Timeline For Civil Rights Movement
By: Chris Biggurs
10 Important Events
2. December 1, 1955: NAACP member Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger. This started the bus boycott.
3. September 1957: Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Favus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "Little Rock Nine"
4. April 1960: The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement.
5. Oct. 1, 1962: James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.6. April 16, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. Is arrested in Birmingham and he wrote
" Letter From Birmingham Jail".
7. August 28, 1963: About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have A Dream" speech.
8. January 23, 1964: The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, which originally had been instituted in 11 southern states after Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.
9. July 2, 1964: President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
10. April 19, 1967: Stokely Carmicheal, a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), coins the phrase "black power" in a speech in Seattle.