Civil Rights Movement: Landmark Events and Notable Activists

The American Civil Rights Movement was a series of protests, organized instances of civil disobedience, and other political actions that took place between roughly 1955 and 1965 to obtain equal rights for Black citizens in the United States. While the stakeholders in the movement were not monolithic, they largely shared a desire to see an end to racial segregation, increase federal protections for Black Americans in both everyday life and spheres of civic engagement, and dismantle of white supremacist institutions and racial discrimination.

The Civil Rights Movement was a counterreaction to the widespread dismissal of Black Americans’ fundamental human rights stretching back through US history to the era of slavery. More directly, it was a response to the restrictions many southern states placed on the rights of Black Americans following the post–Civil War era of Reconstruction.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution theoretically granted Black Americans (specifically Black men) equal protection under the law and the right to vote. However, state legislation known as Jim Crow laws curtailed Black Americans’ newly gained rights throughout the American South via measures like segregation, anti-miscegenation regulations, and literacy tests for voters.

Many of those measures received either implicit or explicit sanctions from federal courts. Most famously, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the US Supreme Court declared segregation allowable on the grounds that facilities for Black and white Americans were “separate but equal.”

The Civil Rights Movement was a far-reaching series of both disparate and coordinated actions. These are some of the most important events from the era:

1. 1. Montgomery Bus Boycott: In 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, a Black woman, refused to cede her seat on the bus to a white man despite a city law that reserved the front of the bus for white people. Parks’s arrest led to widespread outrage. Local clergy and Civil Rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., subsequently founded the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). The MIA-led Montgomery bus boycott eventually resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that desegregated nationwide bus seating.
2. 2. The Little Rock Nine: In 1957, Little Rock, Arkansas, solicited volunteers from all-Black schools to attend the all-white Central High School following the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education that mandated school desegregation. When nine Black students who signed up to attend the school faced violent resistance, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent federal troops to escort the students to and from school. The episode sent a message that the federal government would intervene to desegregate public schools if necessary.
3. 3. The Civil Rights Act of 1957: Eisenhower signed The Civil Rights Act of 1957, one of the first major civil rights laws. It created the prosecutorial framework to go after any bad actors who tried to prevent others from voting.
4. 4. Southern Christian Leadership Conference: In 1957, a group of activists, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to support actions for racial equality throughout the south.
5. 5. Lunch counter sit-ins: In 1960, four Black college students staged a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, leading to a boycott of all segregated lunch counters in the city until the owners of these places agreed to serve them. The resulting widespread action led to the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
6. 6. The Freedom Riders: In 1961, activists known as the Freedom Riders embarked on a bus tour of the American South as a means of forcing enforcement of Boynton v. Virginia, a Supreme Court decision that banned segregation on interstate transport. The activists faced violent resistance during their freedom rides. They were eventually arrested and convicted for trespassing, which lawyers for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) helped them overturn.
7. 7. The Birmingham Campaign: In 1963, the Birmingham Campaign engendered national sympathy for the movement by showing the world the brutal treatment activists and protesters received when they tried to push for equal rights. The work to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, was a proving ground for many of the tactics employed by the SCLC in other actions throughout the south.
8. 8. The March on Washington: On August 28, 1963, civil rights leaders including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin led the famous March on Washington, in which over 200,000 people pushed the federal government to act on discrimination and injustice against Black Americans. During the march, Dr. King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
9. 9. Freedom Summer: In 1964, white and Black activists undertook the Mississippi Summer Project, a voter registration initiative. While the group didn’t register many new voters, the murder of two of their volunteers by the Ku Klux Klan brought attention to their cause. It contributed to the growing push for voter protections on the federal level.
10. 10. The Civil Rights Act of 1964: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, continuing work begun by his predecessor, John F. Kennedy. The legislation banned discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin, and put limits on literacy tests in a major win for Black Americans and other minorities, who were often required to answer each test question correctly to be allowed to vote. It also established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as an employment discrimination watchdog.
11. 11. Selma to Montgomery March: On March 7, 1965, a group of protestors marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in response to the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, an unarmed Black man. The protestors were brutally beaten by police officers sent by Alabama Governor (and segregationist) George C. Wallace to stop the march.
12. 12. Voting Rights Act of 1965: President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which finally banned literacy tests and set up a framework for the federal government to look into suspicious voting regulations. This law would eventually lead the Supreme Court to rule poll taxes unconstitutional.
13. 13. The assassination of Malcolm X: On February 21, 1965, shooters assassinated former Nation of Islam leader and prominent human rights activist Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.
14. 14. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: On April 4, 1968, a gunman assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
15. 15. Fair Housing Act: Soon after King’s assassination, President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act of 1968, a civil rights bill that enacted protections to counteract housing discrimination.

