1. A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS
CIVIL RIGHTS
A TIMELINE OF KEY EVENTS

2. CIVIL WAR Amendments & Plessy v. Ferguson
13th: abolished slavery
14th: established citizenship and due process
15th: universal male suffrage
US Supreme Court legalizes segregation in the United States “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL”

3. Early Civil Rights Leaders
W.E.B. DuBois—pushed for immediate civil rights and equality. Leader of NAACP
Booker T. Washington
founder of Tuskegee Institute.

4. Civil Rights Organizations
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)
The National Urban League (NUL)
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Black Power)

5. Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947.
1948 Pres. Truman integrates the military

6. 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Warren Court)
Supreme Court rules “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. Ends school segregation. Thurgood Marshall argued the case in the Supreme Court

7. 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus. A boycott follows, leading to desegregation.

8. 1957 Central High School Little Rock, Arkansas “The Little Rock Nine”
Pres. Eisenhower sends federal troops after Arkansas governor Orval Faubus uses the National Guard to deny entrance to African-American students at Central High.

9. Sit-ins
College students in Greensboro, NC stage sit-ins at the Woolworth’s lunch counter
Volunteers, black and white, take buses into the South to test new desegregation laws, often meeting with violence

10. Freedom rides

11. 1962 Univ. of Mississippi
Pres. Kennedy sends 5000 federal troops to Mississippi to allow James Meredith, the school’s 1st African-American student, to attend.

12. 1963 Birmingham, AL
Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) focus on segregation in Birmingham. Protests there ends in violence, riots, and arrests of adults and children.
Ralph David Abernathy Sr. co-founded, and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Following the assassination of King, Abernathy became president of the SCLC.
. Abernathy also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)

13. The Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail (also known as "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" and "The Negro Is Your Brother") is an open letter written on April 16, 1963, by Martin Luther King, Jr. The letter defends the strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism. It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. Responding to being referred to as an "outsider," King writes, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere“

14. Aug 1963 March on Washington
200,000 people hear Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington.
The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme "jobs, and freedom". Observers estimated that 75–80% of the marchers were black.

15. What was the purpose of the march on Washington in 1963?
A. to end racial discrimination
B. to lower taxes on African-Americans
C. to get Congress to approve Reparations
D. to support affirmative action

16. Stand in the Schoolhouse Door
Gov. George Wallace promises “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
Refuses to desegregate Univ. of Alabama
Stands aside only after being confronted by federal marshals and the Alabama National Guard.

17. 1963 Bombing in Birmingham
16th St. Baptist Church, a bomb explodes on a Sunday morning, killing four young girls.
KKK member seen planting bomb, is arrested, but found guilty of possessing dynamite without a permit.
Fined $100 and six months
in jail.

18. th Amendment
Outlawed poll tax. Black voter registration begins to increase.

19. 1964 Civil Rights Act
The Act prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin, and granted the federal government new powers to enforce the law

20. 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer
Civil rights activists attempt to register African-Americans to vote
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), often pronounced "snick": SNCC's major contribution was in its field work, organizing voter registration drives all over the South.

21. 1965 Selma March
Demanding voting rights, 600 protesters plan to march to Montgomery.
6 blocks into march, they meet state troopers armed with nightsticks and tear gas.

22. 1965 Voting Rights Act
In the aftermath of Selma, Pres. Johnson calls for passage of a voting rights bill.
Outlaws literacy tests, est’d fed. oversight

23. Check for Understanding

24. Protests—different views
KING: Non-violent, passive resistance
Influenced by Ghandi
Black Power: proactive, militant, focus on black pride and African heritage.
Term popularized by Stokely Carmichael of SNCC

25. 1965 Malcolm X assassinated
Born Malcolm Little, he learned the ideas of black pride and self-reliance from his father, a follower of Marcus Garvey and member of the UNIA.
While in prison, he converted to Islam and joined the Nation of Islam.
Upon release, he changed his name; the X represented the African heritage he would never know.
He preached the superiority of blacks and separation from whites; he scorned King’s non-violence saying black people should use any means to protect themselves.
Between 1952 and 1963, the Nation of Islam grew from 500 members to 25,000.

26. Malcolm X
In 1964, Malcolm X made a pilgrimage to Mecca. After seeing Muslims of different races treating each other as equals, his views changed.
At a meeting in Feb. 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by two members of the Nation of Islam, although imprisoned for their crime, proclaimed their innocence.

27. 1965-67 Urban Race Riots – a call for economic rights
Watts (Los Angeles), Detroit, Newark

28. 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr assassinated
Memphis, TN, King is shot by James Earl Ray. He was 39 years old.

29. Check for Understanding

30. Supreme Court Decisions
Gideon v. Wainright(1963) Warren Court
the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution requires the states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants charged with serious offenses who cannot afford lawyers themselves.
Miranda v. Arizona (1966) Warren Court
Required that arresting officers notify a suspect that “you have the right to remain silent...” and that the suspect has the right to the presence of an attorney during questioning.
(1971) Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal courts had the discretion to include busing as a desegregation tool to achieve racial balance.
Roe v. Wade (1973) Legalized abortion
Regents of the University of California v.Bakke (1978)
It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy.