Civil Rights Resource Guide
Today in History
September
23, 1863
Mary Church Terrell, educator, political activist, and
first president of the National Association of Colored Women
was born on September 23, 1863, in Memphis, Tennessee.
July
28, 1868
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified
on July 28, 1868.
May
18, 1898
The Supreme Court ruled separate-but-equal facilities
constitutional on intrastate railroads. For fifty years,
the Plessy v. Ferguson decision upheld the principle of
racial segregation.
October
26, 1911
Mahalia Jackson, the "Queen of Gospel Song,"
was born in New Orleans, Louisiana.
August
2, 1924
Novelist, essayist, and playwright James Baldwin was born
in New York City.
January
15, 1929
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., twentieth-century America's
most compelling and effective civil rights leader, was born
on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia.
January
5, 1949
President Harry Truman promises a "fair deal"
for all Americans.
December
1, 1955
Rosa Parks was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring
blacks to relinquish bus seats to whites.
March
7, 1965
Civil Rights demonstrators begin a march from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama, on a date now known as "Bloody
Sunday."
October
2, 1967
Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
December
9, 1971
American diplomat Ralph Bunche, winner of the 1950 Nobel
Peace Prize, died in New York City.
October
15, 1972
Jackie Robinson threw out the ceremonial first pitch at
the second game of the World Series, commemorating the twenty-fifth
anniversary of his becoming the first African American to
play in modern Major League Baseball.
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