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Plessy v Ferguson case
Plessy v. Ferguson was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in 1896 It upheld the constitutionality of racial segregation laws for public facilities as long as the segregated facilities were equal in quality. -
Formation of NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-racial organization to advance justice for African Americans by a group, including, W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington and Moorfield Storey. -
Congress of Racial Equality
The Congress of Racial Equality was an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. It was founded in 1942. -
Desegregation of the military
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed this executive order establishing the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services, committing the government to integrating the segregated military. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
Murder of Emmett Till
While visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. It was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr., had a large role in the American civil rights movement. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is formed
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, often pronounced /snɪk/ SNIK) was one of the major Civil Rights Movement organizations of the 1960s. It emerged from the first wave of student sit-ins and formed at an April 1960 meeting organized by Ella Baker at Shaw University. -
Malcolm X begins leading the Nation of Islam
Malcolm X is widely regarded as the second most influential leader of the Nation of Islam after Elijah Muhammad. He was largely credited with the group's dramatic increase in membership between the early 1950s and early 1960s -
The Strategy of Sit-Ins
Students from across the country came together to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and organize sit-ins at counters throughout the South. This front page is from the North Carolina A&T University student newspaper. By 1960, the Civil Rights Movement had gained strong momentum. -
The Freedom Riders
The Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. -
Martin Luther King's Jr's "I have a Dream" speech
"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he calls for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. -
Civil Rights Act
Civil Rights Act is passes giving black citizens equal treatment in 1864 -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer, or the Mississippi Summer Project, was a volunteer campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. -
13th Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the constitution abolishes Slavery in 1865 -
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed under the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Race Riots in Watts and other cities
Watts riots. The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. ... The riots were blamed principally on police racism. It was the city's worst unrest until the Rodney King riots of 1992. -
Martin Luther King's assassination
Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil rights leader, was shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. -
Boston Busing desegregation
The desegregation of Boston public schools was a period in which the Boston Public Schools were under court control to desegregate through a system of busing students -
Rodney King Trial
On April 29, 1992, the jury acquitted three of the officers but could not agree on one of the charges against Powell. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley said, "The jury's verdict will not blind us to what we saw on that videotape. The men who beat Rodney King do not deserve to wear the uniform of the LAPD."
