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This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States, a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color.
- Jim Crow Laws
- World War II and Civil Rights
- Rosa Parks
- Little Rock Nine
- Civil Rights Act of 1957
- Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter
- Freedom Riders
- March on Washington
- Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Bloody Sunday
During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote. In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendmentgranted Black American men the right to vote. Still, m...
Prior to World War II, most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren’t given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military. After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand eq...
On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parksfound a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied. When a white man got on the bus and couldn’t find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus dr...
In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school. On September 4, 1957, nine Bla...
Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass. Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, ...
Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served. Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause ...
On May 4, 1961, 13 “Freedom Riders”—seven Black and six white activists–mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginiathat declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities u...
Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustinand Martin Luther King Jr. More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the m...
President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964—legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination—into law on July 2 of that year. King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities...
On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery marchto protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment. As the protesters neared the ...
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Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (1968) The civil rights movement [b] was a social movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country. The movement had its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century and had ...
- May 17, 1954 – August 1, 1968
- United States
Civil resistance is a form of political action that relies on the use of nonviolent resistance by ordinary people to challenge a particular power, force, policy or regime. [1] Civil resistance operates through appeals to the adversary, pressure and coercion: it can involve systematic attempts to undermine or expose the adversary's sources of ...
- July 26, 1948: President Harry Truman issues Executive Order 9981 to end segregation in the Armed Services.
- May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education, a consolidation of five cases into one, is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools.
- August 28, 1955: Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago is brutally murdered in Mississippi for allegedly flirting with a white woman. His murderers are acquitted, and the case bring international attention to the civil rights movement after Jet magazine publishes a photo of Till’s beaten body at his open-casket funeral.
- December 1, 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott.
Find out more about the key events that shaped the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the March on Washington, and the founding of the Black Panther Party.
The Civil Rights Movement Timeline, 1905-1975 •. African American History.
