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Timeline: The Civil Rights
Movement in America 1624 – the first slaves are
brought to New York. 1688 – Philadelphia Quakers organize the first protest
against slavery. 1857 Mar 6 In Dred Scott v. Sanford the Supreme
Court finds that slaves are property, are not and cannot become citizens, and
thus have no rights of citizenship, such as the right to
sue.
1865 Dec 6 The 13th
Amendment is ratified, making slavery illegal. 1866 Apr 9 Both
Houses of Congress overturn President Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prevents
state governments from discriminating on the basis of race.
1866 May 1-3 A race riot in Memphis results in 48
deaths, 5 rapes, many injuries, and the destruction of 90 black homes, 12
12 schools, and 4 churches.
1868 Jul 28 The 14th
Amendment is ratified. It
characterizes citizenship as the entitlement of all people born or naturalized in the
United States and increases federal power over the states
to protect individual rights, while leaving the daily affairs of the states in
their own hands.
1870 Feb 17 The 15th Amendment is ratified,
guaranteeing that “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” will not be
used to bar U.S. male citizens from voting.
Tennessee will not ratify this amendment until 1997.
1873 Jan 6
Sampson W. Keeble, the first African
American to be elected to the Tennessee General Assembly, takes his seat in the
House of Representatives.
1875 March The Tennessee Legislature passes House Bill
No. 527 authorizing racial discrimination in transportation, lodging, and
places of entertainment.
The Bill receives Senate approval before the end of the month and becomes law (Chapter 130 of the Tennessee Code).
1887-1888 Elected to the 45th Tennessee
General Assembly are Monroe W. Gooden of Fayette County, Styles L. Hutchins of
Hamilton, and Samuel A. McElwee of Haywood.
After the end of their term in January 1889, there will be no more African
Americans elected to the Tennessee legislature until A.W. Willis, Shelby
County, takes his seat in the Tennessee House in January 1965, 76 years later!
1890 Nov 1 The Mississippi Plan
becomes law on this date. It uses literacy and "understanding" tests to disfranchise minority
voters.
Other Southern states soon adopt similar practices to prevent blacks
from exercising their right to vote: violence, voter fraud, gerrymandering, poll
taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, grandfather clauses, etc.
1896 May
18 In Plessy v. Ferguson the
Supreme Court rules that state laws requiring separate-but-equal accommodations for
blacks and whites are reasonable and do
not imply the inferiority of either race. The 7-1 decision (Justice John Marshall Harlan dissents) will
serve as legal justification for segregation until it is finally overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
1906 Dec 24 In March Noah Parden & Styles
Hutchins, two African American lawyers from Chattanooga, Tennessee,
convince Supreme Court Justice John Marshall
Harlan to grant an appeal to Ed Johnson, a black man wrongly convicted of
rape. This is the first time the Supreme Court has chosen to intervene in a
state criminal court case. On the very day the Court’s ruling is announced, a
mob drags Johnson from the jail and lynches him. The Supreme Court, for
the first and only time in its history, brings criminal contempt charges
against the sheriff, his deputies, and several members of the mob . . . and
then elects to hear the case itself. On this date the
Court, in the landmark United States v. Shipp, finds the
defendants guilty of contempt of court and sends them to jail for a short
time. Not long after Sheriff Shipp returns
home to a triumphant welcome, attorneys Parden and Hutchins, their lives in
danger, take their families and flee Tennessee forever. 1909 Feb
12 The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded in New York by a group of
60 men and women, both
black and white. Among its founders are W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, Archibald
Grimké, and Florence Kelley.
1912 Jul
4 Hadley Park is dedicated in Nashville. Originally part of the John
L. Hadley plantation (Hadley was a well-known
supporter of freedmen’s
activities after the Civil War), this is the first public park in the United
States for African Americans. Located near Tennessee State University, the
park continues to this day to honor the community's cultural heritage.
1920 Aug 18 The 19th Amendment is ratified
as Tennessee, in a razor-thin vote, becomes the 36th and final state
needed to give women the vote. 1932 Nov
1 The Highlander Folk School opens near
Monteagle, Tennessee. It supports the labor and Civil Rights movement with
classes in labor education,
literacy training, leadership development, non-violent methods of protest,
mediation, and voter education.
1939 African American contralto Marian Anderson performs at the Lincoln
Memorial on Easter Sunday before a crowd of 75,000 people and a radio audience of millions. After Anderson was denied permission to perform in the D.A.R.
Auditorium, Eleanor Roosevelt herself
arranged the Lincoln Memorial concert.
1940 Feb 29 Hattie
McDaniel wins the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as
Mammy in Gone with the Wind. She is
the first African American, male or female, to win an Academy Award. 1940 Apr 7 Booker
T. Washington becomes the first African American depicted on a postage
stamp. 1940 Oct Benjamin
O. Davis Sr. is promoted to Brigadier General. He is the first black soldier to hold the
rank of general. (See
also May 16, 1960.) 1942 Apr The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is established in Chicago by James L. Farmer Jr., George Houser, and
Bernice Fisher. Having evolved
from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the group espouses the principles of
pacifism and believes that non-violent civil disobedience is the appropriate method
by which to challenge racial segregation in the United States.
1943 Rosa PARKS joins the NAACP, having served as youth advisor
for the Montgomery Chapter since the mid-1930s.
She works with the state president to mobilize a voter
registration drive in Montgomery. Later
that same year she is thrown off a city bus, coincidentally by the same driver
who will have her arrested in 1956.
1945 Oct 23 Baseball executive Branch Rickey announces
that he has assigned Jackie Robinson to
the Brooklyn Dodgers’ minor-league affiliate Montreal Royals. Robinson will debut with the Royals in Daytona Beach on March 17, 1946.
