Freedom Riders – Nashville Historical Newsletter

Civil Rights Timeline, 1624 – 2012

Part Five: 1966–2012.

1966 Jan 13 Robert Clifton Weaver, nominated by President Johnson to be Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is the first African American named to a presidential cabinet.

Texas Western team members with national championship trophy, 1966
(photo from UTEP yearbook)

1966 Mar Texas Western College (now called University of Texas at El Paso), with its all-black starting line-up, defeats the powerful University of Kentucky team to win the NCAA championship. The game is the inspiration for the 2006 film Glory Road. The entire team is inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

1966 Jun 16 SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael rallies a crowd in Greenwood, Mississippi, with the cry, “We want black power!” Martin Luther King’s concerns that the phrase carries “connotations of violence and separatism” are borne out by splits in the civil rights movement between those favoring the use of nonviolent methods and those leaning more toward conventional revolutionary tactics like armed self-defense and black nationalism.

1966 Fall In college football, Jerry LeVias, a student at Southern Methodist University, is the first black scholarship athlete in the Southwest Conference. African-American athletes Greg Page and Nate Northington join the University of Kentucky football team. When Page dies after a blow to the back during practice, Northington transfers to Western Kentucky University, which integrated its classes in 1956 and has fielded black players since 1963.

1966 Fall Seven African-American students attend Vanderbilt University. Among them is Nashville native Perry Wallace, the first African-American basketball scholarship student and player in the SEC. Although Wallace would play for only three years (1968-1970), he remains the school’s second leading rebounder.

1966 Oct The militant Black Panther organization is founded in Oakland, California, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

1966 Nov 8 Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican, becomes the first African American elected by popular vote to the U.S. Senate.

Edward W. Brooke at 1968 Republican Convention (Thomas J. O’Halloran photo; https://www.loc.gov/item/2015651656/)

1967 In the worst summer of racial violence in the nation’s history, more than 40 riots and 100 other upheavals occur across the country. The most destructive take place in Newark (July 12-16) and Detroit (July 23-30).

1967 Jun 12 In Loving v. Virginia the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declares Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional, thus prohibiting all legal marital restrictions based on race.

1967 Aug 30 Judge Thurgood Marshall, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, is confirmed by the Senate as the 96th Supreme Court Justice. He becomes the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court.

1967 Fall Wilbur Hackett Jr. joins the University of Kentucky football team. He will become the first African-American team captain in the SEC two years later.

1967 Nov Carl Stokes, Cleveland, Ohio, becomes the first African American to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city.

1968 Feb 12 Demanding better pay and working conditions, job equality with white workers, and city recognition of their union, 1300 black sanitation workers in Memphis walk off their jobs. Although 500 white workers march with them, they get little support from the community and ask Martin Luther King to support their cause.

1968 Mar Winston-Salem State University becomes the first black college to win an NCAA basketball championship.

1968 Apr 4 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. Violence breaks out in cities across America. James Earl Ray confesses to the murder, but later recants, working until the end of his life to clear his name, supported even by members of the King family who doubt his guilt. The mayor of Memphis, fearing further violence, agrees to recognize the sanitation workers’ union, permits a dues check-off, grants them a pay raise, and introduces a system of merit promotions.

1968 Apr 11 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing on the basis of race, religion, national origin, or sex. On the same date,

1968 Apr 11 On the same date, President Johnson also signs the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, granting Native American people full constitutional access. Prior to this date, the Bill of Rights has not applied to those living on tribal lands. Now, for the first time, Native Americans are guaranteed the right to trial by jury, along with freedom of religion, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, and all other privileges granted to citizens under the Bill of Rights.

1968 Jun 5 Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, on the night of his victory in the California Democratic Primary, is shot to death in Los Angeles by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab nationalist.

1968 Summer Arthur Ashe wins the U.S. Open in tennis. He will go on to win the Australian Open in 1970 and the Wimbledon championship in 1975.

