Civil Rights Timeline

Here are important civil rights events that would have happened during Dawnie Rae’s lifetime.

1954 May 17 The Supreme Court rules against segregation in public schools in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

1955 August 28 Emmett Louis Till, a fourteen-year-old boy from Mississippi, is lynched for supposedly whistling at a white woman. The crime draws widespread media attention.

December 1 Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, refuses to give up her seat to a white man at the front of a segregated bus. This act of bravery ignites the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. African Americans refuse to ride city buses for more than one year. After a Supreme Court ruling on December 21, 1956, Montgomery, Alabama, buses are desegregated.

1957 January–February The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is established with the help of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who becomes the SCLC’s first president. The SCLC promotes nonviolence as a means for social change.

September The Little Rock Nine, a group of black students in Little Rock, Arkansas, enroll in Central High School, an all-white school. Arkansas governor Orval Faubus prevents the students from entering the school. The students are allowed to enter when President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the National Guard to protect them.

1960 February 1 Four African American college freshmen sit at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They refuse to leave the counter until they are served. As a result, the Greensboro sit-ins begin, and spark sit-ins throughout the nation.

April Activist Ella Baker helps form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) at Shaw University in North Carolina. The group’s purpose is to help young people organize peaceful civil rights demonstrations.

1961 May 4 Thousands of student volunteers begin “Freedom Rides” throughout the South. To test laws that prohibit segregation, these young people, black and white, travel on buses together. The students must endure violence. They are supported by SNCC and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).

1962 October 1 James Meredith is the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. James is met by angry mobs. President John F. Kennedy sends 5,000 federal troops to help.

1963 April 16 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., writes his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested and put in jail during a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. His letter outlines the meaning of justice.

August 28 Nearly 250,000 people gather at the Lincoln Memorial as part of the March on Washington. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his world-famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

1964 July 2 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws racial segregation in public places.