U.S. History Timeline: Civil War to Civil Rights, 1860–1970s

Posted on Feb 2, 2026 in History

Unit 7: Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow Era

The Road to the Civil War

• Kansas-Nebraska
  • 1850s: continual debate over the future of the western territories — free or slave states?
  • Compromise of 1850: California became a free state, but the Mexican cession (Utah & New Mexico territories) would be decided by popular sovereignty — people in the territory decide by vote.
  • The South wanted popular sovereignty to decide the future of the Kansas & Nebraska territories.

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

• Drafted by Stephen A. Douglas (Democratic senator from Illinois); needed Southern votes to build a transcontinental railroad and organize the Nebraska territory.
• Douglas proposed popular sovereignty to decide whether slavery would be allowed in the Nebraska territory, overturning the Missouri Compromise line.
• The act prompted conflict as pro- and anti-slavery activists moved to Kansas to influence the vote, leading to fraud and violence.
• 1856: violent clashes between factions; some historians consider these the first violent acts leading to the Civil War.

John Brown

• May 1856: pro-slavery men attacked the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas.
• In revenge, abolitionist John Brown attacked a pro-slavery settlement; Kansas became known as “Bleeding Kansas.”
• October 1859: Brown attempted to seize the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). He was captured, convicted of treason, and hanged — seen by many Northerners as an anti-slavery hero.

Abraham Lincoln

• Born 1809 in Kentucky (a slave state). 16th U.S. President (1861–1865). Led the country through the Civil War; assassinated in 1865.
• Represented the moderate anti-slavery position held by many Whigs and later Republicans before the war.
• As a Whig from a free state, Lincoln was anti-slavery but not an abolitionist; in 1837 he signed a protest in the Illinois legislature declaring that slavery is “founded on both injustice and bad policy” while cautioning against abolitionist tactics that might increase harm.
• Supported the American Colonization Society; early supporters of colonization proposed freed Black Americans emigrate to Liberia.
• 1846: elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
• 1856: joined the Republican Party (founded 1854 by antislavery Whigs, antislavery Democrats, and Free Soilers).
• Political goal: keep slavery out of the territories to protect white labor (“free land, free labor”).
• 1858: Republican candidate for U.S. Senate; delivered the famous speech “A House Divided”: “A house divided against itself cannot stand… This government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.” He argued the nation would become all one thing or the other.
• Pointed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) and the Dred Scott decision (1857) as evidence that the nation was influenced by the interests of slavery.
• Lost the 1858 Senate election to Stephen A. Douglas but gained national prominence from their debates.

The Election of 1860

• Democratic Party split between Northern and Southern wings, nominating Stephen A. Douglas (Northern Democrat) and John Breckinridge (Southern Democrat).
• Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln.
• The Constitutional Union Party (Southern Whigs) nominated John Bell.
• Lincoln lost the popular vote in some areas but won an Electoral College majority; Southern states began to secede.
• Lincoln insisted slavery must be banned in the territories but was not an abolitionist. He interpreted the 10th Amendment to mean the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed.
• First Inaugural Address (1861): “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.”
• Many in the South feared slavery would be abolished under Lincoln; with his election, Southern secession accelerated. Abolishing slavery nationally would have required a constitutional amendment opposed by many slave states.

The Civil War (1861–1865)

• Border slave states Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware remained loyal to the Union.
• 1863: West Virginia separated to become a new state for those who wanted to remain in the Union.
• The Civil War is the deadliest conflict in U.S. history, with more deaths than all other U.S. wars combined.
• Lincoln originally declared war to preserve the Union; the goal later included abolition of slavery as a war aim.
• Economic factors: Union advances disrupted Southern labor as enslaved people escaped, depriving the Confederacy of labor and resources.
• Harriet Tubman served as a Union spy and guide, helping to liberate enslaved African Americans.
• January 1863: Emancipation Proclamation declared the freedom of enslaved people in the Confederacy as a war measure.
• 54th Massachusetts Infantry: one of the first Black Union regiments; recruited and supported by figures such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany. Led the attack on Fort Wagner (July 1863); Black soldiers challenged racism through combat performance.
• 20,000–30,000 Native Americans fought in the war, siding with either the Union or the Confederacy; their choices affected later federal treatment.
• July 1863: Battle of Gettysburg marked a turning point toward Northern victory; Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (Nov. 1863) became one of the nation’s most famous speeches.
• Lincoln re-elected in 1864 (Republicans formed the National Union Party and chose Democrat Andrew Johnson as running mate).
• Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865.