1968 Fall Lester McClain becomes the first black athlete on the University of Tennessee football team. Two years later he will be joined by African-American quarterback Condredge Holloway.

1968 Sep 17 With the premiere of Julia, Diahann Carroll becomes the first African-American woman to star in a television series in which she does not play a domestic servant. In 1962 Carroll was the first black performer to win a Tony Award, for her performance in the musical No Strings.

Shirley Chisholm campaign poster (by N.G. Slater Corp., 1972; https://www.loc.gov/resource/ppmsca.42048/)

1968 Nov 5 Shirley Chisholm, a Democrat from New York, is the first African-American woman elected to Congress. Republican Richard Nixon defeats Hubert Humphrey by a narrow margin to become President.

1969 Jan Avon N. Williams Jr. (Nashville) and J. O. Patterson Jr. (Memphis) take their seats as the first two African American candidates ever popularly elected to the Tennessee State Senate.

1970 Sep 12 USC fullback Sam “Bam” Cunningham’s stellar performance against the all-white Alabama team opens the door for Alabama coach Bear Bryant to recruit black players. In fact, Wilbur Jackson, watching the game from the stands, has already been offered a scholarship to Alabama, although most fans are still unaware of his status. NCAA rules make him ineligible to play as a freshman.

1970 Dec Perry Wallace, Vanderbilt basketball star, is named to the All-South-Eastern-Conference team and wins the Sportsmanship trophy after a vote by league players.

1971 Jan 12 All in the Family begins its eight-year run. The number-one TV sitcom for five years, the show generates a number of other programs that deal with race relations and other controversial subjects in realistic and humorous ways.

*Archie and Lionel in the blood bank episode*, *All in the Family, 1971*

1971 Apr 20 In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, the Supreme Court moves to end de facto segregation in schools where segregation occurs as a consequence of neighborhood segregation and proximity to schools, even when the schools themselves have no policy requiring segregation. The solution in most cases is to reassign students and to bus them to the newly integrated schools. Although the plan is met with disfavor and sometimes violence, court-ordered busing will continue in some cities until the late 1990s.

1971 Fall The University of Alabama, one of the last schools to integrate its athletic teams, recruits John Mitchell, who will become both co-captain of the football team and an All-American the following year.

1972 Sep For the first time, all grades in the Little Rock Public Schools are integrated.

1974 Sep 3 Surprisingly, the strongest opposition to enforced busing occurs in Boston. A federal court finds that Boston school districts were originally drawn to produce racial segregation; other courts rule that racially imbalanced schools are unfair to minority students and require the racial composition of each school in a district to mirror the composition of that district as a whole. Opponents of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had worried about using forced busing to achieve racial quotas in schools, Senator Hubert Humphrey insisting “it would be a violation [of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race.” When Boston schools open in 1974, police in riot gear accompany the buses. Some black children face abusive language and a storm of rocks and bottles as they enter their schools.

1975 During the late 1960s Native American activists have begun to take a more aggressive stance, leading to the occupation of Alcatraz (1969-1970), the development of the American Indian Movement (AIM, 1968), and a violent encounter at Wounded Knee, South Dakota (1973), following a series of fierce conflicts between opposing Indian factions on the Pine Ridge Reservation that have left more than 100 people dead. The shootings of two FBI agents by AIM members lead to a federal crackdown on the violence, and the organization is considerably weakened.

1977 Jan Indiana becomes the 36th and last of the 38 states required to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which would give equal rights to women. First introduced in Congress in 1921, the amendment simply states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” In the face of strong opposition, led by Phyllis Schlafly and others, no other states agree to ratify, and five (Idaho, Kentucky, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Tennessee) will presently rescind their earlier ratifications.

1978 The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is enacted after the federal government becomes aware of how many Native American children are being systematically removed from their families at a much higher rate than other children – often without evidence of abuse, neglect, or other grounds for removal – and placed with non-native families. The effect, and perhaps even the intent, of these actions is to deprive the children of their native family or culture. The ICWA becomes a key component in protecting the rights and the culture of American Indian and Alaska Native families and children.

