Civil Rights Movement Timeline http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#ixzz1Aw9KIGFk
1948 July 26
Truman signs 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."
1954 May 17
The Supreme Court rules on the landmark
case Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kans., unanimously agreeing that segregation in
public schools is unconstitutional. The ruling paves the way for large-scale
desegregation. The decision overturns the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson
ruling that sanctioned "separate but equal" segregation of the races,
ruling that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."
It is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who will later return
to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice.
1955 Aug.
Fourteen-year-old
Chicagoan Emmett
Till is visiting family in
Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the
Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J.
W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an
all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The
case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.
Dec. 1
(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her
seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white
passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the
Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more
than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected
president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin Luther King,
Jr., is instrumental in
leading the boycott.
1957 Jan.–Feb.
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. According to King, it is
essential that the civil rights movement not sink to the level of the racists
and hatemongers who oppose them: "We must forever conduct our struggle on
the high plane of dignity and discipline," he urges.
Sept.
(Little Rock, Ark.) Formerly all-white
Central High School learns that integration is easier said than
done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of
Governor Orval
Faubus.
President Eisenhower sends federal troops
and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known
as the "Little
Rock Nine."
1960 Feb. 1
(Greensboro, N.C.) Four black students from North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical College begin a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's
lunch counter. Although they are refused service, they are allowed to stay at
the counter. The event triggers many similar nonviolent protests throughout the
South. Six months later the original four protesters are served lunch at the
same Woolworth's counter. Student sit-ins would be effective throughout the
Deep South in integrating parks, swimming pools, theaters, libraries, and other
public facilities.
April
(Raleigh, N.C.) The Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with
a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical
organization, especially under the leadership of Stokely
Carmichael
(1966–1967).
1961 May 4
Over the spring and
summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out
new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which
includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are
called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way. The program, sponsored by The Congress of Racial
Equality
(CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more
than 1,000 volunteers, black and white.
1962 Oct. 1
James Meredith becomes the first black
student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots
surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops.
1963 April 16
Martin Luther King is
arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he
writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham
Jail," arguing that
individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.
May
During civil rights
protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene
"Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators.
These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are
instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the
world.
June 12
(Jackson, Miss.) Mississippi's NAACP
field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside
his home. Byron De La Beckwith is tried twice in 1964, both trials resulting in
hung juries. Thirty years later he is convicted for
murdering Evers.
Aug. 28
(Washington, D.C.) About 200,000 people
join the March
on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants
listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
Sept. 15
(Birmingham, Ala.) Four young girls
(Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins)
attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb
explodes
at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights
meetings. Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more black
youths.
1964 Jan. 23
The 24th Amendment
abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern
states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.
Summer
The Council of Federated
Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that includes CORE and
SNCC, launches a massive effort to register black voters during what becomes
known as the Freedom Summer. It also sends delegates to the Democratic National
Convention
to protest—and attempt to unseat—the official all-white Mississippi contingent.
July 2
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of
1964. The most sweeping
civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits
discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin.
The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce
desegregation.
(Neshoba Country, Miss.)
The bodies of three
civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into
a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. James E. Chaney, 21;
Andrew Goodman, 21; and Michael Schwerner, 24, had been working to register
black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the
burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding
charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the
hands of the Ku
Klux Klan,
who murdered them.
1965 Feb. 21
(Harlem, N.Y.) Malcolm X, black nationalist and
founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. It is
believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm
had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam.
March 7
(Selma, Ala.) Blacks begin a march
to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge
by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear
gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody
Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing
through the voting rights act five months later.
Aug. 10
Congress passes the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to
vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to
restrict black voting are made illegal.
Aug. 11–17, 1965
Asserting that civil
rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President
Johnson
issues Executive Order 11246, which enforces affirmative action for the first
time. It requires government contractors to "take affirmative action"
toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.
1966 Oct.
1967 April 19
Stokely
Carmichael,
a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the
phrase "black power" in a speech in Seattle. He defines it as an
assertion of black pride and "the coming together of black people to fight
for their liberation by any means necessary." The term's radicalism alarms
many who believe the civil rights movement's effectiveness and moral authority
crucially depend on nonviolent civil disobedience.
June 12
In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court
rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states
that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their
laws.
July
Major race riots take
place in Newark (July 12–16) and Detroit (July 23–30).
1968 April 4
(Memphis, Tenn.) Martin Luther King, at
age 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. Escaped
convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the
crime.
April 11
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of
1968, prohibiting
discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
1971 April 20
The Supreme Court, in Swann
v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upholds busing as a
legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools.
Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school
districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and
Denver continue until the late 1990s.
1988 March 22
Overriding President Reagan's veto, Congress passes
the Civil Rights Restoration Act, which expands the reach of non-discrimination
laws within private institutions receiving federal funds.
1991 Nov. 22
After two years of
debates, vetoes, and threatened vetoes, President Bush reverses himself and
signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws
and providing for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
1992 April 29
(Los Angeles, Calif.) The first race riots
in decades erupt in south-central Los Angeles after a jury acquits four white
police officers for the videotaped beating of African American Rodney King.
2003 June 23
In the most important
affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court
(5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling that race
can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students
because it furthers "a compelling interest in obtaining the educational
benefits that flow from a diverse student body."
2005 June 21
The ringleader of the Mississippi civil
rights murders (see Aug.
4, 1964),
Edgar
Ray Killen,
is convicted of manslaughter on the 41st anniversary of the crimes.
October 24
Rosa Parks dies at age
92.
2006 January 30
Coretta Scott King dies
of a stroke at age 78.
2007 February
Emmett Till's 1955
murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially
closed. The two confessed murderers, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were dead of
cancer by 1994, and prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue further
convictions.
May 10
James Bonard Fowler, a
former state trooper, is indicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson 40 years
after Jackson's death. The 1965 killing lead to a series of historic civil
rights protests in Selma, Ala.
2008
January
Senator
Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduces the Civil Rights Act of 2008. Some of the
proposed provisions include ensuring that federal funds are not used to
subsidize discrimination, holding employers accountable for age discrimination,
and improving accountability for other violations of civil rights and workers'
rights.
2009 January
In the Supreme Court
case Ricci v. DeStefano, a lawsuit brought against the city of New
Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white people and one Hispanic—argued that results of
the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined
that few minority firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they
threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate-impact
statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The
plaintiffs claimed that they were victims of reverse discrimination under the Title
VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court ruled (5–4) in favor of
the firefighters, saying New Haven's "action in discarding the tests was a
violation of Title VII."
Read more: Civil Rights Movement Timeline (14th Amendment, 1964 Act, Human Rights Law) — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html#ixzz1Aw9KIGFk
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