Civil Rights Movement Essay: 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 Presidents 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 hallthe first major demonstration of the civil rights
movementfollowing 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 Merediths 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. .