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Civil Rights Movement Timeline

Civil Rights Movement

Long before Martin Luther King Jr. walked onto the civil rights stage, many important events took place in the civil rights movement for equality and peace. Many civil rights leaders went before Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech and many came after. Kidzworld has highlighted some of the important dates and events that took place over the past few hundred years that made America the country it is today.

July 2,1777

Vermont is the first American state to abolish slavery.

March 3, 1820

The Missouri Compromise is enacted; slavery is banned everywhere north of Missouri, but is still legal in the southern United States.

September 17, 1849

Harriet Tubman escapes slavery in Maryland and spends the next several years helping more than 300 people escape to free territory by way of the Underground Railroad.

April 12, 1861

The Civil War begins.

July 17, 1862

Congress gives President Abraham Lincoln the green light to allow black people to join the military.

January 31, 1865

The Thirteenth Amendment is passed and slavery is officially abolished from the United States.

April 15, 1865

President Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery, is assassinated.

June 13, 1868

Ex-slave Oscar Dunn becomes Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.

July 28, 1868

The Fourteenth Amendment is passed giving black citizens in America full citizenship.

March 30, 1870

The right to vote is granted to all American males (other than Native Americans), regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude (so even men who had previously been slaves could now vote).

March 1, 1875

Civil Rights Act is passed giving all black citizens the right to equal treatment in public and on any public transportation.

November 26, 1883

US Supreme Court declares the Civil Rights Act to be unconstitutional because laws covered by the Civil Rights Act should be left up to individual states, not the federal government. Individual states now again allowed to discriminate in any way they want against black citizens.

1917

In the same year that the United States enters World War I, anti-black riots are held in St. Louis, Illinois and more than 100 black citizens are either killed or injured. More than 10,000 black New Yorkers hold the Silent Parade to protest the violence.

December 8, 1936

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sues the government to make them pay black and white teachers equal salaries.

June 3, 1946

US Supreme Court bans segregation of black and white people on public transit.

Civil Rights - December 1, 1955

Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, AL. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a boycott of Montgomery buses that lasts over a year.

September 24, 1957

Nine black students integrate with white students at Central High School in Little Rock, AR. President Dwight Eisenhower sends the paratroopers in to ward off any violence.

August 28, 1963

More than 250,000 civil rights demonstrators march on Washington, DC, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have A Dream" speech.

1964

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

April 4, 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN, where had gone to give a speech to striking garbage workers.

1978

Unita Blackwell, founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, becomes the first black woman mayor in the history of Mississippi in the city of Mayersville. She had once been denied the right to vote there.