Civil Rights Movement Timeline
This 1954 Supreme Court case overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and declared “separate but equal” unconstitutional in public schools
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This 1964 law banned discrimination in public accommodations and employment.
What is the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
This Nova Scotia community founded by Black Loyalists in 1784 later became a National Historic Site.
What is Birchtown ?
This organization was founded in 1966 in Oakland to monitor police activity.
What is the Black Panther Party?
This Harlem Renaissance poet wrote The Weary Blues.
Who is Langston Hughes?
The 1955–1956 boycott of buses in this Alabama city lasted 381 days.
What is Montgomery?
This 1965 law eliminated literacy tests and allowed federal oversight of elections
What is the Voting Rights Act of 1965?
This 1946 incident at a movie theatre in New Glasgow challenged segregation in Canada.
What is the arrest of Viola Desmond ?
This SNCC leader popularized the phrase “Black Power” in 1966.
Who is Stokely Carmichael?
This 2018 Marvel film became a cultural milestone for Afrofuturism.
What is Black Panther?
This 1961 campaign tested enforcement of desegregation in interstate bus travel.
What were the Freedom Rides?
This amendment, ratified in 1870, granted Black men the right to vote (though later undermined).
What is the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution?
This Halifax community was demolished in the 1960s in the name of “urban renewal.”
What is Africville?
This 1967 Supreme Court case struck down laws banning interracial marriage.
What is Loving v. Virginia?
This athlete’s 1968 Olympic protest in Mexico City raised gloved fists during the medal ceremony.
Who is Tommie Smith?
Televised violence during 1965 voting rights marches in this Alabama city became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
What is Selma?
This Supreme Court case upheld segregation in 1896 before being overturned decades later.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This civil rights activist helped establish the Ontario Black History Society in 1978.
Who is Jean Augustine?
This FBI program targeted Black activists and organizations during the 1960s and 70s.
What is COINTELPRO?
This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Toni Morrison explores the trauma of slavery.
What is Beloved?
This 1968 event in Memphis followed King’s support of striking sanitation workers.
What is the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.?
This 2013 Supreme Court case weakened key provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
What is Shelby County v. Holder?
This 1793 act in Upper Canada limited slavery and laid groundwork for abolition.
What is the Act Against Slavery ?
This 1972 political convention in Indiana brought together thousands to develop a national Black agenda.
What is the National Black Political Convention?
This 1619 arrival in Virginia marks one of the first recorded arrivals of enslaved Africans in English North America.
What happened at Point Comfort?