Resources
History of Civil Rights in the US
| 1783 | Massachusetts outlaws slavery within its borders |
| 1808 | Nat Turner leads slave rebellion in Virginia; 57 whites killed; U.S. troops kill 100 slaves; Turner was caught, tried and hanged. |
| 1833 | Oberlin College, first U.S. college to adopt co-education, is first to refuse to ban black students. |
| 1857 | Dred Scott Supreme Court decision rules that slaves do not become free when taken into a free state, that Congress cannot bar slavery from a territory, and that blacks cannot become citizens. |
| 1861 | Confederate States of America formed, and Civil War begins. |
| 1863 | President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation freeing "all slaves in areas still in rebellion." |
| 1865 | Civil War ends; 13th Amendment abolishing slavery added to the constitution |
| 1868 | 14th Amendment conferring citizenship added to Constitution |
| 15th Amendment barring racial discrimination in voting added to Constitution | |
| 1875 | Congress passes civil rights act, granting equal rights in public accommodations and jury duty. |
| 1883 | Supreme Court invalidates 1875 Civil Rights Act, saying that the deferral government cannot bar discrimination by corporations or individuals. |
| 1896 | Supreme Court approves "separate but equal" segregation doctrine in Plessy vs. Ferguson |
| 1948 | President Truman issues executive order outlawing segregation in U.S. military. |
| 1954 | Brown vs. Board of Education: U.S. Supreme Court bans segregation in public schools. |
| 1955 | Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus as required by city ordinance and is arrested. |
| 1956 | After more than a year of boycotting the buses and a legal fight, segregation on interstate trains and buses is banned, and the Montgomery buses desegregate. |
| 1957 | Garfield High School becomes first Seattle high school with a more than 50% non-white student body; At previously all-white Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, nine black students are escorted to attend by federal troops. |
| 1962 | The Supreme Court rules that segregation is unconstitutional in all transportation facilities. |
| 1963 | Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is killed by a sniper's bullet; 250,000 people attended the March on Washington, D.C. urging support for pending civil-rights legislation; Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech; Four black girls killed in church bomb in Birmingham, Alabama. |
| 1964 | President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act |
| 1967 | Sam Smith elected Seattle's first black city councilman; Thurgood Marshall first black to be named to the Supreme Court. |
| 1973 | Maynard Jackson (Atlanta), first black elected mayor of a major Southern U.S. city. |
| 1965 | Malcom X assassinated; President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act that King sought and suspended devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting. |
| 1968 | Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; James Earl Ray later convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison. |
| 1989 | Douglas Wilder of Virginia becomes the nation's first African American to be elected state governor. |
| 1992 | The first racially based riots in several years erupt in Los Angeles and other cities after a jury acquits L.S. police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an African American. |
| 1996 | Supreme Court rules consideration of race in creating congressional districts is unconstitutional. |
Session One was the first of the 10th annual 2008 NW Diveristy Learning Series - Leveraging the tensions of diversity: Igniting sparks of opportunity. The Series, held in Seattle, WA, is organized by The GilDeane Group, publishers of DiversityCentral.com.
Presenters were Professor James Gregory and Graduate Student Trevor Griffey, University of Washington History Project, creators of the Seattle Civil Rights Labor History Project, Seattle, WA, and Mic Crenshaw, Educator, Activist and Hip-Hop Artist, Portland, OR
