Civil Rights Timeline
The Tennessee State Library and Archives
Timeline: The Civil Rights Movement in America
March 6
1857
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.
December 6
1865
The 13th Amendment is ratified, making slavery illegal.
April 9
1866
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.
May 1-3
1866
A race riot in Memphis results in 48 deaths, 5 rapes, many injuries,
and the destruction of 90 black homes, 12 schools, and 4 churches.
July 28
1868
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.
February 17
1870
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 it until 1997.
March
1875
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)
November 1
1890
The Mississippi Plan becomes law on this date. It uses literacy and
“understanding” tests to disenfranchise minority voters. Other
Southern states soon adopt similar practices (“Black Codes”) to
prevent blacks from voting: violence, voter fraud, gerrymandering,
poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, grandfather clauses, etc.
May 18
1896
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.
December 24 1906
In March Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins, African American
lawyers from Chattanooga convince Supreme Court Justice John
Marshall Harlan to grant an appeal to Ed Johnson, a black man
wrongly convicted of rape. Meanwhile, a mob drags Johnson from
the jail and lynches him. The Court, its authority challenged, finds
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
2
the defendants (the sheriff, deputies, and members of the mob) guilty
of contempt of court in United States v. Shipp. Their own lives now
in grave danger, Parden and Hutchins flee the state forever.
February 12
1909
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.
July 4
1912
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 TSU, the
park continues to honor the community's cultural heritage.
August 18
1920
The 19th Amendment is ratified, with Tennessee, in a razor-thin
vote, becoming the 36th state needed to give women the vote.
November 1
1932
The Highlander Folk School opens near Monteagle, Tennessee. It
supports the labor and Civil Rights movement with courses in labor
education, literacy training, leadership development, non-violent
methods, and voter education.
Easter Sunday 1939
African American contralto Marian Anderson performs at the
Lincoln Memorial to 75,000 people and a radio audience of millions.
February 29
1940
Hattie McDaniel wins the Academy Award for Best Supporting
Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind.
April 7
1940
Booker T. Washington becomes the first African American
depicted on a postage stamp.
October
1940
Benjamin O. Davis Sr. is promoted to Brigadier General. He is the
first black soldier to hold the rank of general. (See May 16, 1960)
April
1942
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is established in Chicago
by James L. Farmer Jr., George Houser, and Bernice Fisher.
The group espouses the principles of pacifism and believes that nonviolent 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.
1946
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.
Summer
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
October 23
3
1945
Baseball executive Branch Rickey announces that he has assigned
Jackie Robinson to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ minor-league affiliate
Montreal Royals.
1946
Zilphia Horton, music director at the Highlander Folk School,
adapts the lyrics from a gospel hymn by the Rev. Charles Tindley
(1851-1933) and creates the song “We Shall Overcome,” which will
quickly become the anthem of the Civil Rights movement.
December 5
1946
President Truman establishes a Committee on Civil Rights. Their
task is to study violence against African Americans in the country.
The Supreme Court outlaws segregation on interstate buses.
April 15
1947
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American in
professional baseball, playing for the Dodgers. He will win the
first MLB Rookie Award later the same year, and the Major
League MVP award in 1949.
1947
Indiana University integrates its basketball team when it adds
African American 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” springs up, limiting to three the
number of black players on the floor at any one time.
December
1947
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. The report, which at the time is
considered quite radical, calls for segregation to be abolished
(primarily 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.
May 3
1948
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.
July 26
1948
President Harry S Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which
establishes the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment
and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It is accompanied by
Executive Order 9980, creating a Fair Employment Board to
eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment. [This will
require an additional change in Department of Defense policy, which
does not occur for 25 years. See entry for July 26, 1963.]
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
4
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
would be Thurgood Marshall.
1950
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 in poetry.
November 1
1950
Chuck Cooper becomes the first African American professional
basketball player when he takes the floor for the Boston Celtics
against the Fort Wayne Pistons.