Lincoln’s Assassination (1865)

• War effectively ended with the Confederate surrender on April 9, 1865.
• April 14, 1865: Lincoln and his wife attended Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.; John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shot the president.

Reconstruction (1865–1877)

• Nation-building and rebuilding after the war, especially in the South: new laws, political institutions, and social structures.
• Congress passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to protect former enslaved people; these protections were contested by white Southern elites seeking to preserve white supremacy.
• Reconstruction was enforced through legislation and military occupation in the South.
• December 1865: the 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime.
• Conflict within the federal government: Republican-controlled Congress supported Black rights, while President Andrew Johnson (a Southern Democrat and Unionist) favored leniency toward returning Confederate states.
• Congress argued that freedom alone was insufficient; the Freedmen’s Bureau (1865) was created to assist formerly enslaved people by providing food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, schools, and resolving labor disputes. The Bureau tried, but largely failed, to redistribute land to freed people.
• President Johnson vetoed renewal of the Freedmen’s Bureau charter in 1866; Congress overrode his veto.
• 1867: Congress dissolved many Southern state governments and imposed direct military rule; states were required to ratify the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments before rejoining the Union.
• Southern resentment grew against “carpetbaggers” (Northern Republicans who took office in the South) and against African Americans whose rights were enforced by federal power.
• 1868: 14th Amendment secured civil rights by broadening citizenship and guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
• 1870: 15th Amendment secured voting rights by prohibiting denial of the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude (but it did not extend voting rights to women).
• Following the 15th Amendment, around 700 African-American men held public office, including seats in Southern state legislatures and in the U.S. Congress.

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

• Prominent abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and writer. Before and after the Civil War, she fought for Black rights and women’s rights as a common cause.
• Spoke at the 1866 National Women’s Rights Convention and helped found the American Equal Rights Association (AERA).

AERA Debate (1869)

• The American Equal Rights Association struggled with tensions between sexism and racism, as leaders like Frederick Douglass and Elizabeth Cady Stanton debated strategy and priorities.

Jim Crow

• Racist backlash in the South: the Ku Klux Klan and the White League led campaigns of racial terror and violence to restore white supremacy.
• Republican support for freedpeople waned; white supremacy gradually reasserted control in the South through lynchings, disenfranchisement, and segregationist laws known as “Jim Crow.”
• Northern Republicans also contributed to the collapse of Reconstruction by seeking political compromise.

The Compromise of 1877

• 1876 presidential election: Samuel J. Tilden (Democrat) vs. Rutherford B. Hayes (Republican). Disputed electoral votes led Congress to decide the result.
• Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South in exchange for Democrats accepting Hayes’s victory. This marked the effective end of Reconstruction.
• Republicans also agreed to fund Southern railroads and infrastructure; Southern Democrats promised to respect Black civil and political rights — a promise that was quickly broken once troops left.
• Southern states introduced literacy tests and other measures to prevent Black citizens from voting. Jim Crow segregation persisted into the 1960s.

Jim Crow & Segregation: Plessy v. Ferguson

• Homer Plessy, a French-speaking Creole of New Orleans (1/8 African American), boarded a “white only” railcar and refused to leave; he was arrested.
• 1896: U.S. Supreme Court upheld Louisiana’s action in Plessy v. Ferguson, establishing the doctrine of “separate but equal.”

Ida B. Wells

• Black activist and journalist, and an early organizer who helped found the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
• Born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862; liberated during the Civil War and later moved to Memphis.
• After the 1892 lynching of three Black men in Memphis, Wells began investigating lynching nationwide, exposing it as a tool of racial terror rather than spontaneous justice.

