Timeline of Major Civil Rights Events

1950

1955

1960

1965

Civil Rights Timeline

Rosa Parks Bus Incident

Dec 1, 1955

Little Rock Nine

1957

Death of Martin Luther King Jr.

April 4, 1968

March on Washington

Aug. 28, 1963

Freedom Rides

May 4-Dec. 10, 1961

Brown v. Board of Education

Dec. 9, 1952-May 17, 1954

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was riding a city bus in Alabama in the colored section, as that was the law. Bus driver James F. Blake then ordered her to give up her seat in the colored section for a white man, as the white section was full. She refused, and was arrested for civil disobedience. Her refusal to give up her seat made her an icon in the Civil Rights Movement for resistance to racial segregation. She was not the first to resist the bus laws, but she was the most prominant in doing so.

The case of Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws that established separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The ruling overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation. This case made segregation in schools illegal, and soon after many schools began to integrate.

After the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which called the laws that allowed segregation in schools unconstitutional, schools were allowed to integrate their students. In Little Rock, Arkansas, however, the governor Orval Faubus prevented integration in schools. The issue was only resolved when President Dwight Eisenhower interveined. The students that were enrolled, called the "Little Rock Nine," were among the first African American students to attend a previously-white school.

As the 1960's were coming to a close, MLK was still working to make sure that the Civil Rights Movement accomplished everything it set out to do. However, he did not get to see the end. on April 4, 1968, King was standing on the balcony of the hotel he was staying at, and at 6:01 p.m., he was struck by a single bullet fired from a Remington Model 760. The assassin was James Earl Ray, who was captured and sentenced to 100 years in prison. Kings untimely death made him a martyr of the Civil Rights Movement, and an icon for years to come.

While there were major advances in the Civil Rights Movement up until 1963, racism and segregation was still ever present. To combat this, civil rights leaders organized a march on the nation's capitol. The march consisted of nearly 300,000 people involved in civil rights, labor, and religious organizations. It was at this march where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, which called for an end to racism. The march is credited with helping pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

After the rulings of Morgan v. Virginia and Boynton v. Virginia, which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional, African-Americans were eager to test these new laws and examine the legitimacy of the rulings. Thus, the Freedom Rides were created. The results of these rides were arrests, "jail without bail," and violent mobs. The rides did, however, call national attention to the disregard of federal law and the violence that was used to enforce segregation.

1970

Sit-Ins

Feb. 1- Jul. 25, 1960

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dec. 5, 1955-Dec 20, 1956

Death of Medgar Evers

June 12, 1963

Selma March

Mar. 7-Mar. 21, 1965

Death of Emmett Till

Aug. 28, 1955

After Rosa Parks was arrested for "civil disobedeince" for not giving up her seat to a white man, ideas for protests were circulating. The demands to be made were full integration of city buses. On Saturday, December 3, the black community refused to ride city buses. On December 5, meetigns were held to see if the protests would continue. The boycotts proved very effective, with enough lost riders to cause serious economic distress. The result was determinted in Browder v. Gayle, in which the Supreme Court determined that Alabama's segregation for buses was unconstitutional, and ordered full integration.

While the city buses and schools were experiencing integration, resturants and stores were still segregated. To protest these, four African-American men sat down in a nonviolent protest in the Woolworth department store. They stayed until the store closed, then returned the next day with even more protestors. This trend continued, expanding to different stores across the United States. These protests started the desegregation and integration of resturants and department stores across the nation.

In 1955, Emmett Till was only fourteen years old when he went to visit relatives in Mississippi. He spoke to 21 year old Carolyn Bryant, the married propreiter of a store in the town. Several days later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half brother J.W. kidnapped Emmett and brutally beat him before shooting him. They then dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. The two were put on trial, and aquitted by an all-white jury. Till's mother ordered an open casket funeral to show not only the horror of American racism, but the limitations of American democracy. Till posthumanly became a prominant figure in the Civil Rights movement.

After the famous March on Washington, African-Americans were still prevented from registering to vote. A promising voters registration campaign fell flat, and a march from Selma to Montgomery was organized. The march lasted eighteen days, starting in Selma, Alabama and ending in Montgomery, Alabama. At the end, Martin Luther gave his famous "How Long? Not Long" speech at the Alabama State Capitol.

At the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Medgar Evers was very active in the integration of schools, as well as voting rights and other segregated issues. He became field secretary of the NAACP, to help further his involvement in desegration. He was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, who was a member of the White Citizens' Council, a group devoted to preserving segregation. Evers' murder and resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as works of art, music, and films.