Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement

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This is a timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

1600 - 1899

1676

• unknown - Bacon's Rebellion involves some free and slave African-Americans (see also Racism in the United States).

1739

• September 9- In the Stono Rebellion South Carolina slaves gathered at the Stono River to plan an armed march for freedom.

1787

• July 13, The Northwest Ordinance bans the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River.

Early 1800s

• unknown - first Black Codes enacted.

1800

• August 30 - Gabriel Prosser's attempt to lead a slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia is thwarted.

1822

• July 14 - Denmark Vesey's attempt to lead a slave rebellion in Charleston, South Carolina is thwarted.

1829

• September - David Walker begins publication of the abolitionist pamphlet Walker's Appeal.

1831

• unknown - William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator.
• August - Nat Turner leads the most successful slave rebellion in U.S. history. The rebellion is suppressed, but only after many deaths.

1847

• unknown - Frederick Douglass begins publication of the abolitionist newspaper the North Star.

1849

• unknown - Roberts v. Boston seeks to end racial discrimination in Boston public schools.

1852

• March 20 - Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe is published.

1857

• March 6 - In Dred Scott v. Sandford the Supreme Court upholds slavery. This decision is regarded as a key cause of the American Civil War.

1862

• September 22 - Announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, after the Battle of Antietam.

1863-1877 Reconstruction

1863

• January 1 - The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect.
• May 22 - U.S. Army recruits United States Colored Troops. One unit, the 54th Massachusetts will be featured in the critically acclaimed movie Glory.
• July-White protests in New York City turn into riots against blacks-the so called Draft Riots.

1865

• December 18th - The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolishes slavery in the U.S.
• unknown - Ku Klux Klan formed in Pulaski, Tennessee

1866

• April 9 - Civil Rights Act of 1866 passes over presidential veto. All persons born in the United States are now citizens.
• July- New Orleans White Citizens riot against blacks
• September 21 - The U.S. Army regiment of Buffalo Soldiers formed.
• unknown - The Second Freedmen's Bureau Act would have provided many additional rights to ex-slaves, but it is vetoed by President Andrew Johnson.

1868

• April 1 - Hampton Institute founded in Hampton, Virginia.
• July 9 - The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution's Section 1 requires due process and equal protection.
• unknown - Through 1871, the first heavy period of lynching occurs to prevent ratification of new state constitutions.

1870

• February 3 - The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right of citizens of the United States to vote regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
• February 25 - Hiram Rhodes Revels becomes the first black member of the Senate (see African Americans in the United States Congress).

1871

• October 10 - Octavius Catto is murdered in Philadelphia.

1872

• December 11 - P.B.S. Pinchback is sworn in as the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1873

• April 14 - In the Slaughterhouse Cases the Supreme Court votes 5-4 for a narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court also discusses dual citizenship: State Citizens and U.S. Citizens.

1874

• September-Whites riot against blacks in New Orleans-the so called "Battle of Liberty Place"

1875

• March 1 - Civil Rights Act of 1875 signed.
• unknown - Mississippi Plan to intimidate Black voting.

1876

• July 8 - The Hamburg Massacre occurs when local people riot against African-Americans who were trying to celebrate the Fourth of July.
• varied - First Jim Crow laws.

1879

• spring - Thousands of African-Americans give up on the South and migrate to Kansas. They become known as Exodusters.

1880

• unknown - In Strauder v. West Virginia a federal court rules that African-Americans could not be excluded from juries.

1881

• July 4 - Booker T. Washington opens the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama.

1883

• unknown - In Civil Rights Cases the United States Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875 as unconstitutional.

1884

• unknown - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn published, written by Mark Twain.
• unknown - Judy W. Reed, of Washington, DC, and Sarah E. Goode, of Chicago, were the first African American women inventors to receive patents. Reed may not have been able to sign her name, but she may be the first African American woman to receive a patent. Signed with an "X", patent no. 305,474, granted September 23, 1884, is for a dough kneader and roller. Goode's patent for a cabinet bed, patent no. 322,177, was issued on July 14, 1885. Goode, the owner of a Chicago furniture store at the time of her invention, invented a folding bed that could be formed into a desk when not in use.
• unknown - Ida B. Wells sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad Company for its use of segregated "Jim Crow" cars.