1978 Jun 26 In a controversial 5-4 decision on Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that racial quotas must be eliminated in education. The decision is tempered by Justice Lewis Powell’s statement (he votes with the majority but writes an opinion supporting the minority view as well): “Race can be a factor, but only one of many to achieve a balance.” Thus, affirmative action policies might continue if they are more clearly defined.

1978 Sep 29 Seattle becomes the largest city in the United States to desegregate its schools without a court order. The “Seattle Plan” involves busing almost one-fourth of the school district’s students.

1979 Former governor George Wallace recants his earlier segregationist statements and apologizes to black civil rights leaders, saying, “I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over.”

1984 Jul 7 Returning from church in Bangor, Maine, Charlie Howard, a 23-year-old gay man, is beaten and kicked by three teenagers, who shout homophobic slurs before throwing him off a bridge even as he screams that he can’t swim. His body is found several hours later. He has drowned.

1989 Aug 10 General Colin Powell becomes chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

*Civil Rights Memorial, Montgomery, Alabama (hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.04786; Library of Congress Control Number2010630770*)

1989 Nov 5 The Civil Rights Memorial is dedicated at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. Designed by architect Maya Lin, it honors 41 people who died between 1954 and 1968 during the civil rights movement in the U.S.

1989 Nov 7 Douglas Wilder of Virginia is elected to serve as the nation’s first African American state governor.

1991 Nov 22 President George H.W. Bush, having first threatened a veto, signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991, strengthening existing civil rights laws and providing for damages in cases of intentional job discrimination.

Screenshot from the video of LAPD officers beating Rodney King (public domain, Colorlines Screenshot)

1992 Apr 29 When a predominantly white jury acquits four LAPD officers in the beating of a black man named Rodney King, a huge riot breaks out in Los Angeles. The beating, videotaped by a bystander, combines with existing racial unrest in the city to spark five days of violence, ending only after the deployment of Federal troops. Fifty-three people die: 25 blacks, 16 Latinos, 8 whites, 2 East Asians and 2 West Asians. Approximately 3,600 fires are set, destroying 1,100 buildings. Close to 10,000 people are arrested. Stores owned by Asian immigrants are widely targeted, as are, to a lesser degree, those of whites and blacks.

1993 Oct 7 Black author Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1994 Feb 5 In Jackson, Mississippi, thirty-one years after the 1963 shooting of Medgar Evers, Byron De La Beckwith, now 73, is finally found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In December 1997 the Mississippi Supreme Court will uphold this verdict following De La Beckwith’s appeal.

1997 Apr 2 The Tennessee General Assembly ratifies the 15th Amendment, becoming the last state in the nation to do so.

1998 Oct 7 College student Matthew Shepard, 21, is robbed, beaten, and left for dead, tied to a fence in a remote area of Wyoming by two men who have been heard plotting “to rob a gay man.” He dies on October 12 without regaining consciousness.

*Matthew Shepard (photo from http://sdpix.com/blogs/community-connections/2009/10/08/, Fair use*)

2000 Mar 7 In honor of the 35th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” Rep. John Lewis (now a U.S. Congressman from Georgia), and Hosea Williams cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma in the company of President Bill Clinton, Coretta Scott King, and several hundred others. Lewis commented, “This time when I looked there were women’s faces and there were black faces among the troopers. And this time when we faced them, they saluted.”

2000 Dec 16 President George W. Bush nominates General Colin Powell as Secretary of State. When Powell is confirmed in January, he becomes the first African American to hold that office.

2003 Jun 23 In Grutter v. Bollinger the Supreme Court rules that race can be one of many factors considered by colleges when selecting their students because it furthers “a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

2005 Jan 20 Condoleezza Rice succeeds Colin Powell as Secretary of State. She is the second woman and first African American woman to serve in that office.

