BLACK HISTORY

DEFINING MOVEMENTS AND EVENTS: 1951-Present

1951
• Gov. Adlai Stevenson of Illinois orders the National Guard to suppress a race riot after whites protest a black family's attempt to occupy a home in an all-white neighborhood of Cicero, IL
  
• Amos 'n' Andy move from radio to television and become the first TV show to have an all-black cast
  
  1953
• Supreme Court bans segregation in Washington, D.C., restaurants
  
  1954
• U.S. Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) that segregated schools are "inherently unequal", overturning Plessy v. Ferguson, and declares that segregated schools violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, MD., begin desegregating schools. Three Other cases were added to Brown v. Education; Muir v. Louisville, Park Theatrical Association, Briggs et al, v. Elliott, et al, Gebhart v. Belton, and Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia
  
  1955
• Brown v. Board of Education II: this part dealt with how the original decision should be enforced, or, the Remedy to Brown V. Board I
  
• Supreme Court prohibits segregation of recreation facilities like playgrounds
  
• Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation in interstate buses, waiting rooms and railroad coaches
  
• Rosa Parks, a secretary with the NAACP, is arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, AL. Recognizing her unique combination of strength, wherewithal and understanding of the sacrifices that would have to be made if her arrest were made into a test case to challenge legalized segregation, Community leaders capitalize on her arrest to launch the The Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott is administered and lead by the newly founded Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) formed by E.D. Nixon, and given life under the leadership of Martin Luther King, Jr. The boycott lasted more than a year (381 days), and resulted in de-segregation of public transportation in Montgomery and in turn, the rest of the south
  
• Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy is murdered in Mississippi after allegedly wolf-whistling at a white woman
  
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
  
  1956
• Tallahassee Bus Boycott began (ended 1958)
  
• Alabama outlawed the NAACP
  
• Cointelpro: is an acronym for a series of FBI counterintelligence programs designed to neutralize political dissidents. From 1956-1971 it targeted domestic, legal, radical political organizations. Cointelpro was created because The Senate and House of Representatives each set up investigating committees to prosecute communists and publicly expose them. When a series of Supreme Court rulings in 1956 and 1957 challenged these committees and questioned the constitutionality the FBI's response was COINTELPRO, a program designed to "neutralize" those who could no longer be prosecuted. The Black Panthers, The American Indian Movement, Studetns for a Democratic Society, SNCC were all victims of Cointelpro
  
• Browder v. Gayle: Fred Gray, E.D. Nixon and Clifford Durr searched for the ideal case law to challenge the constitutional legitimacy of Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws. Gray approached Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith. They all agreed to become plaintiffs in a civil action law suit. On February 1, 1956, case Browder v. Gayle was filed. It was Browder v. Gayle that caused segregation on Montgomery public buses to be eradicated.
  
• The Southern Manifesto: Southern white legislators and school boards enacted laws and policies to evade or defy the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown ruling. In 1956, nearly every congressman in the Deep South, 101 in total, signed the "Southern Manifesto." It said the Brown decision represented "a clear abuse of judicial power." Opponents of the Brown decision argued that the federal government had no power to force states to integrate schools.
  
• Montgomery bus boycott ends after federal court rules that racial segregation on the Alabama city's buses is unconstitutional.
  
• Bus segregation is outlawed in Tallahassee, FL
  
• NAACP forces the University of Alabama to enroll its first black student, Autherine Lucy
  
• Arthur Mitchell, future director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, becomes the only black dancer in the New York City Ballet. George Balanchine creates several roles especially for him
  
  1957
• 1957 Civil Rights Act, permitting the federal government to sue on behalf of citizens and creating the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, is signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
  
• The Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) founded by M.L.K Jr. Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Bayard Rustin. As bus boycotts spread across the South, leaders of the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association) and other protest groups met in Atlanta on January 10 Ð 11, 1957, to form a regional organization and coordinate protest activities across the South. 60 persons from 10 states assembled and announced the founding of the Southern Leadership Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration. They issued a document declaring that civil rights are essential to democracy, that segregation must end, and that all Black people should reject segregation absolutely and nonviolently
  
• The Little Rock 9: Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Lanier, Minnijean Trickey, Gloria Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed and Melba Beals: In the summer of 1957, the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, made plans to desegregate its public schools within a week of the 1954 landmark Supreme Court decision. The night before school was to start, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the state's National Guard to prevent any black students from entering. The police escorted the nine black students to school under the umbrage and vituperative racist hate of the White crowd.
  
