Civil Rights Era

1. Civil Rights Era

3. More than 200,000 march on Washington D.C, in the largest civil right demonstration ever

4. Four African American girls are killed in the bombing of the sixteenth street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama

5. Sidney Politier becomes the first black actor to win an Oscar for best actor

6. Martin Luther King writes his letter from a Birmingnam Jail

7. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is killed by a sniper's bullet.

8. Race riots prompt modified martial law in Cambridge, Maryland.

9. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.

10. 1956

11. The US Supreme court rules that segregation of Montgomery Alabama buses is unconstitutional

12. Coalition of Southern congressmen calls for massive resistance to Supreme Court desegregation rulings

13. 1960

14. Election of 1960

15. Four African Americans college students hold a sit-in to integrate a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro

16. Congress approves a watered-down voting rights act after a filibuster by Southern senators.

17. 1961

18. The CORE begins to organize Freedom Rides throughout the South

19. John F. Kennedy takes office as president

20. 1958

21. Alvin Ailey founds the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, now world-renowned

22. 1954

23. Brown v. Board of Education Ruling

24. 1962

25. Kennedy is assassinated

26. Malcom X becomes minister of The Nation of Islam

27. President Kennedy sends federal troops to the University of Mississippi to quell riots so that James Meredith, the school's first black student, can attend.

28. The Supreme Court rules that segregation is unconstitutional in all transportation facilities.

29. The Department of Defense orders full integration of military reserve units, the National Guard excluded

30. 1959

31. First play by an African American woman to produced on Broadway

33. Martin Luther King help found the SCLC he also heads it

34. SCLC is organized

35. Althea Gibson becomes first African American tennis player to win a major title

36. Arkansas Gov. OrvalRubus uses National Guard to block nine black students from attending a Little Rock High School; following a court order, President Eisenhower sends in federal troops to ensure compliance

37. 1960

38. Election of 1960

39. Four African Americans college students hold a sit-in to integrate a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro

41. Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice on the Supreme Court

42. Riots in Detroit, Newark, New Jersey.

43. Carl Stokes and Richard G. Hatcher elected first black mayors of major U.S. cities.

44. 1965

45. Voting Rights of 1965

46. Malcom X is assassinated

47. Race riots break out in the Watts area of Los Angeles

48. King organizes a protest march from Selem to Montgomery, Alabama, for African American voting rights

49. 1964

50. Martin Lither King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prizw

51. Civil Rights of 1964 is passed

52. The SNCC and the NAACP and other civil rights groups organize a massive African American voter registration

53. Congress passes Civil Rights Act declaring discrimination based on race illegal after 75-day long filibuster.

54. Three civil rights(CORE) workers disappear in Mississippi after being stopped for speeding; found buried six weeks later.

55. Riots in Harlem, Philadelphia.

56. 1968

57. Shirle Chisholm becomes the first African American women in congress

58. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; James Earl Ray later convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison.

59. Poor People's March on Washington planned by King before his death goes on

60. 1966

61. The holiday of Kwanzaa is created

62. National Organization for women is created

63. The Black Panther Party is found

65. What was the Literacy test? The literacy test, was the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens and potential voters. As used by the states, the literacy test gained infamy to African-American. Adopted by a number of southern states, the literacy test was applied in a unfair manner, as it was used to disfranchise many literate blacks while allowing many illiterate whites to vote. The literacy test, combined with other discriminatory requirements, effectively disfranchised the vast majority of African-Americans in the north from the 1890s until the 1960s. Southern states abandoned the literacy test only when forced to do so by federal legislation . The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspended the use of literacy.

66. Key events

67. 1954 -1968