1960–1968
1960
- February 1 – Four black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro Sit-Ins.
- February 13 – The Nashville, Tennessee Sit-in begins, although the Nashville students, trained by activists and nonviolent teachers James Lawson and Myles Horton, had been doing preliminary groundwork towards the action for two months. The sit-in ends successfully in May.
- February 17 – Alabama grand jury indicts Martin Luther King Jr. for tax evasion.
- February 19 – Virginia Union University students, called the Richmond 34, stage a sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia.[10]
- February 22 – The Richmond 34 stage a sit-in the Richmond Room at Thalhimer's department store.
- March 3 – Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for sit-in participation.
- March 4 – Houston's first sit-in, led by Texas Southern University students, was held at Weingarten supermarket, located at 4110 Almeda in Houston, Texas.
- March 9 – An Appeal for Human Rights was published.
- March 15 – The Atlanta sit-ins begin.
- March 19 – San Antonio becomes the first city to integrate lunch counters.
- April 8 – Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.
- April 15–17 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.
- April 19 – Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the city's ongoing Nashville sit-in for integration of public facilities.
- May – Nashville sit-ins end with business agreements to integrate lunch counters and other public areas.
- May 6 – Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- May 28 – William Robert Ming and Hubert Delaney obtain an acquittal of Dr. King from an all-white jury in Alabama.[11]
- June 28 – Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
- July 31 – Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state; membership in Nation of Islam is estimated at 50,000 to 100,000.
- August – Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker replaces Ella Baker as SCLC's Executive Director.
- October 19 – King and 50 others arrested at a sit-in at Atlanta's Rich's Department Store.
- October 26 – King's earlier probation was revoked; he is transferred to Reidsville State Prison.
- October 28 – After intervention from Robert F. Kennedy, King is freed on bond.
- November 14 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School) following court-ordered integration in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was portrayed by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.
- December 5 – In Boynton v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in bus terminals is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act. This ruling, in combination with the Interstate Commerce Commission's 1955 decision in Keys v. Carolina Coach Co., effectively outlaws segregation on interstate buses and at the terminals servicing such buses.
1961
- January 11 – Rioting in Athens, Georgia, over court-ordered admission of first two African-Americans (Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault) at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated.
- January 31 – Members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students are arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina, for a sit-in at a McCrory's lunch counter.
- March 6 – President John F. Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
- May 4 – The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C., by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.[12]
- May 6 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy delivers a speech to the students of the University of Georgia School of Law in Athens, Georgia, promising to enforce civil rights legislation. It is the Kennedy administration's first formal endorsement of civil rights.[13]
- May 14 – The Freedom Riders' bus is attacked and burned outside of Anniston, Alabama. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham. The Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and spend 40 to 60 days in Parchman Penitentiary.[12]
- May 17 – Nashville students, coordinated by Diane Nash, John Lewis, and James Bevel of the Nashville Student Movement, take up the Freedom Ride, signaling the increased involvement of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
- May 20 – Freedom Riders are assaulted in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Greyhound Bus Station.
- May 21 – King, the Freedom Riders, and congregation of 1,500 at Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s First Baptist Church in Montgomery are besieged by a mob of segregationists; RFK as Attorney General sends federal marshals to protect them.
- May 29 – Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, citing the 1955 landmark ICC ruling in Keys v. Carolina Coach Company and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1960 decision in Boynton v. Virginia, petitions the ICC to enforce desegregation in interstate travel.
- June–August – U.S. Department of Justice initiates talks with civil rights groups and foundations on beginning Voter Education Project.
- July – SCLC begins citizenship classes; Andrew J. Young hired to direct the program. Bob Moses begins voter registration in McComb, Mississippi. He leaves because of violence.
- September – James Forman becomes SNCC’s Executive Secretary.
- September 23 – The Interstate Commerce Commission, at RFK’s insistence, issues new rules ending discrimination in interstate travel, effective November 1, 1961, six years after the ICC's ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company.