1946 Summer African American football players Kenny Washington and Woody Strode are signed by the Los
Angeles Rams, and Marion Motley and Bill Willis join the Cleveland Browns. 1946 Zilphia Horton, music director at the Highlander Folk School, adapts the lyrics from a gospel hymn by the Reverend Charles Tindley (1851-1933)
and creates the song “We Shall Overcome,”
which quickly becomes the anthem of the Civil Rights movement.
1946 Dec
5 President Truman establishes a Committee on Civil Rights. Their task is to study violence against African Americans
throughout the country.
1947 Apr 15 Jackie
Robinson becomes the first African American to join a white professional
baseball team when he is hired by the Dodgers.
He will win the first MLB Rookie Award later the same year, and the
Major League MVP award in 1949. 1947 Fall Indiana University integrates its
basketball team when it adds William
Garrett to its roster. He is the
first black player in the Big Ten and will be named an All-American in
1951. As other schools follow Indiana’s
lead over the next few years, an unspoken “gentlemen’s agreement” evolves,
limiting to three the number of black players on the floor at any one time. 1947 Dec President Truman’s Civil Rights
Committee issues its report, “To Secure These Rights," which positions America's
harsh treatment of its black citizens against our criticism
of Communism’s destruction of its citizens’ individual rights. Among other things, the report, which at the
time is considered quite radical, calls for segregation to be abolished (first
and foremost in government and the military), for lynching to become a federal crime,
for poll taxes to be outlawed, for voting rights to be guaranteed for all
citizens, and for a United States Commission on Civil Rights to be established.
1948 May 3 Sipes v. McGhee, a Michigan case,
leads to Shelley v. Kraemer, in which the Supreme Court
rules that, although no statute prohibits racially restrictive covenants in
property deeds [written to block Asians, Jews, or African Americans from
purchasing property in a neighborhood], no state or federal court can enforce
them. 1948 Jul
26 President Harry S. Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which establishes the President's Committee on Equality of
Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed
Services. [This will require an additional change in Department of Defense
policy. See entry for July 26, 1963.] Order 9981 is accompanied by Executive
Order 9980, creating a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination
in federal employment.
1949 William Henry Hastie is the first African American to be appointed
a Federal judge, when President Truman names him judge of the Third U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals. Hastie, a
native of Knoxville, graduated first in his class from Amherst and took his law
degree at Harvard University. One of his
law students at Howard University was Thurgood Marshall. 1950 African American Ralph J. Bunche receives the Nobel
Peace Prize for mediating the Arab-Israeli truce. He has also played a critical role in the
formation and administration of the United Nations, chartered in 1945. 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks wins the first Pulitzer Prize for poetry. 1950 Nov 1 Chuck
Cooper becomes the first African American professional basketball player
when he takes the floor with the Boston Celtics against the Fort Wayne Pistons. 1951 Fall The University of Tennessee admits its
first African American students. 1952 The
first year since 1881 without a recorded lynching. 1952 The Association of American Law
Schools (AALS) passes a resolution introduced by the Yale Law School faculty two
years earlier, making
racial integration a requirement for membership in the organization.
1953 Fall Vanderbilt
University admits its first African American student. 1954 May
17 The unanimous decision on Brown v. Board of Education
overturns many previous rulings, beginning with
Plessy v. Ferguson (58 years
earlier, almost to the day), by ruling that state laws establishing separate
public schools for black and white students deny the black children equal
educational opportunities – separate is not equal. The
decision bans segregation in public schools.
1954 Sep
30 The last
all-black units are disbanded by the U.S. Military. 1955 Mar 2 Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old African
American is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her bus
seat to a white passenger. Local black
leaders consider using this as the test case for a major protest movement, but
reject the idea when Colvin becomes pregnant. 1955 March Black basketball players K. C. Jones and Bill Russell lead the University of San Francisco to the NCCA championship.
1955 May 24 The Little Rock
School Board votes unanimously to adopt Superintendent Virgil Blossom's plan of
gradual integration, to start in
September 1957 at the high school level and add the lower grades over the next
six years. Mr. Blossom is named "Man
of the Year" by the Arkansas
Democrat for his work on desegregation. 1955 July Rosa Parks receives a scholarship to attend a school desegregation workshop for community leaders. She spends
several
weeks at the Highlander Folk School in
Monteagle, TN, later saying that the workshop was the first time in her life
she had felt a sense of being in "an atmosphere of equality with members
of the other race."
1955 Aug
28 On a dare,
14-year-old Emmett Till, visiting
relatives near Money, Mississippi, whistles at a white woman in a general
store. Later he
is beaten to death by a group of men, including the woman’s husband. Shortly after the two men tried for murdering
Till are acquitted by a local jury, they sell a story
to Look magazine in which they
confess to the murder.
1955 Sep
3 Emmett Till’s mother, schoolteacher Mamie Till Bradley, insists on keeping Emmett's casket open during his funeral,
even though his face
is so disfigured by the beating that he is unrecognizable: “Let the people see
what I have seen,” she says. “I think everybody needs to know what happened
to Emmett Till.”
1955 Nov 7 In Sarah
Keys v. Carolina Coach Company the Interstate Commerce Commission outlaws segregation on interstate
buses.
1955 Dec 1 Rosa
Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery,
Alabama, bus. The next day JoAnn Robinson and other community
activists make and distribute flyers encouraging the African American community
to boycott the city buses. 1955 Dec 5 On the first day of the bus
boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) is established. Members
elect a 26-year old minister, the Reverend Martin
Luther King, as president. 1956 Jan 30 Dr.
