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Jackie Robinson enters Major League Baseball
Jackie Robinson made his MLB debut in front of 26,623 fans at Ebbets field. Robinson started at first base and went hit less, but reached base on an error in the seventh and scored the eventual go-ahead run in a victory against the Boston Braves. -
Executive Order 9981 signed by President Truman
President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981, creating the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. The order mandated the desegregation of the U.S. military. -
Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Ruling
The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education occurred after a hard-fought, multi-year campaign to persuade all nine justices to overturn the “separate but equal” doctrine that their predecessors had endorsed in the Court's infamous 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision. -
Rosa Parks Arrest
Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for disorderly conduct for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man. -
Emmett Till is murdered
A 14-year-old African American youth, who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The boycott was a response to racial segregation on the city's buses. It was a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement and led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. -
Little Rock Nine Intervention
The media coined the name “Little Rock Nine" to identify the first African American students to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957 is passed
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. -
Greensboro Sit-In Protest
More than two thousand African Americans of all ages and classes silently marched to downtown Greensboro to show their dedication to achieving racial equality. -
Integration of Ole Miss Riots
Segregationist rioters sought to prevent the enrollment of African American applicant James Meredith. -
George Wallace’s “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door”
He is remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views; however, in the late 1970's, Wallace moderated his views on race, renouncing his support for segregation. During Wallace's tenure as governor of Alabama, he promoted "industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools." -
Medgar Evers shooting
Ever's and his wife Myrlie established the NAACP office in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-1950's. He tirelessly led marches, prayer vigils, voter registration drives and boycotts. -
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a terrorist bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1963. The bombing was committed by a white supremacist terrorist group. -
The Birmingham Children’s March
Nonviolent protest against segregation held by Black children on May 2–10, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama. The protest is credited with causing a major shift in attitudes against segregation among Americans and with convincing Pres. -
March on Washington / I Have a Dream Speech
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. -
Freedom Summer
The Mississippi Summer Project, was a 1964 voter registration drive aimed at increasing the number of registered Black voters in Mississippi. Over 700 mostly white volunteers joined African Americans in Mississippi to fight against voter intimidation and discrimination at the polls. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed
Addressing a joint session of Congress just after Kennedy's death, Johnson urged members of Congress to honor Kennedy's memory by passing a civil rights bill to end racial discrimination and segregation in public accommodations, public education, and federally assisted programs. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed
The Voting Rights Act was enacted on August 6, 1965, and it prohibited states from imposing qualifications or practices to deny the right to vote on account of race; permitted direct federal intervention in the electoral process in certain places, based on a “coverage formula”. -
Malcolm X is murdered
Malcolm X was shot dead on stage at a New York ballroom as he prepared to deliver a speech to his Organization of Afro-American Unity. -
The Selma Marches / Bloody Sunday
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery. -
Black Panther Party is formed
The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. -
Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling
The U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. -
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated
An assassin fired a single shot that caused severe wounds to the lower right side of his face. SCLC aides rushed to him, and Ralph Abernathy cradled King's head. Others on the balcony pointed across the street toward the rear of a boarding house on South Main Street where the shot seemed to have originated.