2005 Jun 21 On the 41st anniversary of the murders of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman (and as the result of remarkable investigative work by a newspaper reporter and three high school girls preparing a National History Day project) Edgar Ray Killen, 80, a leader of the killings, is finally found guilty of three counts of manslaughter. Following his 2007 appeal, the Supreme Court of Mississippi upholds Killen’s sentence of 3-times-20-years in prison.

2005 Oct 24 Rosa Parks dies. She is the first woman to be honored by lying in state in the U. S. Capitol Rotunda.

2007 Feb Emmitt Till’s 1955 murder case, reopened by the Department of Justice in 2004, is officially closed. Both confessed murderers have died, and there is insufficient evidence to pursue further convictions.

2007 May 10 James Bonard Fowler is indicted for the 1965 murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson. On November 15, 2010, Fowler pleads guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter, insisting that he was acting in self-defense. He is sentenced to six months in prison but is released after five months because of health problems requiring surgery.

2008 Sep 18 Fourteen Freedom Riders, expelled from Tennessee State University in 1961 because of their protest activities, receive honorary Doctorates of Humane Letters (three posthumously) in an emotional ceremony.

2008 Nov 4 Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a black African father and a white American mother, is elected President of the United States.

*Chief Justice John Roberts administers the oath of office to President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.*

2009 May 11 During an awards ceremony at Chattanooga’s Howard High School, the Chattanooga History Center dedicates a mural honoring the students who took part in the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins, many of whom were members of Howard’s 1960 graduating class. The mural will be on permanent exhibit at the school.

2009 Jul 20 President Barack Obama signs into law the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which specifies penalties for any crime in which someone targets a victim because of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

2012 Nov 6 Barack Hussein Obama becomes the first African American to win re-election to the office of President of the United States.

2021 Dec 8 One final note: There have been more than 200 unsuccessful attempts since 1900 to codify lynching as a federal crime. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) introduced the Emmett Till Antilynching Act (H.R. 55) in the 115^th Congress. It passed the House of Representatives on February 26, 2020, by a vote of 410-4, with overwhelming bipartisan support; however, it was blocked in the Senate by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who objected to the language of the bill. Rush reintroduced H.R. 55 on the first day of the 117^th Congress (Jan. 4, 2021), and it has moved forward with 179 bipartisan sponsors. On this date, Dec. 8, 2021, the bill passed through the House Judiciary Committee by voice vote and advanced to the House Floor. This story will be updated as the bill moves through the House and on to the Senate.

Adapted from a timeline created by Kathy B. Lauder for the TN State Library and Archives, 2013.

Civil Rights Timeline, 1624 – 2012

Part Four: 1961-1965.

1961 Jan In Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, more than 80% of the African-American population live below the poverty line, and less than 1% of eligible blacks are registered to vote.

1961 Feb Nine young African-American men are jailed in Rock Hill, South Carolina after staging a sit-in at a McCrory’s lunch counter. They are the first to use the “jail, no bail” strategy, which will lighten the financial burden of civil rights groups across the country. The tactic also keeps cities from profiting from the arrests of civil rights protesters, who further contend that paying bail and fines indicates acceptance of an immoral system and validates their own arrests.

1961 May 4 Organized by members of SNCC, the Freedom Rides will test the enforcement of Boynton v. Virginia. The first bus of thirteen Freedom Riders (7 blacks, 6 whites) leaves Washington, D.C. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, their first stop in the Deep South, two men (one is John Lewis, who will later become a U.S. Congressman) are beaten by a white mob.

*A Freedom Riders bus is attacked and burned by white supremacists.*

1961 May 14 One of the Freedom Riders buses is burned in Anniston, Alabama. As a second bus pulls into the Trailways Station in Birmingham, riders are attacked and badly beaten by a mob of Ku Klux Klan members. Sheriff Bull Connor orders Birmingham police to stay away. The wounded Freedom Riders eventually escape to New Orleans when Attorney General Robert Kennedy orders a plane to take them there.

