Timeline

This is a timeline of events important to the Civil Rights Movement.

1850s

 * 1856 -- Booker T. Washington is born

1860s

 * 1865 -- The Ku Klux Klan is founded

1890s

 * 1896 -- Plessy v. Ferguson ruling

1900s

 * 1908 -- Thurgood Marshall is born
 * 1909 -- NAACP is founded

1910s

 * 1915 -- Supreme Court rules the use of granfather clauses unconstitutional
 * 1917 -- John F. Kennedy is born
 * 1919 -- The 19th Amendment is passed

1920s

 * 1920 -- The 19th Amendment is ratified
 * 1929 -- Martin Luther King Jr is born

1950s

 * 1953 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the 34th President of the United States
 * 1954 -- Brown v. Board of Education ruling declares the segregation of schools unconstitutional
 * 1954 -- Plessy v. Ferguson overturned
 * 1955 -- Emmett Till murdered
 * 1955 -- Rosa Parks's protest
 * 1955 -- 1950's Bus Boycott begins
 * 1957 -- Southern Christian Leadership Conference founded with Martin Luther King Jr as its first president
 * 1957 -- Little Rock Nine enrollled in Little Rock Central High School
 * 1957 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower sends Arkansas National Guard to enforce desegregation of Little Rock schools
 * 1957 -- Civil Rights Act of 1957

1960s

 * 1960 -- Greensboro Sit-In's
 * 1960 -- SNCC is founded
 * 1961 -- John F. Kennedy becomes 35th President of the United States
 * 1961 -- Freedom Riders become active
 * 1962 -- James Meredith becomes first black student to attend the University of Mississippi
 * 1963 -- Sidney Poitier wins an Oscar
 * 1963 -- Martin Luther King Jr's letter from Birmingham Jail
 * 1963 -- March on Washington
 * 1964 -- 24th Amendment ratified
 * 1964 -- Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted
 * 1964 -- Martin Luther King Jr wins Nobel Peace Prize
 * 1965 -- Voting Rights Act of 1965 signed into law
 * 1965 -- Malcolm X assassinated
 * 1966 -- Black Panther Party founded
 * 1967 -- Edward W. Brooke becomes first African American U.S. senator
 * 1967 -- Supreme Court declares laws banning interacial marriage unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia
 * 1967 -- Thurgood Marshall nominated to Supreme Court
 * 1968 -- Martin Luther King Jr assassinated by James Earl Ray
 * 1968 -- Civil Rights Act of 1968 enacted