King’s home is bombed. Over the next two
months, MIA attorneys file a federal
suit challenging the constitutionality of segregated seating on public
buses; a grand jury indicts 90 MIA members for breaking an anti-boycott law;
Dr. King is convicted and fined $1,000. The
MIA’s appeal draws nation-wide media attention. 1956 Mar The
Southern Manifesto, opposing racial integration in public places, is signed by 101 Senators and Congressmen, all
from Southern
states. Refusing to sign are Senators Albert Gore Sr. and Estes Kefauver from
Tennessee and Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas. Other Congressmen who elect not to
sign are Representatives William C. Cramer and Dante Fascell
of Florida; Richard Chatham, Harold D. Cooley, Charles Deane, and Charles R.
Jonas of North Carolina; Howard Baker Sr., Ross Bass, Joe Evins, J. Percy
Priest, and B. Carroll Reece of Tennessee; and seventeen members of the Texas
delegation, including Speaker Sam Rayburn. Their decision to oppose the
Southern Manifesto cost several of these individuals any chance of reelection.
1956 Jun 5 A
Federal court rules all bus segregation unconstitutional. Montgomery city
officials quickly appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the boycott continues, and city
officials concentrate on finding a legal way to prohibit the MIA’s carpool
system, a home-grown network of alternative transportation provided by drivers
both black and white. 1956 Summer African American tennis player Althea Gibson reaches the finals of
the U.S. Open. She wins both singles and doubles
in the
French Open, becoming the first African American to win a Grand Slam tennis
title.
1956 Aug 28 After 27 African American students failed in
their efforts to register in the all-white Little Rock city schools, the NAACP filed a lawsuit on their behalf. On this date, Federal Judge John E. Miller dismisses the suit, stating
that the Little Rock School Board
has acted in “utmost good faith” in following its announced integration plan. Although the NAACP appeals, a higher court
upholds Miller’s ruling. Meanwhile, during
the same period of late summer, the city’s public buses are quietly desegregated. 1956 Fall Although Vanderbilt University Law
School has enrolled Native American, Asian, and Hispanic students for decades, Frederick T. Work and Melvin Porter are the first African
American students admitted to a private law school in the South. Both will graduate in 1959. 1956 Nov 13 In Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court upholds the lower court
ruling finding Montgomery's bus segregation
unconstitutional. On December 20, U.S. Marshals officially
serve the Supreme Court order on Montgomery city officials.
1956 Dec 21 The Montgomery bus boycott comes to a
successful end. After 381 days and the combined efforts of 50,000
people, black residents of Montgomery are now free to choose any seat
on city buses.
1957 Jan 10 The Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
is organized in Atlanta, its stated goal to coordinate and support non-violent
direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South. Martin Luther King Jr., 28, is its first
president. 1957
March Tennessee State University defeats Southeast Oklahoma at the NAIA Basketball Tournament, 92-73, to become
xthe first black college to win a white-dominated national title.
1957 Spring
Of the 517 black students eligible to
attend Little Rock Central High School, 80 express an interest in doing so and
go through a series of interviews with school officials. Of the 17 students who are selected, 8 decide
to remain at the all-black Horace Mann High School, leaving a group who will
become known as the “Little Rock Nine.” 1957 May 17 On the third
anniversary of Brown v. Board of
Education, Bobby Cain graduates from Clinton High School in Clinton,
Tennessee, becoming the first African American graduate of a state-supported,
public, integrated high school in the South. 1957 Tennis player Althea Gibson wins both singles and
doubles titles at the U.S. Open, the Australian Open, and Wimbledon. 1957 Aug 27 During the summer opponents of school
integration in Little Rock have organized into groups, the most vocal being the
Capital Citizens Council and the Mothers League of Central High School. On this date one of the mothers files a
motion in Chancery Court asking for a temporary
injunction against school integration.
Pulaski County Chancellor Murray Reed grants the injunction “on the
grounds that integration could lead to violence.” Three days later Federal District Judge Ronald Davies nullifies the injunction. 1957 Sep 2 On Labor Day, Arkansas Governor Orval
Faubus calls out the Arkansas National Guard to protect the school against
extremists. The next day, Judge Ronald Davies orders that integration
will begin on September 4. This will be
the first important test of Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka. 1957 Sep 4 The nine black students attempt to enter
Little Rock Central High School but are turned away by National Guardsmen. 1957 Sep 9 On March 11, 1956, President Eisenhower, responding to the racial unrest that follows Brown V Board of Education and following
the recommend-ations of President
Truman’s 1947 Civil Rights Committee, urges Congress to pass the first
civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. House Speaker Sam Rayburn and
Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, both Texans, guide the Civil Rights Bill through Congress, in spite of the objections of
many Southern politicians (most notably Strom Thurmond, author of the Southern
Manifesto, whose 24-hour, 18-minute filibuster still stands as the Senate
record). Despite the uproar over its
passage, the bill is much weaker than Eisenhower has hoped – it does little
more than to expand the authority of the U.S. Justice Department to enforce
civil rights and voters’ rights, and to add a new assistant attorney general to
oversee the division of a new Justice Department division responsible for civil
rights issues. 1957 Sep 20 Judge Davies rules that Faubus has used the
National Guard to prevent the students from entering the school and not to
protect them. The Guardsmen are removed,
and the Little Rock Police Department takes responsibility for keeping the
school peaceful. 1957 Sep 23 Nine African American teenagers enter Little Rock Central High for the first time, out of sight of an angry
crowd of 1000 protesters; they are removed for their own safety when the mob
grows unruly. The next day the mayor asks Eisenhower for help. 1957 Sep 25 President Eisenhower sends 1000 members of
the 101st Airborne Division
to Little Rock and federalizes the Arkansas National Guard. The nine black students return to school with
a military escort. 1958 March The Nashville Christian Leadership
Conference (NCLC) holds its first workshop on non-violent tactics against
segregation under the leadership of the Reverend Kelly Miller Smith. The workshops will continue into 1960. 1958 May 27 Ernest Green becomes
the first black student to graduate from Little Rock Central High School. With police and Federal troops standing by, the
graduation ceremony is peaceful and dignified. Governor Orval Faubus will close Little Rock schools for most of the
1958-1959 school year. 1959 Nov James
Lawson, a Vanderbilt University divinity student, and Kelly Miller Smith, the young minister of the First Colored Baptist
Church on 8th Avenue North, continue to hold workshops to train Nashville
high school and college students in the techniques of nonviolence and peaceful
protest. 1959 Dec Lawson, Smith, and student leaders John
Lewis, Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, Marion Barry, and others buy goods
and make early, though unsuccessful, attempts to desegregate
the lunch counters at Harvey’s and Cain-Sloan department stores in Nashville.