Readings for Unit 7

• Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” (Nov. 19, 1863) — framed the Civil War as a test of a nation conceived in liberty.
• Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) — called for national healing “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”
• Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “We Are All Bound Up Together” (May 10, 1866) — linked Black rights and women’s rights as a common cause.
• Ida B. Wells, “Lynch Law in America” (Jan. 1, 1900) — exposed lynching as systemic racial terror.

Unit 8: The Gilded Age (1870s–1900s)

The Gilded Age: Context

• Period of rapid urbanization and industrialization, also marked by growing inequality between wealthy elites and the working poor.
• “Gilded” means covered thinly with gold leaf — a veneer of prosperity masking deep social problems.

Industrial Revolutions

• First Industrial Revolution (1820s–1860s): steamships, canals, railroads, telegraph cables.
• Second Industrial Revolution (1870s–1900s): expansion of railroads, coal, and steel; telephone, refrigeration, electrification; mass production.

Urbanization and Inequality

• By 1920 the U.S. population was majority urban.
• Social problems: widespread poverty, disease, political and business corruption, crowded housing, unsafe working conditions, and child labor.
• By 1900, the richest 10% controlled an outsized share of national wealth.

Monopolies and Titans

• Large corporations consolidated power — General Electric, U.S. Steel (the first billion-dollar company).
• Key industrial figures: Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads), J. D. Rockefeller (oil), Andrew Carnegie (steel), J. P. Morgan (banking).
• Judges in the Gilded Age applied the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” to corporations, often to the detriment of working people.

Jacob Riis and Muckraking

• “Muckrakers” — journalists, photographers, and reformers who exposed urban poverty and corruption.
• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890), documented tenement conditions and spurred reform.

Literature and Realism

• Post-Civil War literature emphasized realism and social critique: Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Upton Sinclair.
• Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), satirized the era’s greed.

Social Darwinism and Eugenics

• Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) influenced scientific thought; some applied distorted ideas to justify inequality as “natural” (social Darwinism).
• Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest” and related ideas were used to legitimize racism, capitalism, and later eugenics.

Immigration in the Gilded Age

• “New” immigrants (1880s): many arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe, changing the ethnic composition of the U.S.
• Nativism grew in response to economic competition and prejudice; immigrants often clustered into enclaves to preserve culture and language.
• Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus” (1883) celebrated the Statue of Liberty as a refuge for immigrants.
• Ellis Island (1892–1954) served as the primary reception center for many European immigrants; 5,000–10,000 people passed through daily at peak times.
• Chinese immigrants (many worked on the First Transcontinental Railroad) faced severe discrimination; the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) barred Chinese labor immigration and remained in effect until 1943.
• Immigration restrictions expanded in the early 20th century (e.g., Immigration Act of 1917, Emergency Quota Act of 1921).

Readings for Unit 8

• Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889) — philanthropic stewardship of wealth.
• Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890) — exposé of tenement life.
• Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883) — welcome to immigrants at the Statue of Liberty.
• Upton Sinclair, from The Jungle (1906) — horrors of the meatpacking industry and immigrant exploitation.

Unit 9: Frontier, Expansionism, and Imperialism

Westward Expansion

• After the Civil War, territories became states and the American West was transformed by settlement, industrial capitalism, and federal power.
• The frontier was declared “closed” by the end of the 19th century; expansion displaced Native American peoples through forced relocation to reservations and the Indian Wars.
• Native Americans were increasingly treated as “wards of the state,” and tribal consent was often ignored.

Land Hunger and Policy

• Homestead Act (1862): settlers could claim land and obtain ownership after five years of residence and improvement.
• Dawes Act (1887): allotted communal Native land into individual plots to encourage assimilation; “surplus” land was sold to settlers. The goal was to erase communal traditions and foster individual property ownership.

The Indian Wars

• Long-running conflicts between Native peoples and the U.S. Army: Navajo Wars, Apache Wars, Sioux Wars, and others.
• Some Native victories occurred (e.g., Red Cloud’s defeat of U.S. troops in 1867 and the Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868), but treaties were often broken when resources were discovered.

Gold, Silver, and Bison

• Gold and silver rushes drew miners onto Native lands (e.g., Black Hills), provoking conflict such as the Great Sioux War of 1876.
• Bison were hunted nearly to extinction by white settlers, undermining Native subsistence and culture.

The Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee

• The Ghost Dance, originating with the Northern Paiute prophet Wovoka, promised spiritual renewal and the return of the dead; it frightened many white settlers.
• 1890: At Wounded Knee, U.S. troops attempted to disarm Lakota Ghost Dancers; a shot led troops to open fire, causing the Wounded Knee Massacre and effectively ending the Indian Wars. Soldiers received medals of honor, a controversial decision.

Native Voices and Boarding Schools

• Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa), born Santee Dakota, became one of the first Native Americans certified in Western medicine, wrote about the Ghost Dance and Wounded Knee, and helped found the Society of American Indians.
• Carlisle Indian School (1879) in Pennsylvania sought to “civilize” Native children; Richard Henry Pratt’s motto was “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Some Natives resisted assimilationist policies.
• Zitkala-Ša (Yankton Dakota) wrote about the trauma of boarding school assimilation in essays such as “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” and “The School Days of an Indian Girl.” She became an activist and founder of the Society of American Indians.

Overseas Expansion: Alaska and Hawaii

• Alaska Purchase (1867) from Russia — initially criticized as “Seward’s Folly,” later found valuable resources (gold, oil).
• Hawaii: U.S. businessmen influenced the monarchy; in 1893 a coup overthrew the queen. The U.S. later annexed Hawaii to ensure strategic and economic control.

Spanish-American War (1898)

• Cuba and Puerto Rico were Spanish colonies; Cuban rebels sought independence from Spain in the 1890s.
• American economic interests in Cuba, sensationalist “yellow journalism,” and the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor (Feb. 1898) helped push the U.S. toward war.
• April 1898: U.S. declared war on Spain; Spain surrendered in August. The Treaty of Paris (1898) freed Cuba (as a U.S. protectorate), ceded Puerto Rico and Guam to the U.S., and transferred the Philippines for U.S. control (for payment to Spain).
• Consequences: the U.S. emerged as a world power, Spain’s empire ended, and the U.S. extended influence in the Caribbean and Pacific. The Philippines resisted, leading to the Philippine-American War (1899–1902).
• Anti-imperialists (e.g., Mark Twain) criticized U.S. colonization of the Philippines; debates over “the white man’s burden” and America’s role in empire persisted.

Readings for Unit 9

• Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893) — argued the frontier shaped American character (criticized for ignoring Native perspectives).
• Zitkala-Ša, “Impressions of an Indian Childhood” & “The School Days of an Indian Girl” (1900) — autobiographical accounts of boarding school trauma.
• Charles Alexander Eastman, “The Ghost Dance War” (From the Deep Woods to Civilization, 1916) — eyewitness account of Wounded Knee and critique of federal policy.
• Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden” (1899) — a poem urging U.S. colonization; reflects paternalistic and racist ideology of imperialism.
• Mark Twain, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” (1901) — satirical criticism of U.S. imperialism.
• Manuel Quezon, “Statement” (1919) — petition for Philippine independence.

Unit 10: Progressive Era and World War I

The Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)

• Reaction to Gilded Age inequalities. Reformers included politicians, conservationists, muckrakers, scientists, civil rights activists, and labor unions.
• Goals varied: regulatory reform, consumer protection, labor rights, anti-corruption, and conservation.

Labor and Radicalism

• Eugene V. Debs: founder of the American Railway Union, co-founder of the Socialist Party of America, and later co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He ran for president multiple times as a socialist.
• Mother Jones (Mary G. Harris Jones): Irish-American labor activist who organized miners and led a children’s march to protest child labor; co-founder of the IWW.

Theodore Roosevelt: Progressivism and Imperialism

• Republican president turned Progressive (1901–1909). Advocated anti-corruption, corporate regulation, consumer protection, and conservation.
• Square Deal: consumer protection (Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906), control of corporations, and conservation (creation of national parks).
• Roosevelt promoted U.S. influence abroad; the Roosevelt Corollary (1904–05) extended the Monroe Doctrine, justifying U.S. intervention in the Western Hemisphere to forestall European involvement.

