An Abbreviated Civil Rights Time Line
© Michael J. Rosenfeld, 2003
Sources include:
Piven and Cloward's Poor Peoples' Movements
Massey and
Gitlin The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage
Viorst Fire in the
Streets
TIME |
Other Events |
1939-1945 |
WWII, Second Great Black Migration North. |
1941 |
Pres. Roosevelt establish the Fair Employment Practices Commission, under threat of a national march organized by the sleeping car porters |
1943 |
Race riots between Blacks and Whites in |
1945-1955 |
The Great Wave of Suburbanization in the |
1948 |
U.S. Supreme Court strikes down racially restrictive covenants (Shelley v. Kraemer) Henry Wallace runs as a progressive and the Democrat party splits into Northern Democrats and pro-segregation Southern Democrats led by Strom Thurmond. The beginning of the end of Democratic party dominance over the South. Truman Elected |
1952 |
Eisenhower elected to first of 2 terms |
1954 |
In Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down explicit state sponsored school segregation. |
1955 |
In |
1957-60 |
Lyndon Johnson, an historically
pro segregation congressman from |
1960 |
First lunch counter sit-it by Black students in Kennedy (and Johnson) elected over Nixon. |
1962 |
At a meeting in |
1963 |
May, SCLC and SNCC target August, The March on Pres. Kennedy makes a national TV appeal for a new Civil Rights bill, and the next day Medgar Evars is killed. November, President Kennedy assassinated. |
1964 |
Johnson pushes through the most comprehensive Civil Rights
Act in Freedom Summer. Goodman, Cheney and Shwerner among the first volunteers, killed. November. Johnson reelected in a landslide over Goldwater. |
1965 |
February 21, Malxolm X assassinated in Voting Rights Act is passed, the most enforceable and effective of all Civil Rights legislation. The March for Massive riots in |
1967 |
Riots in |
1968 |
April 4, Martin Luther King assassinated in Federal Fair Housing Act was passed, woefully lacking in enforcement mechanisms. June 5, Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning for Democratic
nomination, is assassinated in In the summer, the Democratic National Convention in Worldwide Context: Tlatelolco. Riots in Federal Commission ('the Kerner Commission') reports on the riots of 1965-1967, and recommends a national policy of Civil Rights enforcement and investment in the ghettos. Nixon defeats Democrat Humphrey for president, while former Alabama Governor George Wallace runs as a segregationist third party candidate. |
1969 |
To protest the ' Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI initiate the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) which sharply increases the FBI's longstanding policy of infiltration and harassment of student groups and Civil Rights groups Late in the night of December 4, Chicago Police officers acting on a tip from an FBI informant storm the headquarters of the Black Panther Party of Chicago and shoot and kill Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in their beds. No convictions result from the incident. |
1970 |
May 4, Ohio National Guard fires on antiwar protesters at |