Building on 19th-century activism, African Americans at the turn of the 20th century continued the struggle for civil rights. This timeline explores 20th-century milestones, watershed events, and the work of numerous organizations, legislators, educators, protestors, and organizers that ushered in civil rights reform. Lessons learned from their work reveal the civil rights strategies and victories that help inform present-day efforts to achieve equality.

1900-1929 Flight from the South Begins The Great Migration of southern African Americans to northern industrial towns gets underway. Most are fleeing racial violence and seeking economic opportunities. Millions will have migrated North and West by the 1960s. A sculpture at the entrance to the historically African American neighborhood of Bronzeville depicts a man carrying his belongings while wearing a suit made of the worn out soles of shoes, reflecting the journey of millions of others.

1905 The Niagara Movement Plants New Seed In Ontario, Canada, W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter help found the Niagara Movement, the forerunner to the NAACP. The group holds its first public meeting at Storer College at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, where abolitionist John Brown led a rebellion.

1909 The NAACP Becomes a Force for Change African American and white activists establish the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to secure voting rights, equal access to education and employment, and due process under the law. One year later, the NAACP creates Crisis magazine to report national and international news and publish creative works by African American writers.

September 29, 1910 The League Provides Refuge in the North The National Urban League is founded in New York City as the League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes. It is created to help African Americans find jobs, housing, and healthcare after migrating to large cities.

1915 NAACP Protests "The Birth of a Nation" The NAACP protests D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, which President Woodrow Wilson screens at the White House. Based on Thomas Dixon’s book The Clansman, the film portrays Reconstruction as a tragedy, depicts racist stereotypes of African Americans, and leads to a surge in Ku Klux Klan membership across the country. (Protests at the Republic Theater in New York City.)

1925 Union Warns “Fight or Be Slaves” A. Philip Randolph and African American employees of the Pullman Company organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Harlem, New York. It is the first successful African American trade union. Their slogan becomes “Fight or Be Slaves.”

1931 The Scottsboro Nine Sentenced to Death Nine African American teenagers are accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. They are tried, quickly convicted, and all but one are sentenced to death. The "Scottsboro Nine" case attracts national attention and will help fuel the Civil Rights Movement.

1935 National Council of Negro Women Mobilizes Others Educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune establishes the National Council of Negro Women to enlighten, empower, and advocate for women, their families, and their communities. The founding meeting is held in Harlem, New York.

1936 Donald Gaines Murray v. UMD Law School In Pearson v. Murray, Donald Gaines Murray, a Maryland resident, and legal strategists Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and William Gosnell, win a lawsuit against the University of Maryland for rejecting Murray’s application to its law school. The Supreme Court rules that the University must admit African Americans if there is no other law school available to them. This case will lay the foundation for Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

1939 Marian Anderson Sings to Masses As an African American, singer Marian Anderson is denied permission by the Daughters of the American Revolution to sing at their hall in Washington, D.C. Instead, Anderson performs at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 75,000.

1940 The Nation’s First Civil and Human Rights Law Firm As the legal arm of the Civil Rights Movement, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund becomes the nation’s first civil and human rights law firm. Under the 21-year leadership of Thurgood Marshall, the Fund will begin an enduring tradition of fighting discrimination in education, healthcare, housing, recreation, and public accommodations in both the Supreme Court and courts nationwide.

1951 Student Leads Farmville Strike Sixteen-year-old Barbara Johns leads a two-week student strike to protest the overcrowded and inferior facilities at Moton High School in Farmville, Virginia. Refusing to attend classes, and guided by the NAACP, students and their parents challenge the constitutionality of school segregation in a case that becomes one of five in Brown v. Board of Education.

1951 We Charge Genocide at the U.N. Attorney William L. Patterson drafts a petition to the United Nations for relief of crimes, such as lynching and police brutality, that the United States government has committed against African Americans between 1945 and 1951. Although it raises international awareness, the petition never receives a hearing.

1954 School Segregation Deemed Unconstitutional In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Thurgood Marshall, protégé of civil rights legal strategist Charles Hamilton Houston, is the lead attorney for the case.

August 28, 1955 Emmett Till Murdered in Money, Mississippi White men in Money, Mississippi, kidnap and murder 14-year-old Emmett Till after storeowner Carolyn Bryant accuses him of harassment. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insists on an open casket at his funeral. The photos of his mutilated corpse serve as a catalyst to the growing Civil Rights Movement. Sixty years later, Carolyn Bryant admitted she lied about Emmett Till harassing her.

March 2, 1955 Teenager Refuses to Give Up Seat Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin is arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. In 1956, Colvin becomes one of five plaintiffs in Browder v. Gayle, which challenges segregation on buses in Montgomery and ultimately establishes bus segregation as unconstitutional. Unlike Rosa Parks, there is no museum dedicated to Claudette Colvin, yet her story is a pivotal precursor to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

December 1, 1955 Heroines of the Montgomery Bus Boycott Resist Emmett Till’s murder and Claudette Colvin’s arrest motivate Rosa Parks’s refusal to relinquish her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Parks’ arrest initiates a year-long boycott of the bus system, organized largely by activist Prof. Jo Ann Robinson, who leads the city’s Women’s Political Council. In 2022 Alabama State University’s Bibb Graves Hall, named for a former governor and KKK leader, is renamed in her honor.

January 10, 1957 The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Emerges Civil rights leaders convene an emergency meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, to help spur the campaign to desegregate transportation in the South. These meetings lay the foundation for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), which Martin Luther King Jr. leads until his death in 1968.

September 25, 1957 Daisy Bates Preps the Little Rock Nine For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government uses the military to uphold African Americans' civil rights, as U.S. Army troops escort nine students to desegregate a school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Daisy Bates, a NAACP leader, advises and assists the students. She eventually has a state holiday dedicated to her. Follow the link below to continue your journey through Civil Rights history.