• The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is formed. Composed primarily of African Americans, the dance company tours extensively both in the United States and abroad
  
  1958
• Cooper v. Aaron. U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the potential for mob violence did not justify schools' refusal to desegregate
  
• The Kissing Case (Monroe, NC): two pre-adolescent boys playing with a group of whites were kissed by a white girl as part of a game. When the girl told her parents, the White community wanted a lynching. The boys were jailed and sent to reform school for sentances that would last until their 18th birthday. Robert F. Williams publicized this case around the world, forcing the hand of the North Carolina Governor is securing the boys release
  
  1959
• Prince Edward County, Virginia abandoned its public school system to circumvent desegregation
  
• Singer Ray Charles records "What'd I Say," which becomes his first million-seller, and exemplifies the emergence of soul music, combining rhythm and blues with gospel
  
• Trumpeter Miles Davis records Kind of Blue, often considered his masterwork, with composer-arranger-pianist Bill Evans and tenor saxophonist John Coltrane
  
• Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, becomes the first drama by a black woman to be produced on Broadway
  
• Motown Records is founded in Detroit, Michigan, by Berry Gordy, Jr. The "Motown sound" dominates black popular music through the 1960s and attracts a significant white audience as well
  
  1960
• Gomillion vs. Lightfoot The Supreme Court rules that drawing of election districts so blacks constitute a minority in all districts violates the 15th Amendment
  
• The Year of African Independence A dozen countries gained freedom from European colonizers: Zaire, Somalia, Dahomey, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast, Chad, Congo, Brazzaville, Gabon, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria
  
• The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee: A group of black college students from North Carolina A&T University refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. This sparked a wave of other sit-ins in college towns across the South. SNCC was created on the campus of Shaw University in Raleigh two months later to coordinate and support the sit-in movement (SNCC)
  
• President Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960, giving federal government responsibility in civil rights issues
  
• Homes of Civil Rights activists bombed in Nashville, TN
  
  1961
• Thirteen Freedom Riders begin bus trip through South to force desegregation of terminals. The bus is bombed and passengers attacked
  
• The sit-in movement is launched at Greensboro, N.C., when black college students insist on service at a local segregated lunch counter
  
• Federal Court ordered the University of Georgia to admit two African-American students, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes. A riot followed.
• The Albany Movement was the first mass movement in the modern civil rights era to have as its goal the desegregation of an entire community. It resulted in the jailing of more than 1,000 Blacks. After eight months King left Albany admitting that he had failed to accomplish the movement's goals but because of Albany's failure and the lessons that were learned, Birmingham and other future movements found success
  
  1962
• The Caribbean and African nations of Jamaica, Trinidad/Tobago and Uganda achieved independence from the United Kingdom
  
  1963
• The Birmingham Bombing 4 little Black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair (classmate and friend of Condoleeza Rice), and Cynthia Diane Wesley were murdered in the firebombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama
  
• Selma Campaign. M.L.K. Jr. decided to launch a major SCLC voter-registration drive in Selma, Alabama, where an unsuccessful SNCC voter-registration drive had been going on for months. When a protest march organized by the SCLC headed for the jail of the town of Marion it was attacked by a mob of whites. Jimmy Lee Jackson, was shot, and killed. Selma led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965
  
• NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers is killed outside his home in Jackson, MS. In 1994 his killer is finally convicted
  
• More than 250,000 civil rights demonstrators march on Washington, D.C., where Martin Luther King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech
  
• In Birmingham, Ala., Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor uses water hoses and dogs against civil-rights protesters, many of whom are children, increasing pressure on President John F. Kennedy to act while TV and press coverage shocked the nation and attracted widespread support for the Civil Rights Movement.
  
