1960

1969

Summer
By the summer of 1969, more than 800,000 black voters are registered in the states covered by the Voting Rights Acts. Black registration has increased from 20% of the voting age population to 56%. In Mississippi alone, 60% of the black voting-age population is registered.

June
The Stonewall riots erupt on the 27th, marking the beginning of the gay rights movement.

1968

Approximately 13% of black students in the country attend predominantly white schools. By 1980, the percentage rises to 37%. The percentage of white students attending predominantly white schools drops from 78% in 1968 to 61% in 1980.

In 1968, 64.3% of black students attend schools that are 90% minority.

Almost 85% of Southern whites and 35% of Northern whites object to sending their children to schools that are over 50% black.

1967

June
In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), the Supreme Court strikes down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. It holds that all racial classifications are to be subjected to the “most rigid scrutiny.” This test of “strict scrutiny” means that a classification is almost always unconstitutional.

1966

March
In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court holds that state governments May not impose poll taxes in state elections.

1965

The Philadelphia Plan, the first federal affirmative action program, begins under the aegis of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC) in the Department of Labor. By September 1967, the Department of Labor informs all federal agencies that they must abide by the Philadelphia Plan, causing hostility among labor unions as well as contractors.

February
On the 21st, Malcolm X is assassinated.

1964

More than 99.5% of black students in the South, excluding Texas and Tennessee, still attend all-black schools. Only 2.3% of black students throughout the country attend predominantly white schools.

January
Congress passes the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which prohibits the states from imposing poll taxes as a condition for voting in elections for federal offices. It is ratified by the states the same year.

1963

According to a poll by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 65% of whites believe in the principle of integration.

January
At his inauguration as Governor of Alabama, George Wallace states: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny … and I say … Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

1962

August
Justice Felix Frankfurter retires from the Supreme Court and is replaced by Arthur J. Goldberg, solidifying a liberal majority on the Warren Court.

September
Federal marshals escort James Meredith to the University of Mississippi to register. Riots break out at Ole Miss on September 30th in response to Meredith’s matriculation, killing two people and wounding scores of others.

1961

May
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins the Freedom Rides to integrate interstate bus routes throughout the South. Riders are met by angry white mobs and one bus is stoned and firebombed. The Freedom Riders are repeatedly jailed. By November the Interstate Commerce Commission prohibits interstate bus companies from using segregated facilities.

1960

Congress passes 18 U.S.C. �1509, making the obstruction of federal court desegregation orders a crime.

1960

Congress passes 18 U.S.C. �1509, making the obstruction of federal court desegregation orders a crime.

February
On the 1st, four freshmen from all-black North Carolina A&T College sit down at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, vowing to stay until the management agrees to desegregate it. No one serves them, and the store closes half an hour early. Eventually, lunch counter sit-ins take place across the state as well as in other parts of the South. The sit-in eventually becomes a vital tactic for civil rights protesters. A new organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), grows out of the sit-ins.

November
John F. Kennedy is elected President.

December
In Boynton v. Virginia, 364 U.S. 454 (1960), the Supreme Court holds that a black patron of a restaurant located in an interstate bus terminal has a federal statutory right to be served without discrimination.

May
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins the Freedom Rides to integrate interstate bus routes throughout the South. Riders are met by angry white mobs and one bus is stoned and firebombed. The Freedom Riders are repeatedly jailed. By November the Interstate Commerce Commission prohibits interstate bus companies from using segregated facilities.

August
Justice Felix Frankfurter retires from the Supreme Court and is replaced by Arthur J. Goldberg, solidifying a liberal majority on the Warren Court.

September
Federal marshals escort James Meredith to the University of Mississippi to register. Riots break out at Ole Miss on September 30th in response to Meredith’s matriculation, killing two people and wounding scores of others.

According to a poll by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 65% of whites believe in the principle of integration.

January
At his inauguration as Governor of Alabama, George Wallace states: “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny … and I say … Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

April
Civil rights protesters led by Martin Luther King, Jr. begin boycotts, sit-ins, and demonstrations in Birmingham�perhaps the South’s most segregated city. On April 10th, the Birmingham protesters are dispersed by police dogs in a violent scene televised across the country. King is arrested and jailed for a week. He issues his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, explaining why civil disobedience is justified. King is released from jail on April 20th.

May
King organizes the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham. On the 2nd, he sends some 1000 children from the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on a demonstration march through downtown Birmingham. The police promptly arrest them and take them off to jail. The next day, hundreds of students assemble at the church for another march. Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor orders firemen to turn high-pressure hoses on the protesters, and policemen confront the students with attack dogs. Over 2000 protesters are thrown in jail, and many are knocked unconscious by the fire hoses. Protesters begin throwing stones and police respond by beating them with night sticks; the protests escalate into ever-more violent confrontations. Photographers and cameramen capture the treatment of the protesters on film, and the resulting outrage sways public sympathies further toward the Civil Rights Movement. By May 10th, the Mayor of Birmingham and local business men agree to the eventual desegregation of public facilities.

In Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U.S. 526 (1963), the Supreme Court rejects the City of Memphis’ request for a delay in desegregating its facilities. The Court writes, “Brown never contemplated that the concept of �deliberate speed’ would countenance indefinite delay in elimination of racial barriers in schools.”

June
On the 11th, Governor George Wallace tries to stop two black students from entering Alabama’s state university by standing in the doorway.

On the 12th, Medgar Evers, a field secretary for the NAACP, is murdered in Jackson, Mississippi.

August
On the 28th, two hundred fifty thousand demonstrators participate in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, gathering at the Lincoln Memorial. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

September
Governor George Wallace fights a court desegregation order and delays the opening of Alabama public schools. President Kennedy federalizes the Alabama National Guard to enforce the admission of black students.

On the 15th, Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist church is bombed, killing four young black girls attending Sunday school.

November
On the 22nd, President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.

More than 99.5% of black students in the South, excluding Texas and Tennessee, still attend all-black schools. Only 2.3% of black students throughout the country attend predominantly white schools.

January
Congress passes the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which prohibits the states from imposing poll taxes as a condition for voting in elections for federal offices. It is ratified by the states the same year.

May
In Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, 377 U.S. 218 (1964), the Supreme Court holds that closing the public schools in Prince Edward County and appropriating public money to support private, segregated education violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

June
The Mississippi Freedom Summer Project begins. Hundreds of student volunteers from across the country move into black neighborhoods in Mississippi to encourage voter registration. On June 21, three civil rights workers� James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner� are reported missing. Their bodies are later discovered in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

July
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and President Johnson signs it on the 2nd. The Act outlaws race and gender discrimination in voting, public accommodations, and employment. Title VI, which prohibits discrimination in education, becomes a major tool of desegregation efforts.

November
Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Barry Goldwater in the presidential election by a margin of 16 million votes. The black vote overwhelmingly supports Johnson and signals the beginning of a fundamental realignment in American politics. Most blacks shift their allegiance to the Democratic party, and over the next thirty years the white South becomes increasingly Republican.

December
On the 4th, President Johnson issues an executive order prohibiting discrimination in federal aid programs.

On the 7th, in McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964), the Supreme Court strikes down a criminal statute that punishes cohabitation by interracial couples more severely than cohabitation by persons of the same race.

On the 10th, Martin Luther King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

On the 14th, the Supreme Court upholds Congress’s power to pass Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964) and Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964).

The Philadelphia Plan, the first federal affirmative action program, begins under the aegis of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC) in the Department of Labor. By September 1967, the Department of Labor informs all federal agencies that they must abide by the Philadelphia Plan, causing hostility among labor unions as well as contractors.

February
On the 21st, Malcolm X is assassinated.

March
On “Bloody Sunday,” March 7th, six hundred demonstrators gather at the Edmund Pettus Bridge to begin a four day march from Selma to Montgomery to petition Governor Wallace for black voting rights. After the protesters cross the Pettus bridge, Alabama state troopers are unleashed on them, leading to one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights struggles. Sympathy marches occur across the country over the next few days. On the 15th, President Johnson sends a voting rights bill to Congress.

August
On the 6th, President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On the 11th, riots break out in Watts, California.

September
Congress passes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, 20 U.S.C. ��1861 et. seq., giving the federal government the ability to enforce compliance with court desegregation orders by threatening to withhold federal funding. This threat proves vital to producing genuine desegregation in the South.

March
In Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966), the Supreme Court holds that state governments May not impose poll taxes in state elections.

Summer
Stokey Charmichael ousts John Lewis as the head of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Radical separatist black activists, such as Carmichael, Hubert “Rapp” Brown, who replaced Carmichael as the head of SNCC in 1967, and the soon-to-be founders of the Black Panthers Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, begin overtly challenging Martin Luther King’s leadership of the movement and his non-violent principles. The civil rights movement splinters from within. Black radicals reject integrationist strategies and call for a return to black control of local school districts in black neighborhoods under the banner of “black power.”

October
The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, D.C., with Betty Friedan as its first president.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland, California.

December
In United States v. Jefferson County Bd. of Education, 372 F.2d 836 (5th Cir. 1966), Judge Minor Wisdom orders New Orleans school districts to abandon “freedom of choice” plans that have consistently failed to desegregate schools. The court orders the city to “undo the harm” of past desegregation by racially balancing the schools, using guidelines issued by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).

