Chronology (Document Citation Greenblatt, A. (2003, July 11). Race in America. CQ Researcher, 13, 593-624.)

1940s-1950s
World War II and its aftermath presage big changes for African-Americans as the migration north intensifies and the civil-rights movement takes off.

1941
World War II causes an immediate shortage of industrial labor at home, increasing the migration of Southern African-Americans to Northern urban areas.

1947
Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first black to play Major League Baseball.

July 26, 1948
President Harry S Truman ends racial segregation in the armed forces.

1954
The Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling overturns the previous “separate but equal” policy in public education.

1955
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man, sparking the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. emerges as a civil-rights leader.

1960s
The civil-rights movement prompts Congress to enact legislation aimed at ending discrimination.

1961
President John F. Kennedy uses the term “affirmative action” for the first time, ordering federal contractors to give preferential treatment to minorities in hiring.

1963
Dr. King gives his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

1964
The Civil Rights Act prohibits job discrimination based on race, sex or national origin.

1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act. In September he orders federal contractors to actively recruit minorities.

1968
Dr. King is assassinated, touching off race riots in many U.S. cities.

1970s-1980s
New policies like affirmative action are adopted, prompting a backlash among whites.

1970
President Richard M. Nixon requires contractors to set goals for minority employment.

1978
In University of California Regents v. Bakke, the Supreme Court rules that universities can use race as a factor in admissions, but may not impose quotas.

1980
Affirmative-action foe Ronald Reagan is elected to the presidency. The Justice Department begins attacking racial quotas.

1990s-2000s
As affirmative action is challenged in the courts, racist-tinged incidents continue to shock the nation.

1991
Black motorist Rodney King is kicked and beaten by white Los Angeles police officers; their acquittal in 1992 touches off major rioting. Eventually they are convicted of civil-rights violations.

1993
Supreme Court rules in Shaw v. Reno that race cannot be used as the “predominant” factor in drawing political districts.

1996
Voters in California approve Proposition 209 outlawing the use of race or gender preferences at all state government institutions.

1998
Three white men in Jasper, Texas, drag black James Byrd Jr. to death behind their pickup truck. Two are sentenced to death; a third is sentenced to life in prison.

2002
Sen. Trent Lott says the country would have been better off if then-segregationist Gov. Strom Thurmond had been elected president in 1948; after outcry, Lott steps down as Senate majority leader.

Jan. 15, 2003
President Bush announces that his administration sides with affirmative-action opponents against University of Michigan admissions policies.

June 2003
Supreme Court upholds the University of Michigan's qualified use of race as a factor in admissions. . . . Blacks riot in Benton Harbor, Mich., to protest allegedly racist police tactics.