Fall
1951
The University of Tennessee admits 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.
Fall
1953
Vanderbilt University admits its first African American student.
May 17
1954
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.
September 30 1954
The last all-black units are disbanded by the U.S. Military.
March 2
1955
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.
March
1955
K.C. Jones and Bill Russell lead the University of San Francisco to
the NCAA championship.
May 24
1955
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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
5
grades over the next six years. Mr. Blossom is named "Man of the
Year" by the Arkansas Democrat for his work on desegregation.
July
1955
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 felt a sense of being in
"an atmosphere of equality with members of the other race."
August 28
1955
On a dare, 14-year-old Emmett Till, visiting relatives near Money,
Mississippi, flirts with a white woman in a general store. A few days
later he is beaten to death by a group of men, including the woman’s
husband. A few weeks 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.
September 3 1955
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. I think everybody needs to
know what happened to Emmett Till.”
December 1
1955
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.
December 5
1955
On the first day of the bus boycott; the Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) is established. Members elect a young minister,
the Reverend Martin Luther King, 26, as president.
January 30
1956
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.
June 5
1956
A Federal court rules 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 homegrown network of alternative transportation provided by drivers both
black and white.
Late Summer 1956
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.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
6
August 28
1956
After 27 African American students fail in their efforts to register in
the all-white Little Rock city schools, the NAACP files 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.
Fall
1956
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 graduate in 1959.
November 13 1956
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.
December 21 1956
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 now to choose any seat on city buses.
January 10
1957
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is
organized in Atlanta, its stated goal to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems
across the South. Martin Luther King Jr., 28, is its first president.
March
1957
Tennessee State University defeats Southeast Oklahoma at the NAIA
Basketball Tournament 92-73 to become the first black college to
win a white-dominated national title.
Spring
1957
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.”
May 17
1957
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.
Feb.-August
1957
Tennis player Althea Gibson wins both singles and doubles titles at
the U.S. Open, the Australian open, and Wimbledon.
August 27
1957
During the summer opponents of school integration 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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
7
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.
September 2 1957
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.
September 4 1957
The nine black students attempt to enter Little Rock Central High
School but are turned away by National Guardsmen.
September 9 1957
On March 11, 1956, President Eisenhower, responding to the racial
unrest that follows Brown V Board of Education and following the
recommendations 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, 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.
September 20 1957
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.
September 23 1957
Nine African-American teenagers enter Little Rock Central High
for the first time, out of sight of an angry crowd of 1000 protesters,
but they are later removed for their own safety when the mob grows
unruly. The next day the mayor asks Eisenhower for help.
September 25 1957
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.
March 26-28 1958
The Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC) holds its
first workshop on non-violent tactics against segregation under the
leadership of the Rev. Kelly Miller Smith. The workshops will
continue into 1960.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
8
May 27
1958
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 takes place in peace. Orval Faubus will
close Little Rock schools for most of the 1958-59 school year.
November
1959
James Lawson, a divinity student at Vanderbilt University, and
Kelly Miller Smith, the young pastor 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.
Nov.-Dec.
1959
Lawson, Smith, and student leaders John Lewis, Diane Nash, James
Bevel, Marion Barry, and others buy goods and make unsuccessful
attempts to desegregate the lunch counters at Harvey’s and CainSloan’s department stores.
February 1
1960
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 become interested.
February 13
1960
Nashville students begin the first full-scale sit-ins at downtown
businesses. Convening at the Arcade on 5th Avenue shortly after
noon, they move out to Kress’s, Woolworth’s, and McClellan’s
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.
February 19
1960
Thirty Chattanooga high school 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 “no loud talking,” “no profanity,” “please be on best
behavior,” and “try to make small purchase.” They continue the sitins throughout the month of February, drawing more student
participants each time.
February 27
1960
White students attack the Nashville lunch-counter demonstrators.
Police make the first arrests (of 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.