1892

• unknown - Ida B. Wells published her famous pamphlet, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases.

1895

• September 18 - Booker T. Washington delivers his Atlanta Compromise address at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia.

1896

• May 18 - In Plessy v. Ferguson the Supreme Court approves de jure racial segregation (see Jim Crow laws for historical discussion).

1898

• Louisiana enacts the first state-wide grandfather clause.

1900 - 1949

1901

• unknown - Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery is published.

1903

• unknown - W.E.B. Du Bois's seminal work The Souls of Black Folk is published.

1904

• May 15 - Sigma Pi Phi, the first African-American Greek-letter organization, was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1905

• July 11 - First meeting of the Niagara Movement.

1908

• December 26 - Jack Johnson won the World Heavyweight Title.

1909

• February 12 - First National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meeting scheduled.

1910

• September 29 - National Urban League founded.

1915

• February 8 - The Birth of a Nation is released to movie theaters.
• June 21 - In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court rules against grandfather clauses used to deny Blacks the vote.
• September 9 - Professor Carter Woodson founded The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in Chicago, Illinois.

1916

• January - Professor Carter Woodson and The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History begins publishing the Journal of Negro History, the first academic journal devoted to the study of African-American history.

1919

• summer - Red Summer of 1919 riots.
• September 28 - Omaha Race Riot of 1919.
• October 1 - Elaine Race Riot: many Blacks are convicted or plead guilty, but the Supreme Court overturns six convictions in 1923 in Moore v. Dempsey.

1921

• May 31 - Tulsa Race Riot

1923

• February 19 - In Moore v. Dempsey, the Supreme Court holds that mob-dominated trials violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

1925

• unknown - Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organized.
• spring - American Negro Labor Congress founded.

1929

• The League of United Latin American Citizens, the first organization to fight for the civil rights of Hispanic Americans, is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas.

1930

• unknown - The League of Struggle for Negro Rights was founded in New York City.

1931

• March 25 - Scottsboro Boys arrested. All are later freed, pardoned or paroled. The film Heaven's Fall was made about the incident.

1935

• June 18 - Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston win the landmark Murray v. Pearson case removing the color barrier from admissions to the University of Maryland School of Law.

1936

• August - Sprinter Jessie Owens wins four gold medals at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.

1939

• unknown - Billie Holiday first performs Strange Fruit, a protest song against lynching, in New York City.

1940

• February 12 - In Chambers v. Florida, the Supreme Court frees three Black men who were coerced into confessing to a murder.

1941

• early 1941 - U.S. Army forms African-American air combat units, the Tuskegee Airmen
• June 25 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issues Executive Order 8802, the "Fair Employment Act".

1943

• unknown - Congress of Racial Equality founded.

1944

• April 3 - In Smith vs. Allwright the Supreme Court decided the whites-only Democratic primary in Texas was unconstitutional.
• April 25 - United Negro College Fund incorporated.
• July 17 - Port Chicago disaster, which leads to the Port Chicago Mutiny.
• November 7 - Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. elected to U.S. House of Representatives

1945-1975 Second Reconstruction/American Civil Rights Movement

1945

• unknown - Freeman Field Mutiny, where Black officers attempt to desegregate an all-white officers club.

1946

• unknown - Renowned actor/singer Paul Robeson founds the American Crusade Against Lynching

1947

• April 9 - The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 men on the Journey of Reconciliation.
• April 15 - Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black baseball player in professional baseball in 60 years.

1948

• January 12 - In Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. the Supreme Court rules that the State of Oklahoma and the University of Oklahoma Law School could not deny admission based on race ("color").
• May 3 - In Shelley v. Kraemer the Supreme Court rules that the government could not enforce racial restrictive covenants, and asserts that they were in conflict with the nation's public policy.
• July 12 - Hubert Humphrey makes a controversial speech in favor of American Civil rights at the Democratic National Convention
• July 26 - President Harry S. Truman issues Executive Order 9981 ordering the end of segregation in the armed forces.

