The Black Civil Rights Movement

1954

• Brown vs. Board of Education requires schools to integrate “with all deliberate speed.”

August 1955

• Emmett Till is murdered in Mississippi.

1955

• Dec. 1: Rosa Parks arrested

• Dec. 5: Montgomery Improvement Association formed, MLK is named president

1956

• Dec. 1956: Supreme Court desegregates buses

1957-1961

• (Little Rock Nine enroll in Central Little Rock High)

• James Meredith is first black man to enroll at Ole Miss University

1960

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee launches sit-ins to protest segregation.

1961

• Freedom Rides: White and black activists ride buses throughout the South, protesting segregation.

1963

• Protests in Birmingham draw national attention.

• MLK writes “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” to explain and defend civil disobedience

1963

• March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

• MLK gives “I Have a Dream” speech

1964

• LBJ signs Civil Rights Act of 1964.

• The law bans discrimination in all public places.

1964

• Freedom Summer: CORE and SNCC recruit volunteers, mostly white college students, to work to increase voter registration in Mississippi.

• Three volunteers are murdered: James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman. Murder trial becomes national news.

1964

• March from Selma to Montgomery

• Police brutality draws national attention

1965

• Lyndon Baines Johnson signs Voting Rights Act of 1965, banning use of literacy tests and grandfather clauses

Riots (1965, 1967)

1966

• Stokely Carmichael announces SNCC’s new focus on Black Power

• Declares SNCC to be an all-black organization

1960s

• Malcolm X preaches black nationalism and black separatism alongside the Nation of Islam

1966

• Black Panther Party for Self Defense is founded in Oakland, CA

• Panthers create breakfast programs, medical clinics, Afrocentric schools, and patrol neighborhoods.

1968

• Civil Rights Act of 1968 (Fair Housing Act) outlaws housing discrimination

• MLK is assassinated• RFK is assassinated• Vietnam War and

protests reach height of violence

1969-1974

• Supreme court requires states to speed up integration, recommend busing.

• Resistance occurs throughout the country. In Boston, riots occur.

• Alexander v. Holmes Board of Ed. and Swann v. Charlotte Board of Ed

1961-1976

• JFK, LBJ, and Nixon issue executive orders requiring businesses and colleges to enact affirmative action programs

1977

• In Regents of University of California vs. Bakke, the Supreme Court rules that quota systems are unconstitutional.

• Race can only be one factor in hiring and admission to school.