1961 May 17 Unwilling to allow the KKK to defeat them, Tennessee activists take a bus from Nashville to Birmingham; Bull Connor arrests them and dumps them by the side of the road, just over the Tennessee border. They make their way back to Birmingham, but they cannot find a bus driver willing to risk driving them any further.

1961 May 20 Under orders from Robert Kennedy, the Alabama governor provides a Highway Patrol escort, and the bus roars toward Montgomery at 90 mph. At the city limits the police guards disappear, under Bull Connor’s orders, and the riders are set upon and brutally beaten by a mob of KKK supporters, who have as much as 20 uninterrupted minutes to attack the Riders with bats and iron bars before the police arrive and drive the growing mob away with teargas. Many riders are left bloody and unconscious, including reporters (the mob has quickly destroyed the cameras) and Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who is found lying unconscious in the street. Local black citizens eventually rescue the wounded and take them to hospitals.

1961 May 21 Martin Luther King and James Farmer of CORE (who is already recruiting more Freedom Riders) speak to 1200 people in Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s Montgomery church, while a mob outside throws rocks at the windows, overturns cars, and starts fires. Over the next several days, more Freedom Riders arrive; most are jailed. By the end of the summer, more than 60 Freedom Rides have come south, and more than 300 individuals have been jailed, including many local supporters of the Riders.

1961 Winter The Loyola University (Chicago) basketball team puts four black players on the floor at one time, breaking an unwritten rule of college sports.

1962 Darryl Hill is recruited by coach Lee Corso at the University of Maryland. He is the first African-American football player in the Southwest Conference (SWC). The only black player on the team until his senior year, he sets two receiving records that stand for decades.

1962 Sep 30 James Meredith is escorted onto the University of Mississippi (Oxford) campus by a convoy of Federal Marshals. In the riots that follow, two people are killed and many others injured.

1963 Jan Alabama Governor George Wallace declares, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

*Sidney Poitier wins an Oscar for Lilies of the Field.*

1963 Apr 8 Sidney Poitier is the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Starring in three major films, he is also the top box office star of the year.

1963 Apr 16 Jailed for his protest activities, Martin Luther King writes his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which quickly becomes a classic document of the Civil Rights struggle with its assertion that individuals have a moral right to disobey unjust laws.

1963 May Civil rights activists, including children, march in Birmingham. By the end of the first day, 700 have been arrested. When 1000 more youngsters turn out to march peacefully on May 3, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor turns police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses on them. Within five days, 2500 are in jail, at least 80% of them children. After 38 days of confrontation and public outcry from across the nation, Birmingham city officials and business leaders agree to desegregate public facilities. Governor George Wallace’s refusal to accept the plan will lead to violent confrontation.

1963 Jun 11 Governor George Wallace stands in the doorway of Foster Auditorium at the University of Alabama, blocking the enrollment of two black students. Later, confronted by Federal Marshals and Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, he stands aside.

*Deputy U. S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (right) confronts Gov. George Wallace, who is blocking the entrance to a University of Alabama building.*

1963 Jun 12 NAACP activist Medgar Evers is shot to death outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. His assailant, KKK member Byron De La Beckwith, will not be found guilty of his murder until 1994.

1963 Jul 26 The true fulfillment of Executive Order 9981 (1948)—equality of treatment and opportunity for all military personnel—requires a change in Defense Department policy, which finally occurs with the publication of Department Directive 5120.36, issued fifteen years to the day after Truman’s original order. This major policy shift, ordered by Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara, expands the military’s responsibility to eliminate off-base discrimination detrimental to the military effectiveness of black servicemen.

1963 Aug 28 250,000 civil rights supporters take part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The highlight of the event occurs when Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

1963 Sep Voter registration volunteers in Selma, Alabama, face arrests, beatings, and death threats. Thirty-two black schoolteachers who attempt to register to vote are fired by the all-white school board. After the September 15 church bombing, students begin lunch counter sit-ins – 300 are arrested, including John Lewis of SNCC.

