Black Segregation Timeline for kids
Interesting facts about racial discrimination are provided Black Segregation Timeline detailed below. The history of Racial Segregation in America is told in a factual timeline sequence consisting of a series of interesting, short facts and dates providing a simple method of relating the history of the Segregation for kids, schools and homework projects.

1857: The Dred Scott Court Decision that stated that slaves were not citizens but the property of their owners

1861-1865: Black soldiers were segregated during the Civil War

1862: The Homestead Act was passed giving away free farming land. 

1865: The 13th Amendment ended slavery

1865 - 1866: The series of laws called the Black Codes were passed to restrict the ex-slaves new found freedom.

1865: The Freedmen's Bureau Bill was passed establishing a temporary government agency to help and protect emancipated slaves in the South

1865: The Sharecropping system resulted in constant debt and poverty.

1866: The Southern Homestead Act was passed to establish the freed slaves as landowners in the South. It completely failed due to segregation and discrimination and was repealed in 1879

1866: The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed to protect ex-slaves from legislation such as the Black Codes

1866: The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded by White Supremacists who used terror tactics and acts of violence to maintain racial segregation in the South.

1868: The 14th Amendment dealt with Civil Rights and asserted that there were equal protection rights  nullifying part of the Dred Scott decision and prohibiting state laws that denied citizens equal protection under the law

1870: The  Enforcement Acts (including the Ku Klux Klan Act) were passed.

1870: The 15th Amendment prohibiting racial discrimination in voting

1874: The White League white paramilitary group was established in Louisiana to prevent freedmen from voting

1875:  The Red Shirts, a white paramilitary group was established in Mississippi

1875: The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a law to protect all citizens in their civil and legal rights but it was not enforced, and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883

1879: The Exodusters. A mass migration of thousands of African Americans to Kansas was organized by Benjamin "Pap" Singleton.

1880: The Jim Crow Laws of the South legalized segregation. The number of Lynchings began to escalate. Black Americans were deprived of the right to vote by imposing a poll tax of $2 and a literacy test in order to be eligible to vote

1886: Black farmers formed the Colored Farmers' National Alliance and Cooperative Union which strongly supported Black Populism.

1896: The Federal government Sanctions Racial Segregation as a result of the Plessy vs. Ferguson Case

1900's: The years surrounding WW1 saw the emergence of race riots against black communities and the Resurgence of the 1920's Ku Klux Klan.

1913: The federal government imposed racial segregation in government offices in Washington, D.C. It was eventually reversed in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.

1939 - 1945: During World War II Black Americans were initially assigned to non-combat units

1948: President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order de-segregating the armed forces.

1954: The African-American Civil Rights Movement began

1954: The Brown vs. Board of Education case - the Supreme Court banned the practice of school segregation

1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat is ejected from a racially segregated bus

1955: Dr. Martin Luther King become the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Montgomery Bus Boycott begins

1957: The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed to ensure that all African Americans could exercise their right to vote. Dr. Martin Luther King becomes president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

1957: President Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to enforce integration of Little Rock's Central High School - refer to the Little Rock Nine

1960: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded and organized 'Sit-ins' and Freedom Rides throughout the South

1963: Dr. Martin Luther King organizes a massive peace protest in the heavily segregated city of Birmingham, Alabama which ends in violence. MLK is arrested and writes the Letter from Birmingham Jail

1963: Dr. Martin Luther King meets with President Kennedy who fully endorses the civil rights movement.

1963: Dr. King then delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" at the end of the March on Washington

1964: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 bans segregation and discrimination based on race, nationality, or gender

1964: The 24th Amendment was passed  making it illegal to make anyone pay a tax to have the right to vote.

1964: The Freedom Summer campaign  was organized by SNCC activists

1964: The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed to safeguard the right to vote of Black Americans and banned the use of literacy tests.

1968: Dr. Martin Luther King is killed by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee. See MLK Assassination

1968: The rise of Black revolutionaries such as the Black Panthers together with the violence of the race riots effectively ends the civil rights movement.