Woodrow Wilson and World War I

• Wilson supported social reform while also holding racist views. He served as president during the outbreak of WWI.
• The U.S. initially remained neutral but provided resources to the Allies before entering the war on April 6, 1917.
• Anti-German hysteria and suppression of dissent rose; patriotism and propaganda encouraged enlistment and war bonds.
• 1918 Spanish flu pandemic infected a large portion of the global population.
• 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles created the League of Nations (U.S. did not join). Postwar effects included increased xenophobia and political conflict between internationalists and isolationists.

Women and Suffrage

• Women took new wartime roles and campaigned for voting rights. Carrie Chapman Catt linked suffrage to women’s wartime contributions.
• June 4, 1919: Congress passed the 19th Amendment; August 18, 1920: it was ratified, granting women the right to vote.

Readings for Unit 10

• Eugene V. Debs, “How I Became a Socialist” (1902) — personal account of radicalization after labor struggles like the Pullman Strike.
• Carrie Chapman Catt, “An Address to the Congress of the United States” (1917) — argued woman suffrage was inevitable and necessary for democracy.
• W. E. B. Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers” (1919) — urged Black veterans to continue the fight for civil rights at home.

Unit 11: Roaring Twenties to the New Deal

The Roaring Twenties

• Flourishing arts, culture, and entertainment: the Jazz Age, Harlem Renaissance, radio, and motion pictures.
• Mass culture and standardization often eroded the distinctiveness of immigrant cultures.
• Al Jolson became famous as a vaudeville and blackface performer and starred in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer (1927).

The Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance

• Many Black Americans moved from the rural South to Northern cities seeking work and opportunity (Great Migration).
• Harlem became a major Black cultural center producing literature, jazz, and blues.

The Great Depression

• October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday): the stock market crash initiated a deep economic depression.
• By 1930 more than 4 million workers were jobless; by 1933 almost 13 million (about 25% of the labor force) were unemployed.
• Bank failures wiped out savings; the Dust Bowl devastated Southern Plains agriculture, prompting migration and hardship.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal

• FDR (32nd president, 1933–1945) promised a “New Deal” — relief, recovery, and reform.
• Programs included the National Recovery Administration, Social Security, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
• Federal Project Number One supported artists, writers, and musicians; the Federal Writers’ Project included the Slave Narrative Collection. Zora Neale Hurston worked for the Florida Writers’ Project.
• Many Black Americans shifted political allegiance to the Democratic Party, although New Deal policies often excluded or marginalized Black people because FDR needed Southern Democratic support.
• Abel Meeropol and Billie Holiday created the song “Strange Fruit,” a haunting protest against lynching.

Readings for Unit 11

• Zora Neale Hurston, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” (1928) — celebrates individual identity beyond victim narratives.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age” (1931) — critique of the Jazz Age’s excesses.
• Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again” (1935) — contrasts the American Dream with social reality.
• Abel Meeropol / Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit” (1937/39) — musical protest against lynching.
• John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 1 (1939) — depiction of the Dust Bowl’s devastation.

Unit 12: World War II and the Cold War

World War II

• U.S. initially tried to remain neutral; FDR established the Good Neighbor Policy to improve relations in the Western Hemisphere.
• December 1941: Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; the U.S. entered the war and public opinion shifted toward full participation.
• Japanese Americans faced forced internment in camps due to wartime hysteria and racism.
• Women entered the workforce in large numbers (“Rosie the Riveter”). Many remained employed after the war, advancing changes in gender roles.
• Black Americans served in segregated units and supported the “Double V” campaign — victory abroad and victory over racism at home.
• May 8, 1945: Victory in Europe (V-E Day). FDR died in April 1945 and was succeeded by Harry S. Truman. August 1945: the U.S. used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrendered.
• WWII stimulated the economy and helped end the Depression; the U.S. and USSR emerged as superpowers and helped create the United Nations.

The Cold War Begins

• Postwar tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (capitalism vs. communism) led to a global Cold War.
• 1947: Truman Doctrine established a policy of containment to prevent communist expansion.
• Marshall Plan (1948) provided aid to rebuild Europe and limit communist influence.
• Arms and space races followed (e.g., Sputnik in 1957 and the creation of NASA).
• Policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterred direct nuclear confrontation; the U.S. joined NATO in 1948.

