Extra detail: Timelines

I know some of you prefer timelines for getting an overview, so here is one for the civil rights movement.

1951

• Linda Brown, an 8-year-old girl in Topeka, Kansas, lives within walking distance of a whites-only elementary school. Because of segregation, she has to travel by bus to a more distant school for African-American children. Her father sues the school board of Topeka, and the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.

1953

• The Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tenn., which runs workshops on organizing protests for individuals such as union organizers, issues invitations to civil rights workers.

1954

• The Supreme Court decides Brown v. Board of Education on May 17, arguing that “separate but equal” schools are inherently unequal. The decision declares legal school segregation unconstitutional.

1955

• Rosa Parks attends a workshop for civil rights organizers at the Highlander Folk School in July.
• On August 28, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago, is killed near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
• In November, the Federal Interstate Commerce Commission proscribes segregation on interstate buses and trains.
• On December 1, Rosa Parks refuses to give her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• The Montgomery Improvement Association elects Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as president on December 5 in order to lead the boycott.

1956

• In January and February, whites angry about the Montgomery Bus Boycott bomb four African-American churches and the homes of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King and E.D. Nixon.
• On court order, the University of Alabama admits its first African-American student, Autherine Lucy, but finds legal ways to prevent her attendance.
• On Nov. 13, the Supreme Court upholds an Alabama district court ruling in favor of the Montgomery bus boycotters.
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott ends in December, having successfully integrated Montgomery’s buses.

1957

• Martin Luther King helps found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in January. The organization’s purpose is to fight for civil rights, and King is elected its first president.
• The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, obstructs the integration of Little Rock High School, using the National Guard to block the entry of nine students. President Eisenhower orders federal troops to integrate the school.
• Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which creates the Civil Rights Commission and authorizes the Justice Department to investigate cases of African Americans being denied voting rights in the South.

1958

• The Supreme Court decision Cooper v. Aaron rules that a threat of mob violence is not reason enough to delay school desegregation.

1959

• Martin Luther King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, visit India, the homeland of Mahatma Gandhi, who won independence for India through nonviolent tactics. King discusses the philosophy of nonviolence with Gandhi’s followers.

1960

• On February 1, four young African-American men, students at North Carolina Agriculture and Technical College, go to a Woolworth in Greensboro, North Carolina, and sit down at a whites-only lunch counter. They order coffee. Despite being denied service, they sit silently and politely at the lunch counter until closing time. Their action marks the start of the Greensboro sit-ins, which sparks similar protests all over the South.
• On April 15, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee holds its first meeting.
• On July 25, the downtown Greensboro Woolworth desegregates its lunch counter after six months of sit-ins.
• On Oct. 19, Martin Luther King, Jr., joins a student sit-in at a whites-only restaurant inside of an Atlanta department store, Rich’s. He is arrested along with 51 other protesters on the charge of trespassing. On probation for driving without a valid Georgia license (he had an Alabama license), a Dekalb County judge sentences MLK to four months in prison doing hard labor. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy phones King’s wife, Coretta, to offer encouragement while his brother, Robert Kennedy, convinces the judge to release King on bail. This phone call convinces many African-Americans to support the Democratic ticket.
• On December 5, the Supreme Court hands down a 7-2 decision in the Boynton v. Virginia case, ruling that segregation on vehicles traveling between states is unlawful because it violates the Interstate Commerce Act.

1961

• On May 4, the Freedom Riders, composed of seven African-American and six white activists, leave Washington, D.C. for the rigidly segregated Deep South. Organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), their goal is to test Boynton v. Virginia.
• On May 14, Freedom Riders, now traveling in two separate groups, are attacked outside Anniston, Alabama and in Birmingham, Alabama. A mob throws a firebomb onto the bus that the group outside Anniston is riding. Members of the Ku Klux Klan attack the second group in Birmingham after making an arrangement with the local police to allow them 15 minutes alone with the bus.
• On May 15, the Birmingham group of Freedom Riders is prepared to continue their trip down south, but no bus will agree to take them. They fly to New Orleans instead.
• On May 17, a new group of young activists join two of the original Freedom Riders to complete the trip. They are placed under arrest in Montgomery, Alabama.
• On May 29, President Kennedy announces that he has ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to enact stricter regulations and fines for buses and facilities that refuse to integrate. Young white and black activists continue to make Freedom Rides.
• In November, civil rights activists participate in a series of protests, marches and meetings in Albany, Georgia, that come to be known as the Albany Movement.
• In December, King comes to Albany and joins the protesters, staying in Albany for another nine months.

1962

• On August 10, King announces that he is leaving Albany. The Albany Movement is generally considered a failure in terms of effecting change, but what King learns in Albany allows him to be successful in Birmingham, Alabama.
• On September 10, the Supreme Court rules that the University of Mississippi must admit African-American student and veteran James Meredith.
• On September 26, the governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, orders state troopers to prevent Meredith from entering Ole Miss’s campus.
• Between September 30 and October 1, riots erupt at over Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi or “Ole Miss.”
• On October 1, Meredith becomes the first African-American student at Ole Miss after President Kennedy orders U.S. marshals to Mississippi to ensure his safety.