1960 Feb 1 Four African American college freshmen
bring attention to the unequal treatment of the races when they take seats at a
Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. More students arrive the next day, and news
services begin to take interest in the story.
1960 Feb 13 Nashville
students begin their first full-scale sit-ins at downtown businesses. Convening at the Arcade on 5th Avenue
xshortly after noon, they move out to the Kress,
Woolworth’s, and McClellan’s stores, where they make purchases and then take
seats at the lunch counters. Two hours
later the stores close their lunch counters, and the students leave without
incident.
1960 Feb 19
Thirty
Chattanooga students (most from Howard High School) take seats at the lunch
counters of three downtown variety stores.
Their hand-written rules, circulated to all the participants, include
“please be on best behavior,” “no loud talking,” “no profanity,” and “try to
make small purchase.” They continue the
sit-ins throughout the month of February, drawing more student participants
each time. 1960 Feb 27 White students attack the Nashville lunch-counter
demonstrators. Police arrest the black
students, but others move in quickly to take their seats. The students are represented in court by
Nashville councilman and attorney, Z.
Alexander Looby and his associates Avon
Nyanza Williams and Robert E. Lillard. By mid-May lunch counters will be opened to
customers of any race; by October Looby will have convinced a judge to dismiss
the charges against 91 students for conspiracy to disrupt trade and commerce. 1960 Mar 3 James
Lawson, whom Martin Luther King has called “the leading non-violence
theorist in the world,” is expelled from Vanderbilt University for his efforts
in organizing the Nashville sit-ins. (He will complete his degree program at
Boston University.) The dean and faculty
members of the Vanderbilt Divinity School
resign in protest. 1960 Apr The Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) is founded at a
series of student meetings led by Ella
Baker at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, at mid-month. Baker insists on a two-part organization –
one part for direct action (sit-ins) and one part for voter registration. Marion Barry is the first chairman; other
early members are Diane Nash, John Lewis, James Lawson, James Bevel, Charles
McDew, Julian Bond, and Stokely Carmichael. 1960 Apr
19 Z.
Alexander Looby's home is destroyed by a dynamite blast. 2500 students and community members stage a
silent march to City Hall, where Mayor Ben West meets them on the steps. Student leader Diane Nash asks him, "Do you
feel it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their
race or color?" West says yes, later explaining, "It was a moral
question – one that a man had to answer, not a politician."
1960 May 6 President Eisenhower introduced a second
civil rights bill in late 1958, in reaction to violence against Southern
schools and churches. Once again
Southern politicians react against what they see as Federal interference in
state business – 18 Southern Senators form a filibustering “team” and produce
the longest filibuster in history: over 43 hours. Majority leader Lyndon Johnson holds the Senate in 24-hour session until the Civil Rights Bill of 1960 is passed.
Eisenhower signs the bill into law on May 6, thus creating a Civil Rights
Commission, establishing federal regulation of local voter registration polls,
and providing penalties for anyone interfering with a citizen’s effort to vote
or to register to vote. 1960 May
10 Six Nashville lunch counters begin
serving black customers. 1960 Jul 31 Elijah
Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, calls for the establishment of a
separate state for blacks.
in the Olympics, winning the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash,
and the 400-meter relay, in which she runs the anchor leg.
1960 Oct 12 Thurgood
Marshall, who will later become a Supreme Court justice himself, pleads the
case of Boynton v. Virginia before
the Court. The case involves a black
interstate bus passenger who was arrested for refusing to leave a whites-only
section of a bus station restaurant.
Marshall claims such arrests violate the Interstate Commerce Act and the
Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. 1960 Dec 5 In Boynton v. Virginia the Supreme
Court rules that restaurant facilities in bus terminals that primarily exist to
serve interstate bus passengers cannot discriminate based on race according to
the Interstate Commerce Act. The
decision is a landmark event because it ties the future of the Civil Rights
movement to the Federal Government. 1960 Dec 31 By the end of 1960,
70,000 people have participated in sit-ins, and 3600 have been arrested. 1961 Jan In Selma, Alabama, over 80% of African Americans live below the
poverty line; fewer than 1% of eligible blacks are registered to vote. 1961 Feb Nine young African American men are
jailed in Rock Hill, South Carolina,
after staging a sit-in at a McCrory’s lunch counter. They are the first to use the “jail, no bail” strategy, which will
lighten the financial burden of civil rights groups across the country. 1961 May 4 Organized by SNCC, the Freedom Rides will
test the legal enforcement of Boynton v.
