Dates for Timeline

1964- Civil Rights Act of 1964

1964 BCE

1964- Civil Rights Act of 1964 53 years ago
Thanks to the campaign of nonviolent resistance championed by Martin Luther King Jr. beginning in the late 1950s, the civil rights movement had begun to gain serious momentum in the United States by 1960. That year, John F. Kennedy made passage of new civil rights legislation part of his presidential campaign platform; he won more than 70 percent of the African-American vote. Congress was debating Kennedy’s civil rights

1963- I Have a Dream

1963 BCE

1963- I Have a Dream 54 years ago
On August 28, 1963, some 250,000 people—both black and white—participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the largest demonstration in the history of the nation’s capital and the most significant display of the civil rights movement’s growing strength. After marching from the Washington Monument, the demonstrators gathered near the Lincoln Memorial, where a number of civil rights leaders addressed the crowd, calling for voting rights.

1961- Core and Freedom Rides

1961 BCE

1961- Core and Freedom Rides 56 years ago
Founded in 1942 by the civil rights leader James Farmer, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sought to end discrimination and improve race relations through direct action. In its early years, CORE staged a sit–in at a Chicago coffee shop (a precursor to the successful sit–in movement of 1960) and organized a “Journey of Reconciliation,” in which a group of blacks and whites rode together on a bus through the upper South.

1961- Birmingham Church Bombed

1961 BCE

1961- Birmingham Church Bombed 56 years ago
In mid-September, white supremacists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama during Sunday services; four young African-American girls were killed in the explosion. The church bombing was the third in 11 days, after the federal government had ordered the integration of Alabama’s school system.

1957- Central High School

1957 BCE

1957- Central High School Integrated 60 years ago
Central high School, located in the state capital of Little Rock was integrated

1955- Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955 BCE

1955- Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott 62 years ago
On December 1, 1955, an African–American woman named Rosa Parks was riding a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama when the driver told her to give up her seat to a white man. Parks refused, and was arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, which stated that blacks sit in the back of public buses and give up their seats for white riders if the front seats were full.

1954- Brown V. Board of Education

1954 BCE

1954- Brown V. Board of Education 63 years ago
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its verdict in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment’s mandate of equal protection of the laws of the U.S. Constitution to any person within its jurisdiction.

1947- Jackie Robinson

1947 BCE

1947- Jackie Robinson 70 years ago
By 1900, the unwritten color line barring blacks from white teams in professional baseball was strictly enforced. Jackie Robinson, a sharecropper’s son from Georgia, joined the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League in 1945, after a stint in the U.S. Army (he earned an honorable discharge after facing a court–martial for refusing to move to the back of a segregated bus)

1941- African Americans in WWII

1941 BCE

1941- African Americans in WWII 76 years ago
During World War II, many African Americans were ready to fight for what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the “Four Freedoms”— freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear—even while they themselves lacked those freedoms at home. More than 3 million blacks would register for service during the war. Frustrated black servicemen were forced to combat racism even as they sought to protect the U.S.A

1909- NAACP Founded

1909 BCE

1909- NAACP Founded 108 years ago
Establishment of political protest movement who demanded civil rights for blacks

1896- Separate but Equal

1896 BCE

1896- Separate but Equal 121 years ago
Legislation was introduced (Laws)in the southern states which eventuated in separate schools for blacks and whites, “persons of colour” were required to be separate from whites in railroad cars, hotels, theatres, restaurants, hairdressing salons and other establishments

1861- Civil War and Emancipation

1861 BCE

1861- Civil War and Emancipation 156 years ago
Emancipation was the freeing of 3 million slaves in the rebel states of the civil war

1831- Liberator 186 years ago Anti-slavery

1831 BCE

1831- Liberator 186 years ago
Anti-slavery newspaper the Liberator is published and becomes a leading voice in the Abolitionist movement (Movement that eventually saw slavery become illegal)

1808- Slave importing Banned 209 years ago American congress

1808 BCE

1808- Slave importing Banned 209 years ago
American congress bans further importation of slaves

1739- The Stono Rebellion

1739 BCE

1739- The Stono Rebellion 278 years ago
Slave rebellion that began on 9 September 1739, in the colony of South Carolina. It was the largest slave uprising

1690- Every American Colony had slaves

1690 BCE

1690- Every American Colony had slaves 327 years ago
By this year, just about every colony in America had slaves brought from Africa

1619- Slaves Arrive in America

1619 BCE

1619- Slaves Arrive in America 398 Years ago
First African contracted servants arrive in American colonies