20th Century

The Niagara Movement, led by W.E.B. DuBois and William M. Trotter, is the first significant black organized protest movement of the twentieth century in Buffalo, NY. It is an attempt by a small yet articulate group of radicals to challenge Booker T. Washington’s ideals of accommodation.

A bi-racial group of activist establishes the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in NYC. The founders, Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E. B. Dubois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villard (a descendant of William Lloyd Garrison) and William English Walling, make a renewed call for the struggle for civil and political liberty. DuBois becomes editor of the organization’s publication, Crisis Magazine, which presents exposes on conditions and issues in the black community.

Oscar DePriest (Illinois Republican) begins term in House of Representatives. He is the last black to serve in the House until the election of William Dawson in 1943.

Thurgood Marshall heads the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense efforts and works tireless to end segregation.

Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit,” a haunting song describing lynching. The song increases public recognition of lynching as racist terror.

President Truman issues Executive Order 9808, establishing the President’s Committee on Civil Rights to propose measures to strengthen and protect the civil rights.

Truman appoints to the Committee leading black civil rights activist, Sadie Alexander, the first black women to earn a PhD and an early leader in the Philadelphia Urban League.

General Assembly of the United Nations adopts Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Brown v. Board decision declares segregation in public schools illegal.

US military desegregate, by executive order.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference establishes and adopts nonviolent mass action as its cornerstone strategy to gain civil rights and opportunities for blacks. Working initially in the South under the leadership of Martin Luther King, by the mid 1960’s King enlarges the organization’s focus to address racism in the North.

Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail inspires a growing national civil rights movement. In Birmingham, the goal is to end the system of segregation completely in every aspect of public life (stores, no separate bathrooms and drinking fountains, etc.) and in job discrimination.

In Birmingham, a white man is seen placing a box containing a bomb under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church, a black congregation. The explosion kills four black girls attending Sunday school. Twenty-three others people are also injured in the blast.

Martin Luther King delivers his I Have a Dream Speech on the Washington Mall, which becomes an enduring symbol of King’s legacy and influence.

As Author Kent Garrett put it: “In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited an unprecedented eighteen “Negro” boys as an early form of affirmative action. Four years later [in 1963] they would graduate as African Americans.”

President Johnson announces the “Great Society” with “abundance and liberty for all”, and declares a “War on Poverty.”

Congress authorizes the Civil Rights Act, the most far-reaching legislation in U.S. history to ensure the right to vote, guarantee access to public accommodations, and the withdrawal of federal funds to any program administered in a discriminatory way.

Beginning this year, growing frustrations in black communities over urban decay and lack of opportunities erupts into a wave of race riots through U.S. cities, leaving many black urban neighborhoods in ruins.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Bussing African American children to white schools in white neighborhoods was deemed constitutional.

Slavery was gone but Jim Crow was alive.

Voting Rights Act is passed, authorizing direct federal intervention to enable blacks to vote.

Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.

Robert C. Weaver is appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He is the first black to hold a Cabinet position in U.S. history.

Edward Brooke (Massachusetts Republican) becomes the first black to serve in the Senate since Reconstruction.

Thurgood Marshall becomes the first black appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Martin Luther King is assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.

Congress authorizes the 1968 Civil Rights Act, providing federal enforcement provisions for discrimination in housing.