Virginia. The first bus of 13 Freedom Riders (7 blacks, 6 whites)
leaves Washington, D.C. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, their first
stop in the South, John Lewis and another man are beaten by a white mob. 1961 May 14 One of the Freedom
Riders’ buses is burned in Anniston,
Alabama. As a second bus pulls into the Trailways Station in Birmingham, riders
are attacked and badly beaten by a
mob of Ku Klux Klan members. Sheriff Bull
Connor orders Birmingham police to stay away. The wounded Freedom Riders eventually escape
to New Orleans when Attorney General Robert Kennedy orders a plane to take them
there. 1961 May 17 Unwilling to allow the KKK to defeat them,
Tennessee activists take a bus from Nashville
to Birmingham; Bull Connor arrests
them and dumps them along the road, just over the Tennessee border. They make
their way back to Birmingham but cannot find a bus driver willing to risk driving
them. 1961 May 20 Under orders from Robert Kennedy, the Alabama governor provides
a Highway Patrol escort, and the bus roars toward Montgomery at 90 mph. At the
city limits the police guards disappear, under Connor’s orders, and the riders
are set upon and brutally beaten by a mob of KKK supporters, who have as much
as 20 uninterrupted minutes to attack the Riders with bats and iron bars before
police arrive and drive the growing mob away with tear-gas. Many riders are
left bloody and unconscious, including reporters (the mob has quickly destroyed
their cameras) and Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who is found lying in the street. Local black citizens eventually rescue the
wounded and take them to hospitals. 1961 May 21 Martin
Luther King and James Farmer of
CORE (who is already recruiting more Freedom Riders) speak to 1200 people in the
Reverend Ralph Abernathy’s Montgomery church, while a mob outside throws rocks at
the windows, overturns cars, and starts fires.
Over the next several days, more Freedom Riders arrive; most are
jailed. By the end of the summer, more than
60 Freedom Rides have come south, and more than 300 individuals have been
jailed, including many local supporters of the Riders. 1961
Winter The Loyola University (Chicago)
basketball team puts four black players on the floor at one time, breaking an
unwritten rule of college sports.
1962 Darryl Hill is recruited by coach Lee Corso at the University of Maryland. He is the first African American football
player in the Southwest Conference (SWC). The only black player on the team until his
senior year, he sets two records that still stand: total yards receiving, and
most passes caught in a single game.
1962 Sep 30 James
Meredith is escorted onto the University
of Mississippi (Oxford) campus by a convoy of Federal Marshals. In the riots that follow, two people are
killed and many others injured. 1963 January Alabama Governor George Wallace declares, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." 1963 Apr
8 Sidney Poitier is the first African
American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Starring in three major films,
he is also the
top box office star of the year.
1963 Apr 16 Jailed for his protest activities, Martin
Luther King writes his “Letter from a
Birmingham Jail,” which becomes a classic document of the Civil Rights
struggle, asserting that individuals have a moral right to disobey unjust laws. 1963 May Civil rights activists, including
children, begin to march in Birmingham. By the
end of the first day, 700 have been arrested.
When 1000 more youngsters turn out to march peacefully on May 3,
Commissioner of Public Safety Bull
Connor turns police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on them. Within five
days, 2500 are in jail, at least 80% of them children. After 38 days of confrontation and public
outcry from across the nation, Birmingham city officials and business leaders
agree to desegregate public facilities.
Governor George Wallace’s refusal to accept the plan will lead to
violent confrontation. 1963 Jun
11 Governor George Wallace stands in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama, blocking the
the University of
Alabama, blocking the enrollment of two black students. Later, confronted by Federal Marshals and
Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, he stands aside. 1963 Jun 12 NAACP
activist Medgar Evers is shot to
death outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His assailant, KKK
member Byron De La Beckwith, will not be found guilty of his murder until 1994. 1963 Jul
26 The true fulfillment of Executive
Order 9981 (1948) -- equality of treatment and opportunity for all military personnel
-- requires a change in Defense Department policy,
which finally occurs with the publication of Department Directive 5120.36, issued
fifteen years to the day after Truman’s original order. This major policy
shift, ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert
J. McNamara, expands the military’s responsibility to
eliminate off-base discrimination detrimental to the military effectiveness of
black servicemen.
1963 Aug
28 250,000 civil rights supporters take
part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The highlight of the
event occurs when Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
1963 Sep Voter registration volunteers in Selma,
Alabama, face arrests, beatings, and death threats. Thirty-two black schoolteachers who attempt
to register to vote are fired by the all-white school board. After the September
15 church bombing, students begin lunch counter sit-ins – 300 are arrested,
including John Lewis of SNCC. 1963 Sep 15 Four little girls, ages 11 to 14, are killed
when a bomb explodes in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Many
other people are injured. 1963 Nov
22 President John F. Kennedy is
assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.
1964 Jan
3 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is Time
Magazine’s Man of the Year. 1964 Jan 23 The 24th
Amendment to the Constitution abolishes the poll tax, used in Southern
states since Reconstruction to make the voting process more difficult for poor
blacks. 1964 Jun 14 Freedom
Summer (also called the Mississippi Summer Project) begins with
training sessions in Ohio. This effort
to register black voters, primarily in Mississippi (in which only 6.2% of
eligible blacks were registered to vote) is spearheaded by SNCC, along with the
NAACP, CORE, and the SCLC. Dr. Staughton Lynd from Yale University directs
the Freedom Schools project. 1964 Jun 21 Three young civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew
Goodman – are arrested in Neshoba County, Mississippi, and then disappear. 1964 Jul 2 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits discrimination of all kinds
based on race, color, religion, or national origin; it also provides the
federal government with the authority to enforce civil rights legislation. To Johnson’s
great dismay, the passage of this law will be followed by a year of violence as
white supremacists attempt to undo the gains accomplished by registering black voters.