1950 - 1959

For more detail during this period, see Freedom Riders website chronology

1950

• June 5 - In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents the Supreme Court rules that a public institution of higher learning could not provide different treatment to a student solely because of their race.
• June 5 - In Sweatt v. Painter the Supreme Court rules that a separate-but-equal Texas law school was actually unequal, partly in that it isolated the students from the majority of other future lawyers.
• The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is created in Washington, DC to promote the enactment and enforcement of effective civil rights legislation and policy.

1951

• April 23 - High school students in Farmville, Virginia go on strike: the case Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County is heard by the Supreme Court in 1954 as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
• July 26 - The United States Army high command announces it will desegregate the Army.

1952

• January 28 - Briggs v. Elliott: after a District Court orders separate but equal school facilities in South Carolina, the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case as part of Brown v. Board of Education.
• April 1 - Chancellor Collins J. Seitz finds for the black plaintiffs (Belton v. Gebhart, Belton v. Bulah) and orders the integration of Hockessin elementary and Claymont High School in Delaware based that the black and white schools are not equal based on (Plessy v. Ferguson, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Eduation 1899) "separate but equal" public school facilities required by the Delaware constitution.
• September 4 Eleven black students attend the first day of school at Claymont High School becoming the first black students in the 17 segregated states to integrate a white public school. The day occurred without incident or notice by the community.
• September 5 Delaware State Attorney General informs Claymont Superintendent Stahl that the black students will have to go home because the case is being appealed. Stahl, the School Board and the faculty refuse and the students remain. The two Delaware cases are argued before the Warren US Supreme Court by Redding, Greenberg and Marshall and are used as an example of how integration can be achieved peacefully and is a primary influence in the Brown v. Board case. Claymont High School is the first public school in the states that allow or require segregation to integrate. The students become active in sports, music and theater and the first two black students graduate in June 1954 just one month after the Brown v. Board case.

1954

• May 17 - The Supreme Court overturns the "separate but equal" doctrine in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans. and in Bolling v. Sharpe, overturning Plessy v. Ferguson.
• July 11 - The first White Citizens' Council meeting takes place, in Mississippi.
• The Supreme Court of the United States decides in Hernandez v. Texas that Mexican Americans and all other racial groups in the United States are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
• November - Charles Diggs of Detroit, Michigan is elected to Congress.

1955

• January 15 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs Executive Order 10590, establishing the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in federal employment.
• May 7 - NAACP activist Reverend George W. Lee is killed in Belzoni, Mississippi.
• May 31 - The Supreme Court rules in "Brown II" that desegregation must occur with "all deliberate speed".
• June 29 - The NAACP wins a Supreme Court decision, ordering the University of Alabama to admit Autherine Lucy.
• August 13 - Registration activist Lamar Smith is murdered in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
• August 28 - Teenager Emmett Till is killed for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi.
• December 1 - Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus, starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• unknown - Roy Wilkins becomes the NAACP executive secretary.
• unknown - Richard J. Daley becomes the mayor of Chicago.

1956

• February 3 - Autherine Lucy is admitted to the University of Alabama. Whites riot, and she is suspended. Later, she is expelled for her part in further legal action against the university.
• February 24 - The policy of Massive Resistance is declared by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr..
• March 12 - Southern Manifesto released to the press.
• May 28 - The Tallahassee, Florida bus boycott begins.
• November 13 - The Supreme Court strikes down Alabama laws requiring segregation of buses in Browder v. Gayle.
• unknown - Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission formed.
• unknown - Southern Manifesto is signed by Southern state congressmen opposing integration.
• unknown - * The FBI begins the COINTELPRO program to investigate and disrupt "dissident" groups within the United States.