- September 25 – Voter registration activist and NAACP member Herbert Lee is shot and killed by a white state legislator in McComb, Mississippi.
- November 1 – All interstate buses are required to display a certificate that reads: "Seating aboard this vehicle is without regard to race, color, creed, or national origin, by order of the Interstate Commerce Commission."[14]
- November 1 – SNCC workers Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagon and nine Chatmon Youth Council members test new ICC rules at Trailways bus station in Albany, Georgia.[15]
- November 17 – SNCC workers help encourage and coordinate black activism in Albany, Georgia, culminating in the founding of the Albany Movement as a formal coalition.[15]
- November 22 – Three high school students from Chatmon's Youth Council were arrested after using "positive actions" by walking into white sections of the Albany bus station.[15]
- November 22 – Albany State College students Bertha Gober and Blanton Hall were arrested after entering the white waiting room of the Albany Trailways station.[15]
- December 10 – Freedom Riders from Atlanta, SNCC leader J. Charles Jones, and Albany State student Bertha Gober are arrested at Albany Union Railway Terminal, sparking mass demonstrations, with hundreds of protesters arrested over the next five days.[16]
- December 11–15 – Five hundred protesters arrested in Albany, Georgia.
- December 15 – King arrives in Albany, Georgia in response to a call from Dr. W. G. Anderson, the leader of the Albany Movement to desegregate public facilities.[12]
- December 16 – King is arrested at an Albany, Georgia demonstration. He is charged with obstructing the sidewalk and parading without a permit.[12]
- December 18 – Albany truce, including a 60-day postponement of King's trial; King leaves town.[17]
- Whitney Young is appointed executive director of the National Urban League and begins expanding its size and mission.
- Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, a white Southerner who deliberately darkened his skin to pass as a Negro in the Deep South, is published, describing "Jim Crow" segregation for a national audience.
- An amendment to the Library Bill of Rights was passed in 1961 that made clear that an individual's library use should not be denied or abridged because of race, religion, national origin, or political views. Some communities decided to close their doors rather than desegregate.[18]
- From 1934 through November 1961, the Professional Golfers Association of America maintained a "Caucasian-only" membership clause in its bylaws. The clause was removed by amending its constitution.[19][20]
1962
- January 18–20 – Student protests over sit-in leaders’ expulsions at Baton Rouge’s Southern University, the nation's largest black school, close it down.
- February – Representatives of SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP form the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). A grant request to fund COFO voter registration activities is submitted to the Voter Education Project (VEP).
- February 26 – Segregated transportation facilities, both interstate and intrastate, ruled unconstitutional by U.S. Supreme Court.
- March – SNCC workers sit-in at US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's office to protest jailings in Baton Rouge.
- March 20 – FBI installs wiretaps on NAACP activist Stanley Levison’s office.
- April 3 – Defense Department orders full racial integration of military reserve units, except the National Guard.
- June – SNCC workers establish voter registration projects in rural southwest Georgia.
- July 10 – August 28 SCLC renews protests in Albany; MLK in jail July 10–12 and July 27 – August 10.
- August 31 – Fannie Lou Hamer attempts to register to vote in Indianola, Mississippi.
- September 9 – Two black churches used by SNCC for voter registration meetings are burned in Sasser, Georgia.
- September 20 – James Meredith is barred from becoming the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
- September 30 – October 1 – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black orders James Meredith admitted to Ole Miss.; he enrolls and a white riot in Oxford ensues. French photographer Paul Guihard (the only journalist murdered during the Civil Rights Era) and Oxford resident Ray Gunter are killed.
- October – Leflore County, Mississippi, supervisors cut off surplus food distribution in retaliation against voter drive.
- October 23 – FBI begins Communist Infiltration (COMINFIL) investigation of SCLC.
- November 20 – Attorney General Kennedy authorizes FBI wiretap on Stanley Levison’s home telephone.
