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Civil Rights Timeline

Step 1 – students read description and write it in their own words.

Step 2 – Match description to picture.

Step 3 – present events and take notes

Step 4 – generalize or make a comment, question, connection…

The first Africans are brought to the state of Virginia as slaves. Slaves are the property of their owners. Slaves will not be able to learn to read or write or own guns. If a child is born to a female slave, that child will be a slave, too. African Americans (free or slaves) would not be allowed to be citizens of the United States until 1868.

The Declaration of Independence is signed and approved. This document says that the land owned by England (called the British colonies) were now independent states and no longer a part of England. It contains this famous sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Translation: all men are created equal and they have certain rights that can never be taken away. Some of those rights are life, freedom, and trying to find happiness.

Bill of Rights is approved. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments, or changes, to the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the USA describes all the laws of this country. The Bill of Rights are additions or changes to the main law and describe freedoms that people living in the United States should have, like freedom to practice whatever religion they choose, to speak freely, to have the right to privacy in your home (no one can come and search your home without a warrant or permission from a judge), to have a fair, public trial in a court, etc.

Nat Turner's Rebellion. Turner and 70 blacks, both free and slaves, went from house to house, freeing slaves and killed whites. They used knives, hatchets, and axes in order to keep their rebellion quiet. Turner and his rebellion were defeated by a group of white men with guns. Overall, Turner's rebellion killed fifty-five white men, women, and children.

The Underground Railroad was the term used to describe a network of persons who helped escaped slaves on their way to freedom in the northern states or Canada. The most famous "conductor," an escaped slave named Harriet Tubman, reportedly made nineteen return trips to the South; she helped some three hundred slaves escape. A number of individual whites also helped runaway slaves.

The Civil War Begins. States in the South and the North had been disagreeing over the issue of slavery. States in the South generally wanted slavery. Then, when Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States in 1860, the southern states secede, or leave, the United States. The North and the South fought each other in this Civil War over whether or not the South should be allowed to leave the United States and whether it is ok for slavery to exist. Around this time, there are about 4,441,830 people of African ancestry. 3,953,760 were slaves and 488,070 free.

The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by the states – it says that slavery is illegal. Slaves are now free.

The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution was approved. The amendment gives citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" which included former slaves who had just been freed after the Civil War. It said a state could not prevent someone from having "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." This means that you have to have a trial before someone can take away your life, freedom, or property and the laws have to be used fairly and apply to all people in the same way.

15th Amendment to the United States Constitution was approved. This law finally gave African Americans the right to vote. It states that, "the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Although the law said this, it took almost 100 more years and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 for all African Americans to be able to vote. Racist governments would try to keep African Americans from voting by making them pay a tax, pass a reading test, or scaring them with the use of violence. Note that the 15th amendment makes no mention of sex. It was not until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that women were actually given the vote.

Plessy v. Ferguson – Supreme Court Case. 30-year-old Homer Plessy was put in jail sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. Although Plessy’s lawyer said that under the 14th Amendment his client should be treated equally and separate seats for blacks was wrong, the judges in the Supreme Court did not agree. The Supreme Court said that it was ok to separate blacks and whites, as long as they were given equal treatment and things. This court case created the “separate but equal” rule that would be legal until 1954.

Jim Crow Laws. The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments gave African Americans more freedom and rights. In response to this, racist white voters and representatives in many states passed laws to separate black and white people and to keep African Americans from having power in society. These laws were called "Jim Crow" laws, after a racist character from a popular play. Most of the Jim Crow Laws were passed in states in the South. Here are pictures of signs that told people to separate.

The NAACP is formed. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was created partly in response to the horrific practice of lynching and the 1908 race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Appalled at the violence that was committed against blacks, a group of white liberals held a meeting to discuss racial justice. 60 people joined the group and 7 of them were African American, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett. The goals of the NAACP were to “ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of minority group citizens of United States and eliminate race prejudice.”

Brown v. Board of Education – Supreme Court Case. This court case said that racial segregation (separation) of children in public schools went against the 14th Amendment and was not constitution or legal. It would take years for schools to integrate, or teach black, white and Latino students all together, but this court case helped end the idea of “separate but equal” that had been in place since 1896.

Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his “I Have a Dream Speech.” In 1957, the activist and minister Martin Luther King, Jr. created an organized called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to help African Americans get equality in the United States. He believed in using non-violence strategies to racism. He organized protests and boycotts to help the world understand the inequality that African Americans faced in the United States and he put pressure on governmental leaders to pass laws to end inequality. He gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. at a huge protest to demand jobs and freedom for African Americans.

Civil Rights Act of _______________. This law, signed by President Kennedy, gave the federal government more power to end segregated schools and end segregation and unequal treatment in public places like restaurants and businesses. It said that companies had to be fair when hiring people and could not discriminate against employees based on race or sex.

Jackie Robinson Breaks the “Color Barrier”.

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when the Brooklyn Dodgers started him at first base on April 15, 1947. As the first major league team to play a black man since the 1880s, the Dodgers ended racial segregation that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades. The example of Robinson's character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.

The Great Migration – this is the name for when more than 6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to the cities of the North, Midwest and West. It had a huge impact on urban life in the United States. Driven from their homes by the lack of job opportunities and racism, many blacks headed north to find jobs, as there were many factory jobs during World War I. As Chicago, New York and other cities saw their black populations increase very quickly, African American migrants were forced to deal with poor working conditions and competition for living space, as well as widespread racism and prejudice. During the Great Migration, African Americans began to build a new place for themselves in public life, actively working against economic, political and social challenges and creating a new black urban culture.

1619

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1831

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1865

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Note: emancipation means “being set free” or given freedom.

July 4, 1776

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1791

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1861

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1868

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1870

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1880s to 1960s

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1896

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1909

1963

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1954

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Note: “ban” means to prohibit, or stop from happening

“segregation” means the separation of different people

Early to mid-1800s

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1947

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1916-1970s

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