1957

• January - Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed. Martin Luther King is named chairman of the organization.
• September 4 - The governor of Arkansas calls out the National Guard to block integration of Little Rock Central High School.
• September - Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas is integrated. Federal and National Guard troops escort the Little Rock Nine.
• unknown - Civil Rights Act of 1957 signed.

1958

• unknown - The Supreme Court awards the NAACP the right to continue operating in Alabama under NAACP v. Alabama.

1959

• April 25 - Mack Charles Parker, accused of raping a white woman, is taken from jail and lynched by a white mob in Poplarville, Mississippi.

1960 - 1969

For more detail during this period, see Freedom Riders website chronology

See also Race riot

1960

• February 1 - Four black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro Sit-Ins.
• February 17 - Alabama grand jury indicts Martin Luther King (MLK) for tax evasion.
• February 20 - Virginia Union University students stage sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Richmond.
• March 3 - Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for sit-in participation.
• March 7 - Felton Turner of Houston beaten and hung-upside down in a tree, initials KKK carved on his chest.
• March 19 - San Antonio becomes first city to integrate lunch counters.
• March 20 - Florida Governor Leroy Collins calls lunch counter segregation “unfair and morally wrong.”
• April 8 - Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.
• April 15-17 - The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• April 19 - Nashville civil rights lawyer Z. Alexander Looby’s home bombed.
• May - Nashville sit-ins.
• May 6 - Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by Dwight Eisenhower.
• May 28 - All-white Alabama jury acquits MLK.
• June 24 - MLK meets Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK).
• June 28 - Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr..
• July - SCLC volunteer Bob Moses, traveling for SNCC, meets Amzie Moore in Mississippi Delta.
• July 31 - Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state. Membership in Nation of Islam estimated at 100,000.
• August - Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker replaces Ella Baker as SCLC’s Executive Director.
• October 19 - MLK and fifty others arrested at sit-in at Atlanta’s Rich’s Department Store.
• October 26 - MLK’s earlier probation revoked; transferred to Reidsville State Prison.
• October 28 - After intervention from Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), King is free on bond.
• November 8 - John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, winning by 119,000 votes out of 68,800,000 cast.
• December 5 - In Boynton v. Virginia the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in public transportation is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act.

1961

• January 11 - Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African Americans at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension.
• January 30 - A third child, Dexter Scott, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King in Atlanta, Georgia.
• January 31 - Member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
• March 6 - President John F. Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
• May 4 - The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals, using Boynton v. Virginia.
• May 14 - The Freedom Rider’s bus is burned outside of Anniston, Alabama. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham, Alabama. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend forty to sixty days in Parchman Penitentiary.
• May 17 - Nashville students, coordinated by Diane Nash and James Bevel, take up the Freedom Ride.
• May 20 - Freedom Riders assaulted in Montgomery, Alabama.
• May 21-22 - MLK, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by mob of segregationists; Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sends federal marshals.
• June-August - U.S. Dept. of Justice initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project.
• July - SCLC begins citizenship classes; Andrew J. Young hired to direct the program. Bob Moses begins voter registration in McComb, Mississippi.
• September - James Forman becomes SNCC’s Executive Secretary.
• September 23 - Interstate Commerce Commission, at Robert F. Kennedy’s insistence, issues new rules ending discrimination in intersate travel, effective November 1, 1961.
• September 25 - Voter registration activist Herbert Lee killed in McComb, Mississippi.
• November 1 - All interstate buses required to display a certificate that reads: “Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission.”
• November 1 - SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon and nine Chatmon Youth Council members test new ICC rules at Trailways bus station in Albany, Georgia.
• November 17 - SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.
• November 22 - Three high school students from Chatmon’s Youth Council arrested after using “positive actions” by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.
• November 22 - Albany State college students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall arrested after going “clean sided” to enter the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.
• December 10 - Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal sparking mass demonstrations with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.
• December 11-15 - Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia.
• December 15 - Dr. King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.
• December 16 - Dr. King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.
• December 18 - Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; MLK leaves town.