- November 20 – President Kennedy upholds 1960 presidential campaign promises to eliminate housing segregation by signing Executive Order 11063 banning segregation in Federally funded housing.
1963
- January 14 – Incoming Alabama governor George Wallace calls for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in his inaugural address.
- April 3 – May 10 – The Birmingham campaign, organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, protests segregation in Birmingham by daily mass demonstrations.
- April – Mary Lucille Hamilton, Field Secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality, refuses to answer a judge in Gadsden, Alabama, until she is addressed by the honorific "Miss". At the time, it was the southern custom to address white people by honorifics and people of color by their first names. Jailed for contempt of court Hamilton refused to pay bail. The case Hamilton v. Alabama is filed by the NAACP. It reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1964 that courts must address persons of color with the same courtesy extended to whites.
- April 7 – Ministers John Thomas Porter, Nelson H. Smith, and A. D. King lead a group of 2,000 marchers to protest the jailing of movement leaders in Birmingham.
- April 12 – King is arrested in Birmingham for "parading without a permit".
- April 16 – King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is completed.
- April 23 – CORE activist William L. Moore is murdered in Gadsden, Alabama.
- May 2–4 – Birmingham's juvenile court is inundated with African-American children and teenagers arrested after James Bevel, SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education, launches his "D-Day" youth march. The actions span three days to become the Birmingham Children's Crusade where over a thousand children and students are arrested. The images of fire hoses and police dogs turned on the protesters are televised around the world.[21]
- May 9–10 – The Children's Crusade lays the groundwork for the terms of a negotiated truce on Thursday, May 9, which puts an end to mass demonstrations in return for rolling back segregation laws and practices. Dr. King and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth announce the settlement terms on Friday, May 10, only after King holds out to orchestrate the release of thousands of jailed demonstrators with bail money from Harry Belafonte and Robert Kennedy.[22]
- May 11–12 – A double bombing in Birmingham, probably organized by the KKK with help from local police, precipitates rioting, police retaliation, the intervention of state troopers, and finally mobilization of federal troops.
- May 13 – In United States of America and Interstate Commerce Commission v. the City of Jackson, Mississippi, et al., the United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit rules the city's attempt to circumvent laws desegregating interstate transportation facilities by posting sidewalk signs outside Greyhound, Trailways and Illinois Central terminals reading "Waiting Room for White Only — By Order Police Department" and "Waiting Room for Colored Only – By Order Police Department" to be unlawful.[23]
- May 24 – A group of Black leaders (assembled by James Baldwin) meets with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to discuss race relations.
- May 29 – Violence escalates at NAACP picket of Philadelphia construction site.[24]
- May 30 – Police attack Florida A&M anti-segregation demonstrators with tear gas; arrest 257, in Tallahassee, Florida.[25]
- June 9 – Fannie Lou Hamer is among several SNCC workers badly beaten by police in the Winona, Mississippi, jail after their bus stops there.
- June 11 – "The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door": Alabama Governor George Wallace stands in front of a schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop desegregation by the enrollment of two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. Wallace stands aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Alabama National Guard. Later in life, he apologizes for his opposition to racial integration.
- June 11 – President Kennedy makes his historic civil rights address, promising a bill to Congress the next week. About civil rights for "Negroes", in his speech, he asks for "the kind of equality of treatment which we would want for ourselves."
- June 12 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi. (His murderer is convicted in 1994.)[26]
- Summer – 80,000 blacks quickly register to vote in Mississippi by a test project to show their desire to participate in the political system.
- June 19 – President Kennedy sends Congress (H. Doc. 124, 88th Cong., 1st session.) his proposed Civil Rights Act.[27] White leaders in business and philanthropy gather at the Carlyle Hotel to raise initial funds for the Council on United Civil Rights Leadership
- August 28 – Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Northwest Baltimore County, Maryland is desegregated.
