A divided union: civil rights in the USA, 1945–74 — timeline

Key topic 1 · The Red Scare and McCarthyism

Reasons for the Red Scare: the Cold War, Hiss and the Rosenbergs

March 1947

Truman's Federal Employee Loyalty Program screens over four million people. Why this date: The machinery predates McCarthy by three years and was created by a Democratic president.

October 1947

HUAC hearings on Hollywood; the Ten are jailed for contempt and blacklisted. Why this date: The blacklist had no legal existence, which made it unchallengeable.

1949

The Soviet atomic test and the communist victory in China. Why this date: The two shocks that made an internal-betrayal explanation politically irresistible.

January 1950

Hiss convicted of perjury. Why this date: Weeks before McCarthy's Wheeling speech, and the case he built on.

June 1953

The Rosenbergs executed. Why this date: The only American civilians executed for peacetime espionage, and the case against Ethel was the weaker.

McCarthy's methods, the growth of opposition and his downfall

9 February 1950

The Wheeling speech: a list of 205 that is never produced. Why this date: The number changed within days, which is the fastest way to demonstrate the method.

June 1950

Margaret Chase Smith's Declaration of Conscience. Why this date: Opposition existed from the start and was ineffective, which is what needs explaining.

9 March 1954

Murrow's See It Now broadcast. Why this date: The first major broadcast attack, using McCarthy's own words as the evidence.

April–June 1954

The Army–McCarthy hearings, televised for thirty-six days. Why this date: Television, not argument, is what did the damage, and the medium is part of the answer.

2 December 1954

The Senate censures him 67 to 22. Why this date: He retained his seat; censure was political death rather than legal consequence.

Key topic 2 · Civil rights in the 1950s

Brown v Board of Education and 'all deliberate speed'

1896

Plessy v Ferguson establishes separate but equal. Why this date: Brown is an overturning, and the fifty-eight-year interval is part of its significance.

17 May 1954

Brown: separate educational facilities are inherently unequal, 9–0. Why this date: Unanimity was engineered by Warren precisely because defiance was expected.

May 1955

Brown II: desegregation with all deliberate speed. Why this date: The phrase that removed the deadline, and the reason compliance took a decade.

March 1956

The Southern Manifesto signed by 101 members of Congress. Why this date: Resistance was organised at federal level by elected representatives, not only by mobs.

1964

About 2 per cent of black children in the Deep South in desegregated schools. Why this date: The number that measures the ruling's direct effect, and it is the strand's decisive statistic.

Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

August–September 1955

Till murdered; open casket; Jet publishes; Bryant and Milam acquitted. Why this date: The acquittal, not the murder, is what radicalised a generation, because it showed the law would not act.

1 December 1955

Rosa Parks arrested. Why this date: A selected test case with a trained NAACP officer, not a spontaneous act.

5 December 1955

One-day boycott; the MIA formed; King elected president. Why this date: Organisation existed within four days, which only happens where it already existed.

13 November 1956

Browder v Gayle affirmed by the Supreme Court. Why this date: The legal victory, and it came from a different case than the one everyone remembers.

21 December 1956

Buses desegregated after 381 days. Why this date: The duration is the achievement; sustaining it is what proved the community's capacity.

Little Rock, the Civil Rights Act 1957 and the revival of the Klan

2 September 1957

Faubus uses the National Guard to block the students. Why this date: State troops against a federal court order — the constitutional issue that forced the President's hand.

4 September 1957

Elizabeth Eckford turned back alone. Why this date: The photograph that internationalised the crisis, at the height of the Cold War.

24 September 1957

Eisenhower federalises the Guard and sends 1,200 paratroopers. Why this date: Federal military force used to enforce desegregation for the first time since Reconstruction.

September 1957

The Civil Rights Act, the first since 1875, heavily weakened in the Senate. Why this date: Precedent without power, and Johnson's role in weakening it matters for how he is judged in 1964.

1958–59

Faubus closes Little Rock's high schools rather than continue desegregation. Why this date: The federal victory was tactical; the resistance simply changed form.

Key topic 3 · The impact of civil rights protests, 1960–74

Sit-ins, Freedom Riders and the Meredith case

1 February 1960

The Greensboro sit-in begins; within two months it is in 54 cities. Why this date: The speed of spread is the evidence that a network already existed among black colleges.

April 1960

SNCC founded at Ella Baker's initiative. Why this date: A student organisation independent of King, which shapes the movement's later divisions.

14 May 1961

Anniston: a Freedom Rider bus firebombed. Why this date: The image that forced federal action four months later.

September–November 1961

The Interstate Commerce Commission desegregates interstate terminals. Why this date: The tactic's payoff, and it enforced a ruling that had been law since 1960.

30 September 1962

The Ole Miss riot; two killed; around 30,000 federal personnel eventually deployed. Why this date: The cost of one admission, and the reason litigation alone could not scale.