Johnson turns his attention to passing a Voting Rights act.
1964 Aug 4 The bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew
Goodman are found, buried in an earthen dam. Schwerner and Goodman have
been shot; Chaney was beaten to death. The state of Mississippi refuses to charge
anyone with the murders. Seven
people are eventually tried for Federal crimes, but none of the accused serves more than six
years in jail.
1964 Aug 25 By the end of the
10-week Freedom Summer project, four
workers have been killed, four others critically wounded, 80 beaten, and 1000
arrested. Thirty black homes or businesses and 37 churches have been bombed or
burned. Many of these crimes are never solved.
Since Mississippi still requires a literacy test for voter registration,
of the 17,000 Mississippi blacks trying to register, only 1,600 succeed. 1964 Oct 14 Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., 35, becomes the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He will deliver his
powerful acceptance speech on December 10 in Oslo: “Nonviolence is the answer
to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to
overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.” 1964 Nov Archie
Walter “A.W.” Willis, Jr., is elected
to the Tennessee General Assembly. When
he takes his seat in January 1965, he becomes the first African American to serve
in the Tennessee House of Representatives since Reconstruction. 1965 Feb 18 Jimmie
Lee Jackson, 26, is shot during a peaceful protest in Marion, Alabama, as
he tries to protect his mother and grandfather from a beating by Alabama State
Troopers. Jackson, shot at very close
range, dies a week later. An Alabama
Grand Jury refuses to indict James
Bonard Fowler, the trooper who shot him. 1965 Feb 21 Black nationalist leader Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little in
Nebraska in 1925) is assassinated during a speech in Manhattan. Three members of the Black Muslim
organization are accused of his murder. 1965 Mar 7 SCLC leader James Bevel sets up a 55-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the
state capitol in Montgomery – a demonstration on behalf of African American voting
rights. On the outskirts of Selma, just
after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
the 600 marchers are brutally assaulted, in full view of TV cameras, by heavily
armed state troopers & deputies. ABC interrupts its broadcast of Judgment in Nuremberg, a Nazi war crimes
documentary, to show footage of the violence.
John Lewis, 25, and the Rev. Hosea Williams, 39, leading the
march are clubbed to the ground, as are many others. A widely published photograph shows 54-year-old
Amelia Boynton Robinson lying
unconscious on the bridge. Fifty
marchers are hospitalized. 1965 Mar 9 Martin
Luther King Jr. leads a second
march across the Pettus Bridge. The marchers kneel in prayer, then turn back around, obeying the court order that prohibits
them from going on to Montgomery. After
the march, three white ministers are attacked and beaten – one (James Reeb,
from Boston) dies in Birmingham, after Selma’s public hospital refuses to treat
him. On the same day, demonstrations condemning “Bloody Sunday,” as the March 7 incident
has come to be called, take place in 80 cities across the nation. 1965 Mar 15 President Lyndon B. Johnson makes what many consider his greatest speech to
Congress as he calls for a Voting Rights bill: “It is wrong—deadly wrong—to
deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country . . . .
What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement that now reaches into
every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to
secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who
must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we
shall overcome.” 1965 Mar 16 A Federal judge rules in Williams
v. Wallace: “The law is
clear that the right
to petition
one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups
. . . . These rights may . . . be exercised by marching, even along public
highways.” Granting the protesters their First Amendment
rights to march also means the State of Alabama can no longer obstruct them. 1965 Mar 21 Close to 8000 people, of all races, begin
the third march from Selma to Montgomery. The 5-day march covers a 54-mile route along
the "Jefferson Davis Highway"(U.S. 80). Protected by 4000 troops (U.S.
Army, Alabama National Guard under Federal command, and many FBI agents and
Federal Marshals), the marchers average ten miles a day and arrive at the Alabama
Capitol building on the 25th. 1965 Mar 23 The marchers pass through cold, rainy Lowndes County, where, though African
Americans make up 81% of the population, not a single one is registered to
vote, while the 2240 whites on the voting rolls constitute 118% of the adult
white population! 1965 Mar 25 Martin
Luther King addresses the marchers in Montgomery (“How Long, Not Long”),
and they listen to Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter, Paul & Mary, Tony
Bennett, and others in a “Stars for
Freedom Rally.” 1965 April Fannie
Lou Hamer and other SNCC members help found the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union to organize cotton workers. 1965 May 19 Patricia
Harris becomes the first African American since Ebenezer Bassett (1869,
Haiti) to serve as an American ambassador (Luxembourg). 1965 Aug 6 President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This bill, urgently sought by Johnson, along
with Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders, eliminates such devices as poll
taxes and literacy tests, and authorizes federal registrars to register
qualified voters. 1965 Aug 11 A large-scale race riot begins in the Watts
area of Los Angeles, sparked by a traffic arrest. As community leaders try to restore order,
rioters block fire fighters from burning buildings, and vandalism and looting
take place throughout the area. Nearly
14,000 National Guardsmen are sent in to help restore order. By the time the violence ends six days
later, 34 people have been killed, 1032 are injured, and 3952 are arrested. Nearly 1000 buildings have been damaged or
destroyed, and the city is left with $40 million in property damage. 1965 Sep 15 The first episode of the television series I Spy is broadcast. This is the first drama series on American television to
x x feature a black actor
(Bill Cosbey) in a starring role.
