1963 |
| |
Strength
to Love, King's book of sermons, is published.
|
 |
24 February
|
A.
Philip Randolph announces that the Negro American Labor
Council (NALC) will plan a mass "pilgrimage" to
Washington, D.C. in order to dramatize the employment crisis
of African Americans.
|
 |
26 February
|
At the annual convention of the Nation of Islam, Malcolm
X for the first time appeals for unity in the fight for
black civil rights and urges cooperation between the Muslims,
the NAACP,
and CORE.
|
1 March
|
The NAACP,
SCLC, SNCC,
and CORE
launch a voter registration campaign in Greenwood, Mississippi.
|
28 March
|
In Greenwood, Mississippi, SNCC
leaders Bob
Moses and James
Forman are arrested as African Americans march to the
Leflore County courthouse to register as voters.
|
3 April
|
SCLC and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
launch a protest campaign in Birmingham.
|
12 April
|
King is arrested in Birmingham after violating a state circuit
court injunction against protests.
|
 |
16 April
|
Responding to eight Jewish and Christian clergymen’s
advice that African Americans wait patiently for justice,
King pens his "Letter
from Birmingham Jail."
|
19 April
|
King and Abernathy are released on bond.
|
2 May
|
In Birmingham, Alabama over one thousand black children march
in the "Children’s Crusade."
|
7 May
|
Conflict in Birmingham reaches its peak when high-pressure
fire hoses force demonstrators from the business district.
Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, among others, is wounded. In addition
to hoses, Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor
employs dogs, clubs, and cattle prods to disperse four thousand
demonstrators in downtown Birmingham. Later, Alabama governor
George Wallace sends two hundred fifty state highway patrolmen
and 575 troopers armed with tear gas, machine guns, and sawed-off
shotguns into the city. By 8 May, twelve hundred law officers
have descended on Birmingham.
|
 |
8 May
|
King and twenty-six others are jailed in Birmingham for parading
on Good Friday without a permit.
|
10 May
|
King, Fred Shuttlesworth, and Ralph Abernathy work out a
tentative desegregation plan with a committee of white Birmingham
businessmen.
|
11 May
|
In Birmingham, segregationists bomb both the motel at which
King is staying and the house of his brother, the Rev. A.
D. King.
|
27 May
|
In Watson
v. City of Memphis, the U.S. Supreme Court decides
that the concept of "deliberate speed," established
by the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision
was not to be used to delay the integration of schools. The
Supreme Court abandons the concept of "deliberate speed"
and calls for prompt implementation of the Brown decision.
|
11 June
|
In a private meeting, President John F. Kennedy warns King
of FBI surveillance and counsels him to sever contacts with
alleged ex-communists Jack O’Dell and Stanley Levison.
King will later resume secret contacts with Levison, a longtime
friend and trusted advisor.
|
12 June
|
Civil rights leader Medgar
W. Evers is murdered at his home in Jackson. It was not
until 1994 that white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was
convicted of the murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
|
23 June
|
King speaks
at a freedom rally in Detroit, Michigan, to 125,000 protestors.
|
28 August
|
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom attracts more
than two hundred thousand demonstrators to the Lincoln Memorial.
Organized by A.
Philip Randolph and Bayard
Rustin, the march is supported by all major civil rights
organizations as well as by many labor and religious groups.
King delivers his "I
Have a Dream" speech.
|
 |
|
After the march, King and other civil rights leaders meet
with President John
F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon
B. Johnson in the White House.
|
 |
15 September
|
Four
black schoolgirls, Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair,
Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Dianne Wesley are killed by
a bomb explosion at Birmingham’s Sixteenth St. Baptist
Church. The twenty-first time in eight years that African
Americans had been the victims of bombings in Birmingham,
the murders, like the previous cases, remain unsolved.
|
 |
|
King sends President John
F. Kennedy a telegram urging for immediate federal action
before "the worst racial holocaust the nation has ever
seen" erupts in Birmingham. King sends Governor Wallace
a telegram telling him that, because of "your irresponsible
and misguided actions..., the blood of four little children
and others... is on your hands."
|
18 September
|
King delivers the eulogy
at the funerals of Addie Mae Collins, Carol Denise McNair,
and Cynthia Dianne Wesley, three of the four children that
were killed during the 15 September bombing of the Sixteenth
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Carole Robertson, the
fourth victim, was buried in a separate ceremony.
|
19 September
|
President John
F. Kennedy meets with King and six other leaders, who
tell the president that African Americans in Birmingham are
"almost on the verge of despair as a result of this reign
of terror."
|
10 October
|
U.S. Attorney General Robert
Kennedy authorizes the FBI to wiretap King’s home
phone in Atlanta and subsequently approves taps on SCLC’s
phones as well.
|
7 November
|
Nearly eighty thousand disenfranchised African Americans
in Mississippi cast "freedom ballots" in a mock
election designed to prove that black residents want to vote.
|
30 December
|
SNCC
agrees to a plan, formulated by Bob
Moses and Allard
K. Lowenstein, to bring thousands of white volunteers
to a Mississippi
Summer Project in 1964.
|