• The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to eight clergymen who attacked his role in Birmingham. Widely reprinted, it soon becomes a classic of protest literature
  
• Sidney Poitier wins the Academy Award as best actor for his performance in Lilies of the Field
  
  1964
• Griffin et al. V. County School Board of Prince Edward County et al U.S. Supreme Court found a school board may not close a school to circumvent a desegregation order
  
• U.S. Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination in public places, schools, lodging, federal programs and employment. It also outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Originally conceived to protect the rights of black men, the bill was amended prior to passage to protect the civil rights of everyone, and explicitly included women for the first time
  
• Martin Luther King Jr. receives the Nobel Peace Prize. At 35, he is he youngest to ever win
  
• The Deacons For Defense were formed in Jonesboro, Louisiana. Made up mostly of WWII and Korean war veterans, their goal was to combate Ku Klux Klan violence against CORE volunteers involved in the Freedom Summer Campaign
  
• Freedom Riders & Freedom Summer: A campaign to register as man Black voters in the southern states as possible. Over 1,000 volunteer converged mainly in Mississipi where Blacks composed 45% of the population but only 5% voted. James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed. Seven men were convicted for the deaths.
  
• Three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were arrested and then murdered while traveling through Mississippi to assist with voter registration
• The 24th Amendment: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax"
  
  

  1965

• The Rev. M.L. King leads 200 marchers from Selma to Montgomery, AL to protest racial discrimination
  
• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz is assassinated at the Audubon Grand Ballroom in upper Manhattan
  
• Voting Rights Act: Congress determined that the existing federal anti-discrimination laws were not sufficient. Efforts to eliminate discriminatory practices on a case-by-case basis had been unsuccessful; as soon as one discriminatory practice or procedure was proven to be unconstitutional, a new one would be substituted. The Act contained special enforcement provisions targeted at those areas of the country where the potential for discrimination to be the greatest
  
• The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (D.P. Moynihan), also known as The Moynihan Report, It hypothesised that government policy that leads to the destruction of the Black nuclear-family structure would be a hindrance to further progress towards economic, and thus political, equality.
  
• Executive Order 11246 prohibits federal contractors and federally-assisted construction contractors and subcontractors, who do over $10,000 in Government business in one year from discriminating in employment. Each Government contractor with 50 or more employees and $50,000 or more in government contracts is required to develop a written affirmative action program
  
• "Bloody Sunday" Voting rights marchers were beaten back by Alabama state troopers on Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama
  
• James Reeb, a Unitarian Minister, was brutally attacked in Selma, Alabama. He died of his wounds
  
• Viola Liuzzo was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan as she drove voting rights marchers back from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama
  
• The Watts Riot: The riot began when a California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer, pulled over a Black woman and her family on suspicion of drunk driving. a group of people began to gather. A struggle ensued in front of the gathering crowd and he end result was a 5 day riot, 34 people killed, 1,100 injured, 4,000 arrested, 600 buildings destroyed
  
  
  1966
• The Black Panthers founded by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
  
• World Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the United States Army during the Vietnam War, he was stripped of his title and did not fight again for almost 4 years. Ali regained his title in 1974 by knocking out George Foreman
  
• Civil rights activist James Meredith is wounded by a sniper during a voter registration "march against fear". The next day, nearly 4,000 blacks register to vote
  
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. met with Elijah Mohammed, leader of the Nation of Islam, and led an unsuccessful protest against job discrimination, poor schools, and slum housing.
• Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts elected first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction
  
• Barbara Jordan becomes first black to serve in Texas state senate since 1883. She later serves in U.S. Congress before death in January 1996
  
  1967
• Loving v. Virginia declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the "Racial Integrity Act of 1924", unconstitutional. Mildred Jeter (a black woman) and Richard Perry Loving (a white man), had been married in June of 1958 in the District of Columbia, having left Virginia to evade a state law banning marriages between persons of different races. Upon their return to Virginia, they were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia.
  
• Thurgood Marshall appointed as first Black Supreme Court Justice
  
• In Newark, NJ, delegates at the Black Power Conference call for partitioning the U.S. into two independent nations, one for whites and one for blacks
  
• National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders: In the summer of 1967 President Johnson formed the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders in hopes of finding a peaceful solution to the rioting of that same year. In 1968 the committee, headed by Gov. Otto Kerner, issued a report--commonly called the Kerner Report. It said that the United States was becoming two societies, "one black, one white--separate and unequal." It claimed that "white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it." This was the first official document of the federal government recognizing that racism existed and was a problem.
  
  1968
• The Chicago 8: Abbie Hoffman, Bobby Seale, John Froines, Lee Weiner, Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Tom Hayden and Jerry Ruben were placed on trial for conspiracy to riot. all seven defendants were found not guilty on the conspiracy charges, two (Froines and Weiner) were acquitted completely, and five were convicted of crossing state lines with the intent of inciting a riot. The convictions were all reversed based upon the bias of the judge and his refusal to permit defense attorneys to question prospective jurors regarding cultural bias
  
• Alexander v. Holms County Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school districts must end racial segregation at once and must operate only unitary school systems
  
• Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise the Black Power salute at Olympic medal ceremony
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated after addressing striking garbage workers in Memphis, TN
  
• President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1968 Housing Act prohibiting discrimination in sale, rental or lease of housing
  
• Shirley Chisholm of New York is first black woman elected to U.S. Congress
  
  1969
• Black Economic Development Conference in Detroit, Michigan issued "Black Manifesto," demanding reparations. Landmark court decisions
  
• James Earl Ray pleads guilty to murdering Martin Luther King and is sentenced to 99 years in prison
  
  1970
• Federal court orders the Internal Revenue Service to tax segregated schools in Mississippi
  
• Morgan v. Hennigan filed in Massachusetts (systematic segregation in Boston schools (see 1974 for result)
  
• Senate extends the Voting Rights Act of 1965 banning literacy tests
  
  1971
• The Panther 21 acquited: The Panthers were charged with conspiracy to kill several police officers and to destroy four police stations, five department stores, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. All were held on $100,000 bail, even though several white radicals arrested later for bombings that had actually been committed were released on far less bail. The march through the justice system took about two years. Much of the case was based on the testimony of an informer who had been diagnosed by several psychiatrists as a pathological liar and a paranoid schizophrenic
  
• The uprising at Attica Correctional Facility (54% Black inmates) ended four days later in a barrage of gunfire that left 29 convicts and 10 hostages dead and 89 wounded and over 1,100 inmates systematically tortured in the following weeks and months. It was initially reported that the hostages were killed with inmate zip guns and due to stab wounds. The inmates had no zip guns and all dead hostages had been killed by weapons fired by police and correction officers. Sixty-two prisoners were charged with 1289 crimes in 42 separate felony indictments. 7 inmates pleaded guilty and only 2 convictions were won. Governor Carey pardoned the inmates who had taken guilty pleas. He commuted the sentence of the Native American convicted in William Quinn's murder. He stopped all disciplinary actions against all state employees and terminated the grand jury and all criminal prosecutions
  
• Captain Samuel L. Gravely, Jr., promoted to become first Black rear admiral in the Navy
  
• U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Griggs vs. Duke Power Co. Eight Blacks filed suit claiming that the test required to become a federal employee is "culturally and racially discriminatory". The Supreme Court affirms their claim, citing on-the-job "bias provisions" of "Title VII" of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The claim hinges on "objective" criteria, unrelated to job skills, for hiring workers are discriminatory if minorities end up disadvantaged and the "skills" tested are not related to the work. In other words, "practices that are fair in [legal] form but discriminatory in operation"
  
• Shirley Chisholm, "un-bought and un-bossed" runs for Democratic Nomination for President
  
• The San Quentin 6: Fleeta Drumgo, Hugo Pinell, Willie Tate, David Johnson, Luis Talamantez & Johnny Spain were put on trial for the death of 3 San Quentin prison guards killed during an escape attempt masterminded by Black Panther, George Jackson
  
• Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Supreme Court upholds school busing for the purpose of ensuring racial balance in areas where segregation has been official policy and school authorities have not come up with a viable alternative to busing
  
  1972
• MOVE co-founded in Philadephia by a janitor, John Africa, born Vincent Leaphart, and Donald Glassey. The group advocates vegetarianism and constant motion and movement towards positivity, including frequent exercise and the sanctity of all life, thus the name, "MOVE"
  
  1974
• "Title VII" of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 expanded to educational institutions
  
• Morgan v. Hennigan: Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. found in 1974 that the Boston School Committee had "knowingly carried out a systematic program of segregation affecting all of the city's students, teachers and school facilities." The ruling, unanimously affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, ordered the School Committee to desegregate Boston schools by instituting student assignment, teacher employment, and facility improvement procedures, as well as the use of busing on a citywide basis.
  
• The "Rumble in the Jungle Ali/Foreman, Kinshasha, Congo. Ali, heavily favored to lose to George Foreman, introduces the "rope-a-dope" and wins one of the most thrilling boxing contest the world has known
  
  1975
• Lee Elder is the first black to play in the Masters Tournament at Augusta, Ga
  
• Tennis player Arthur Ashe wins the singles title at Wimbledon, becoming the first black to win a major men's singles championship
  
  1977
• Alex Haley's Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) is adapted for television, becoming one of the most popular shows in the history of American television
  
  1978
• 913 followers of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple committed a mass suicide in northern Guyana at a site called, Jonestown. The leader of Jonestown, was Jim Jones, who set up the Peoples Temple in San Francisco and ultimately moved his mostly poor Black followers to the remote inland jungles Guyana. In 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan went to Jonestown to investigate supposed abuses by the People's Temple and attempted to take four of the cult members who had decided to defect. Jones ordered his followers to drink fruit punch laced with cyanide
  
• The MOVE 9: Chuck, Debbie, Delbert, Edward, Janet, Janine, Mike, Merle and Phil Africa were convicted of murder of a Philadelphia Policeman despite the fact that at the time, they were in a basement, had no gun, and the policeman who was facing them, was shot from behind, from almost directly above, with a bullet consistent with the swat sniper rifles used at the raid
  
• University of California Regents vs. Bakke The Supreme Court rules that the University of California Medical School at Davis must admit white applicant Allan Bakke, who argued that the school's minority admissions program made him a victim of "reverse discrimination"
• Unita Blackwell, founding member of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, becomes the first black woman mayor in the history of Mississippi in city of Mayersville. She had once been denied to vote there
  
  1979
• Rap is announced nationwide with the release of 'Rappers Delight' by the Sugarhill Gang
  
  1980
• U.S. Supreme Court rules that intentional discrimination must be proven in order to declare a local election unconstitutional. Mobile, Alabama's, at-large voting system was found constitutional, overturning the rulings of two lower courts. Not one black had been elected city commissioner or to the county school board in the city 's history, although blacks comprise 35.4% of its population. Justices William Brennan, Byron White, and Thurgood Marshall wrote dissenting opinions
  
  1983
• President Ronald Reagan approves law making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday
  
• Vanessa Williams is crowned first black Miss America
  
• Guion S. Bluford Jr. becomes the first black American astronaut in space
  
  1984
• Jesse Jackson runs for Democratic Nomination
  
• Robert N.C. Nix Jr. of Pennsylvania is voted first black to head a state Supreme Court and served in this role for 12 years. He was the son of Robert N.C. Nix, Sr. the first of Pennsylvania's Black Congressmen. His grandfather was born into slavery, but later became a minister and Dean of South Carolina State College
  
  1985
• MOVE, an alternative Black commune is Philadelphia is fire bombed, 11 killed (5 children) and 82 homes burned to the ground
  
• Congressman John Conyers pushes part of Anti-Apartheid Act, to impose sanctions on South Africa for its refusal to grant civil rights to its black residents
  
  1988
• Reparations: In this year, America issued a national apology to Japanese Americans placed in American internment camps during World War II and paid each victim $20,000. This prompted many Black Americans to press for similar reparations. Some also cited as grounds for reparations the unfulfilled Civil War promise that each slave receive 40 acres and a mule; The exploitation of labor by big business; Insurance policies held on the lives of the slaves; the millions of dollars of German aid to Jews following the Holocaust and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II. Reparations advocates have proposed packages ranging from $700 billion to $4 trillion. Most favor investing the money in education and economic development for Black communities
  
• Juanita Kidd Stout of Pennsylvania elected first black woman to serve on a state Supreme Court
  
• Rev. Jesse Jackson place second in Democratic presidential race, winning 13 primaries and caucuses
  
• U.S. Congress passes a Civil Rights Bill vetoed earlier by President Reagan. In 1957, Senator Strom Thurmond SC logged the longest filibuster by a single senator when he argued for 24 hours and 18 minutes against an earlier version of the bill
  
• Colin Powell becomes first black Chief of Staff for U.S. Armed Forces. In 1995, he considers and then rejects a run for U.S. President
  
  1989
• City of Richmond vs. J.A. Croson Supreme Court declares illegal a Richmond, Va., set-aside program mandating that 30 percent of the citys public works funds go to minority-owned firms. Such programs only legal if they redress identified discrimination"
  
  1990
• A Georgia state court rules a law keeping Ku Klux Klan members from wearing hooded masks in public is unconstitutional
  
• Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, nation's first African-American governor, requires state agencies to divest themselves of all business dealings with South Africa
  
  1991
• Rodney King, gets tortured on videotape with over 56 baton strokes, kicks in the head and several taser shots administered by officers Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell, Theodore Briseno and Timothy Wind. despite the videotape of the beating, the officers are acquited, touching off the largest riot in the United States since the Watts riots
  
• Busing Cases Supreme Court issues Oklahoma and Georgia rulings, saying school systems don't have to bus students to overcome school segregation caused by segregated housing patterns
  
• Anita Hill, an African-American law professor, testifies that African-American Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her, sparking nationwide debate
  
  1992
• Rodney King Verdict Riot in L.A. Los Angeles police accused of beating African-American motorist Rodney King are found not guilty, sparking riots across the city
  
• Mae Jemison becomes the first African-American woman astronaut, spending more than a week orbiting Earth in the space shuttle Endeavour
  
• Carol Moseley-Braun, Lawyer, former prosecutor and Illinois state representative, becomes the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She later served as Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa and ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 2004
  
  1994
• The Million Man March organized by Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam brings close to 1,000,000 Black men tot he Mall in Washington, D.C. The "spirit of God" was invoked, and the Black men were instructed to "... build your own communities, avoid drugs and violence, register to vote, build Black political power, and invest in Black businesses."
  
• Fueled by the history of Belgium's colonial divisiveness and racial classification of "Hutu's" and "Tutsi's", the Hutu's launch a major offensive on the Tutsi's after the pullout of the U.N. peacekeeping forces. in 100 days, over 800,000 Tutsi's are killed, mostly with machete's, knives and clubs while the U.N. stands idle, refusing to classify the massacre as "genocide"
  
• Nelson Mandela elected President in first multiracial elections and Black rule is instituted in South African
  
  1995
• O.J. Simpson Trial
  
  1996
• Oakland, CA, plan to use black English, or Ebonics, in schools sparks nationwide debate
  
  1998
• James Byrd dragged to death behind pick-up, Jasper, Texas
  
  1999
• Cappachione vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools et al. Federal District Court Judge Robert Potter bars Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system from using race to assign students to schools, effectively ending court-ordered busing mandated in landmark Swann vs. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education case in 1971
  
• Tuttle vs. Arlington County (Va.) school board Supreme Court rules the board cannot use a weighted admission lottery to promote racial and ethnic diversity
  
• Eisenberg vs. Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools Supreme Court rules that the school board could not deny a studentÕs request to transfer to a magnet school because of his/her race
  
• Tom Coleman, corrupt White undercover cop arrests 40% of Tulia, Texas Black population in drug sting
  
  2000
• Colin Powell becomes the first black U.S. Secretary of State
  
• George Bush steal Florida and thus the Presidency through massive voter fraud that results in hundreds of Blacks being denied the right to vote in key counties
  
  
  2002
• A jury awarded $1.6 million to Jeremy Morse, the former cop from Inglewood, California, who was videotaped slamming Black teenager Donovan Jackson onto a car and punching him in July 2002. Morse's firing was considered "wrongful termination" by the jury, which also found that his termination amounted to racial discrimination, since the jury felt that Morse was severely punished only because he is white
  
  2003
• The Darfur conflict or the Darfur genocide between the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited from local Baggara tribes, and the non-Baggara peoples. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided arms and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the Janjaweed. An Estimated 400,000 have died. The U.S. Government has described it as genocide
  
• The Grutter Decision: White student Barbara Grutter complained that she was discriminated against in U. Michigan law school admission based on the fact that some Black students who scored lower on the LSAT than her were admitted. Neglected by Grutter were the White students, with lower scores than her who were admitted. While striking down the use of "quotas" the Supreme court ruled that the University may use a "narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions to "further a compelling interest"
  
  2005
• Hurricane Katrina: Hundreds of Blacks die, hundreds of thousands displaced by although plenty of forewarning is given. Government apathy to the poor Black community results in the greatest catastrophe displacement of Blacks in over a hundred years
  
  
  2008
• BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  

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