1962

• January 18-20 - Student protests over sit-in leaders’ expulsions at Baton Rouge’s Southern University, the nation’s largest black school, close it down.
• February - Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). The name is taken from an earlier coalition effort to support the Freedom Riders. A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP).
• February 26 - Segregated trasportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court.
• March - SNCC workers sit-in RFK’s office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge.
• March 20 - FBI installs wiretaps on Stanley Levison’s office.
• April 3 - Full racial integration of military reserve units, except the National Guard, ordered by the Defense Department
• April 9 - Corporal Roman Duckworth shot by a police officer in Taylorsville, Mississippi.
• June - Leroy Willis becomes first black graduate of the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences.
• June - Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara visits South Vietnam and proclaims, “We’re winning this war.”
• June - SNCC workers establish voter registration projects in rural Southwest Georgia.
• July 10-August 28 SCLC renews protests in Albany; MLK in jail July 10-12 and July 27-August 10.
• August 31 - Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi.
• September 9 - Two black churches used by SNCC for voter registration meetings burn in Sasser, Georgia.
• September 20 - James Meredith is barred from becoming the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
• September 30-October 1 - Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss. Meredith enrolls; riot ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed.
• October - Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.
• October 23 – Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) begins Communist Infiltration (COMINFIL) investigation of SCLC.
• October 14-28 – Cuban Missile Crisis.
• November 7-8 – Edward Brooke selected Massachusetts Attorney General, Leroy Johnson Georgia State Senator, Augustus Hawkins first black from California in Congress.
• November 20 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy authorizes wiretap on Stanley Levison’s home telephone.
• November 20 - President John F. Kennedy upholds 1960 campaign promise to eliminate housing segregation with “stroke of a pen” by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in federally funded housing.

1963

• January - Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.
• April-May - The Birmingham campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights challenges city leaders and business owners in Birmingham, Alabama with daily mass demonstrations.
• April 16 - Letter from Birmingham Jail written by Martin Luther King.
• April 23, CORE activist William L. Moore is killed in Gadsden, Alabama.
• May 2-4 - Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers when Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth launches a "D-Day" youth march, which spans over three days to become the Children's Crusade.
• May 9-10 - After images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on protesters are shown on television, the Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9 - an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back oppressive segregation laws and practices. MLK and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth announce the terms of the settlement on Friday, May 10, only after MLK holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
• June 9 - Fannie Lou Hamer is among a group of several SNCC workers badly beaten by police in the Winona, Mississippi jail after their bus stops there.
• June 11 - "The Stand In The Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation of that institution by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace only stands aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard. Later in life he apologizes for his opposition to racial integration at that time.
• June 11 - President John F. Kennedy (JFK) makes his historic civil rights speech, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves."
• June 12 - NAACP worker Medgar Evers is murdered in Jackson, Mississippi. (His killer is convicted in 1994.)
• June 19 - President Kennedy sends to the Congress (H. Doc. 124, 88th Cong., 1st session.) his proposed Civil Rights Act.
• August 28 - March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. Dr. Martin Luther King gives his I have a dream speech.
• September 15 - 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls. Spike Lee will later make the 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls about this atrocity.
• November 22 - President Kennedy is assassinated. The new President Lyndon Johnson decides that accomplishing JFK's legislative agenda is his best strategy, which he pursues with the results below in 1964-1965.

1964

• January 23 - Twenty-fourth Amendment abolishes the poll tax.
• Summer - Mississippi Freedom Summer.
• June 21 - Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders.
• June 28 - Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death.
• July 2 - Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed.
• August - Congress passes the Economic Opportunity Act which, among other things, provides federal funds for legal representation of Native Americans in both civil and criminal suits. This allows the ACLU and the American Bar Association to represent Native Americans in cases that later win them additional civil rights.
• December 10 - Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
• December 14 - In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States the Supreme Court upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• unknown - The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenges the seating of all-white Mississippi representatives at the Democratic national convention.