March 3
1960
James Lawson, whom Martin Luther King has called “the leading
nonviolence 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.
April 16-17
1960
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is
founded at a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker at Shaw
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
9
University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Baker insists on a two-part
organization – one part for direct action (sit-ins) and one part for
voter registration. Nashville activists will play leading roles in the
new organization. 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.
April 19
1960
Z. Alexander Looby's home is destroyed by a dynamite blast.
2,500 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."
May 6
1960
President Eisenhower has 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.
May 10
1960
Six Nashville lunch counters begin serving black customers.
May 16
1960
Benjamin O. Davis Jr. becomes the first black general in the U.S.
Air Force. Twenty years earlier his father was the first black soldier
ever promoted to general.
July 31
1960
Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, calls for the
establishment of a separate state for blacks.
September 7 1960
Wilma Rudolph becomes the first American woman, black or white,
to win 3 gold medals in the Olympics, winning the 100-meter dash,
the 200-meter dash, and the 400-meter relay, in which she ran the
anchor leg.
October 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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
December 5
1960
10
In Boynton v. Virginia the Supreme Court rules that restaurant
facilities in bus terminals that primarily exist to serve interstate bus
passengers can not discriminate based on race – it ties the future of
the Civil Rights movement to the Federal Government.
By the end of 1960
70,000 people have participated in sit-ins and 3,600 are arrested.
January
1961
In Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, more than 80% of the African
American population live below the poverty line, and less than 1% of
eligible blacks are registered to vote.
February
1961
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.
May 4
1961
Organized by members of SNCC, the Freedom Rides will test the
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 Deep South, two men (one is
John Lewis) are beaten by a white mob.
May 14
1961
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 Att. Gen. Robert Kennedy orders a plane for them.
May 17
1961
Unwilling to allow the KKK to defeat them, local Tennessee
activists take a bus from Nashville to Birmingham; Bull Connor
arrests them and dumps them by the side of the road, just over the
Tennessee border. They make their way back to Birmingham, but
they cannot find a bus driver willing to risk driving them.
May 20
1961
Under orders from Robert Kennedy, the Alabama 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 the police arrive and
drive the growing mob away with teargas. Many riders are left
bloody and unconscious, including reporters (the mob has quickly
destroyed the cameras) and Justice Department official John
Siegenthaler, who is found lying in the street. Local black citizens
eventually rescue the wounded and take them to hospitals.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
11
May 21
1961
Martin Luther King and James Farmer of CORE (who is
already recruiting more Freedom Riders) speak to 1200 people in
Rev. 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.
Winter
1961
The Loyola University (Chicago) basketball team puts four black
players on the floor at one time, breaking an unwritten convention 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 set two records that still stand: total yards
receiving, and most passes caught in a single game.
September 30 1962
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.
January
1963
Alabama Governor George Wallace declares, “Segregation now,
segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
April 8
1963
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.
April 16
1963
Jailed for his protest activities, Martin Luther King writes his “Letter
from a Birmingham Jail,” a classic Civil Rights document,
asserting that individuals have a moral right to disobey unjust laws.
May/June
1963
Civil rights activists, including children, march in Birmingham. By
the end of the first day, 700 have been arrested. When 1000 more
youngsters turn out on May 3, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull
Connor turns 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, Birmingham city officials and
business leaders agree to desegregate public facilities. Governor
Wallace’s refusal to accept the plan will bring violent confrontation.
June 11
1963
Governor George Wallace stands in the doorway of Foster
Auditorium at 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.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
12
June 12
1963
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.
July 26
1963
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.
August 28
1963
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.
September
1963
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.
September 15 1963
Four young 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.
November 22 1963
President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.
January 3
1964
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.
January 23
1964
The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, used in Southern states
since Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.
June 14
1964
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.
June 21
1964
Three young civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael
Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman – are arrested in Neshoba
County, Mississippi. and then disappear.
