Civil Rights Movement: 1890-1900 1890: The state of Mississippi adopts
poll taxes and literacy tests to discourage black voters. 1895: Booker T.
Washington delivers his Atlanta Exposition speech, which accepts segregation of
the races. 1896: The Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson the separate but
equal treatment of the races is constitutional. 1900-1910 1900-1915: Over one
thousand blacks are lynched in the states of the former Confederacy. 1905: The
Niagara Movement is founded by W.E.B. du Bois and other black leaders to urge
more direct action to achieve black civil rights. 1910-1920 1910: National Urban
League is founded to help the conditions of urban African Americans. 1920-1930
1925: Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey is convicted of mail fraud. 1928:
For the first time in the 20th century an African American is elected to
Congress. 1930-1940 1931: Farrad Muhammad establishes in Detroit what will
become the Black Muslim Movement. 1933: The NAACP files -and loses- its firs
suit against segregation and discrimination in education. 1938: The Supreme
Court orders the admission of a black applicant to the University of Missouri
Law School 1941: A. Philip Randoph threatens a massive march on Washington
unless the Roosevelt administration takes measures to ensure black employment in
defense industries; Roosevelt agrees to establish Fair Employment Practices
Committee (FEPC). 1942: The congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is organized in
Chicago. 1943: Race riots in Detroit and Harlem cause black leaders to ask their
followers to be less demanding in asserting their commitment to civil rights; A.
Philip Randolph breaks ranks to call for civil disobedience against Jim Crow
schools and railroads. 1946: The Supreme Court, in Morgan v. The Commonwealth of
Virginia, rules that state laws requiring racial segregation on buses violates
the Constitution when applied to interstate passengers. 1947: Jackie Robinson
breaks the color line in major league baseball. 1947: To Secure These Rights,
the report by the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, is released; the
commission, appointed by President Harry S. Truman, recommends government action
to secure civil rights for all Americans. 1948: President Harry S. Truman issues
an executive order desegregating the armed services. 1950-1960 1950: The NAACP
decides to make its legal strategy a full-scale attack on educational
segregation. 1954: First White Citizens Council meeting is held in Mississippi.
1954: School year begins with the integration of 150 formerly segregated school
districts in eight states; many other school districts remain segregated. 1955:
The Interstate Commerce Commission bans racial segregation in all facilities and
vehicles engaged in interstate transportation. 1955: Rosa Parks is arrested for
refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person; the action triggers a bus
boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, let by Martin Luther King Jr. 1956: The home of
Martin Luther King Jr. is bombed. 1956: The Montgomery bus boycott ends after
the city receives U. S. Supreme Court order to desegregate city buses. 1957:
Martin Luther King Jr. and a number of southern black clergymen create the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 1958: Ten thousand students
hold a Youth March for Integrated Schools in Washington, D.C. 1959: Sit-in
campaigns by college students desegregate eating facilities in St. Louis,
Chicago, and Bloomington, Indiana; the Tennessee Christian Leadership Conference
holds brief sit-ins in Nashville department stores. 1960-1970 1960: Twenty-five
hundred students and community members in Nashville, Tennessee, stage a march on
city hall—the first major demonstration of the civil rights
movement—following the bombing of the home of a black lawyer. 1960: John F.
Kennedy is elected president by a narrow margin. 1961: Martin Luther King Jr.
and President John F. Kennedy hold a secret meeting at which King learns that
the new president will not push hard for new civil rights legislation. 1962: Ku
Klux Klan dynamite blasts destroy four black churches in Georgia towns. 1962:
President Kennedy federalizes the National Guard and sends several hundred
federal marshals to Mississippi to guarantee James Meredith’s admission to the
University of Mississippi Law School over the opposition of Governor Ross
Barnett and other whites; two people are killed in a campus riot. 1963: Black
students Vivian Malone and James Hood enter the University of Alabama despite a
demonstration of resistance by Governor George Wallace; in a nationally
televised speech President John F. Kennedy calls segregation morally wrong.
1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated; Vice President Lyndon B.
Johnson assumes the presidency. 1964: President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in most public
accommodations, authorizes the federal government to withhold funds from
programs practicing discrimination, and creates the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission. 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1965:
Malcolm X is assassinated while addressing a rally of his followers in New York
City; three black men are ultimately convicted of the murder. 1965: Rioting in
the black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles leads to 35 deaths, 900 injuries, and
over 3,500 arrests. 1966: Martin Luther King Jr. moves to Chicago to begin his
first civil rights campaign in a northern city. 1966: Martin Luther King Jr.
leads an integrated march in Chicago and is wounded when whites throw bottles
and bricks at demonstrators. 1966: The Black Panther Party (BPP) is founded in
Oakland, California. 1966: James Meredith is shot by a sniper while on a one man
“march against fear” in Mississippi. 1967: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers
his first speech devoted entirely to the war in Vietnam, which he calls ‘one
of history’s most cruel and senseless wars’; his position causes
estrangement with President Johnson and is criticized by the NAACP. 1967:
Rioting at all-black Jackson State College in Mississippi leads to one death and
two serious injuries. 1967: Thurgood Marshall is the first black to be nominated
to serve on the Supreme Court. 1967: Rioting in the black ghetto of Newark, New
Jersey, leaves 23 dead and 725 injured; rioting in Detroit leaves 43 dead and
324 injured; President Johnson appoints Governor Otto Kerner of Illinios to head
a commission to investigate recent urban riots. 1968: The Kerner Commission
issues its report, warning that the nation is ‘moving toward two societies,
one black, one white—separate and unequal.” 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.
travels to Memphis, Tennessee, to help settle a garbage worker strike. 1968:
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee,
precipitating riots in more than one hundred cities. 1968: Congress passes civil
rights legislation prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale or rental of
housing. 1968: Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.’s successor as head of
the SCLC, leads Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. 1969: The Supreme
Court replaces its 1954 decision calling for “all deliberate speed” in
school desegregation by unanimously ordering that all segregation in schools
mush end “at once.”