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Truman signs Executive Order 9981
Truman signs the Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." -
Brown vs Board of Education.
The case of Brown vs Board of Education ended legal segregation in public schools. The people that wanted equality among schools, were those of the ordinary. They were teachers, secretaries, welders, ministers and students. -
Tragic death of Emmett Till.
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till was visiting his family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for whistling at a white woman The two white men responsible for his death were Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam. This case was a cause of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Rosa Park Bus Seat
NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, which was a custom at the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launched a bus boycott, which lasted for more than a year, until the buses were desegregated in Dec. 21, 1956. -
Marther Luther King Jr. becomes president of the SCLC
Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth establish the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which King is made the first president. The SCLC becomes a major force in organizing the civil rights movement and bases its principles on nonviolence and civil disobedience. -
Lunch Counter protestment
Four black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College began a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter. Although they were refused service, they were allowed to stay at the counter. The event triggered many similar nonviolent protests throughout the South. Six months later the four protestors were served lunch in Woolworth's lunch counter. -
Bus Trips through the South
Over the spring and summer, student volunteers began taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibited segregation in interstate travel facilities, which included bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they were called, were attacked by angry mobs along the way. -
First black student to enroll in university
James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident caused President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops. -
Marther Luther King jailed
Marther Luther King was arrested and jaiiled during the anti-segregation protests in Birmingham. He ends up writing his seminal, "Letters from Birmingham Jail" in which he says that humans and individuals have the right to disobey unjust laws. -
Civil Rights Movement gains more Sympathy
During the protests in Birmingham, the Commisioner of Public Safety, Eugene Conor, uses fire hoes and police dogs on black demonstrators. The graphical images that were telvised world wide, caused the Civil Rights Movement to gain lots of Sympathy.
