A Timeline of the Civil Rights Movement

A TIMELINE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The Civil Rights Movement 1954-1968

1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968

Brown v. Board of

Education

Montgomery Bus Boycott Little

Rock Nine

SCLC Established

Sit-Ins

SNCC Founded

Freedom Rides

James Meredith

March On Washington

Civil Rights Act

24th Amendment

Malcolm X Murdered

Voting Rights Act

Executive Order 11246 “Black

Power”

Black Panthers Founded

Martin Luther King Jr. Shot

Brown v. Board of Education

May 17th, 1954

Overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which had stated that “separate but equal” was legal.

Concerning Segregation in Schools in Topeka, Kansas.Linda Brown had to walk 6 blocks just to catch the bus for her segregated black school. The white school was only a total of 7 blocks from her house.

Montgomery Bus BoycottRosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man.

Her arrest caused others to boycott the bus systems by walking, car-pooling, and bicycling wherever they went.

December 1st, 1955

SCLC Established

Creation was triggered by the bus boycotts

Nonviolent

Open to all races, religions and backgrounds

Martin Luther King Jr. was the first President.

February 14th, 1957

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Little Rock Nine

September 24th, 1957

Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas.Governor had the National Guard surrounding the school.Eisenhower ordered troops to help the nine students enter the school.

Sit-ins

February 1st 1960

Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina

Four students ordered doughnuts and coffee and were refused service so they refused to get up.The next day, 30 students joined them and this continued the whole week.

SNCC Founded

Originally created at Shaw University to help stage sit-ins like those in Greensboro.

Because of white violence, the non-violence approach changed.

April 15th 1960

(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

Freedom Rides

May 4th, 1961

James Farmer of CORE organized these rides to test to see if the Supreme Court legislation that banned segregation of buses would hold up.

13 people started in Washington D.C. expecting extreme violenceAlabama caused problems

James Meredith

October 1st, 1962

Troops and federal marshals were sent in to assure that James Meredith was registered and could attend classCrowds taunted the marshals and it ended in a confrontation where things were thrown, smashed and guns were fired.University of Mississippi

March on Washington

August 28th, 1963

MLK Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech here.

Organized by the “Big Six.” The influential civil rights leaders of the time.

Started in Birmingham and went to the Washington Monument. Had entertainment and speakers.

24th Amendment

Prohibits poll tax in federal elections.

This did not eliminate poll tax in state and local elections.

African Americans still had to partake in literacy tests.

January 23rd, 1964

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Outlawed discrimination in the work field

Equal access to public places

Federal Government had power to enforce this law.

July 2nd, 1964

Malcolm X Murdered

The biggest convert of African Americans to join the Black Muslim congregation.

For black pride and nationality. Spoke mostly militant about whites until his trip to Mecca.

February 21st, 1965

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Eliminated illegal barriers to the right to vote

Absolutely ended the Jim Crow laws

Against voter examinations

August 6th, 1965

Executive Order 11246

Introduced affirmative action for equal rights in the workplace and the learning environment.

September 24th, 1965

Black Panthers Founded and “Black Power” is coined.

Founded for self-defense because of all of the violence seen in the previous fights for equality.

Black power came from Stokley Carmichael’s speech vocalizing his anger with the little progress and arrests.

June 10th and October 1st, 1966

MLK Jr. Shot

39 years old Killed by James

Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

The movement declined but did not end.

April 4th, 1968

Works Cited

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart9.html

http://www.sclcnational.org/

http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/modern/jb_modern_polltax_1.html

Dierenfield, Bruce J. Civil Rights Movement. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2004.

Kasher, Steven. Civil Rights Movement a Photographic History, 1954-68. New York: Abbeville P, 1996.

Levy, Peter B., ed. Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement. New York: Greenwood P, 1992.