1936
NAACP leadership, at the behest of young Black activists, form the NAACP Youth and College Division.
1940
2,000 students protest New York University’s (NYU) decision to pull an African American player from a football game against the University of Missouri (MU) to accommodate MU’s policy against interracial athletics. NYU loses the game 33-0.
1952
The University of Alabama (UA) admits Autherine Lucy and Pollie Anne Myers, two Black graduate students, before learning of their race. Thurgood Marshall and others join the fight to desegregate UA after admissions officials refuse to let them enroll in classes.
1952
The University of Alabama (UA) admits Autherine Lucy and Pollie Anne Myers, two Black graduate students, before learning of their race. Thurgood Marshall and others join the fight to desegregate UA after admissions officials refuse to let them enroll in classes.
1960
FEBRUARY: Four students from North Carolina A&T University stage the country’s first lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, NC.
APRIL: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee is formed. It propels Black student participation in sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and other forms of peaceful protest.
1961
JANUARY: Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes win a lawsuit to be admitted to the University of Georgia (UGA) and immediately enroll. Although White mobs protest their appearance on campus and the administration tries to persuade them to withdraw for their own safety, UGA faculty successfully petition for their right to stay.
FEBRUARY: Black students stage multiple simultaneous protests across the U.S. At University of Wisconsin-Madison, thousands participate in a strike that lasts for several weeks before the administration agrees to their demands.
APRIL: A burning cross is erected outside a Black women’s dormitory at Cornell University. Black students occupy the student union building and, following clashes with White students, weaponize and barricade themselves inside for 36 hours.
MAY: Freedom Rides, in which young Black and White students and activists travel on public transportation together to test the South’s adherence to desegregation laws, begin. They are frequently met with extreme violence from segregationists.
1962
More than 5,000 police officers and military are sent to quell riots against the admission of James Meredith, an African American, to the University of Mississippi.
1963
Alabama Governor and pro-segregation icon George Wallace physically blocks Black students James Hood and Vivian Malone Jones from entering UA. Federal police are sent to control White rioters.
1964
Hundreds of students from across the U.S. participate in the Mississippi Summer Project to register disenfranchised Black voters. College student Andrew Goodman, who is White and Jewish, and volunteers James Earl Chaney and Michael Henry Schwerner are murdered by the Ku Klux Klan one day after the project launches.
1966
MARCH: Activists at San Francisco State University (SFSU) form the first Black Student Union at a predominantly White institution.
OCTOBER: Merritt College students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale found the Black Panther Party to monitor police interactions with African Americans and inform them of their rights.
1967
SEPTEMBER: San Jose State University students hold campus protests, and Black athletes threaten to strike unless the administration meets demands to improve racial campus climate.
OCTOBER 1968: San Jose State student athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos become civil rights icons by raising their fists in a Black power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics.
NOVEMBER: SFSU’s Black Student Union launches the longest student strike in U.S. history. It ends on March 4, 1969, when officials agree to create an ethnic studies school — the first of its kind — and a Black studies department.
1969
JANUARY: Brandeis University students occupy a building for 11 days before the university agrees to demands for better African American support and representation.
1970
MAY 7: Days after protesters are killed at nearby Kent State University, The Ohio State University closes for two weeks amid demonstrations against the Vietnam War and unequal treatment of women and African Americans on campus.
Beverly Wade Hogan is the 13th president of Mississippi’s Tougaloo College. The first woman to lead the institution since its 1869 founding, Hogan delves into the historical and social importance of Historically Black Colleges and Universities like Tougaloo – first to educate freedmen, and later as an academic refuge for black scholars who were denied admission elsewhere. As Hogan shares, Tougaloo played a significant role in the civil rights movement, beginning with noted segregation protestors “the Tougaloo Nine.”
A Virtual Q & A with special guests Dr. Jelani Favors and Dr. Crystal Sanders, Dr. Jelani Favors and Dr. Crystal Sanders who are the 2018 and 2019 Connor Award recipients through the N.C. Historical Review (NCHR), and published by UNC Press. The session was moderated by Angela Thorpe, Director of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission.