The Civil Rights Movement 1941-1968

Reconstruction 1866 – The Civil Rights Act – Affirms black citizenship, later made into XIV Amendment 1868 – XIV Amendment: Blacks are citizens, no one’s civil rights may be infringed 1870 – XV Amendment: Black, male suffrage 1871 – Civil Rights Act/Klan Act 1873 – Slaughterhouse cases restrict interpretation of XIV Amendment 1873 – Colfax Massacre

The Gilded Age 1876 – “Redeemer” governments begin passing “Jim Crow” laws 1877 – Compromise ends Reconstruction 1879 – First Exodusters move to Kansas 1881 – Booker T. Washington opens the Tuskegee Institute to educate blacks 1888 – Court strikes down 1875 Civil Rights Act, allows for segregation of public facilities 1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson 1898 – First grandfather clause created to exempt whites from literacy tests

Early Stirrings 1903 – WEB DuBois publishes The Souls of Black Folk 1905 – First meeting of Niagara Movement 1909-10 – NAACP founded 1910 – Urban League formed 1914 – Wilson re-segregates federal offices 1916-20 – First Great Migration 1918-9 – Race riots in northern cities

World War II 1936 – Jesse Owens upstages the Nazi theory of racism at Berlin Olympics 1939 – Marion Anderson performs on Lincoln Memorial after being denied DAR Hall 1940-70 – Second Great Migration 1941 – A. Philip Randolph threatens march on Washington, FDR agrees to desegregate defense industries

The Early Civil Rights Era 1947 – Jackie Robinson integrates major league baseball 1948 – Truman desegregates armed forces 5/17/1954 – Brown vs Board of Education overturns Plessy vs Ferguson 1955 – Emmett Till murdered, becomes rallying point in ending lynching 12/55 – Rosa Parks arrest sparks Montgomery Bus Boycott

The Late ‘50s 1956 – Martin Luther King emerges as leader in Montgomery 1957 – SCLC founded 1957 – Crisis at Central High, Little Rock 1957 – Civil Rights Act passed, largely ineffective attempt at voting rights 1958 – First large sit-ins begin in Oklahoma City

The Early Sixties 1960 – SNCC has first sit-ins in Greensboro, NC 1960 – Elijah Muhammad calls for all black state 1961 – JFK starts EEOC 1961 – The Freedom Riders attempt to desegregate bus stations 1962 – Albany Movement stalls 1962 – James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss 1963 – Birmingham, King writes Letter From a Birmingham Jail 1963 – Medgar Evers assassinated after JFK makes Civil Rights speech 1963 – March on Washington, King’s I Have A Dream speech

LBJ and Civil Rights 1964 – XXIVth Amendment bans polls taxes ‘64 – Mississippi Freedom Summer to register voters leads to the death of three activists ‘64 – Civil Rights Act signed, ends discrimination in public places ‘64 – MLK wins Nobel Peace Prize ‘65 – Malcolm X is shot by members of Nation of Islam ‘65 – Selma protest for voting rights ‘65 – Voting Rights Act ends voting discrimination

Decline ‘65 – Watts Riots shock white moderates ‘66 – First African American senator since Reconstruction ‘67 – Loving v Virginia legalizes interracial marriage ‘67 – Thurgood Marshall appointed to Supreme Court ‘68 – MLK assassinated, riots nationwide ‘68 – Civil Rights Act bans housing discrimination

The Seventies ‘69 – The Philadelphia Plan begins Affirmative Action ‘73 – American Indian Movement, inspired by civil rights movement, seizes Wounded Knee ’74 - Milliken v Bradley: Busing may be used to desegregate schools, leads to “white flight” ‘78 – Bakke case ends quotas, but allows race to be a factor in admissions

Recent History ‘86 – First national MLK Day ‘89 – Colin Powell, first African American chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ’92 – Rodney King Riots in LA ‘92 – First African American woman elected to US Senate ‘95 – Million Man March on Washington ‘05 – Edgar Ray Killen convicted of killing civil rights workers in ‘64 ‘09 – Barack Obama elected President