Civil Rights Movement Timeline

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1936 - Victor Hugo Green published the first annual volume of The Negro Motorist Green-Book,  to assist African Americans traveling the segregated south.

 

1954 – Thurgood Marshall represents the Brown family in landmark case Brown vs Board of Education Topeka, Kansas. This ruling ENDS segregation of schools. Thurgood Marshall later is the first African American on the Supreme Court.

 

1955 – Rosa Park refuses to give up her seat on segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott that last 382 days and involved more than 40,000 Africans Americans refusing to ride the buses. 

 

1956 – December: Montgomery Bus Boycott resulted in the desegregation of buses.

 

1961 – Feb 1: Four college students stared the Greensboro Sit-Ins at the Woolworth lunch counter, which resulted in a nationwide sit-in movement and the end of segregated lunch counters.

 

1963 – April: Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested for participating in an anti-segregation protest. He wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” which gave arguments to support the right of individuals to disobey.

 

1963 – August: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

 

1964 – Civil Rights Act was signed ending segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

1965 – Voting Rights Act was signed.  Voting right are guaranteed by the 15th Amendment

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1966-67 - The final edition of The Green-Book is published.