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The NAACP which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans in New York City on February 12, 1909 -
The Tulsa Race Massacre occurred between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when white mobs attacked the Black Wall Street in Tulsa Oklahoma. The 2 day attack destroyed 35 square blocks, 1,200+ homes, and killed an estimated 100-300 people -
The Scottsboro Boys refers to to nine black teenagers wrongly accused of raping two white women in Alabama 1931, sparking landmark civil rights cases highlighting systemic racism -
Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color barrier by starting at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. This debut ended over 50 years of segregation in Major League Baseball. -
Brown vs Board of Education was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case that unanimously declared state-sponsored segregation in public schools unconstitutional, overturning the “separate but equal” doctrine from Plessy v. Ferguson -
Emmett Till was brutally kidnapped, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi for allegedly offending a white woman while visiting family from Chicago on August 28, 1955 -
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a 381 day, nonviolent protest from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, where African Americans refused to use segregated city buses in Montgomery, Alabama -
The Little Rock 9 were nine African American students who courageously integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. -
Ruby Bridges was the first African American child to desegregate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960, a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement, where she was escorted by federal marshals through violent protests to attend the all-white school. -
Martin Luther King Jr. wrote the letter from Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963, while imprisoned for defying an anti-protest injunction in Alabama. It is a landmark, 7,000-word open letter defending the strategy of nonviolent direct action, famously stating that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”. -
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place on August 28, 1963, where over 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. It was a massive, peaceful protest aimed at advocating for civil rights. -
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964, making it illegal to discriminate based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, and ending segregation in public places -
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965 at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York, while preparing to speak to supporters, with his wife Betty Shabazz and young daughters in the audience. -
The Votings Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on August 6, 1965. It is a landmark piece of federal legislation designed to enforce the 15th Amendment, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. -
The Black Panther Party was founded on October 15, 1966, in Oakland California. It was established as a revolutionary Black nationalist and socialist organization aimed at protecting African American neighborhoods from police brutality. -
President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall as the first African American Supreme Court Justice on June 10, 1967, Marshall served 1991, defending individual liberties and advocating for desegregation. -
Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated by a sniper’s bullet on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, while standing on the balcony of his room supporting a sanitation workers’ strike, dying later at a hospital from wounds to his neck and jaw