Alfstad's Civil Rights Time Line

By sethalfstad

  • Birmingham Campaign

    Birmingham Campaign
    • The SCLC leader was Reverend Fred L.
    • There were unsolved bombing in the black neighborhoods
    • King and SCLC together planned a non violent serious against the segregation

  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    Civil Rights Act of 1964
    • was a landmark constitutional law case of the US supreme court
    • It stemmed from an 1892 incident in which African American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car breaking a Louisiana law
    • the Court ruled that a state law that implies merely a legal distinction between whites and blacks did not conflict with the 13th and14th Amendments

  • First Lunch Counter Sit-In

    First Lunch Counter Sit-In
    • Four African American students tried to order food at a lunch counter and the waitress refused to take there order and give them food
    • They decided to return the next day, and about 20 other people joined them
    • They once again did not take any of there orders or let them eat and they stayed until the lunch counter closed

  • Freedom Rides

    Freedom Rides
    • seven blacks and six whites boarded two buses in Washington D.C., and headed south. When the first bus reached Anniston Alabama a white mob attacked the Freedom Riders
    • The mob followed the bus as it left town, threw a firebomb through the window and then beat the passengers as they fled the bus
    • Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent federal marshals to ensure safe passage for the riders to Jackson Mississippi and they were also beat in jail

  • Integration of Central High School

    Integration of Central High School
    • Little Rock Nine- First nine blacks students who integrated into a white school
    • Little Rock Nine students were not welcomed into their new school
    • Students were escorted with troops to school

  • March on Washington

    March on Washington
    • more than 200,000 Americans gathered in Washington D.C. for a political rally known as the March on Washington for jobs and Freedom
    • the march became a key moment in the growing struggle for civil rights in the United States
    • Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech was a spirited call for racial justice and equality

  • Montgomery Bus Boycott

    Montgomery Bus Boycott
    • African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery
    • Rosa Parks, an African-American woman refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus and she was arrested and fined
    • The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system and one of the leaders of the boycott a young pastor named Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    Voting Rights Act of 1965
    • an act of Congress outlawing literacy tests and other tactics that had long been used to deny African Americans the right to vote
    • less than 7 percent of Mississippi's eligible black voters were registered to vote
    • Overall the number of African American voters in the South increased from 1 million to 3.1 million

  • Black Panther Party Founded

    Black Panther Party Founded
    • The party’s original purpose was to patrol African American neighborhoods to protect residents from acts of police brutality
    • The Panthers eventually developed into a Marxist revolutionary group that called for the arming of all African Americans
    • At its peak in the late 1960s Panther membership exceeded 2,000 and the organization operated chapters in several major American cities

  • Advocates for Black Nationalism

    Advocates for Black Nationalism
    • One of the leaders of this change was a former convict named Malcolm X
    • He was arrested and put in jail then in prison he was introduced to to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad who was the leader of a religious group
    • After Malcolm Little left prison in 1952, he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malcolm X

  • Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

    Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
    • four justices were firmly against any use of race in university admissions
    • The remaining justice, Lewis Powell, thought race could be used as a criterion in choosing students but opposed the system of preferential treatment used by the University of California
    • also said that racial quotas were unconstitutional that race could not be used as the only criterion

  • Civil Rights Act of 1968

    Civil Rights Act of 1968
    • The Civil Rights Act of 1968 defines housing discrimination as the refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion, or national origin
    • the bill was the subject of a contentious debate in the Senate but was passed quickly by the House of Representatives in the days after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr
    • The act stands as the final great legislative achievement of the civil rights era

  • Swann vs Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education

    Swann vs Charlotte Mecklenburg Board of Education
    -However because of racially segregated housing patterns and resistance by local leaders, many schools remained as segregated in the late 1960s as they were at the time of the Brown decision
    - in the mid-1960s less than 5 percent of African American children attended integrated schools
    - later decades court ordered busing plans were criticized by African Americans who often charged that busing harmed African American students by requiring them to endure long commutes to and from school

  • Watts Riots + Kerner Commission

    Watts Riots + Kerner Commission
    • The Watts Riot had a total of 34 deaths and a total of 1,032 injuries
    • The Kerner commission was the cause of 1967 race riots in the United States
    • They both had to do with riots with killing, injuries, and offended many many people