Civil rights (1)

Development of Civil Rights

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    Civil Rights Timeline

  • Congress bands slave trade

    Congress bands slave trade
  • Missouri Compromise

    -First major crisis over the admission of new states to the union with free or slave state status
    -Prohibited slavery north of the geographical boundary at 36 degrees latitude
    -Allowed Missouri to be admitted to the union as a slave state
    -To maintain the balance of slave and free states, Maine was carved out of a portion of Massachusetts
    - Solidified the South in its determination to keep slavery legal
    -Fueled the fervor of those who opposed slavery
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
    -A novel that depicted the evils of slavery, further inflamed the country
    -Sold 300,000 copies
    -Prompted Pres. Abraham Lincoln to call Stowe "the little woman who started the big war"
  • Dred Scott v. Sandford

    Court ruled that the Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery north of a set geographical boundary, was unconstituional.
    -Court went on to add that slaves were not US citizens, and as a consequence, slaves could not bring suits in federal court
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    Civil War

    -Slavery was key issue
    -Confederates-pro slavery (South) v Union-anti-slavery (North)
  • Emancipation Proclamation

    Emancipation Proclamation
    -The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
    -Freed only those who lived in the Confederacy
  • Thirteenth Amendment Adopted

    One of the three Civil War Amendments; specifically bans slavery in the United States
  • Civil Rights Act of 1866

    -Used to invalidate some state Black Codes
    -Federal law in the United States that was mainly intended to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, in the wake of the American Civil War
    -The Act was enacted by Congress over the veto of President Andrew Johnson
    -Declared that people born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power are entitled to be citizens, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude
  • Fourteenth Amendment Adopted

    One of the three Civil War Amendments; guarantees equal protection and due process of the law to all US citizens
  • Fifteenth Amendment Adopted

    One of the three Civil War Amendmentsl specially enfranchised newly freed male slaves
    -prompted many woman's rights supporters to leave the abolition movement and to work solely for the cause of women's rights
  • Civil Rights Act of 1875

    Designed to grant equal access to public accommodations such as theaters, restaurants, and transportation
    -prohibited the exclusion of African Americans from jury service
    -The Act guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, was entitled to the same treatment in "public accommodations" (public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement).
  • Civil Rights Cases

    Name attached to five cases brought under the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
    -In 1883, the Supreme Court decided that discrimination in a variety of public accommodations, including theaters, hotels, and railroads, could not be prohibited by the act because such discrimination was private discrimination and not state discrimination
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    Suffrage Movement

    -The drive for voting rights for women that took place in the United States
    -Nineteenth Amendment: Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed women the right to vote
    -EX. NAWSA
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    Progressive Era

    Characterized by a concerted effort to refrom poltical, economic, and social affairs.
    Examples: child labor, concentration of economic power in the hands of a few industrialists, limited suffrage, poltical corruption , business monopolies and prejudice against African Americans all were targets of progressive reform efforts
  • Plessy v Ferguson

    Plessy v Ferguson
    Supreme Court cases that challenged a Lousisna statute requiring that railroads provide separate accommodations did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment Homer Plessy, one eighth black, boarded a train in New Orleans and proceeded to the "white only" car. He was arrested because he refused to take a seat in the car reserved for Black Americans.
  • National Association for Advancement of Colored People

    In 1909, a handful of individuals active in a variety of progressive causes, including woman suffrage and the fight for better working conditions for women and children, met to discuss the idea of a group devoted to the problems of the Negro.
  • 19th Amendment

    19th Amendment
    Prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. Ratified on August 18, 1920 Was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote.
  • Executive Order 9981

    Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    Brown v. Board of Education
    U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that school segregation is inherently unconstitutional because it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection
    • Women won the right to vote, and after a long and arduous trail of litigation in the federal courts, the Supreme Court finally overturned its most racist decision of the era, Plessy v. Ferguson. The court boldly proclaimed that separate but equal would no longer pass constitutional muster.
  • Emmett Till Killed

    Emmett Till Killed
    Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.
  • A New Move for African American Rights - Rosa Parks