- August 28 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held. Martin Luther King Jr. gives his "I Have a Dream" speech.[28]
- September 10 – Birmingham, Alabama City Schools are integrated by National Guardsmen under orders from President Kennedy.
- September 15 – 16th Street Baptist Church bombing kills four young girls, killing of Johnny Robinson and Virgil Lamar Ware happened later that day in Birmingham . That same day, in response to the killings, James Bevel and Diane Nash begin the Alabama Project, which will later develop as the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
1964
- All year – The Alabama Voting Rights Project continues organizing led by James Bevel, Diane Nash, and James Orange. Although Bevel is SCLC's Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education, the organization itself is not yet participating.
- All year – Throughout Mississippi approximately fifty Freedom Libraries are established and run by librarian volunteers.[29]
- January 23 – Twenty-fourth Amendment abolishes the poll tax for Federal elections.
- March 30 – Hamilton v. Alabama, 376 U.S. 650 (1964), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that an African-American woman, Mary Hamilton, was entitled to be greeted with the same courteous forms of address which were customarily and solely reserved for whites in the Southern United States,[30] and that calling a black person by their first name in a formal context was "a form of racial discrimination".[31][32]
- April – The Chester school protests culminate in violent clashes with police in Chester, Pennsylvania.[33]
- Summer – Freedom Summer – movement for voter education and registration in the Mississippi. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was founded and elected an alternative slate of delegates for the national convention, as blacks are still officially disenfranchised.
- June 9 – Bloody Tuesday – peaceful marchers beaten, arrested, and tear-gassed by Tuscaloosa, Alabama, police on a peaceful march to the County Courthouse to protest whites-only restroom signs and drinking fountains
- June 21 – Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers disappear from Philadelphia, Mississippi, later to be found murdered and buried in an earthen dam.
- June 28 – Organization of Afro-American Unity is founded by Malcolm X, lasts until his death.
- July 2 – Civil Rights Act of 1964[34] signed, banning discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations.[35]
- August – Congress passes the Economic Opportunity Act which, among other things, provides federal funds for legal representation of Native Americans in both civil and criminal suits. This allows the ACLU and the American Bar Association to represent Native Americans in cases that later win them additional civil rights.
- August – The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates challenge the seating of all-white Mississippi representatives at the Democratic national convention.
- December 10 – King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person so honored.[36]
- December 14 – In Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Civil Rights Act of 1964.[34]
1965
- February 18 – After a peaceful nighttime protest march in Marion, Alabama, state troopers turn off the streetlights, break up the march, and one trooper shoots Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson dies on February 26. His death helped inspire the Selma to Montgomery marches. Though not prosecuted at the time, James Bonard Fowler is indicted for Jackson's murder in 2007.
- February 21 – Malcolm X is assassinated in Manhattan, New York, probably by three members of the Nation of Islam.
- March 7 – Bloody Sunday: Civil rights workers in Selma, Alabama, begin the Selma to Montgomery march but are attacked and stopped by a massive Alabama State trooper and police blockade as they cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge into Dallas County. Many marchers are seriously injured, including SNCC leader John Lewis and long-time major Selma activist Amelia Boynton. This march, initiated and organized by James Bevel, becomes the visual symbol of the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
- March 9 – Joined by clergy from all over the country who responded to his urgent appeals for reinforcements in Selma, King leads a second attempt to cross the Pettus Bridge. Although amassed law enforcement personnel are ordered to draw back when the protesters near the foot of the bridge on the other side, King responds by telling the marchers to turn around, and they return to Brown Chapel nearby. He thereby obeys a just-minted federal order prohibiting the group from walking the highway to Montgomery.[37]
- March 11 – Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who had heeded King's call for clergy to come to Selma, is beaten by Klansmen. Reeb dies of his injuries. Reeb's murder shocks the nation.[38]
- March 15 – President Lyndon Johnson uses the phrase "We Shall Overcome" in a speech before Congress to urge passage of the voting rights bill.[39]
- March 21 – Participants in the third and successful Selma to Montgomery march stepped off on a five-day 54-mile march to Montgomery, Alabama's capitol.
