1. The Civil Rights Movement

2. Reconstruction
1866 – The Civil Rights Act – Affirms black citizenship, later made into XIV Amendment
1868 – XIV Amendment: Blacks are citizens, no one’s civil rights may be infringed
1870 – XV Amendment: Black, male suffrage
1871 – Civil Rights Act/Klan Act
1873 – Slaughterhouse cases restrict interpretation of XIV Amendment
1873 – Colfax Massacre

3. The Gilded Age
1876 – “Redeemer” governments begin passing “Jim Crow” laws
1877 – Compromise ends Reconstruction
1879 – First Exodusters move to Kansas
1881 – Booker T. Washington opens the Tuskegee Institute to educate blacks
1888 – Court strikes down 1875 Civil Rights Act, allows for segregation of public facilities
1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson
1898 – First grandfather clause created to exempt whites from literacy tests

4. Early Stirrings 1903 – WEB DuBois publishes The Souls of Black Folk
1905 – First meeting of Niagara Movement
– NAACP founded
1910 – Urban League formed
1914 – Wilson re-segregates federal offices
– First Great Migration
– Race riots in northern cities

5. World War II
1936 – Jesse Owens upstages the Nazi theory of racism at Berlin Olympics
1939 – Marion Anderson performs on Lincoln Memorial after being denied DAR Hall
– Second Great Migration
1941 – A. Philip Randolph threatens march on Washington, FDR agrees to desegregate defense industries

6. The Early Civil Rights Era
1947 – Jackie Robinson integrates major league baseball
1948 – Truman desegregates armed forces
5/17/1954 – Brown vs Board of Education overturns Plessy vs Ferguson
1955 – Emmett Till murdered, becomes rallying point in ending lynching
12/55 – Rosa Parks arrest sparks Montgomery Bus Boycott

7. The Late ‘50s
1956 – Martin Luther King emerges as leader in Montgomery
1957 – SCLC founded
1957 – Crisis at Central High, Little Rock
1957 – Civil Rights Act passed, largely ineffective attempt at voting rights
1958 – First large sit-ins begin in Oklahoma City

8. The Early Sixties 1960 – SNCC has first sit-ins in Greensboro, NC
1960 – Elijah Muhammad calls for all black state
1961 – JFK starts EEOC
1961 – The Freedom Riders attempt to desegregate bus stations
1962 – Albany Movement stalls
1962 – James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss
1963 – Birmingham, King writes Letter From a Birmingham Jail
1963 – Medgar Evers assassinated after JFK makes Civil Rights speech
1963 – March on Washington, King’s I Have A Dream speech

9. LBJ and Civil Rights 1964 – XXIVth Amendment bans polls taxes
‘64 – Mississippi Freedom Summer to register voters leads to the death of three activists
‘64 – Civil Rights Act signed, ends discrimination in public places
‘64 – MLK wins Nobel Peace Prize
‘65 – Malcolm X is shot by members of Nation of Islam
‘65 – Selma protest for voting rights
‘65 – Voting Rights Act ends voting discrimination

10. Decline ‘65 – Watts Riots shock white moderates
‘66 – First African American senator since Reconstruction
‘67 – Loving v Virginia legalizes interracial marriage
‘67 – Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court
‘68 – MLK assassinated, riots nationwide
‘68 – Civil Rights Act bans housing discrimination

11. The Seventies ‘69 – The Philadelphia Plan begins Affirmative Action
‘73 – American Indian Movement, inspired by civil rights movement, seizes Wounded Knee
’74 - Milliken v Bradley: Busing may be used to desegregate schools, leads to “white flight”
‘78 – Bakke case ends quotas, but allows race to be a factor in admissions

12. Recent History ‘86 – First national MLK Day
‘89 – Colin Powell, first African American chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
’92 – Rodney King Riots in LA
‘92 – First African American woman elected to US Senate
‘95 – Million Man March on Washington
‘05 – Edgar Ray Killen convicted of killing civil rights workers in ‘64
‘09 – Barack Obama elected President