    Rosa Parks made history when she refused to leave her seat on a bus to move to the back to make room for a white male passenger. She was arrested for violating an Alabama law banning integration of public facilities, including buses.
  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    The SCLC had a southern base and was rooted more closely in black religious culture. The SCLC's philospohy reflected King's growing belief in the importance of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience
  • Little Rock incident

    Little Rock incident
    Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine."
  • Freedom Riders

    Over the spring and summer, student volunteers begin taking bus trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. Several of the groups of "freedom riders," as they are called, are attacked by angry mobs along the way.
  • Martin Luther King Jailed

    Martin Luther King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham, Ala.; he writes his seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws.
  • Birmingham Demostrations

    Birmingham demonstrations (was a strategic movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to bring attention to the unequal treatment that black Americans endured in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign ran during the spring of 1963, culminating in widely publicized confrontations between black youth and white civic authorities, that eventually pressured the municipal government to change the city's discrimination laws.)
  • March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

    March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
    Held a few months after the Birmingham demonstrations
    -More than 250,000 people heard King deliver his famous "I have a Dream" speech from the Lincoln Memorial
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    -Both the SCLC and SNCC sought full implementation of SC decisions dealing with race and an end to racial segregation and discrimination
    The cumulative effect of collective actions including sit-ins, boycotts, marches, as well as the tragic bombings and deaths inflicted in retaliation – led Congress to pass the first major piece of civil rights legislation since post- Civil War era~ Civil Rights Act of 1964
    Wide-ranging legislation passed by Congress to outlaw segregation in public facilities
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1964

    -Both the SCLC and SNCC sought full implementation of SC decisions dealing with race and an end to racial segregation and discrimination The cumulative effect of collective actions including sit-ins, boycotts, marches, as well as the tragic bombings and deaths inflicted in retaliation – led Congress to pass the first major piece of civil rights legislation since post- Civil War era~ Civil Rights Act of 1964
    -Wide-ranging legislation passed by Congress to outlaw segregation in public facilities
  • Bloody Sunday

    Bloody Sunday
    Blacks begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. The incident is dubbed "Bloody Sunday" by the media. The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later.
  • Loving v. Virginia

    the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1968

    President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
  • Swann v. Charlotte- Mecklenburg School District

    The Supreme Court ruled that all vestiges of state- imposed segregation called de jure discrimination or discrimination by law, must be eliminated at once.
    Court also ruled that lower fed. courts had the authority to fashion a wide variety of remedies including busing, racial quotas, and the pairing of schools to end dual segerated school systems
  • Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education

    upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools. Although largely unwelcome (and sometimes violently opposed) in local school districts, court-ordered busing plans in cities such as Charlotte, Boston, and Denver continue until the late 1990s.
  • Title IX

    -. Statutory Remedies for Sex Discrimination
    -provision of the educational amendments of 1972 that bars educational institutions receiving federal funds from discriminating against female students
  • Civil Rights Act of 1991

    After two years of debates, vetoes, and threatened vetoes, President Bush reverses himself and signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination.
  • Grutter v. Bollinger

    In the most important affirmative action decision since the 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court (5–4) upholds the University of Michigan Law School's policy, ruling 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."
  • Reopening of Emmett Tills Case

    Emmett Till's 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially closed. The two confessed murderers, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, were dead of cancer by 1994, and prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to pursue further convictions.
  • Civil Rights Act of 2008

    Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) introduces the Civil Rights Act of 2008. Some of the proposed provisions include ensuring that federal funds are not used to subsidize discrimination, holding employers accountable for age discrimination, and improving accountability for other violations of civil rights and workers' rights.
  • Ricci v. DeStefano

    In the Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano, a lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, 18 plaintiffs—17 white people and one Hispanic—argued that results of the 2003 lieutenant and captain exams were thrown out when it was determined that few minority firefighters qualified for advancement. The city claimed they threw out the results because they feared liability under a disparate-impact statute for issuing tests that discriminated against minority firefighters. The plaintiffs claimed th