1965

• February 21 - Malcolm X is shot to death in Manhattan, New York, probably by members of the Black Muslim faith.
• March 7 - Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama begin a march to Montgomery but are stopped by a massive police blockade as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Many marchers are severely injured and one killed.
• March 15 - President Lyndon Johnson uses the phrase "We shall overcome" in a speech before Congress on the voting rights bill.
• March 25 - white volunteer Viola Liuzzo is shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members -- one of whom was an FBI informant.
• June 2 - black deputy sheriff O'Neal Moore is murdered in Varnado, Louisiana.
• July 2 - Equal Employment Opportunity Commission opens.
• August 6 - Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed.
• August 11 - Watts riots erupt.
• September - Raylawni Young Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong become the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi.
• September 15 - Bill Cosby co-stars in I Spy, a first for a black person on American television
• September 24 - Executive Order 11246 is signed, requiring Equal Employment Opportunity by federal contractors.

1966

• January 10 - NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day.
• October - Black Panthers founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
• November - Edward Brooke is elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. He is the first Black senator since 1881.
• unknown - Julian Bond is seated to the Georgia House of Representatives by order of the Supreme Court after his election.

1967

• June 12 - In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
• June 13 - Thurgood Marshall is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• August 2 - The movie In the Heat of the Night is released.
• December 11 - The movie Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is released.
• unknown - The trial of accused killers in the Mississippi civil rights worker murders convicts 7 of 18 accused men. Conspirator Edgar Ray Killen is convicted in 2005.

1968

• February 8 - Orangeburg Massacre occurs during university protest.
• April 2 - On a primetime television special, Petula Clark touches Harry Belafonte's arm during a duet. Chrysler Corporation, the show's sponsor, had insisted the moment be deleted, but Clark stood firm, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the completed program to NBC with the touch intact.
• April 4 - Dr. Martin Luther King is shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.
• April 11 - Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act - it bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
• October - Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists to symbolize black power and unity after winning the gold and bronze medals, respectively, at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games.
• November 22 - first interracial kiss on American television, between Nichelle Nichols and William Shatner on Star Trek
• unknown - In Powe v. Miles a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act.
• unknown - Poor People's Campaign marches on Washington, DC.

1969

• December - Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party is shot and killed while asleep in bed during a police raid on his home.
• unknown - United Citizens Party is formed in South Carolina when Democratic Party refuse to nominate African-American candidates.
• unknown - Control of segregationist TV station WLBT given to a bi-racial foundation.
• unknown - Congress passes the Indian Civil Rights Act, which prohibits state governments from assuming jurisdiction over Native American lands and extends to Indians the same rights that non-Native whites have had since the addition of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution.

1970 - Present

1970

• unknown - The film Watermelon Man released, directed by Melvin Van Peebles and starring Godfrey Cambridge.

1971

• The Supreme Court, in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds desegregation busing of students to achieve integration.

1972

• In Baton Rouge, two Southern University students are killed by white Sheriff deputies during a school protest over lack of funding from the state. Today, the university’s Smith-Brown Memorial Union is named in their honor.

1973

• February 27 - Start of 71-day standoff at Wounded Knee between federal authorities and members of the American Indian Movement.

1974

• July 25 - In Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision holds that outlying districts could only be forced into a desegregation busing plan if there was a pattern of violation on their part. This decision reinforces the trend of white flight.

1976

• February - Black History Month is founded by Professor Carter Woodson's Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History.

1978

• Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

1983

• May 24 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bob Jones University did not qualify as either a tax-exempt or a charitable organization due to its racially discriminatory preactices.

1984

• The film A Soldier's Story is released, dealing with racism in the U.S. military.

1986

• Established by legislation in 1983, Martin Luther King, Jr., Day is first celebrated as a national holiday.

1987

• The Public Broadcasting System's six-part documentary Eyes on the Prize is first shown, covering the years 1954-1965. In 1990 it is added to by the eight-part Eyes on the Prize II covering the years 1965-1985.

1988

• Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988.
• The movie Mississippi Burning is released, regarding the 1964 Mississippi civil rights worker murders.

1989

• October 1 - Colin Powell becomes Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
• December 15 - The film Glory is released: it features African-American Civil War soldiers.