June
In Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), the Supreme Court strikes down Virginia’s ban on interracial marriages. It holds that all racial classifications are to be subjected to the “most rigid scrutiny.” This test of “strict scrutiny” means that a classification is almost always unconstitutional.

On the 13th, President Johnson nominates Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. He takes his seat in October, becoming the first African-American Justice of the Supreme Court. It turns out to be the last Supreme Court appointment the Democrats will make for 27 years.

July
Race riots erupt in cities across the country, including Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Newark. President Johnson forms a National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (The Kerner Commission) to investigate the causes of the riots in the urban centers. The Commission issues its report on March 1, 1968, warning that the nation is rapidly moving toward two separate societies� -one black and poor, the other affluent and white. It calls for major anti-poverty efforts and strengthened civil rights enforcement to eliminate the causes of the disorders.

Approximately 13% of black students in the country attend predominantly white schools. By 1980, the percentage rises to 37%. The percentage of white students attending predominantly white schools drops from 78% in 1968 to 61% in 1980.

In 1968, 64.3% of black students attend schools that are 90% minority.

Almost 85% of Southern whites and 35% of Northern whites object to sending their children to schools that are over 50% black.

A group of parents in San Antonio, Texas file a suit on behalf of their children who attend schools in the Edgewood district, alleging that the Texas system of public school financing discriminates against the poor. The Edgewood districts spends $231 per student and has one of the highest tax rates in the area, while the city’s wealthiest school district, Alamo Heights, is able to spend $543 per student with a substantially lower tax rate. The Supreme Court eventually upholds the state financing scheme in 1973 in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).

April
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on the 4th. Riots break out in cities all over the country.

Congress passes the Fair Housing Act, also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1968, on the 10th. President Johnson signs it on the 11th. The Act makes it unlawful to refuse to sell, rent, or negotiate for the sale or rental of a dwelling because of race or religion. Only the Justice Department is authorized to enforce the Act’s provisions through lawsuits.

May
In Green v. New Kent County School Board, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), the Supreme Court holds that segregation must be dismantled “root and branch.” It rejects a freedom-of-choice plan that allowed black students to transfer to white schools because it placed the burden of desegregation on black students and preserved white- and black- identified institutions. School officials, the Court says, must “fashion steps which promise realistically to convert promptly to a system without a �white’ school and a �Negro’ school, but just schools.”

June
Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated in Los Angeles on the 6th.

On the 23d, Earl Warren retires as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. President Johnson nominates Associate Justice Abe Fortas to replace Warren as Chief Justice, but Senate opposition and allegations of financial impropriety lead Johnson to withdraw the nomination in October. Fortas resigns from the Court a year later amid financial scandal. The failed nomination leaves the Republicans with two appointments and signals the end of the liberal majority on the Supreme Court. Warren Burger becomes Chief Justice in June 1969, and after two failed nomination attempts, Richard Nixon replaces Fortas with Harry Blackmun in April 1970.

November
Richard Nixon wins the Presidency, receiving 43.4 % of the vote. Democrat Hubert Humphrey wins 42.7% of the vote, and George Wallace wins 13.5% as a third party candidate. The Democrats maintain their majority in the House of Representatives. A record number of black men and women are elected to Congress.

As president, Nixon shifts the emphasis away from the cutting off of federal funds to coerce desegregation and toward Justice Department sponsored lawsuits. Throughout his presidency, Nixon repeatedly attacks busing as a remedy and states that he will do no more than the minimum required by law. He even proposes a constitutional amendment to prohibit busing to achieve racial balance in the public schools.

Summer
By the summer of 1969, more than 800,000 black voters are registered in the states covered by the Voting Rights Acts. Black registration has increased from 20% of the voting age population to 56%. In Mississippi alone, 60% of the black voting-age population is registered.

June
The Stonewall riots erupt on the 27th, marking the beginning of the gay rights movement.

July
The Department of Justice and HEW announce that strict compliance with timetables for integration will be dropped. The Nixon Administration files a motion in the Supreme Court to delay integration throughout the country. The Court denies the motion, but Nixon announces that he does not feel obligated to do any more than the minimum required by law. At Nixon’s direction, HEW Secretary Robert Finch asks the federal courts to delay desegregation measures for 33 school districts in Mississippi. A unanimous Supreme Court rejects the request in October in Alexander v. Holmes, 396 U.S. 19 (1969), unanimously declaring that Brown II’s “all deliberate speed” time frame has expired and that desegregated schools must therefore be achieved “at once.”

November
The Nixon administration expands federal affirmative action. The Department of Labor’s Order No. 4 declares that government contractors should set their own minority hiring targets but that the targets must be equal to the “minority ratio of the local applicant population.” In February, the Department issues a revised order, requiring all government contractors to file an affirmative action program within 120 days of signing a contract.

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