1963 Sep 15 Four young girls, ages 11 to 14, are killed when a bomb explodes in the basement of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Many other people are injured.

1963 Nov 22 President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.

1964 Jan 3 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is Time Magazine’s Man of the Year.

1964 Jan 23 The 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax, employed in Southern states since Reconstruction to make it difficult for poor blacks to vote.

1964 Jun 14 Freedom Summer (also called the Mississippi Summer Project) begins with training sessions in Ohio. This effort to register black voters, mostly in Mississippi (in which only 6.2% of eligible blacks were registered to vote) is spearheaded by SNCC, along with the NAACP, CORE, and the SCLC. Dr. Staughton Lynd, a history professor at Yale University, directs the Freedom Schools project.

1964 Jun 21 Three young civil rights workers – James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman – are arrested in Neshoba County, Mississippi. and then disappear.

*FBI poster asking for information about the three missing civil rights workers. It was 44 days before their bodies were found.*

1964 Jul 2 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin; it also provides the federal government with the authority to enforce civil rights legislation. To Johnson’s dismay, the passage of this law will be followed by a year of violence as white supremacists attempt to undo any gains in registering black voters. Johnson turns his attention to passing a Voting Rights act.

1964 Aug 4 The bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman are found, buried in an earthen dam. Schwerner and Goodman have been shot; Chaney was beaten to death. The state of Mississippi refuses to charge anyone with the murders. Seven people are eventually tried for Federal crimes, but none will serve more than six years in jail.

1964 Aug 25 By the end of the 10-week Freedom Summer project, four workers have been killed, four others critically wounded, 80 beaten, and 1000 arrested. Thirty black homes or businesses and 37 churches have been bombed or burned. Many of these crimes are never solved. Since Mississippi still requires a literacy test for voter registration, of 17,000 Mississippi blacks trying to register, only 1,600 succeed.

1964 Oct 14 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 35, becomes the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. He will deliver his powerful acceptance speech on December 10 in Oslo: “Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression.”

1964 Nov Archie Walter (A. W.) Willis Jr. is elected to the Tennessee General Assembly. When he takes his seat in January 1963, he becomes the first African American to serve in the Tennessee House of Representatives since Reconstruction.

1965 Feb 18 Jimmie Lee Jackson, 26, is shot during a peaceful protest in Marion, Alabama, as he tries to protect his mother and grandfather from a beating by Alabama State Troopers. Jackson, shot at very close range, dies a week later. An Alabama Grand Jury refuses to indict James Bonard Fowler, the trooper who shot him. (See May 10, 2007.)

1965 Feb 21 Black nationalist leader Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little in Nebraska in 1925) is assassinated during a speech in Manhattan. Three members of the Black Muslim organization are accused of his murder.

1965 Mar 7 SCLC leader James Bevel organizes a 55-mile march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capitol in Montgomery – a demonstration on behalf of African-American voting rights. On the outskirts of Selma, just after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the 600 marchers are brutally assaulted, in full view of TV cameras, by heavily armed state troopers & deputies. ABC interrupts its broadcast of Judgment in Nuremberg, a Nazi war crimes documentary, to show footage of the violence. John Lewis, 25, and the Rev. Hosea Williams, 39, leading the march are clubbed to the ground, as are many others. A widely-published photograph shows 54-year-old Amelia Boynton Robinson lying unconscious on the bridge. Fifty marchers are hospitalized. The event will come to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

*Alabama troopers confront peaceful demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. John Lewis walks at the head of the marchers (wearing light-colored trench coat, right center).*

1965 Mar 9 Martin Luther King leads a second march across the Pettus Bridge. The marchers kneel in prayer, then turn back around, obeying the court order that prohibits them from going on to Montgomery. After the march, three white ministers are attacked and beaten – one (James Reeb, from Boston) dies in Birmingham, after Selma’s public hospital refuses to treat him. On the same day, demonstrations condemning “Bloody Sunday,” as the March 7 incident has come to be called, take place in 80 cities across the nation.