July 2
1964
President 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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
13
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 in registering black
voters. Johnson turns his attention to passing a Voting Rights act.
August 4
1964
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 serve more
than six years in jail.
August 25
1964
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.
October 14
1964
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.”
May 19
1965
Patricia Harris becomes the first African American since Ebenezer
Bassett (1869, Haiti) to serve as an ambassador (Luxembourg).
February 18
1965
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.
February 21
1965
Black nationalist leader Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little in 1925) is
assassinated during a speech in Manhattan. Three members of the
Black Muslim organization are accused of his murder.
March 7
1965
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 makes the ironic
choice to interrupt 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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
march are clubbed to the ground, as are many others. A widelypublished photograph shows 54-year-old Amelia Boynton
Robinson lying unconscious on the bridge. Fifty marchers are
hospitalized.
March 9
1965
Martin Luther King leads a second march across the Pettus
Bridge. The marchers kneel in prayer, then return, obeying the
court order that prohibits them from going on to Montgomery.
One of three white ministers attacked and beaten after the march
(James Reeb, from Boston) dies in Birmingham, after Selma’s
public hospital refuses to treat him. Demonstrations condemning
“Bloody Sunday,” as the March 7 incident has come to be called,
take place in 80 cities across the nation during the day.
March 15
1965
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 which 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.”
March 16
1965
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 may no longer obstruct them.
March 21
1965
Close to 8,000 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 4,000
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.
March 22-23 1965
The marchers pass through cold, rainy Lowndes County, where,
although African Americans make up 81% of the population, not
one is registered to vote, while the 2240 whites on the voting rolls
constitute 118% of the adult white population!
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
14
Civil Rights Timeline
15
March 25
1965
Martin Luther King speaks to the marchers in Montgomery (“How
Long, Not Long”) and they are entertained by Harry Belafonte, Tony
Bennett, Peter, Paul & Mary, Sammy Davis Jr., and others in a
“Stars for Freedom Rally.”
April
1965
Fannie Lou Hamer and other SNCC members help found the
Mississippi Freedom Labor Union to organize cotton workers.
August 6
1965
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.
August 11
1965
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 the area, and vandalism and
looting occur 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, 1,032 are injured, and
3,952 are arrested. Nearly 1,000 buildings have been damaged or
destroyed, and the city is left with $40 million in property damage.
September 15 1965
The first episode of the television series I Spy is broadcast. This
show is the first drama series on American television to feature a
black man (Bill Cosby) in a starring role.
September 24 1965 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.
January 13
1966
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.
March
1966
Texas Western College (now UTEP), with its all-black starting lineup, defeats the powerful University of Kentucky team in the NCAA
Men’s Tournament
June 16
1966
SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael rallies a crowd in Greenwood,
Mississippi, with the cry, “We want black power!” Martin Luther
King’s concerns that the phrase carries “connotations of violence
and separatism” are born 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.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
Fall
1966
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 black players since 1963.
October
1966
The militant Black Panther organization is founded in Oakland,
California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
Late Fall
1966
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 played only three years (1968-1970) he is still (2009) the
school’s second leading rebounder.)
November 8
1966
Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, becomes the
first African American elected by popular vote to the U.S. Senate.
16
May–October 1967
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).
June 12
1967
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
August 30
1967
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.
Fall
1967
Wilbur Hackett Jr. joins the University of Kentucky football team.
He will be the first African American team captain in the SEC.
November
1967
Carl Stokes, Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first African American
elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
February 12
1968
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 to support their cause.
March
1968
Winston-Salem State University becomes the first black college to
win an NCAA basketball championship.
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
17
April 4
1968
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.
April 11
1968
President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting
discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
June 5
1968
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.
Fall
1968
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.
September 17 1968
With the premiere of Julia, Diahann Carroll becomes the first
African American woman to star in a TV series in which she did not
play a domestic servant. In 1962 Carroll had been the first black
performer to win a Tony Award for Best Acress.
