William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

168168 Chapter 5 | Civil Rights

FIGURE

5.4

African-American Civil Rights Time Line

September 9

The Federal Civil Rights Act prohibits

discrimination.

September 23

President Eisenhower sends troops to escort

black students into a white high school in Little

Rock, Arkansas.

August 6

The Federal Voting Rights Act

prohibits denying anyone the

vote on the basis of color or race.

July 2

President Johnson

signs the Civil

Rights Act.

December 1

Rosa Parks is arrested

for refusing to move to

the back of a bus in

Montgomery, Alabama.

February 1

Black college students,

refused service at a lunch

counter in Greensboro,

North Carolina, launch

a sit-in.

April 16

Martin Luther King Jr. writes his

“Letter from the Birmingham Jail,”

defending nonviolent civil

disobedience against unjust laws.

August 28

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers

his “I Have a Dream” speech

at the March on Washington.

June 21

Three civil rights workers

are murdered outside

Philadelphia, Mississippi.

March 7

Six hundred voting rights

marchers are attacked by

police with clubs and whips

on the Edmund Pettus

Bridge outside Selma,

Alabama. On March 21,

about 3,200 marchers

head out again on a

four-day march to

Montgomery in support

of voting rights.

September 15

Four girls are killed when

a Baptist church in

Birmingham, Alabama,

is bombed.

February 21

Malcolm X is shot and

killed in New York.

April 4

Martin Luther King

Jr. is slain in Memphis,

Tennessee.

April 11

Fair Housing Act protects

against discrimination

in housing.

May 4

Freedom Riders

test a Supreme

Court decision

that integrated

interstate bus

travel, sparking

violence.

1957 1965

1960 1963 1965

Social Movement

1954

Government Action

May 17

U.S. Supreme Court

rules segregated schools

are unconstitutional in

the Brown v. Board of

Education decision.

1964

1961 1964 1968

1968

1955

Source: Adapted from “Civil Rights Movement Timeline,” History.com, http://www.history.com/topics/civil-rights-movement-timeline (accessed 4/18/18).

As part of the Montgomery Bus

Boycott, many African Americans

organized car pools or walked to work.

continued to respond with passive resistance, and new waves of protesters replaced

those who had been arrested. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

(SNCC) was created to coordinate the protests. The Greensboro Woolworth’s was

integrated on July 26, 1961, but the protests continued in other cities. By August 1961,

the sit-ins had 70,000 participants and there had been 3,000 arrests.^49 The sit-ins

marked an important shift in the tactics of the civil rights movement: away from

the court-based approach, exemplified by the fight against the “separate but equal”

doctrine (as we will discuss next), and toward the nonviolent civil disobedience

approach that had been successful in Montgomery.

Also during this period, the Freedom Riders were working to get President

Kennedy to enforce two Supreme Court decisions that banned segregation in

interstate travel, including at bus terminals, in waiting rooms, in restaurants,

and in other public facilities related to interstate travel.^50 On May 4, 1961, a group

of whites and blacks boarded two buses in Washington, D.C., headed for New

Orleans. The whites and blacks sat together and went into segregated areas of bus

stations together. The trip was uneventful until Rock Hill, South Carolina, where

several Freedom Riders were beaten. Then, in Anniston, Alabama, one bus had its

tires slashed and was firebombed. The Freedom Riders were beaten as they f led

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