1965 Sep 24 President Johnson
issues Executive Order 11246, which requires government contractors to
"take affirmative action"
toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment. 1966 Jan13 Robert
Clifton Weaver, nominated by President Johnson to be Secretary of the
Department of Housing and Urban Development, is the first African American
named to the cabinet. 1966 Mar Texas
Western College (now called University of Texas at El Paso), with its all-black
starting line-up, defeats the powerful University of Kentucky team to win the NCAA championship. The game inspired
the 2006 film Glory Road. The entire team is inducted into the
Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007. 1966 Jun 16 SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael rallies a crowd in Greenwood,
Mississippi, with the cry, “We want black
power!” Martin Luther King Jr.’s concerns that the phrase carries
“connotations of violence and separatism” are borne out by splits in the civil
rights movement between those favoring the use of nonviolent methods and those
leaning more toward conventional revolutionary tactics like armed self-defense
and black nationalism. 1966 Fall In college football, Jerry LeVias, a student at Southern
Methodist University, is the first black scholarship athlete in the Southwest
Conference. African American athletes Greg Page and Nate Northington join the University of Kentucky football
team. When Page dies after a blow to the
back during practice, Northington transfers to Western Kentucky University,
which integrated its classes in 1956 and has fielded back players since 1963. 1966 Fall Seven African American students attend
Vanderbilt University. Among them is
Perry Wallace, the first African American basketball scholarship student and
player in the SEC. Although Wallace
would play for only three years (1968-1970), he is still the school’s second
leading rebounder. 1966 October The militant Black Panther organization is founded
in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. 1966 Nov 8 Edward
W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, becomes the first African American
elected by popular vote to the U.S. Senate. 1967 Summer In the worst summer of racial violence in the
nation’s history, more than 40 riots and 100 other upheavals occur across the
country. Among the most destructive take place in Newark
(July 12-16) and Detroit (July 23-30). 1967 Jun 12 In Loving
v. Virginia the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declares Virginia's
anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional, thus
prohibiting all legal marital restrictions based on race 1967 Aug 30 Judge Thurgood
Marshall, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, is confirmed by the
Senate to be the 96th Supreme Court Justice. He becomes the first African American to
serve on the Supreme Court. 1967 Fall Wilbur
Hackett Jr. joins the University of Kentucky football team. He will become the first African American
team captain in the SEC. 1967 Nov Carl
Stokes, Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first African American elected mayor
of a major U.S. city. 1968 Feb 12 Demanding better pay and working conditions,
job equality with white workers, and city recognition of their union, 1300
black sanitation workers in Memphis
walk off their jobs. Although 500 white
workers march with them, they get little support from the community and ask
Martin Luther King Jr. to support their cause. 1968 Mar Winston-Salem
State University becomes the first black college to win an NCAA basketball
championship. 1968 Apr 4 Martin
Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis.
Violence breaks out in cities across America. James Earl Ray confesses to the murder, but
later recants, working until the end of his life to clear his name, supported
by members of the King family who doubt his guilt. The mayor of Memphis, fearing further
violence, agrees to recognize the sanitation workers’ union, permits a dues check-off, grants them
a pay raise, and introduces a system of merit promotions. 1968 Apr 11 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of
housing. 1968 Jun 5 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, on the night of his
victory in the California Democratic Primary, is shot to death in Los Angeles
by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab nationalist. 1968 Summer Arthur
Ashe wins the U.S. Open in tennis.
He will go on to win the Australian Open in 1970 and the Wimbledon
championship in 1975. 1968 Fall Lester
McClain becomes the first black athlete on the University of Tennessee
football team. Two years later he will
be joined by African American quarterback Condredge
Holloway. 1968 Sep 17 With the premiere of Julia, Diahann Carroll
becomes the first African American woman to star in a television series in
which she does not play a domestic servant.
In 1962 Carroll had been the first black performer to win a Tony Award,
for her performance in the musical No
Strings. 1968 Nov 5 Shirley
Chisholm, a Democrat from New York, is the first African American woman
elected to Congress. Republican Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey by a narrow margin to
become President.
1969 Jan Avon
N. Williams Jr. (Nashville) and J.
O. Patterson Jr. (Memphis) take their seats as the first two African
Americans ever elected to the Tennessee State Senate. 1970 Sep 12 USC fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham’s stellar performance
against the all-white Alabama team opens the door for Alabama’s coach Bear
Bryant to recruit black players. In
fact, Wilbur Jackson, watching the
game from the stands, has already been offered a scholarship to Alabama,
although most fans are still unaware of his status. NCAA rules make him ineligible to play as a
freshman. 1970 Dec Perry
Wallace, Vanderbilt basketball star, is named to the
All-South-Eastern-Conference team and wins the Sportsmanship trophy after a
vote by league players. 1971 Jan 12 All in the Family begins its eight-year
run.
The number-one TV sitcom for five years, the show generates many other
programs that deal with race relations and other controversial subjects in
realistic and humorous ways. 1971 Apr 20 In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of
Education, the Supreme Court moves to end de facto segregation in schools
where segregation occurs as a result of neighborhood segregation and proximity
to schools, even though the schools themselves have no policy requiring
segregation. The solution in most cases
is to reassign students and to bus them to the newly integrated schools. Though the plan is met with disfavor and even
violence, court-ordered busing will continue in some cities until the late
1990s. 1971 Fall The University
of Alabama, one of the last schools to integrate its athletic teams, recruits John Mitchell, who will
become both co-captain of the team and an All-American the following year.
1972 Sep For the first time, all grades in the
Little Rock Public Schools are integrated. 1974 Sep 3 Surprisingly, the strongest opposition to enforced busing occurs
in New England. A Federal court finds that Boston school districts were originally drawn
to produce racial segregation; other courts rule that racially
imbalanced schools are unfair to minority students and require the racial
composition of each school in a district to mirror the composition of that
district as a whole. Opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had worried about using
forced busing to achieve racial quotas in schools, Senator Hubert Humphrey insisting "it would be a violation [of the Constitution],
because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be
transporting children because of race." When Boston schools open in 1974,
police in riot gear accompany the buses.