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962)

• After Castro’s revolution (1959) and alignment with the Soviet Union, the U.S. supported an invasion at the Bay of Pigs (1961) that failed.
• 1962: U.S. spy planes discovered Soviet missiles in Cuba; a tense standoff nearly led to nuclear war before a negotiated settlement removed the missiles.
• U.S. maintained an embargo on Cuba and Guantánamo Bay became a long-term U.S. naval base.

Cold War Conflicts and the 1950s

• Many U.S. interventions during the 1960s–80s were tied to Cold War competition (e.g., Vietnam).
• The Cold War officially ended in 1991 with the Soviet collapse, though nuclear armament issues persist.
• 1950s McCarthyism fostered anti-communist paranoia, with blacklisting of Hollywood and suppression of dissent. Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) allegorized the era.

Readings for Unit 12

• James G. Thompson, Letter to the Pittsburgh Courier (1942) — proposal for the Double V campaign.
• James Baldwin, “Notes of a Native Son” (1955) — reflections on race and anger in Harlem.
• Yuri Kochiyama, “Then Came the War” (1991) — account of Japanese American internment.
• Lillian Hellman, Letter to the House Un-American Activities Committee (1952) — refusal to name others under HUAC pressure.
• Paul Robeson, testimony before HUAC (1956) — defense of civil rights and critique of the committee.
• Malvina Reynolds, “Little Boxes” (1962) — satirical song about suburban conformity.

Unit 13: Civil Rights Movements and Later 20th Century

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

• Established the doctrine of “separate but equal,” upholding state segregation laws.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

• Linda Brown’s father sued the Topeka school district after she was forced to attend a distant Black school despite a nearby White school.
• May 17, 1954: The Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools violated the 14th Amendment, declaring separate educational facilities inherently unequal and overturning Plessy in the field of education.

Emmett Till and Rosa Parks

• Summer 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till from Chicago was murdered in Mississippi after an alleged interaction with a White woman; the brutality drew national attention when his mother, Mamie Till, held an open-casket funeral.
• 1955: Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a national movement; the Supreme Court declared segregation on public buses unconstitutional in 1956.

The Civil Rights Movement

• 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led campaigns in Birmingham, Alabama; nonviolent protests and televised violence generated national and international outrage.
• King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington (Aug. 1963) became an iconic call for racial equality.
• President John F. Kennedy referred to civil rights as a “moral crisis” and began to push for legislation.

Presidential Responses

• John F. Kennedy (1961–1963) proposed a “New Frontier” including science, space, and civil rights policies; he was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963.
• Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) succeeded JFK and advanced landmark legislation: Civil Rights Act (1964) outlawing discrimination, and Voting Rights Act (1965) enforcing the 15th Amendment and banning literacy tests and poll taxes in federal elections.

Black Power and Radicalization

• Malcolm X (1925–1965) argued that violence could be justified in self-defense and criticized nonviolence; younger activists like Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) promoted “Black Power.”
• The movement’s focus expanded in northern cities toward economic justice, housing, and police brutality; riots in the inner cities shocked many who saw racial problems as purely Southern.

The Vietnam War and Domestic Protest

• U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated under JFK and LBJ; public opinion turned against the war, fueling a large anti-war movement and contributing to social unrest.

Continuing Struggles and Later Movements

• The Civil Rights Movement achieved important legal victories but many structural inequalities persisted (mass incarceration, police violence, economic disparities).
• The movement inspired other struggles: women’s liberation, gay liberation, Red Power, Chicano rights, and later movements such as Black Lives Matter.

Other Landmark Decisions and Movements

• Roe v. Wade (1973): recognition of a woman’s right to choose abortion under constitutional privacy principles derived from the 14th Amendment.
• 1960s LGBTQ activism: Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (1966) and the Stonewall Riots (1969) marked important early confrontations for transgender and gay rights.

Readings for Unit 13

• Rosa Parks on Life in Montgomery (1956–1958) — account of daily realities under Jim Crow and the context for her protest.
• Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” (1963) — visionary call for racial justice.
• Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” (1967) — King connects civil rights with anti-war politics.
• Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle (2013) — critique of simplified Civil Rights narratives and discussion of ongoing struggles against mass detention and systemic injustice.