civil rights questions today?