While a holistic accounting of all of the people that contributed to the fight for racial equality would be impossible, here are some of the major players in the effort:

1. 1. A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979): Randolph’s threat to organize a march on Washington, DC, in 1941 prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue an executive order banning job discrimination in World War II defense industries. Randolph was a lifelong labor leader who helped organize the March on Washington in 1963.
2. 2. Bayard Rustin (1912–1987): A tireless fighter for civil rights, Bayard Rustin founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. and was one of the primary organizers of the March on Washington in 1963.
3. 3. Rosa Parks (1913–2005): Activist Rosa Parks’s civil disobedience in Montgomery, Alabama, was one of the first flashpoints of the Civil Rights Movement. While Parks is best known for initiating the Civil Rights Movement with her refusal to sit in the back of the bus, she also worked as the secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.
4. 4. Malcolm X (1925–1965): Commonly known for his maxim to achieve racial justice “by any means necessary,” Malcolm X was a civil rights activist and minister. He pushed for more direct confrontation with institutions of white supremacy and oppression.
5. 5. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968): Dr. King was one of the most prominent and prolific activists of the era, galvanizing and organizing action all over the American South.
6. 6. Bobby Seale (b.1936): Seale cofounded the Black Panther Party in 1966 with Huey Newton to protest police brutality. The group drew attention for its revolutionary attitude and was a frequent target of FBI espionage. The Party launched many community programs, including its Free Breakfast for Children Program, which the federal government eventually expanded nationwide.
7. 7. John Lewis (1940–2020): Lewis served as an SNCC chairman and led the Bloody Sunday protests. He was also one of the Freedom Riders and a speaker at the 1963 March. Lewis went on to represent Georgia in Congress from 1987 until his death.
8. 8. Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998): An activist and SNCC chairman, Carmichael coined the phrase “Black power” and was a seminal figure in the Black nationalist movement.
9. 9. Huey P. Newton (1942–1989): Newton cofounded the Black Panther Party in 1966 with Bobby Seale.

The famous figures of the Civil Rights Movement couldn’t have accomplished all they did without the backing of larger organizations, some of which continue their important work today.

1. 1. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909): Founded in 1909, the NAACP continues to bring lawsuits to expose and rectify inequality and discrimination. The NAACP has had an enormous impact on the desegregation of public facilities and institutions and the passage of numerous pieces of civil rights legislation.
2. 2. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957): The SCLC is most famous for its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and was an essential organ of support for local groups throughout the south attempting to mobilize support for racial equality.
3. 3. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1960): SNCC participated in and organized numerous actions throughout the Civil Rights era, energizing young people to join in the fight.

While the Civil Rights Movement didn’t end racism or discrimination in America, it did lead to the creation of tools and institutions that made fighting those forces more possible than ever. It also created a generation of political leaders (like John Lewis) who spent the rest of their lives defending the progress made during the Civil Rights era and expanding the protections put in place at the time.

The methods of nonviolent protest popularized during the Civil Rights Movement continue to influence activism in America today across numerous causes but especially in the ongoing fight for racial justice. Mass movements, like Black Lives Matter, use many strategies activists employed during the Civil Rights era, like sit-ins and mass demonstrations.

There’s a lot of information that history textbooks don’t cover, including the ways in which systems of inequality continue to impact everyday life. With the MasterClass Annual Membership, get access to exclusive lessons from Angela Davis, Dr. Cornel West, Jelani Cobb, John McWhorter, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Sherrilyn Ifill to learn about the forces that have influenced race in the United States.