Timeline of Civil Rights in The United States

Scroll down to read the timeline and view photos.
Captions in Italics represent voices from the documentary.

1870
Passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, granting the right to vote to freedmen, but not to freedwomen. By the end of the nineteenth century African Americans across the South will be stripped of the franchise through violence, intimidation, and legal subterfuge.

1875
March – Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1875, barring discrimination in public facilities such as inns, restaurants, and theaters. Congress will not pass another civil rights law until 1957.

1883
October – U.S. Supreme Court overturns Civil Rights Act of 1875.

1884
May – Schoolteacher and activist Ida B. Wells initiates a lawsuit opposing racial segregation on railway transportation.

1896
May – In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated facilities for African Americans do not deprive them of civil rights as long as the facilities are equal. The doctrine of “separate but equal” is the legal cornerstone of racial segregation in the United States until 1954.

1903
Scholar and activist W. E. B. Du Bois publishes The Souls of Black Folk, predicting that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.”

1910
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is founded by a group of black and white activists (including W. E. B. Du Bois) with the goal of renewing the fight for African American civil rights.

1913
President Woodrow Wilson initiates racially segregated government facilities in Washington, DC.

1917
April – The United States enters World War One. African Americans fight in segregated units, the most famous of which is the 369th Infantry Regiment of the National Guard, known as the Harlem Hellfighters.

1918
November – World War One ends.

1919
Summer – Race riots break out in twenty-six U.S. cities.

1920
Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote. Black women in the South, like black men, continue to encounter severe obstacles to voting.

Suffragettes Celebrating Passing of 19th Amendment
© Bettmann/CORBIS

1935
Spearheaded by Charles Hamilton Houston, the NAACP begins its legal strategy to challenge racial segregation in graduate and professional schools. In Pearson v. Murray, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the University of Maryland must admit African Americans to its all-white law school or establish a separate school. The university elects to admit its African Americans.

1939
Thurgood Marshall succeeds his mentor Charles Hamilton Houston as special counsel of the NAACP.

Man Drinking at Segregated Drinking Fountain
Original caption: Jim Crowism: Drinking fountain for colored men in a streetcar terminal in Oklahoma City. Photograph, 1939.
© Bettmann/CORBIS

1941
June – Activist A. Philip Randolph organizes the March on Washington Movement to pressure President Franklin Roosevelt to address the economic oppression of African Americans. The president responds by issuing his Executive Order 8802 banning racial discrimination in government employment, training programs, and the defense industries.

1942
After the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issues Executive Order 9066 which prohibits Japanese-Americans from living on the west coast. Over 120,000 Japanese-Americans are forced to leave their homes and many of them are imprisoned in federal internment camps.

Japanese-Americans Interned at Santa Anita
© Bettmann/CORBIS

1944
10 year old Adrian Dove steals a “Colored Only” sign from the street car and keeps it as a reminder of segregation. (Dallas, TX)

1946
June – In Morgan v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court outlaws racial discrimination on interstate bus transportation.

1947
April – Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers becomes the first African American to play major league baseball.

1948
The NAACP commits to Thurgood Marshall’s strategy of a direct attack on segregation in education, instead of fighting the inequality of separate facilities.

July – President Harry Truman issues an executive order to desegregate the U.S. military.

1953
May 17 – 1953 Hazel LeBlanc White first tries to register to vote in Louisiana and is denied.

1954
May 17 – In a 7-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka that the doctrine of separate but equal is unconstitutional because it violated the “equal protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Fall – Patricia Stephens Due, Jacqueline Dash Ziglar, and Morris Thompson are part of a number of African-American students who are the first to integrate public schools throughout the south. Grace Booth witnesses her fellow white classmates protest against integration in her high school in New Orleans, while first grade substitute teacher Betty Bunce witnessess anti-integration protests by white parents throughout the year.

1955
May – In a follow-up to the first Brown decision, the Supreme Court issues a second ruling, Brown II, ordering that segregation must be ended “with all deliberate speed.” The exact meaning of this phrase is source of heated controversy in the years following.

December – Led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a yearlong bus boycott begins in Montgomery, Alabama after NAACP veteran Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger.

1957
September – President Dwight Eisenhower orders federal troops to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orville Faubus had earlier called out the Arkansas National Guard to block the passage of black students into Central High School.

