-
Creation of the NAACP
The NAACP was created in 1909 by an interracial group consisting of W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, Mary White Ovington, and others concerned with the challenges facing African Americans, especially in the wake of the 1908 Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot. -
Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers accused in Alabama of raping two White American women on a train in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. -
Jackie Robinson Breaks the Color Barrier
On this day in 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. -
Ruby Bridges desegregate elementary school
Ruby Bridges was the first African-American child to attend an all-white public elementary school in the American South. -
Brown vs. Board of Education
The story of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools, is one of hope and courage. When the people agreed to be plaintiffs in the case, they never knew they would change history. The people who make up this story were ordinary people. They were teachers, secretaries, welders, ministers and students who simply wanted to be treated equally. -
The Murder of Emmitt Till
fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott of public buses by blacks in Montgomery began on the day of Parks' court hearing and lasted 381 days. -
The Little Rock 9
The little rock nine was a group of nine african americans that went to a school called little rock in arkansas. These nine black people were trying to end the difference between blacks and whits. They thought they should be equal and be able to go to the same school as the whites. -
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail, also known as the Letter from Birmingham City Jail and The Negro Is Your Brother, is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. -
Assassination of Malcolm X
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was shot before he was about to deliver a speech about his new organization called the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Reporters inspect the scene of the assassination, inside the Audobon Ballroom in New York -
Thurgood Marshall Named Supreme Court Justice
President Lyndon Johnson appoints U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Thurgood Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Tom C. Clark. On August 30, after a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall’s nomination by a vote of 69 to 11. Two days later, he was sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, making him the first African American in history to sit on America’s highest court. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr
Shortly after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St. Joseph Hospital. -
Election of Barak Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician who is 44th President of the United States and the first African American to hold the office. -
Creation of the Black Panthers
t was a Black political organization; originally known as the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.