1963

• King, SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organize a series of demonstrations and protests to challenge segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
• On April 12, Birmingham police arrest King for demonstrating without a city permit.
• On April 16, King writes his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” in which he responds to eight white Alabama ministers who urged him to end the protests and be patient with the judicial process of overturning segregation.
• On June 11, President Kennedy delivers a speech on civil rights from the Oval Office, specifically explaining why he sent the National Guard to allow the admittance of two African-American students to the University of Alabama.
• On June 12, Byron De La Beckwith assassinates Medgar Evers, the first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi.
• On August 18, James Meredith graduates from Ole Miss.
• On August 28, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held in D.C. Around 250,000 people participate, and King delivers his legendary “I have a dream” speech.
• On September 15, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is bombed. Four young girls are killed.
• On November 22, Kennedy is assassinated, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, uses the nation’s anger to push through civil rights legislation in Kennedy’s memory.

1964

• On March 12, Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam. Among his reasons for the break is Elijah Muhammad’s ban on protesting for Nation of Islam adherents.
• Between June and August, SNCC organizes a voter registration drive in Mississippi known as Freedom Summer.
• On June 21, three Freedom Summer workers–Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman–disappear.
• On August 4, the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman are found in a dam. All three had been shot, and the African-American activist, Chaney, had also been badly beaten.
• On June 24, Malcolm founds the Organization of Afro-American Unity along with John Henrik Clarke. Its aim is to unite all Americans of African descent against discrimination.
• On July 2, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination in employment and in public places.
• In July and August, riots break out in Harlem and Rochester, New York.
• On August 27, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDM), organized to challenge the traditional state democratic party that had excluded African Americans, sends a delegation to the national Democratic convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They ask to represent Mississippi at the convention. Offered two seats at the convention in turn, the MFDM delegates reject the proposal.
• On December 10, the Nobel Foundation awards MLK the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Basics – Black Civil Rights

Black Americans had to ‘fight’ for their right to equality. In the 1950s a Baptist preacher named Martin Luther King became the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He believed that peaceful protest was the way forward.

Some of the protests of the Civil Rights movement are detailed below:

1954
Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

In the 1950s, school segregation was widely accepted throughout the United States and was a requirement of law in most southern states.

In 1952, the Supreme Court heard a number of school-segregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. In 1954 the court decreed that segregation was unconstitutional.

1955
Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks, a 43 year old black seamstress, was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on 5th December 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. The Montgomery Bus rules stated that white people boarding its buses should fill the bus by occupying seats from the front backwards. Coloured people should fill the bus by occupying the seats from the back forwards. If the bus became full additional coloured people boarding the bus would stand but if additional white people boarded the bus coloured people would be expected to give up their seats and stand. Civil Rights leaders including  Dr. Martin Luther King, organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott specifically in protest against Parks’ arrest but also as a protest against the segregation practices used by the bus company.

Parks was found guilty by a court on 5th December and fined but she appealed the court’s decision. Meanwhile the Montgomery Bus boycott was being put into place. Negroes and others who supported equality agreed not to use the buses, a move which would deprive the bus company of 65% of its income.

Although Martin Luther King was fined $500 for interfering with the running of businesses, the protest was successful and on 4th June 1956 the Supreme Court decided, based on the outcome of recent school segregation cases, that bus segregation violated the United States constitution.

1957
Desegregation at Little Rock, Arkansas

The Little Rock School Board approved a desegregation programme and nine coloured students were enrolled at the school. The Little Rock Nine (left) Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Watts, Carlotta Walls La Nier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed,  Melba Pattillo Beals  were to begin their studies in September 1957.

On 4th September the nine students duly arrived at the school but found their way barred by anti-desegregation protestors. Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus, had ordered the Arkansas National Guard to reinforce the protest line. The National Guard remained stationed outside the school until 20th September when the courts ordered Faubus to remove them.

On September 23rd the nine students returned to the school and although they were shouted at and jeered by the angry crowd of white protestors they were able to enter the school. However, fearing for their safety the police sent them home before the end of the day.

President Eisenhower intervened at this point and ordered the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army to Little Rock where they were to ensure that the nine students were able to enter and leave the school in safety. He also federalised the National Guard so that they could no longer be deployed by Faubus. The 101st Airborne remained in Little Rock until November 1957.

In Spring 1958 Minnijean Brown was suspended for her acts of retaliation against white taunts and abuse. The other eight remained at school despite the abuse and taunts and all eight graduated.

1960
Sit-in Campaigns

After having been refused service at the lunch counter of a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, Joseph McNeill, a Negro college student, returned the next day with three classmates to sit at the counter until they were served.

They were not served. The four students returned to the lunch counter each day.

When an article in the New York Times drew attention to the students’ protest, they were joined by more students, both black and white, and students across the nation were inspired to launch similar protests.

1961
Freedom Rides

In 1961, bus loads of people waged a cross-country campaign to try to end the segregation of bus terminals.

Groups of black and white students travelled on buses through the southern states choosing to sit where they pleased.

At many stops along the way the group encountered violence but they refused to give up and continued riding the buses.

1962
University of Mississippi Riot

President Kennedy ordered Federal Marshals to escort James Meredith, the first black student to enrol at the University of Mississippi, to campus. A riot broke out and before the National Guard could arrive to reinforce the marshals, two students were killed.

1963
Birmingham

Birmingham, Alabama was one of the most segregated cities in the 1960s. Black men and women held sit-ins at lunch counters where they were refused service, and “kneel-ins” on church steps where they were denied entrance.

Hundreds of demonstrators were fined and imprisoned. In 1963, Dr. King, the Reverend Abernathy and the Reverend Shuttlesworth led a protest march in Birmingham where they were arrested by policemen with dogs. The three ministers were taken to Southside Jail.