This timeline accompanies the film 'America's Civil Rights Movement: A Time for Justice.' Poster version available.
This piece is to accompany the film America's Civil Rights Movement: A Time for Justice
Click here for a poster version of this timeline with a bonus lesson.
May 17, 1954 Supreme Court outlaws school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education
July 11, 1954 White citizens council formed to resist desegregation
August 28, 1955 Emmett Louis Till murdered for speaking to a white woman, Money, Miss.
December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, Montgomery, Ala.
December 5, 1955 Montgomery bus boycott begins
November 13, 1956 Supreme Court bans segregated seating on Montgomery buses
August 29, 1957 Congress passes first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction
September 24, 1957 President Eisenhower orders federal troops to enforce school desegregation, Little Rock, Ark.
February 1, 1960 Black students stage sit-in at ‘whites only’ lunch counter, Greensboro, N.C.
April 16, 1960 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (sncc) founded to promote youth involvement
December 5, 1960 Supreme Court outlaws segregation in bus terminals
January 6, 1961 The University of Georgia is desegregated after a federal judge orders that two African-American students be admitted. White students jeer, “two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.”
May 14, 1961 Freedom Riders attacked in Alabama while testing compliance with bus desegregation laws
May 21, 1961 Federal Marshals sent to protect civil rights activists threatened by a mob in Montgomery, Ala.
April 1, 1962 Civil Rights groups join forces to launch voter registration drive
September 30, 1962 Riots erupt when James Meredith, a black student, enrolls at Ole Miss
May 3, 1963 Birmingham police attack marching children with dogs and fire hoses
June 11, 1963 Alabama governor stands in schoolhouse door to stop university integration
June 12, 1963 Medgar Evers, civil rights leader assassinated, Jackson, Miss.
August 28, 1963 25,000 Americans march on Washington for civil rights
September 15, 1963 Addie Mae Collins, Denise Mcnair, Carole Robertson & Cynthia Wesley: schoolgirls killed in bombing of Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Ala.
January 23, 1964 The 24th amendment to the U.S. Constitution outlaws poll tax in federal elections
June 20, 1964 Freedom summer brings 1,000 young civil rights volunteers to Miss.
June 21, 1964 James Chaney, Andrew Goodman & Michael Schwerner:
civil rights workers abducted and slain by klansmen, Philadelphia, Miss.
July 2, 1964 President Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1964
February 26, 1965 Jimmie Lee Jackson: civil rights marcher killed by state trooper, Marion, Ala.
March 7, 1965 State troopers beat back marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Ala.
March 25, 1965 Civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery completed
July 9, 1965 Congress passes Voting Rights Act of 1965