Hugo Owens takes his daughters to the library in Portsmouth, VA and is denied library borrowing privileges. He takes his case to court and win.

1960
February – Students in Greensboro, North Carolina stage a sit-in to oppose segregation at a Woolworth’s lunch counter. Similar protests are launched across the South in the months that follow.

As a college student at Florida A&M, Patricia Stephens Due and five others attempt to integrate a lunch counter in Tallahassee, Florida. They are arrested and spend 49 days in jail.

1960- 61 Winter
Jean Desmond joins her college-age daughter in a trip between New York City and Washington D.C. to desegregate restaurants along Route 40.

1962
Cesar Chavez leads the United Farm Worker.s Union to bargain rights for Mexican Americans.

September – James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. His arrival triggers riots on campus.

Cesar Chavez Leading Strike
Farm labor leader Cesar Chavez pickets here outside San Diego area headquarters of Safeway markets. Picketing was in protest over the arrest of 29 persons at a Delano, California Safeway. Nationwide picketing has been launched to protest arrests.
© Bettmann/CORBIS

1963
After completing nursing school, Doxie Whitfield moves to Atlanta, GA to work at Grady Memorial Hospital. There the husband of a white patient refuses her services.

May ­ Over a thousand children take to the streets in Birmingham in protest. Fifteen year-old Michael Dizaar is one of them.

June – Proclaiming his dedication to “segregation forever,” Alabama governor George Wallace stands on the steps of the University of Alabama to block the enrollment of a black student.

NAACP activist Medgar Evers is assassinated.

In the wake of his death, Gretchen Weber.s father, who is a minister, conducts a memorial service in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Webers face harassment and when unknown perpetrators attempt to burn a cross in their neighborhood, their neighbor, who had previously supported George Wallace, chases the perpetrators away.

November – President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Earlier in the year, in the wake of the assassination of NAACP activist Medgar Evers the president had pledged his support for a new civil rights law.

Demonstrators Facing Fire Hoses in Birmingham, 1963
Three demonstrators join hands to build strength against the force of water sprayed by riot police in Birmingham, Alabama, during a protest of segregation practices. © Bettmann/CORBIS

1964
July – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act, outlawing segregation in all public facilities of any kind and laying the groundwork for federal affirmative action policies.

December – The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1965
August – Congress passes the Voting Rights Act which prohibits literacy tests and poll taxes at polling stations.

President Johnson Signs the Voting Rights Bill
President Johnson signs the 1965 Voting Rights bill in law in the President's Room at the U.S. Capitol. © Bettmann/CORBIS

1966
January– Under Klan orders, Billy Roy Pitts and others participate in the firebombing of the Dahmer family home in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 10 year old Bettie Dahmer suffers severe burns, while her father Vernon Dahmer, who had helped blacks register to vote, died from injuries sustained in the bombing.

The National Organization of Women is founded.

1967
October – Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, is sworn in as the court’s first African American justice.

1968
Frankie Rogers is a college student in Memphis, TN and participates in marches against her mother.s wishes.

American Indian Movement (AIM) is founded in Minneapolis.

February – After studying the economic and social conditions of black and white Americans, the Kerner Commission finds the United States is becoming “two nations—one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

April – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis.

1969
June – Stonewall Riots in Greenwich village of New York begin after a police raid at a bar that is frequented by homosexuals. The event is often cited as the symbolic beginning of the gay rights movement.

1978
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the U.S. Supreme Court significantly weakens the legal standing of affirmative action policies, ruling that Allan Bakke, a white medical student, had been a victim of “reverse discrimination.”

1990
American with Disabilities Act prohibits employment discrimination of people with disabilities.

Harold Wilke with George Bush and Dan Quayle
Original caption: Washington: After signing landmark civil rights legislations for the handicapped on the White House South Lawn. President Bush (right) presents Reverend Harold Wilke with a ceremonial pen. Wilke, who is armless, accepted the pen with his foot. Watching are Vice President Quayle (left) and Lex Frieden of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities. © Bettmann/CORBIS

1991
Mississippi Governor pardons Billy Roy Pitts for participating in the death of Vernon Dahmer.

2003
December – After years of conservative attacks against affirmative action, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the principle of racial preferences in school admissions but also places limits on how much race can figure into the admissions process.

2004
August – October – The Voices of Civil Rights project travels the country for 70 days collecting personal stories from individuals who lived during the civil rights era. voicesofcivilrights.org