Some black children face abusive language and a storm of rocks and
bottles as they enter their schools. 1977 Jan Indiana becomes the 36th
and last of the 38 required states to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA),
which would give equal rights to women.
In the face of strong opposition, led by Phyllis Schlafly and others, no
other states will ratify, and five (Idaho, Kentucky, South Dakota, Nebraska,
and Tennessee) will rescind their earlier ratifications. 1978 Jun 26 In a controversial
5-4 decision on Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme
Court rules that racial quotas must be eliminated in education. The decision is tempered by Justice Lewis
Powell’s statement (he votes with the majority but writes an opinion supporting
the minority view also): “Race can be a factor, but only one of many to achieve
a balance.” Thus, affirmative action
policies could continue if clearly defined. 1978 Sep 29 Seattle
becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools
without a court order. The “Seattle
Plan” involves busing almost one-fourth of the school district's students. 1979 George Wallace recants his earlier
segregationist statements and apologizes to black civil rights leaders, saying
“I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over.” 1984 Jul 7 Returning from church in Bangor, Maine,
Charlie Howard, 23, is beaten and kicked by three teenagers, who shout
homophobic slurs before throwing him off a bridge even as he screams he can’t
swim. His body is found several hours later.
He has drowned. 1989 Aug
10 General Colin Powell becomes chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 1989 Nov 7 Douglas
Wilder of Virginia becomes the
nation’s first African American state governor. 1991 Nov 22 President George H. W. Bush, having first threatened a veto, signs the Civil
Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for
damages in cases of intentional job discrimination. 1992 Apr 29 When a predominantly white jury acquits four
LAPD officers in the beating of a black man named Rodney King, a huge riot breaks
out in Los Angeles. The videotaped beating
combines with existing racial unrest in the city to spark five days of violence,
ending only after the deployment of Federal troops. A total of 53 people die: 25 blacks, 16
Latinos, 8 whites, 2 East Asians and 2 West Asians. Approximately 3,600 fires are
set, destroying 1,100 buildings. About 10,000 people are arrested. Stores owned
by Asian immigrants are most likely to be targeted. 1993 Oct 7 Author Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize in Literature. 1994 Feb 5 In Jackson, Mississippi, thirty-one years
after the 1963 shooting of Medgar Evers, Byron
De La Beckwith, now 73, is finally found guilty of first-degree murder and
sentenced to life in prison. In December
1997 the Mississippi Supreme Court will uphold this verdict following De La
Beckwith’s appeal. 1997 Apr 2 The Tennessee General Assembly ratifies the
15th Amendment, making
the state the last in the nation to do so. 1998 Oct 7 College student Matthew Shepard, 21, is robbed, beaten, and left for dead, tied to
a fence in a remote area of Wyoming by two men who have been heard plotting “to
rob a gay man.” He dies on October 12
without regaining consciousness. 2000 Mar 7 In honor of the 35th
anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," Rep.
John Lewis (now a U.S. Congressman from Georgia), and Hosea Williams cross the Pettus
Bridge in Selma in the company of President Bill Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and several hundred others. Lewis
said, "This time when I looked there were women's faces and there were black
faces among the troopers. And this time when we faced them, they saluted."
2000 Dec
16 President George W. Bush nominates
General Colin Powell as Secretary of State. When Powell is confirmed in
January, he becomes the first African American to hold that
office.
2003 Jun 23 In Grutter
v. Bollinger the Supreme Court rules that race can be one of many factors
considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers
"a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow
from a diverse student body." 2005 Jan 20 Condoleezza
Rice succeeds Colin Powell as Secretary of State. She is the second woman
and first black woman to serve in that office. 2005 Jun 21
On the 41st anniversary of the murders
of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and
Andrew Goodman (and as a result of rigorous investigative work by a newspaper
reporter and three Illinois high school students preparing a National History
Day project!) Edgar Ray Killen, 80, a
leader of the killings, is finally found guilty of three counts of
manslaughter. Following his 2007 appeal,
the Supreme Court of Mississippi upholds Killen’s sentence of 3-times-20-years
in prison. 2005 Oct
24 Rosa Parks dies. She is the first woman to be honored by lying
in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
2007 May 10 James
Bonard Fowler is indicted for the 1965 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. In November
2010, after a lengthy postponement to prepare an appeal, Fowler, now 77, pleads
guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter and is sentenced to six
months in jail. Jackson family members, disappointed with the verdict, do agree
that the jail time and Fowler’s apology has brought some closure to their suffering. 2008 Sep 18 Fourteen Freedom Riders, expelled from
Tennessee University in 1961 because of their protest activities, receive
honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters (three posthumously) in a touching
ceremony. 2008 Nov 4 Barack
Hussein Obama, the son of a black African father and a white American
mother, is elected President of the United States. 2009 May 11 During an awards
ceremony at Chattanooga’s Howard High
School, the Chattanooga History
Center dedicates a mural honoring the students who took part in the 1960 lunch
counter sit-ins, many of whom were members of Howard’s 1960 graduating
class. The mural will be on permanent
exhibit at the school. 2009 Oct 28 President
Barack Obama signs into law the Matthew
Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which specifies penalties for any crime in
which someone targets a victim because of actual or perceived race, color,
religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or
disability. 2012 Nov 6 Barack
Hussein Obama becomes the first African American to win reelection to the
office of President of the United States. The arc
of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Martin Luther King, March 25, 1965 |