1965 Mar 15 President Lyndon B. Johnson makes what most consider his greatest speech to Congress as he calls for a Voting Rights bill: “It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country . . .. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”

1965 Mar 16 A Federal judge rules in Williams v. Wallace: “The law is clear that the right to petition one’s government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups . . .. These rights may . . . be exercised by marching, even along public highways.” Granting the protesters their First Amendment rights to march also means the State of Alabama can no longer obstruct them.

1965 Mar 21 Nearly 8,000 people, of all races, begin the third march from Selma to Montgomery. The 5-day march covers a 54-mile route along the “Jefferson Davis Highway”(U.S. 80). Protected by 4,000 troops (U.S. Army, FBI agents and Federal Marshals, and the Alabama National Guard under Federal command), the marchers average around ten miles a day and will finally arrive at the Alabama Capitol building on the 25th.

1965 Mar 23 The marchers pass through cold, rainy Lowndes County, where, although African Americans make up 81% of the population, not one is registered to vote, whereas the 2240 white registrants on the voting rolls constitute 118% of the adult white population!

1965 Mar 25 Martin Luther King speaks to the marchers in Montgomery (“How Long, Not Long”) and they are entertained by Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, Peter, Paul & Mary, Sammy Davis Jr., and others in a “Stars for Freedom” rally.

1965 Apr Fannie Lou Hamer and other SNCC members help found the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union to organize cotton workers.

1965 May 19 Patricia Harris becomes the first African American since Ebenezer Bassett (1869, Haiti) to serve as an American ambassador (Luxembourg).

1965 Aug 6 President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This bill, urgently sought by Johnson, along with Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders, eliminates such devices as poll taxes and literacy tests, and it authorizes federal registrars to register qualified voters.

*President Lyndon B. Johnson hands Martin Luther King Jr. the pen with which he has just signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act* (*Library of Congress photograph*).

1965 Aug 11 A large-scale race riot begins in the Watts area of Los Angeles, sparked by a traffic arrest. As community leaders try to restore order, rioters block fire-fighters from burning buildings, and vandalism and looting take place throughout the area. Nearly 14,000 National Guardsmen are sent in to help restore order. By the time the violence ends six days later, 34 people have been killed, 1,032 are injured, and 3,952 are arrested. Nearly 1,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and the city is left with $40 million in property damage.

1965 Sep 15 The first episode of the television series I Spy is broadcast. This is the first drama series on American television to feature a black actor (Bill Cosby) in a starring role.

1965 Sep 24 President Johnson issues Executive Order 11246, which requires government contractors to “take affirmative action” toward prospective minority employees in all aspects of hiring and employment.

Adapted from a timeline created by Kathy B. Lauder for the TN State Library and Archives, 2013.

Civil Rights and the Nashville Room

by Sue Loper.

Four decades ago, during a time of sweeping social change throughout our nation, a determined group of Nashville students began a nonviolent revolution in this city that changed history. On February 13, 1960, after months of workshops centered on the methods of nonviolent protest, a group of African-American students from local universities sat down at a lunch counter and refused to move until they were served.

This was the start of the sit-in movement in Nashville, inaugurating what Martin Luther King, Jr., deemed the best-organized movement in the South. It was not an easy process: response to the group’s activities was sometimes violent. Nevertheless, the movement grew, as individuals and groups raised bail money or represented the students in court. One of those advocates was lawyer Z. Alexander Looby. In retaliation for Looby’s support of the protestors, his home was bombed on April 19, 1960. Later that day the students gathered for a spontaneous march to the courthouse to confront Nashville’s mayor. Diane Nash, spokesperson for the group, asked Mayor Ben West whether he thought it morally right for a restaurant to deny an individual a meal because of the color of his skin. Mayor West agreed the practice was wrong.

