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Hege Library & Learning Technologies
Hege Library & Learning Technologies
Date |
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General African American Timeline |
Local Quaker & African American Timeline |
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1952 |
Malcom X has growing influence as he becomes a minister in the Nation of Islam. Over time his advocacy goes from teaching black supremacy and separatism to disavowing racism to work with civil rights leaders. |
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1954 |
Brown v. Board of Education case by the Supreme Court declares state laws that establish racially segregated schools are unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the justices declare that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." |
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1955 |
Emmett Till (from Chicago) is brutally murdered, while visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta, for allegedly having whistled at a white woman. |
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1955 |
The Supreme Court ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company is a landmark case for civil rights decided in November, six days before Rosa Parks' refusal to move in the bus. The case interprets the Interstate Commerce Act's non-discrimination clause as being a ban on segregated bus travel across state lines. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Keys_v._Carolina_Coach_Company |
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1955 |
Rosa Parks refuses to obey the bus driver and does not give up her front seat in the bus on December 1, 1955. Her arrest sets off the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott. On December 21, 1956, Montgomery buses were desegregated. |
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1957 |
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, is established by Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, Fred L. Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, Ralph Abernathy, and others. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Christian_Leadership_Conference |
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1957 |
The Little Rock Nine was the name given to a group of nine African-American students who enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957 with encouragement from the NAACP. This caused the Little Rock Crisis as Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus at first prevented the students from entering the segregated school. Intervention by President Eisenhower and the National Guard later allowed the students to enter. It was a significant event in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. |
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1958 |
Bruce Boynton, an African American law student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., takes a bus to travel home to Montgomery, Alabama. In Richmond, Virginia, he decides to test the Interstate Commerce Act and sits down in the "whites only" bus terminal restaurant to be served. He is arrested for trespassing. The case goes to the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia. |
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http://www.enotes.com/boynton-v-virginia-reference/boynton-v-virginia |
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1960 |
Four black students from the Agricultural & Technical College in Greensboro, North Carolina sat down at the segregated Woolworth lunch counter on February 1. Their action caused a Sit-in Movement across the South. Six months later, the "A&T Four" had succeeded. The lunch counters and other public facilities were integrated. |
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1960 |
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded in April on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina during meetings led by Ella Baker with civil rights leaders and students. The organization would play a leading role in the sit-ins, freedom rides, March on Washington in 1963, Mississippi Freedom Summer, voter registration and other civil rights struggles throughout the South. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_Nonviolent_Coordinating_Committee |
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1960 |
Boynton v. Virginia is a ruling by the Supreme Court stating that restaurants in a bus terminal, in accordance with the Interstate Commerce Act, could not be segregated. The Act banned discrimination in interstate passenger transportation. Boynton v. Virginia also overturned a trespassing conviction against an African American law student for entering a "whites only" bus terminal restaurant. |
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1961 |
Freedom Riders in the spring and summer begin to travel in buses across state lines to segregated southern states. They want to test interstate commerce laws by using travel facilities at segregated bus and railway stations. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organize these civil rights demonstrations. Many of the Freedom Riders are attacked by angry crowds, even as they carry out non-violent protests themselves. |
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1962 |
James Meredith, after being denied entrance to the segregated institution, becomes the first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi on October 1. U. S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in consultation with Governor Barnett who opposed the admission, helped to make it happen. The event cause rioting by white protesters on campus. |
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1963 |
Martin Luther King, Jr. writes "Letter from Birmingham Jail" after being arrested for protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. In his writing, he promotes nonviolent civil disobedience. |
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1963 |
On August 28, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech to the gathering of about 250,000 demonstrators at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. |
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1963 |
Governor George Wallace physically tries to block Vivian Malone and James Hood from registering for classes at the University of Alabama on June 11. He is forced to step aside by federal marshals, the Deputy Attorney General, and the National Guard. |
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1963 |
A bomb at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church kills four young African American girls in Birmingham. Alabama on September 15. The bombing brought more awareness to the civil rights struggles. The Church had been a site where many civil rights leaders held meetings. |
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16th_Street_Baptist_Church_bombing |
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1964 |
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2. It is a landmark act banning all major forms of discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and national origin. |
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1964 |
James E. Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are murdered by the Ku Klux Klan near Philadelphia, Mississippi. They are Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers participating in the Freedom Summer to register black voters. Chaney was an African American from Meridian, Mississippi, while Goodman and Scherer were white civil rights workers from New York. |
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1964 |
On October 14, Martin Luther King, Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in fighting racial inequality through nonviolent civil disobedience. |
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1965 |
Malcolm X is assassinated on February 21. He was Muslim American, a black nationalist, a civil rights activist, and founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity. |
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1965 |
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlaws discriminatory voting practices that have widely disenfranchised African Americans, for instance, with literacy tests. |
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1965 |
The Watt Riots in Los Angeles lead to 34 killed and 1,032 people injured. It ran from August 11 to 17, and caused over $40 million of property damage. |
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1966 |
The Black Panther Party is founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale on October 15 in Oakland, California. It is an African American socialist organization that gained notoriety with their involvement in the Black Power Movement during the 1960s and 1970s. |
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1967 |
The 1967 Newark race riots occur from July 12 to 17 and leave 26 dead during the looting and destruction. It was triggered by a sense of being powerless as their tenements were being taken down for urban renewal. It was also a time of high unemployment and poverty. |
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1967 |
The 1967 Detroit riot lasts from July 23 to July 28. An event precipitated by a police raid on an unlicensed bar becomes one of the worst riots in U.S. history with 43 killed, 467 injured, more than 7,200 arrests, and over 2,000 buildings destroyed. |
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1967 |
Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights attorney and Chief Counsel for the NAACP, is appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson and become the first African American Justice. Prior to this, his most famous case was Brown v. Board of Education. |
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1967 |
Loving v. Virginia is a landmark civil rights case causing 16 states to revise their anti-miscegenation laws. It states that prohibition of interracial marriage is unconstitutional. |
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1968 |
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on April 4 in Memphis, Tennessee.
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1968 |
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on April 11 during rioting after the assassination of Rev. King. It prohibits discrimination in housing due to race, creed, or national origin. |
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