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Use
these links to navigate through the major sections of our website. If
the Civil Rights Movement is new to you, you can access our dictionary page from
any page in the entire web site by clicking here.
Use our timeline below to see all the important events of the Civil Rights
Movement from before the Civil War to today! Click on any famous person or event
to learn more!
· 1600’s
o Africans begin being shipped to North America as slaves.
· 1787
o The writers of the United States Constitution decide that
slaves will count as three fifths of
a person when deciding how many representatives each state will have in
Congress.
· 1820
o The Missouri Compromise
allows the people in each state to vote on whether slavery should be legal
in that state or not.
· 1826
o Sojourner Truth escapes from
slavery and begins fighting for the desegregation of buses in Washington
D.C. and for women’s rights.
· 1828
o Nat Turner sees a vision and
hears voices telling him to fight against slavery by killing slave owners.
· 1847
o Frederick Douglass gives
speeches and publishes a newspaper to encourage others to help fight
against slavery.
· 1849
o Harriet Tubman begins helping
over 300 slaves escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
· 1850
o The Compromise of 1850 ends the
slave trade to the United States, but allows slavery to continue.
· 1854
o The Kansas-Nebraska Act
causes fighting in Kansas and Nebraska over whether those new states
should allow slavery or not.
· 1857
o Dred Scott takes his case to win
his freedom to the Supreme Court, and the court rules that slaves who
escape to free states must be returned to their masters.
· 1859
o John Brown attacks the military
arsenal at Harper’s Ferry to start a slave revolt and end slavery.
· 1860
o Abraham Lincoln is elected
the sixteenth President of the United States, and begins to work to keep
the country together.
· 1860-1861
o Southern states break away from the
United States, angering northerners and causing the Civil War.
· 1861-1865
o The North (Union) battles the South (Confederacy) in the Civil
War.
· 1863
o The Emancipation Proclamation frees
slaves in southern states to punish the south for trying to break away
from the country.
· 1865
o The Thirteenth Amendment
ends slavery in the United States.
o President Abraham Lincoln is
assassinated.
· 1865-1877
o During Reconstruction, the
Union Army keeps southerners from treating their freed slaves badly.
· 1868
o The Fourteenth Amendment
makes all people born in the United States citizens.
o The Ku Klux Klan begins
terrorizing blacks.
· 1870
o The Fifteenth Amendment
gives black men the right to vote
· 1896
o In the case of Plessy v.
Ferguson, the Supreme Court rules that it is constitutional to require
black and white people to be treated "separate but equally."
· 1910’s
o Marcus Garvey starts the Back
to Africa Movement to encourage Blacks to leave the United States and move
to Africa.
· 1935
o Mary McLeod Bethune
works with President Franklin Roosevelt to get more money for black
schools.
· 1954
o In the case of Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, the Supreme Court rules that
separate schools for black and white students is unconstitutional.
· 1955
o Rosa Parks is arrested for
refusing to give up her seat in the front of a bus, helping begin the
Montgomery Bus Boycotts.
· 1957
o Martin Luther King, Jr.
leads the Montgomery Bus Boycott to help end segregation on buses.
o The Little Rock Nine help
integrate the all-white Little Rock Central High School.
· 1960
o Ruby Bridges is one of the
first black students to attend an all-white school.
· 1961
o President John F. Kennedy promises to
end racial discrimination in his inaugural address.
o Black and white freedom riders
travel into the south to see if they will be treated equally, and they are
attacked by racists.
· 1962
o Jesse Jackson leads Operation
Breadbasket to get more job opportunities for Blacks.
· 1963
o President Kennedy is assassinated.
o Martin Luther King, Jr.
gives his "I Have a Dream" Speech in Washington, D.C.
o Medgar Evers is assassinated
for working with the NAACP to end segregation in colleges.
· 1964
o The Civil Rights Act of 1964 guarantees
that all people will have equal access to hotels, restaurants, and other
public places.
· 1965
o Malcolm X is assassinated after
giving speeches to encourage others to fight for their equal rights
"by any mean necessary."
· 1968
o Martin Luther King, Jr.
is assassinated.
· 1984
o Jesse Jackson runs for
President of the United States
· 1988
o Jesse Jackson runs for
President again.
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