Civil Rights Movement Timeline

1865-70: 13th, 14th, 15th Amendments ratified

1865-70

During Reconstruction, three constitutional amendments were passed to protect the civil rights of African Americans and reassert Republican power in the South. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment established national citizenship for all people born or naturalized in the US and prohibited states from abridging the rights of citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment forbade states to deny citizens the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or “previous condition of servitude”.

1896: Plessy v. Ferguson

1896

In the case Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated railroad cars and other public facilities were permissible by the Fourteenth Amendment as long as blacks had access to “separate but equal” accommodations. In doing so, the Supreme Court allowed Jim Crow segregation laws enacted by most Southern states to stand in spite of clear discrimination, given the flagrant inferiority of segregated facilities for blacks. Essentially, Plessy v. Ferguson established national approval of segregation and remained in place until 1954.

1909: NAACP founded

1909

In response to a bloody race riot in Illinois, leading African American reformers and white allies appalled by white mob violence met in 1909, creating the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP served as a vehicle for advocating equal rights for African Americans, especially through the courts. In the decades that followed, it grew into a powerful force for racial justice.

1941: Executive Order 8802

1941

Due to resistance from defense plants to hire African Americans during WWII, the most prominent black trade union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatened a march on Washington to demand equal opportunity for black workers in war jobs. In response, President FDR issued Executive Order 8802, which prohibited discrimination in defense jobs or government and established the Fair Employment Practice Committee. The Order constituted the first major response by the federal government to African Americans’ plight since Reconstruction and was an important step in ending discrimination in federal employment practices overall.

1954: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

1954

Linda Brown, a black student in Topeka, Kansas, was forced to attend a segregated elementary school far from her home rather than a nearby white school. Her case was taken to the Supreme Court, where the Court declared that educational facilities were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling finally overturned the “separate but equal” precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson and ordered desegregation to proceed, although enforcement of the decision was complicated by white Southerners’ resistance and President Eisenhower’s reluctance to act.

1955-56: Rosa Parks & the Montgomery Bus Boycott

1955-56

When a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white man, she was arrested and charged for violating local segregation laws. In response, Montgomery’s black community turned to the leadership of MLK Jr., who led a yearlong boycott of Montgomery’s segregated bus system as African Americans formed ar pools or walked to work. The boycott resulted in MLK’s rise to national prominence and ended when the Supreme Court declared segregated seating on public transportation unconstitutional.

1957: Crisis at Central High School & the “Little Rock Nine”

1957

To test the desegregation ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, nine black students attempted to enroll at the formerly white-only Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Central High School would prove a crucial battleground in the struggle for civil rights. The governor of Arkansas called out the National Guard to prohibit the students from entering the school, and the attempt at integration faced angry resistance from white mobs.

1961: Freedom Rides

1961

Emboldened by the SNCC’s usage of sit-in tactics in student protests, the Congress of Racial Equality organized its own kind of mobile, multiracial sit-ins on interstate bus lines throughout the south. These sit-ins, known as Freedom Rides, represented an early and important civil rights protest that aimed to call attention to ongoing segregation in interstate commerce. Freedom Riders took their lives into their hands for the sake of activism, as they frequently encountered violent attacks from Klansmen and insistent nonintervention by state authorities.

1963: March on Washington & “I Have a Dream Speech”

1963

In early 1963, civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph called for a march on Washington DC to mark the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. His plan for such a massive demonstration was carried out in August, when a quarter million people marched to the Lincoln Memorial to demand that Congress end Jim Crow racial discrimination and launch a major jobs program to bring needed employment to black communities. The public face of the event was MLK Jr., whose “I Have a Dream” speech influenced the federal government to take more direct actions to further racial equality, as seen in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

1964: Civil Rights Act

1964

Responding to the demands of the civil rights movement, Congress approved the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex. As the most far-reaching civil rights law since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act ended segregation in public places and is considered a key legislative achievement of the civil rights movement. The Act was expanded by the Voting Rights Act the following year to remove obstacles to black voting.

1965: “Bloody Sunday”

1965

In order to take the cause of voting rights to the governor of Alabama, civil rights demonstrators marched through the city of Selma and across the Edmund Pettus bridge, where they were confronted by state troopers who brutally attacked them. Footage from the attack was aired on television, causing outrage to sweep through the US as sympathizers staged sit-ins, traffic blockades, and other demonstrations. The assault on the civil rights marchers in Selma ultimately galvanized the fight against racial injustice by shaping public opinion and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

1966: Black Panthers founded

1966

Despite court victories and new laws, social change as it pertains to the advancement of civil rights did not immediately come about; as African Americans became frustrated with the slow pace of reform and white resistance, they turned to black nationalism, which emphasized racial pride and autonomy. One of the most radical groups that espoused black nationalism was the Black Panther Party, which was founded in Oakland, California as a militant organization dedicated to protecting African Americans from police violence. The Black Panthers opposed the Vietnam War, called for black liberation, and spread to other cities, where members undertook a wide range of community-organizing projects.