1991

• March 3 - four white police officers are videotaped beating African-American Rodney King.
• Civil Rights Act of 1991
• Senate confirms the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court

1992

• April 29 - 1992 Los Angeles riots erupt after officers accused of beating Rodney King are acquitted.
• November 18 - Director Spike Lee's film X on Malcolm X is released.

1995

• October 16 - Million Man March in Washington, D.C.

1997

• July 9 - Director Spike Lee releases his documentary 4 Little Girls about the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

1998

• June 7 - James Byrd, Jr. was brutally murdered by white supremacists in Jasper, Texas. The scene was reminiscent of earlier lynchings. In response, Byrd's family created the James Byrd Foundation for Racial Healing.
• The film American History X is released, powerfully highlighting the problems of urban racism

2000

• May 3 - The Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist South Carolina private institution, ended its ban on interracial dating.

2001

• January 20 - Colin Powell becomes Secretary of State

2003

• June 23 - Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger upholds the University of Michigan Law School's admission policy. However, in the simultaneously-heard Gratz v. Bollinger the University is required to change a policy.

2005

• October 15 - the Millions More Movement holds a march in Washington D.C.
• October 25 - Rosa Parks dies at the age of 92. She was famous for starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Her body lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. before her funeral.
• Edgar Ray Killen is convicted of participating in the Mississippi civil rights worker murders.

Footnotes

To the reader : If you arrived at a footnote by clicking on a superscript [b] (or [c]) then click on the superscript b (or c), to return.

See also

• African Americans in the United States Congress
• Affirmative action bake sale
• American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)
• American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
• African American history
• African American literature section on Civil Rights Movement Literature
• Baseball color line
• Big Six (civil rights)
• Blackface
• Black Panther Party
• Black power
• Black pride
• Cotton Club
• Desegregation
• Equal Protection Clause
• Grandfather clause
• History of slavery in the United States
• Interstate Commerce Commission
• List of landmark African-American legislation
• Lynching in the United States
• Movies filmed in Harlem
• Nation of Islam
• Negro
• Negro league baseball
• Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America
• Racial segregation in the United States
• Racism in the United States
• Sundown town
• Uncle Tom
• Wednesdays in Mississippi
• Civil Rights Movement in Omaha, Nebraska

Other people

• Reverend Ralph Abernathy
• Marion Barry
• H. Rap Brown
• Stokley Carmichael
• Bernice Fisher
• James Forman
• A. G. Gaston
• freddy free
• Reverend James Lawson
• Robert Parris Moses
• Condoleezza Rice
• Bayard Rustin
• Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth
• Roy Wilkins
• Robert F. Williams

Other performers

• Count Basie
• Angela Bassett
• Halle Berry
• Sammy Davis, Jr.
• Duke Ellington
• Laurence Fishburne
• Morgan Freeman
• Danny Glover
• Don Mitchell of Ironside (TV series)
• Cicely Tyson
• Denzel Washington
• Clarence Williams III of The Mod Squad
• Oprah Winfrey

Other athletes

• Hank Aaron
• Muhammad Ali
• Arthur Ashe
• Ernie Banks
• James "Cool Papa" Bell
• Jim Brown
• Wilt Chamberlain
• Julius Erving
• Joe Frazier
• Althea Gibson
• Kareem Abdul Jabbar
• Magic Johnson
• Michael Jordan
• Jackie Joyner Kersee
• Carl Lewis
• Joe Louis
• Willie Mays
• Satchel Paige
• Sugar Ray Robinson
• Wilma Rudolph
• Bill Russell
• John Woodruff
• Tiger Woods

External links

• Black History Daily, 365 days a year
• Detailed year-by-year timeline 1951-1968
• University of Southern Mississippi's Civil Rights Documentation Project, includes an extensive Timeline
• Freedom Riders website chronology, extremely detailed
• Civil Rights Timeline, sections on Martin Luther King, Jr.
• 41 Lives for Freedom
• Black baseball firsts
• African-American Pioneers of Texas
• Memphis Civil Rights Digital Archive

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