Late summer 1968
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.
November 5
1968
Shirley Chisholm, a Democrat from New York, is the first African
American woman elected to Congress. She will serve until 1983.
Republican Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey by a narrow
margin to become President.
Sept. 12
1970
USC fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham’s 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 by
Alabama. NCAA rules make him ineligible to play as a freshman.
December
1970
Perry Wallace, Vanderbilt basketball star, is named all-SouthEastern conference and wins the SEC Sportsmanship Trophy
after a vote by league players.
January 12
1971
All in the Family begins its eight-year run. The number-one TV
sitcom for five years, it generates many other programs that deal with
controversial subjects in realistic and humorous ways.
April 20
1971
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
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
18
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.
Although the plan is met with disfavor and sometimes violence,
court-ordered busing will continue in some cities until the late 1990s.
Fall
1971
The University of Alabama, one of the last schools to integrate its
athletic teams, recruits John Mitchell, who will become both cocaptain of the team and an All-American the following year.
September
1972
For the first time, all grades in the Little Rock Public Schools are
integrated.
September 3 1974
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 the 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.
January
1977
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 ratify, and five (Idaho, Kentucky, South
Dakota. Nebraska, and Tennessee) rescind their earlier ratifications.
June 26
1978
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 as well): “Race can be a factor,
but only one of many to achieve a balance.” Thus, affirmative action
policies could continue if more clearly defined.
September 29 1978
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.
July 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.
1984
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
19
August 10
1989
General Colin Powell becomes chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
November 7
1989
Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation’s first African
American state governor.
November 22 1991
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.
April 29
1992
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; 3,600
fires are set, destroying 1,100 buildings; 10,000 people are arrested.
October 7
1993
Author Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
February 5
1994
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.
April 2
1997
The Tennessee General Assembly ratifies the 15th Amendment,
making the state the last in the nation to do so.
October 7
1998
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.
March 7
2000
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
other supporters. Lewis later comments, "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."
December 16 2000
President George W. Bush nominates General Colin Powell as
Secretary of State. When he is confirmed in January, Powell will
become the first African American to hold that office.
June 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."
2003
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/
Civil Rights Timeline
20
January 20
2005
Condoleeza Rice succeeds Colin Powell as Secretary of State. She
is the second female (after Madeleine Albright) and the first black
woman to serve in that office.
June 21
2005
On the 41st anniversary of the murders of James Chaney, Michael
Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman (and as a result of remarkable
investigative work by a newspaper reporter and three high school
girls preparing a National History Day project) Edgar Ray Killen,
80, a leader of the killings, is found guilty of three counts of manslaughter. Following his 2007 appeal, the Mississippi Supreme
Court upholds Killen’s sentence of 3-times-20-years in prison.
October 24
2005
Rosa Parks dies. She will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda,
the first woman to receive that honor.
February
2007
Emmitt Till’s 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of
Justice in 2004, is officially closed. Both confessed murderers have
died, and there is insufficient evidence to pursue further convictions.
May 10
2007
James Bonard Fowler is indicted for the 1965 murder of Jimmie
Lee Jackson. In October 2008 the trial is postponed indefinitely,
pending the outcome of an unspecified appeal.
September 18 2008
Fourteen Freedom Riders, expelled from Tenn. State University
for their protest activities in 1961, receive honorary Doctorates of
Humane Letters (three posthumously) in a touching TSU ceremony.
November 4
2008
Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black African
father and a white American mother, is elected President of the
United States.
May 11
2009
In 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.
July 20
2009
The Senate passes 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. Attached to the annual military funding bill, it clears the
chamber on an 87-7 vote.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
Martin Luther King, March 25, 1965
Prepared by Kathy Lauder, TSLA Education Outreach Staff, 2009
Courtesy of Tennessee State Library and Archives, 403 Seventh Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37243
http://tn.gov/tsla/