- March 25 – After the successful completion of the Selma to Montgomery March, and after King has delivered his "How Long, Not Long" speech on the steps of the state capitol, a white volunteer, Viola Liuzzo, is shot and killed by KKK members in Alabama, one of whom was an FBI informant.
- June 2 – Black deputy sheriff Oneal Moore is murdered in Varnado, Louisiana.
- July 2 – Equal Employment Opportunity Commission begins operations.
- August 6 – Voting Rights Act of 1965 is signed by President Johnson. It provides for federal oversight and enforcement of voter registration in states and individual voting districts with a history of discriminatory tests and underrepresented populations. It prohibits discriminatory practices preventing African Americans and other minorities from registering and voting, and electoral systems diluting their vote.[39]
- August 11–15 – Following the accusations of mistreatment and police brutality by the Los Angeles Police Department towards the city's African-American community, Watts riots erupt in South Central Los Angeles which last over five days. Over 34 are killed, 1,032 injured, 3,438 arrested, and cost over $40 million in property damage.
- September – Raylawni Branch and Gwendolyn Elaine Armstrong become the first African-American students to attend the University of Southern Mississippi.
- September 24 – President Johnson signs Executive Order 11246 requiring Equal Employment Opportunity by federal contractors.
1966
- January 10 – NAACP local chapter president Vernon Dahmer is injured by a bomb in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He dies the next day.
- June 5 – James Meredith begins a solitary March Against Fear from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. Shortly after starting, he is shot with a birdshot and injured. Civil rights leaders and organizations rally and continue the march leading to, on June 16, Stokely Carmichael first using the slogan Black power in a speech. Twenty-five thousand marchers entered the capital.
- June 10 – The murder of Ben Chester White led to the KKK being legally held responsible for one of its member's action.
- Summer – The Chicago Open Housing Movement, led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel[40][41] and Al Raby, includes a large rally, marches, and demands to Mayor Richard J. Daley and the City of Chicago which are discussed in a movement-ending Summit Conference.
- October – Black Panther Party founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
1967
- April 4 – King delivers "Beyond Vietnam" speech, calling for the defeat of "the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism".
- June 12 – In Loving v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that prohibiting interracial marriage is unconstitutional.
- In the trial of accused killers in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, the jury convicts 7 of 18 accused men. Conspirator Edgar Ray Killen is later convicted in 2005.
- June – August – Over 150 communities burn during the Long, Hot Summer of 1967. The largest and deadliest riots of the summer take place in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit with 26 fatalities reported in Newark and 43 people losing their lives in the Motor City.
- October 2 – Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.
1968
- February 1 – Two Memphis sanitation workers are killed in the line of duty, exacerbating labor tensions.
- February 8 – The Orangeburg Massacre occurs on the campus of South Carolina State College during a university protest in Orangeburg, South Carolina. This marked the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American university.
- February 12 – First day of the (wildcat) Memphis sanitation strike.
- April 3 – King returns to Memphis; delivers his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech in support of the workers.
- April 4 – Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee.
- April 4–8 and one in May 1968 – Riots break out in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Louisville, Kansas City, and more than 100 U.S. cities in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
- April 11 – Civil Rights Act of 1968 is signed. The Fair Housing Act is Title VIII of this Civil Rights Act, and bans discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. The law is passed following a series of Open Housing campaigns throughout the urban North, the most significant being the 1966 Chicago Open Housing Movement and the organized events in Milwaukee during 1967–68. In both cities, angry white mobs had attacked nonviolent protesters.[42][43]
- May 12 – Poor People's Campaign encamps on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for six weeks
- October 16 – In Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a black power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 meters.
- December 23 – In Powe v. Miles, a federal court holds that the portions of private colleges that are funded by public money are subject to the Civil Rights Act.
