March Toward Equality: Significant Moments in the Civil Rights Movement
1941
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs executive order banning
discrimination in employment by government defense contractors.
1942
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)is organized in Chicago,
Illinois.
1946
President Harry S. Truman establishes President's Committee on
Civil Rights, which declares racial discrimination to be a
national problem.
U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in interstate bus travel.
1947
CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) sponsor the first
Freedom Ride. Freedom Riders travel through the South to
test Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus
travel.
Jackie Robinson breaks baseball's color barrier when he is hired
to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black to
play major league sports in half a century.
1948
Supreme Court rules that federal and state courts cannot enforce
laws which bar persons from owning property based on race.
President Truman orders the integration of all units of the U.S.
armed forces.
1949
Members of CORE stage a sit-in at segregated facilities in St.
Louis, Missouri.
1954
In Brown v. Topeka, Kansas, Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme
Court orders that blacks be admitted to public schools on a
racially non-discriminate basis "with all deliberate speed." This
over turns the doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities by
acknowledging that "separate educational facilities are
inherently unequal."
1955
Successful boycott of municipal bus lines, in Montgomery,
Alabama, led by Martin Luther King Jr., overturns local ordinance
requiring blacks to sit in the back of buses. Similar
gains are made in other Southern cities.
1957
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce
the right of nine black students to enroll at Central High School
in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the first use of federal troops to
protect black civil rights in the South since shortly after the
Civil War.
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is
established with Martin Luther King, Jr. as its first president.
Congress passes a civil rights law creating the U.S. Commission
on Civil Rights and a civil division in the Department of
Justice.
1960
Black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
College start sit-in movement in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Sit-ins at segregated public restaurants and lunch counters soon
spread throughout South.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at
Shaw University Raleigh, North Carolina.
1961
Freedom Riders deliberately violate "white only" rules at
drinking fountains, lunch counters, rest rooms and waiting rooms
in bus and train stations in the South.
President John F. Kennedy establishes Committee on Equal
Employment Opportunity.
Thurgood Marshall is appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals.
Black students are admitted to the University of Georgia in
accordance with federal court orders.
1962
Several black civil rights organizations join to teach blacks in
Mississippi how to register to vote. The effort is largely
unsuccessful because public officials continue to apply poll
taxes, reading tests and other arbitrary barriers.
James Meredith, a black student, enrolls at the University of
Mississippi under protection of federal troops.
President Kennedy orders an end to discrimination in public
housing built with federal funds.
1963
Four black children are killed in Birmingham, Alabama, when
segregationists bomb a Baptist Church.
Peaceful March on Washington attended by 250,000 people from
around the country culminates in Martin Luther King, Jr.famous "I
have a Dream" speech.
President Kennedy sends federal troops to enforce right of black
students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the National Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP), is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi.
1965
Voting Rights Act permits federal examiners to supersede local
officials and register black voters in certain circumstances. By
1967, more than half of eligible blacks are registered
in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina,
enabling more black candidates than before to be elected to
office.
Riots erupt in Watts, a ghetto neighborhood of Los Angeles,
California.
President Lyndon Johnson begins "War on Poverty," a series of
programs to provide job training, housing, education, health care
and other social benefits for the poor.
1967
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black Supreme Court justice.
Riots occur in Detroit, Michigan; Newark, New Jersey and other
large cities.
First black mayors of major U.S. cities are elected in Cleveland,
Ohio and Gary, Indiana.
1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. announces plans for the Poor People's
Campaign in Washington, D.C., demanding employment for all
Americans.
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders issues the
Kerner Commission report stating that America is "moving
toward two societies, one black, one white separate and unequal."
The commission recommends sweeping programs in housing,
job creation and training, education and welfare.
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. Urban riots erupt across
the country. Ralph Abernathy succeeds King as head of SCLC
and begins the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court prohibits discrimination in rental and
sale of all housing.
1970
President Richard M. Nixon creates Office of Minority Business
Enterprise to help blacks succeed in business ventures.
1971
Supreme Court rules that busing children outside their
neighborhoods to desegregate schools is constitutional.
Congressional Black Caucus is organized.
Jesse Jackson founds People United to Save (later Serve) Humanity
(PUSH).
1972
Equal Opportunity and Employment Act is passed, encouraging
preferential hiring and promotion of minorities and women.
1974
Detroit, Michigan, establishes an affirmative action hiring
program in an attempt to balance the racial composition of the
local police force.
1978
Supreme Court decision in the Allan P. Baakke case legalizes the
concept of "reverse" discrimination.
1982
The Voting Rights Act is strengthened and extended for 25 years.
1983
President Ronald Reagan signs legislation designating Martin
Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday.
1989
L. Douglas Wilder is elected governor of Virginia, becoming the
first black to be elected governor of a state.
1992
Riots break out in South-Central Los Angeles, following a jury's
acquittal of white L.A. police officers who had been videotaped
in the beating of a black motorist.
Carol Moseley Braun becomes the first black woman elected to the
U.S. Senate.
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