Birmingham, Washington, Freedom Summer, Selma and the two Acts

1961–62

Albany fails; Pritchett's restraint denies the movement its images. Why this date: The failure that explains every subsequent choice of target.

April–May 1963

Birmingham; the Letter from Birmingham Jail; the children's march and Connor's dogs and hoses. Why this date: The strategy's clearest execution, and the point at which Kennedy moved.

28 August 1963

The March on Washington, about 250,000 people. Why this date: Scale and respectability, aimed at Congress rather than at a Southern sheriff.

June–August 1964

Freedom Summer; the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders; the MFDP at Atlantic City. Why this date: The moment SNCC's confidence in the federal alliance broke, which matters for the next strand.

7 March 1965

Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Why this date: Eight days before Johnson's address to Congress, which is the tightest cause-and-effect in the option.

August 1965

The Voting Rights Act. Why this date: Federal registrars acting directly, which is why the registration figures move within two years.

Malcolm X, Black Power, the riots and the Panthers

21 February 1965

Malcolm X assassinated, eleven months after breaking with the Nation of Islam. Why this date: The break and the hajj precede the assassination, which is why his settled position is not the Nation's.

11–16 August 1965

Watts: 34 dead, five days after the Voting Rights Act. Why this date: The timing is the argument — the legislation had addressed a Southern problem.

June 1966

Carmichael uses Black Power on the Meredith March. Why this date: The phrase's origin, on a march called after Meredith was shot.

1966

Chicago campaign fails; the Panthers founded in Oakland. Why this date: The failure and the alternative in the same year, which is the causal link.

October 1968

Smith and Carlos raise gloved fists in Mexico City. Why this date: The movement's most widely seen single image after 1965, and it cost all three men on the podium.

Key topic 4 · Other protest movements: students, women, anti–Vietnam

Berkeley, SDS and the anti-Vietnam movement

1962

The Port Huron Statement founds SDS on participatory democracy. Why this date: The movement's intellectual origin, and it predates Vietnam escalation by three years.

Autumn 1964

Berkeley Free Speech Movement; about 800 arrested at Sproul Hall. Why this date: The tactics come directly from Mississippi Freedom Summer, which many participants had just left.

April 1967

King's Riverside Church speech against the war. Why this date: The public joining of the two movements, and it cost him support.

4 May 1970

Kent State: four students killed; Jackson State follows on 14–15 May. Why this date: The largest student strike in American history followed, and the disparity in coverage is itself evidence.

1971 and 1973

Voting age lowered to eighteen; the draft ends. Why this date: The movement's concrete legislative legacy, which is easy to overlook.

Friedan, NOW, women's liberation, abortion — and Schlafly

1961–63

Eleanor Roosevelt chairs the Commission on the Status of Women; it reports in 1963. Why this date: The state commissions it created became the movement's first network.

1963

The Feminine Mystique published; Equal Pay Act passed. Why this date: Argument and legislation in the same year, and the book's audience is a fair criticism to state.

1964

'Sex' added to Title VII by a segregationist congressman. Why this date: The most effective piece of American sex-discrimination law arrived as a wrecking amendment.

1972

The ERA passes Congress; Title IX enacted; STOP ERA founded. Why this date: The movement's high point and the beginning of its defeat, in the same year.

January 1973

Roe v Wade. Why this date: A court ruling rather than legislation, which is why it remained politically contested.

June 1982

The ERA deadline expires three states short. Why this date: The defeat, and the reason the strand exists on the specification.

Key topic 5 · Nixon and Watergate

The scandal: break-in, cover-up, tapes and resignation

17 June 1972

The Watergate break-in; five arrested, one of them CREEP's security coordinator. Why this date: The connection to the campaign is present from the first day.

23 June 1972

The smoking gun conversation about using the CIA to block the FBI. Why this date: The obstruction is six days after the burglary and is on tape.

November 1972

Nixon wins 49 states. Why this date: The scandal did not defeat him electorally; the cover-up destroyed him afterwards.

July 1973

The taping system revealed. Why this date: The moment the case stops depending on whose word to believe.

October 1973

The Saturday Night Massacre. Why this date: The dismissal of the prosecutor converted a legal process into a constitutional crisis.

24 July – 9 August 1974

United States v Nixon 8–0; the tape released; resignation. Why this date: Sixteen days from ruling to resignation, which shows what the evidence did.

The legislative aftermath and the pardon

November 1973

The War Powers Resolution passed over Nixon's veto. Why this date: An override is the clearest measure of how far presidential authority had collapsed.

9 August 1974

Ford becomes President, never having been elected to either office. Why this date: A constitutional first, and it weakened his position for the pardon that followed.

8 September 1974

Ford pardons Nixon, before any charge. Why this date: The pardon preceded an indictment, so it forgave offences that were never specified.

1974

Campaign finance, privacy and budget legislation. Why this date: Four statutes in two years is the durable constitutional consequence of the scandal.