That moment sparked important changes in the city — within three weeks, Nashville lunch counters began serving black customers — but it was not the end of the student movement. Many went on to join the Freedom Riders and to work faithfully in voter registration efforts all over the South.

Years later David Halberstam described the experiences of those students in his book The Children. Nashvillian Bill King was so moved by the author’s description of the fortitude, persistence, and faith of the young protestors, he believed the events in Nashville and the work of “the children” should be memorialized.

In 2001 Mr. King and his wife Robin, friends of the Nashville Public Library, set up an endowment enabling the library to create a civil rights collection focusing on the Nashville sit-in movement. The collection includes print materials, an oral history project, an audio-visual library, microfilm research materials, and a collection of dissertations.

A library space was redesigned to intensify the focus of the collection. The new area opened on December 6, 2003, and is now a mainstay of the Nashville Public Library Special Collections Division: The Nashville Room. The setting includes a symbolic lunch counter and stools: glass “placemats” on the countertop list the ten rules sit-in participants were required to follow, and a timeline of national, state, and local civil rights events adorns the backsplash of the counter. Large photographs around the room depict highlights of the movement. A media room and a classroom/lecture space offer screens and touchpads for individual and group viewing. On a glass wall are the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “I come to Nashville not to bring inspiration, but to gain inspiration from the great movement that has taken place in this community.” Over the doorway is a quote by John Lewis, one of the 1961 students, later to become a U. S. Representative from Georgia: “If not us, then who; if not now, then when?”

At the dedication of the room, February 14-15, 2004, John Lewis, moved to tears by seeing his quotation over the doorway, stood in the civil rights room as the leader of the “Faith and Politics Tour,” which travels annually, with invited U.S. legislators, to significant civil rights locations. Lewis’s co-chair for this trip was Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The library’s Saturday civil rights workshops drew 800 people; 1300 came to hear the panel speak on Sunday. This powerful discussion, moderated by John Seigenthaler, featured Reverend C. T. Vivian, Reverend James Lawson, Diane Nash, Congressman John Lewis (Georgia), Reverend James Bevel, and Reverend Bernard Lafayette, speaking to the overflow crowd. Other program participants included Nashville Library Director Donna Nicely, Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell and Vice-Mayor Howard Gentry, U.S. Congressman Jim Cooper and Senator Bill Frist, and Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen. The program concluded with the singing of “We Shall Overcome,” led by Guy and Candie Carawan, folk singers whose songs have long inspired the civil rights movement. No one wanted the program to end: the library, scheduled to close at 5:00, remained open until after 7:00.

The program and reception were funded in part by the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill, a gathering place for sixties protestors and a training site for nonviolent protest activity. Other supporters included The First Amendment Center and The William Winter Center for Racial Justice, with primary support for the event coming from Robin and Bill King.

Additional contributions included a photographic exhibit of the civil rights movement by Harold Lowe; a film provided by Nashville Public Television, from their production entitled Nashville Memories; and a film of the event made by Metro Channel 3, which continues to make it available. Nashville Public Television filmed segments of the program for their popular series, Tennessee Crossroads.

The heroes of the Civil Rights movement lead the singing of “We Shall Overcome” at a Nashville Public Library ceremony, February 2004 (image above from PowerPoint presentation, “Resources in African American History and Civil Rights,” created by Kathy B. Lauder; original photograph by Gary Layda)

Today the civil rights room is an active place. Cumberland Valley Girl Scouts use its resources as they work on civil rights badges. Schools, churches, and civic groups come for tours; colleges and universities use the Lowe Photograph Collection. Staff members are working with Fisk University to prepare a traveling exhibit about the women of the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Oral History Collection continues to grow as the words of participants are captured for future generations. Recently a correspondent from the Azerbaijani newspaper Baku Sun asked to copy the photograph of the silent march to the courthouse. The photograph will accompany the Sun’s interview with USAID Country Coordinator William McKinney, who was a participant in the Nashville sit-ins. The seeds planted by Nashville’s nonviolent revolution continue to produce fruit.