Timeline: 1920s
1921
Quota Act
The Quota Act limited immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The number of immigrants from different countries allowed to enter the USA was fixed at 3% per year of the total number of people from each different nationality group living in the USA, in 1910.
1921
Membership of the Ku Klux Klan reached its peak
Klan membership reached as many as four to eight million between 1923 and 1924. Members included state governors, senators, judges, sheriffs and members of police forces. In the South, Black Americans were subject to beating, lynching, mutilation and murder. Members of the KKK also hated Catholics, Jews, socialists and communists.
Timeline: 1930s
1931
The Scottsboro Boys
Two white girls in Scottsboro, Alabama, accused nine Black American youths of rape. The youths were tried and found guilty by an all-white jury. Eight were sentenced to death and the ninth given life imprisonment because he was only 13 years old. Later, one of the girls admitted she’d been lying. After six years of appeals and retrials, the charges against five of the youths were dropped.
1932
Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) elected President
The Great Depression left huge numbers of people unemployed and living in poverty. Roosevelt’s New Deal aimed to create jobs. Opportunities were provided for Black Americans, but there was still plenty of discrimination. For example, the minimum wage for Black Americans was lower than for whites. But trade unions gave Black American workers an increased awareness of their civil rights.
Timeline: 1940s
1941
Pearl Harbor
The Japanese air force attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The USA declared war on Japan and its allies, and fought in World War Two (1939-1945) as an ally of the UK.
1942
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) formed
CORE pioneered the use of non-violent protest as a civil rights strategy. In 1943 a group of CORE members carried out their first sit-in at a Chicago restaurant that refused to serve Black Americans. In 1947, CORE sponsored a Journey of Reconciliation through some states in the South to test compliance with a Supreme Court decision banning segregation on inter-state transportation. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, CORE concentrated its efforts on voter-registration drives in Southern states.
1947
Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers
In 1947, the Black American baseball player Jackie Robinson left the Negro National League to join the previously whites-only Brooklyn Dodgers team in the National Baseball League. Within ten years all major US baseball teams had at least one Black American player.
Timeline: 1950s
1954
Brown v Topeka Board of Education case
In 1950, seven year old Linda Brown had to walk a mile across railway tracks to catch a bus to a blacks-only elementary school five miles away. Linda’s father had tried to enrol his daughter in the whites-only school near their home but was refused because there was a ‘separate but equal’ school for Black Americans. The NAACP supported Mr Brown in his legal battle against the school board. The case went to the Supreme Court in Washington D.C., which ruled that schools segregated by race were unconstitutional.
1955
Emmett Till murdered
Emmett Till was a 14 year old Black American boy from Chicago who was murdered while on holiday in Mississippi. Emmett was kidnapped, beaten and shot by two white men who believed that he had been rude to the wife of one of the men. Emmett’s mother allowed photographs of his mutilated body to be published to bring public attention to the horrific racist attack on her son. Both men were put on trial but found not guilty by an all-white jury.
1955
Martin Luther King became the leader of the MIA
Martin Luther King was minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery when Rosa Parks was arrested. He was surprised to be elected leader of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) since he hadn’t been involved in local politics or civil rights campaigns. As a result of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King took part in many marches and demonstrations. His speeches and written works inspired other civil rights leaders and he became famous throughout the world.
1957
Southern Christian Leadership Conference formed
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed to encourage and coordinate non-violent civil rights protests in the South. The SCLC supported Black American boycotts in other cities, similar to the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Then the SCLC focused its efforts on an unsuccessful campaign to double the number of Black Americans registered to vote in the South.
Timeline: 1960s
1960
Formation of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee
By October 1960 the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) had organised sit-ins in 112 towns and cities. Other non-violent protests included wade-ins at segregated swimming pools and beaches, stand-ins at segregated theatres and cinemas, and pray-ins at segregated churches.
1963
Civil rights demonstrations took place in Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham, Alabama, was the most important industrial city in the South. Martin Luther King agreed to lead a campaign against shops and businesses in the city that refused to desegregate their restaurants, changing rooms, toilets and water fountains. The campaign also planned to target businesses that did not hire Black Americans, or wouldn’t promote them to positions of responsibility.
1964
Civil rights demonstrations in Selma, Alabama
Jimmie Lee Jackson was an activist who encouraged other Black Americans to register to vote. When he was murdered in Alabama, Martin Luther King and others organised a protest march. As marchers tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, they were attacked by mounted police. TV reports showed the unarmed demonstrators being beaten and tear-gassed. Two days later, state troopers again blocked the way. The march was only completed when the President ordered the National Guard to protect the protestors.
1965
Malcolm X murdered in New York
In March 1964, Malcolm X resigned from the Nation of Islam and announced that he was going to set up his own temple in New York to tackle issues facing all Black Americans, whether or not they had adopted Islam. He then made a pilgrimage to Mecca. On his return to the USA he set up the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). The OAAU had less than 1,000 members when he was shot and killed. His killers were alleged to have been connected to the Nation of Islam.
1965
Voting Rights Act passed
In many states white racists made sure that few Black Americans could vote. When Black Americans had attempted to register to vote, literacy tests and other obstacles that did not apply to white voters were used to exclude them. The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and other obstacles to Black Americans being able to register to vote. Within five years of the Act being passed, 60% of Black Americans had registered to vote in the American South, compared to only 20% in 1960.
1965
The Watts Riots took place in Los Angeles, California
Many Black Americans began to reject the non-violence of the Southern-based civil rights movement. In the spring and summer months of every year from 1964 to 1968 there were riots in the Black American ghettos of almost every major American city. These riots often were sparked off by acts or even rumours of police brutality.
1968
Martin Luther King murdered in Memphis, Tennessee
In March 1968, Rev King went to Memphis, Tennessee to support Black American workers on strike. However, a demonstration publicising the strikers’ case ended with gang members and other Black American youths smashing windows and looting shops. King stayed on in Memphis, despite many death threats. He was shot dead by a lone white gunman (James Earl Ray) as he stood on his room balcony in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King’s violent death sparked off riots in Black American ghettos across the USA.
