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| 1875 |
MARCH 1
Congress passed a third Civil Rights Act in response to the refusal of
many whites who owned public establishments, inns, railroads, and other facilities
to make them equally available to black people. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 prohibited
racial discrimination in such places and guaranteed equal access to public accommodations
regardless of race or color. White supremacist groups, however, embark upon a
campaign against blacks and their white supporters. |
| 1896 |
MAY 18
Plessy v. Ferguson, decided by the
U.S. Supreme Court, upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating
racially segregated but equal railroad cars ruling that the equal
protection clause of the Fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution
dealt with political and not social equality. Plessy
v. Ferguson opened
the door to sweeping interpretation of "equal but separate” accommodations
to apply to “white and colored people" in all life experiences
legitimizing “Jim
Crow” practices throughout the
south. |
| 1909 |
FEBRUARY 12
The National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was
founded by a multi-racial group of activists in New York City, NY. They
initially called themselves the National
Negro Committee. FOUNDERS: Ida
Wells-Barnett, W.E.B.
DuBois,
Henry
Moscowitz, Mary
White Ovington, Oswald Garrison
Villiard, William English Walling led the "Call" to
renew the struggle for civil and political liberty. |
| 1954 |
MAY 17
The U.S. Supreme Court rules on the landmark case Brown v. Board
of Education of Topeka, Kansas unanimously agreeing
that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The decision paved the
way for large-scale desegregation. The decision overturn\ed the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling
instead "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." It
is a victory for NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, who argued the case and will
later return to the Supreme Court as the nation's first black justice. |
| 1955 |
AUG. 27th
Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi
when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the
Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two
white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder
and acquitted by an all-white jury. They later boast about committing
the murder in a Look magazine interview. The case becomes
a cause célèbre of the civil rights movement.
DEC.
1
(Montgomery, Ala.) NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses
to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of
a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time.
In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches
a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the
buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. As newly elected president
of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Reverend Martin
Luther King, Jr., is instrumental in leading the boycott.
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