1941

1944

African American pastor and statesman Adam Clayton Powell begins an 11-term career in the U.S. House of Representatives

Jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie begins a stint at the Onyx Club in New York City, where he pioneers the style of bebop jazz

1945

Ebony magazine is founded

1947

Jackie Robinson signs with the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first Africa American to play for a major league baseball team

1950

African American diplomat Ralph Bunche wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a U.N. mediator during the Arab-Israeli crisis in the Middle East

1952

1954

U. S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education verdict bans racial segregation in public schools and other public facilities

1955

Under the direction of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, stage a bus boycott when commuter Rosa Parks is jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a crowded bus

1957

President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders 1,000 federal troops to enforce public school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas

1958

CBS airs Mike Wallace and Louis Lomax’s five-part documentary The Hate That Hate Produced, which gives the Nation of Islam and its spokesperson, Malcolm X, national exposure

1960

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded to coordinate youth-directed civil rights efforts in the South

1961

President Kennedy calls for an affirmative action program to establish equity in awarding government-backed contracts

1963

Black civil rights activist and NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered at his home in Mississippi

Martin Luther King Jr. gives his famous “I have a dream” speech before a crowd of more than 200,000 civil-rights protesters in the nonviolent March on Washington

1964

Congress passes the Civil Rights Act, which establishes the Equal EmploymentOpportunity Commission and ratifies the Economic Opportunity Act, enabling blacks to benefit from Head Start and Upward Bound programs

1965

Clashes between African American residents and police in south-central Los Angeles ignite the catastrophic Watts Riots, the largest race-related disturbance in U.S. history

1966

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California; the organization offers numerous community aid programs and services to African Americans

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) espouse the concept of Black Power, which is articulated by Stokely Carmichael and other leaders

African American studies professor Maulana Karenga creates the holiday Kwanzaa, modeled after a traditional African harvest festival, to celebrate traditional African values in the United States; celebration of the holiday has since spread to other countries

1967

1968

1969