Civil Rights

1. Civil Rights African Americans 1961-1968

2. Freedom Riders, 1961 • Student volunteers begin taking trips through the South to test out new laws that prohibit segregation in interstate travel facilities, which includes bus and railway stations. • Several of them are attacked by angry mobs along the way. • The program was sponsored by The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), involves more than 1000 volunteers, black and white. • Freedom Riders

3. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963 April • Dr. King is arrested and jailed during anti-segregation protests in Birmingham. • His arrest was made after he violated a state law, not a federal one about prohibiting demonstrations. • He spent 8 days in jail. • He writes his seminal “Letter from Birmingham Jail” arguing that individuals have the moral duty to disobey unjust laws. • “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

4. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963 May • During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene “Bull” Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on African American demonstrators. • This images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world. • Birmingham Brutality

5. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963 August • March on Washington • About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. • Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial • Participates listen as Dr. King delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech I Have a Dream

6. Birmingham Church Bombing, 1963 • Four young girls (Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings. • Riots erupt in Birmingham, leading to the deaths of two more African American youths. • Birmingham Church Bombing

7. Freedom Summer Mississippi, 1964 • The Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a network of civil rights groups that include CORE and SNCC, launches a massive effort to register African American voters. • It also sends delegates to the Democratic National Convention to protest-and attempt to unseat-the official all-white Mississippi contingent.

8. Freedom Summer Mississippi, 1964 • Over the course of the ten-week project: • four civil rights workers were killed (one in a head-on collision) • at least three Mississippi blacks were murdered because of their support for the civil rights movement • Four people were critically wounded • eighty Freedom Summer workers were beaten • one-thousand and sixty-two people were arrested (volunteers and locals) • thirty-seven churches were bombed or burned • thirty Black homes or businesses were bombed or burned

9. Civil Rights Act, 1964 • President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. • The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, colour, religion, or national origin. • The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. • Civil Rights Act 1964

10. Malcolm X, 1965 • Malcolm X is the national minister of the Nation of Islam. • He rejects the nonviolent civil rights movement and integration, and becomes a champion of African American separatism and black pride. • Malcolm X, African American nationalist and founder of the Organization of Afro-American Unity, is shot to death. • It is believed the assailants are members of the Black Muslim faith, which Malcolm had recently abandoned in favor of orthodox Islam. • Malcolm X on Nationalism

11. Selma, Alabama 1965 • African American begin a march to Montgomery in support of voting rights but are stopped at the Pettus Bridge by a police blockade. • Fifty marchers are hospitalized after police use tear gas, whips, and clubs against them. • The incident is dubbed “Bloody Sunday” by the media. • The march is considered the catalyst for pushing through the voting rights act five months later. • The Right to Vote

12. Voting Rights Act, 1965 • Congress passes the Voting Rights Act. • Making it easier for Southern African Americans to register to vote. • Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict African American voting are made illegal.

13. Executive Order 11246, 1965 • Asserting the civil rights laws alone are not enough to remedy discrimination, President Johnson issues Executive Order 1126, which enforces affirmative action for the first time. • It requires government contractors to “take affirmative action” toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

14. Black Panthers, 1966 • The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. • Although it develops a reputation for militant rhetoric and clashes with the police, the group also becomes a national organization that supports food, education, and health care programs in poor African American communities. • Black Panther Party • Forrest Gump meets th Black Panther Party

15. Loving vs. Virginia, 1967 • Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional. • Sixteen states that still banned interracial marriage at the time are forced to revise their laws.

16. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated , 1968 • Martin Luther King at the age of 39, is shot as he stands on the balcony outside his hotel room. • Escaped convict and committed racist James Earl Ray is convicted of the crime. • Dr. King's Assassination