The Civil Rights

Movement

Chronology
Background

 The first 20 1619
African slavesare
sold to settlers in
Virginia as
"indentured
servants."
 1831

Nat
Turnerleads
slave revolt in
Virginia.
Dred Scottdecision: 1857
lived in a free territory, sues for
his freedom.
The Supreme Court, saying
African American people are "so
far inferior...
Declares that slaves were not
citizens and had no rights to sue,
and that slave owners could take
their slaves anywhere on the
territory and retain title to them.
 The Civil War begins. 1861-1863
Lincoln signs
theEmancipation
Proclamation:
It meant to change the
federal legal status
ofenslaved peopleofthe
Southfrom "slave" to
"free.
 1865
TheCivil Warends.

Lincoln is assassinated.
Freedmen's Bureau, to help former
slaves, is established.
13th Amendment approved ->
"neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude....shall exist" in the United
States.
 1868-1870
14th Amendment-> approved:
African Americans full citizens
of the United States and
prohibiting states from denying
them equal protection or due
process of law.
15th Amendment ->
authorized: the right to vote
 First"Jim Crow"or
In Tennessee mandated the
segregation law
separation of African
Americans from whites:
trains, white hotels, barber
shops, restaurants,
theaters and other public
accommodations.
By 1885, requiring
separate schools.
 1882
Congress passes
theChinese Exclusion
Actrestricting the
immigration of all
Chinese laborers for 10
years and requiring
Chinese to carry
identification cards.
Affirmed a Seperate but
equal policy
widespread segreation
(specially in the Southern
States) and it was
LEGAL.
Plessy V.
Ferguson

1896
 TheNational Association for the
Advancement of Colored
1910-1912
People(NAACP) is founded by
W.E.B Du Bois, Jane Addams,
John Dewey and others.
TheMexican Revolutionbrings an
influx of immigrants to the United
States looking for work.
The Mexican ambassador formally
protests the mistreatment of
Mexicans in the United States,
citing a number of brutal lynching
and murders.
 The Cable Act declares that 1922-1924
"any woman citizen who
marries an alien ineligible
to citizenship, shall cease
to be a citizen.
TheImmigration
Actprevents any "aliens
ineligible to citizenship"
from entering the United
States.
The movement
begins

 1954

InBrown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court rules
deliberate public school segregation illegal.

Marshall later became

the first African American
on the U.S. Supreme
Court
 August 28th
Emmett Louis Till (14-year-old.)
1955
murdered in Mississippi.
Killed for allegedly whistling at a white
woman
Mutilated body found in Tallahatchie
River
Two suspects were later acquitted by
an all white jury for Tills murder
Case becomes catalyst for Civil Rights
Movement
 1955
December 1st

NAACP member Rosa Parks arrested
for refusing to give up her seat at the
front of the colored section of a
Montgomery bus to a white passenger.
Montgomery community launches a
bus boycott, led byMartin Luther King,
Jr.
 Montgomery bus 1956
boycottends in
victory, December
21, Supreme Court
declaring
segregation on
buses illegal.
King's home was
bombed.
 1957
Students were blocked from entering the
school by Governor Orval Faubuss
orders
Federal troops & National Guards sent to
intervene on behalf of the Little Rock
Nine by President Dwight Eisenhowers
orders

Central High School, Little Rock,

AR
Nine black high school students
set out to integrate the all-white
school
 1960
Woolworths segregated lunch

counter: 4 black students conduct
sit-ins:
They sat at the counter until they
were served or arrested and
refused to be violent.
TheStudent Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee(SNCC)
is founded.
John F. Kennedy elected president.
Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee
1960
(SNCC) founded at Shaw
University:
Gave black youth a place in
the movement
Grows into a more radical
organization led by Stokely
Carmichael
Later coined the term Black
Power
 1961

Congress of Racial Equality(CORE) organizesFreedom
Ridesinto the South to draw attention to the Souths
segregation of bus terminals.
Riders arebeaten by mobsin several places, including
Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala.
Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I
Have a Dream" speech. 1963
Medger Evers, NAACP field
secretary in Jackson, Miss.,
murdered.

President Kennedy is assassinated.

Malcolm X, the fiery orator and Muslim
leader, is assassinated.
 1968
Birmingham police used
fire hoses and attack dogs
to prevent people from
marching.
A Birmingham church is
bombed on Sept. 15,
killing four African
American girls.
Civil Rights Act of 1964:
President Lyndon Johnson
1964
banned segregation in
most public places.
The 24th Amendment,
helped to guarantee the
right to vote for African
Americans
1965-1967
Bloody Sunday: Selma, AL

marchers tear-gassed, whipped,
and beated by police
Voting Rights Act of 1965: to
vote easier for Southern black
voters
Stokely Carmichael, first uses
the phrase "black power" -
divides the civil rights
movement.
 1968

April 4, Martin Luther
King, Jr. is murdered;
marked the end of the
civil rights.
The assassination of
Martin Luther King
movement.