1960 and public protest

  • The Greensboro Four and the Sit-In Movement

    began a sit in protest at a Woolworth's whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been refused service.
  • Ruby Bridges and the New Orleans School Integration

    The New Orleans school desegregation crisis was a period of intense public resistance in New Orleans that followed the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation of public schools was unconstitutional.
  • freedom rides

    During the spring of 1961, student activists from the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) launched the Freedom Rides to challenge segregation on interstate buses and bus terminals.
  • Birmingham Demonstrations

    The Birmingham campaign was a model of nonviolent direct action protest and, through the media, drew the world's attention to racial segregation in the South.
  • March on Washington

    The March on Washington. On August 28 1963, a quarter of a million people rallied in Washington, D.C. for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to demand an end to segregation, fair wages and economic justice, voting rights, education, and long overdue civil rights protections.
  • Civil Rights Act

    The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.
  • Assassination of Malcolm X

    The growing hostility between Malcolm and the Nation led to death threats and open violence against him. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated while delivering a lecture at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Three members of the Nation of Islam were arrested.
  • selma march

    The Selma Marches were a series of three marches that took place in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. These marches were organized to protest the blocking of Black Americans' right to vote by the systematic racist structure of the Jim Crow South
  • Watts Riots

    The riot spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated.
  • Black Panther Party founded

    The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who met at Merritt College in Oakland. It was a revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism, and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality.