Civil Rights Timeline

Sit-in Movement

• Cause : segregated lunchrooms

• Event – Jan. 1960, sit-in at the Woolworth in Greensboro N.C.

• Effect – Sit-in movement spreads across the South.

Freedom Riders

• Cause – Need to integrate bus terminals in the South( Led by CORE)

• Events – May 1961 Bombing of buses, attacks at bus terminals, arrest by officials

• Effect – By 1962, segregated interstate travel ended.

Birmingham Protest

• Cause – The Kennedy administration busy with Cuban Missile crisis and the Cold War

• Event – Spring 1963 – Using the young to bring about social justice. The Letter from Birmingham Jail. TV showing the brutality towards Blacks

• Effect – The March on Washington

The March on Washington

• Cause – The need to get Congress to pass a Civil Rights Bill

• The event – August 28, 1968 – over 200,000 peaceful demonstrators - Ends with MLK’s I have a Dream speech

• Effect – JFK assassination leads to LBJ pushing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress

Mississippi Freedom Summer

• Cause - Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Event – People from throughout the U.S. descend on Mississippi to register Black voters. Southern Racist kill workers, bomb churches and businesses. Murder od Medgar Evers

• Effect – The Selma March

Selma to Montgomery March

• Cause – the violence of the Freedom Summer

• Event – Sunday March 7, 1965 A peaceful march turns violent with White law enforcement attacking peaceful, praying marchers. It’s televised

• Effect- An Angry LBJ orders Congress to pass a Voting Rights Act to give teeth to the laws for voters.

The Watts Riots

• Cause – Police brutality

• Events – August 8, 1965, Racial uprising in Los Angeles based on pent up anger

• Effect – The Kerner Report shows that White racism and poverty caused the riots.

Malcolm X and Black Power

• Cause – economic disparity between the races.

• Events – Malcolm X – Nation of Islam- gives up last name for an unknown. Discuss separatism, Black Panthers

• Effect – major splits between groups. Economic issues are most important.

Martin Luther King’s Assassination

• Cause – In Memphis to negotiated a Garbage strike

• Event – Gives the “Been to the Mountaintop Speech” Next day on April 4, 1968, King assassinated by James Earl Ray.

• Effect – National Mourning and riots throughout the nation. Congress does pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968 ( fair housing provisio.)