Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement: 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 President’s 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 hall—the first major demonstration of the civil rights movement—following 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 Meredith’s 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: