Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- Timeline History

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Southern Freedom Movement
History & Timeline

"History does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do." - James Baldwin

(Skip Introduction)

Jump To: Year-by-year List of events Historical Context
Years: 51-52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Introduction

Yet another timeline? — Why?
— To put the "movement" back in the Civil Rights Movement.
There are dozens of Civil Rights Movement timelines & chronologies on the web, but too many of them minimize the central role played by ordinary people transforming their lives with extraordinary courage. The mass media called it the "Civil Rights Movement," but most of us prefer the term "Southern Freedom Movement" because it was about so much more than just civil rights. Regardless of what you call it, our movement was above all a mass peoples' movement — people coming together to change their lives for themselves. But all too often that central fact has been quitely dropped out of history in favor of a "benevolent" court ruling, a couple of charismatic leaders, a handful of famous protests in a few well-known places, some tragic martyrs, and the gracious largess of magnanimous legislators.
We want to set the record straight. Without the courage, determination, and activity of hundreds of thousands of men and women of all ages in cities, towns, and hamlets across the South there would have been no Freedom Movement, no famous leaders, no court rulings, no new laws, and no change.

When (and what) was the Civil Rights Movement?

struggle that began

Today, too many timelines and textbooks tell us that the Civil Rights Movement "began" in 1954 with a Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education and "ended" in 1968 with the assasination of Dr. King. But to us, our Freedom Movement began in 1951 when a 16 year old high-school girl named Barbara Johns led her Virginia classmates out on a student strike to protest segregated schools.

And as as far as we are concerned, the Freedom Movement never ended, but rather like a living organism it has evolved and flowered into struggles of many kinds that continue to this day. For the purpose of this timeline, we have arbitrarily chosen 1968 to mark the cross-over year in which the Southern Freedom Movement evolved into a new phase with the Poor People's Campaign shifting the focus from civil rights to economic and human rights; and nation-wide campus uprisings against the Vietnam War bringing us full circle to our student roots and the beginning of the next cycle.

Where was the Civil Rights Movement?

From what you see today in the mass media and what you read in textbooks and websites you would think that the Civil Rights Movement existed only in a few states of the deep South, — but that is not so. The Freedom Movement lived and fought in every state and every city of America, North and South, East and West. There were some differences between the Southern and Northern wings of the Movement, but those differences were insignificant compared to the Movement's essence. North or South, it was the same movement everywhere.

This website is devoted the Freedom Movement as it existed in the South. Not because the Northern wing of the Movement was unimportant — it was enormously important, — but because the Southern Movement was the part of the Movement that we participated in and know enough about to build this website. Hopefully, some day soon activists from the Northern wing of the Movement will do the same.

Historical Context

Southern Freedom Movement
History & Timeline

Introduction

Historical Context

1951-52

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

1960

1961

1962

1963 (Jan-June)

1963 (July-Dec)

1964 (Jan-May)

1964 (June-Dec)

1965

1966

1967

1968

Southern Freedom Movement History & Timeline

Introduction

1963 (Jan-June)

1963 (July-Dec)

1964 (Jan-May)

1964 (June-Dec)

Southern Freedom Movement
History & Timeline