CIVIL RIGHTS

A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS

CIVIL WAR Amendments

13th: 1865 abolished slavery 14th: 1868 established citizenship and due process 15th: 1870 universal male suffrage

Plessy v. Ferguson

1896 US Supreme Court legalizes segregation in the United States

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL

Early Civil Rights Leaders

W.E.B. DuBois pushed for immediate civil rights and equality. Leader of NAACP

Booker T. Washington founder of Tuskegee Institute.

1909 NAACP
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People estd.

1948 Pres. Truman integrates the military

1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Supreme Court rules separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Ends school segregation.

1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. A boycott follows, leading to desegregation.

1957 Central High School Little Rock, Arkansas The Little Rock Nine

Pres. Eisenhower sends federal troops after Arkansas governor Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to deny entrance to African-American students at Central High.

1960 Sit-ins

College students in Greensboro, NC stage sit-ins at the Woolworths lunch counter

1961 Freedom Rides

Volunteers, black and white, take buses into the South to test new desegregation laws, often meeting with violence

Freedom rides

1962 Univ. of Mississippi

Pres. Kennedy sends 5000 federal troops to Mississippi to allow James Meredith, the schools 1st African-American student, to attend.

1963 Birmingham, AL

Martin Luther King and the SCLC focus on segregation in Birmingham. Protests there end in violence, riots, and arrests of adults and children.

Aug 1963 March on Washington

200,000 people hear Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech in Washington.

1963 Stand in the Schoolhouse Door

Gov. George Wallace promises segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever! Refuses to desegregate Univ. of Alabama Stands aside only after being confronted by federal marshals and the Alabama National Guard.

1963 Bombing in Birmingham

16th St. Baptist Church, a bomb explodes on a Sunday morning, killing four young girls. KKK member seen planting bomb, is arrested, but found guilty of possessing dynamite without a permit. Fined $100 and six months in jail.

1964 24th Amendment

Outlawed poll tax. Black voter registration begins to increase.

1964 Civil Rights Act

Outlaws discrimination based on race.

1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer

Civil rights activists attempt to register African-Americans to vote

1965 Selma March

Demanding voting rights, 600 protesters plan to march to Montgomery. 6 blocks into march, they meet state troopers armed with nightsticks and tear gas.

SELMA, ALABAMA
1965

1965 Voting Rights Act

In the aftermath of Selma, Pres. Johnson calls for passage of a voting rights bill. Outlaws literacy tests, estd fed. oversight

Protestsdifferent views

KING: Non-violent, passive resistance Influenced by Ghandi

Black Power: proactive, militant, focus on black pride and African heritage. Term popularized by Stokely Carmichael of SNCC

1965 Malcolm X assassinated

Born Malcolm Little, he learned the ideas of black pride and self-reliance from his father, a follower of Marcus Garvey and member of the UNIA. While in prison, he converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam. Upon release, he changed his name; the X represented the African heritage he would never know. He preached the superiority of blacks and separation from whites; he scorned Kings non-violence saying black people should use any means to protect themselves. Between 1952 and 1963, the Nation of Islam grew from 500 members to 25,000.

Malcolm X

In 1964, Malcolm X made a pilgrimage to Mecca. After seeing Muslims of different races treating each other as equals, his views changed. At a meeting in Feb. 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by two members of the Nation of Islam, although imprisoned for their crime, proclaimed their innocence.

1965-67 Urban Race Riots a call for economic rights

Watts (Los Angeles), Detroit, Newark

1968 Martin Luther King, Jr assassinated

Memphis, TN, King is shot by James Earl Ray. He was 39 years old.

Civil Rights Today

Do we face civil rights issues today? Are we a desegregated, equal society? Are there other groups dealing with civil rights questions today?