Final Timeline by Lyndsey Smith - Student

April 1968

smithlyndseyj — 2023-12-05 15:41:17 UTC

The death of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee, in April 1968 dealt a fatal blow to the dream of White and African American people cooperating peacefully to eradicate racial injustice. King had traveled there to aid in the unionization efforts of the sanitation workers. He was shot and died on April 4 while standing on his motel balcony.

Malcolm X 1965

smithlyndseyj — 2023-12-05 15:48:32 UTC

Malcolm X and the NOI became the radical counterweight to Martin Luther King Jr.'s racially integrated, mostly Protestant strategy before he was assassinated in 1965. Malcolm X spent a significant portion of his life promoting Black separatist, a Black power ideology that opposed racial integration efforts and maintained that Black communities could best address their own issues by remaining apart from White civilization.

late 1940's

smithlyndseyj — 2023-12-05 15:53:56 UTC

A few White country artists started experimenting with the blues' rhythms in the late 1940s. The blues is a decades-old musical style that originated in rural southern Black communities. The result of these experiments was the development of a new musical genre known as rockabilly, which eventually gave rise to rock & roll in the 1950s. Themes like youthful love and liberation from the oppression of middle-class society were embraced in rock & roll music. Thanks in major part to disc jockey Alan Freed, who created the phrase "rock and roll" and promoted the music by playing it on the radio in Cleveland—where he also hosted the first rock and roll concert—it swiftly gained popularity among American teenagers.

1961

smithlyndseyj — 2023-12-05 16:06:38 UTC

Disgruntled Native American college students established the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC) in the summer of 1961 in an effort to raise awareness of the predicament of Native Americans. In the Pacific Northwest, the council organized a number of "fish-ins" in 1964 where celebrities and activists threw nets and waited for the police to pick them up. They also pushed for tribal fishermen to be exempt from conservation regulations while they were on reservations. The Red Power movement, an intertribal movement aimed at bringing attention to Native American issues and opposing prejudice, was launched by the NIYC with its militant rhetoric and use of direct action.

late 1960's

smithlyndseyj — 2023-12-05 16:15:24 UTC

The larger Mexican American civil rights struggle of the years following World War II gave rise to the Chicano movement in the 1960s. Before activists reclaimed the name and utilized it as a catalyst to push for political and social change among Mexican Americans in the 1960s, the term "Chicano" was once thought to be a disparaging epithet for immigrants from Mexico. Discrimination in agriculture, politics, schools, and other formal and informal institutions was a challenge faced by the Chicano movement.