341 chronology

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Movement Chronology:
from the Civil War to the Present

1865 \| 1896 \| 1919 \| 1941 \| 1960 \| 1968
1865	Lincoln assassinated. Andrew Johnson becomes President.
1867–1877	Molly Maguires terrorize Mauch Chunk PA.
1869	Knights of Labor founded as secret society. Ulysses S. Grant, Republican President.
1873	Panic of 1873 begins Long Depression (1873-1879).
1877	Great Railroad Strike. Socialist Labor Party founded. Rutherford B. Hayes, President. Last federal troops withdrawn from South. End of Reconstruction and beginning of Jim Crow era.
1881	Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School founded. International Working People’s Association (Black International) founded. "Chicago Idea"—One Big Union. Manifesto of Chicago Socialist Revolutionary Club written by Johann Most. Chester Arthur succeeds James Garfield as President.
1883	Supreme Court invalidates Civil Rights Act of 1875
1885	Grover Cleveland, President.
1886	Haymarket Riot. August Spies, Address to the court. American Federation of Labor founded by Samuel Gompers.
1889	Benjamin Harrison, President.
1890	Mississippi institutes poll tax and literacy law. NWSA and AWSA merge to form NAWSA, the National American Woman Suffrage Association.
1892–1893	World’s Columbia Exposition (Chicago)
1892	Peak year for lynchings. 789,000 immigrants. Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors.
1893	Panic of 1893. American Railway Union formed with Debs as president. Grover Cleveland, President, again.
1894	Successful American Railway Union strike. Pullman strike. Debs jailed in Woodstock, Ill, dates his espousal of Socialism to this period.
1895	Booker T. Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address.
1896	Plessy v. Ferguson legalizes segregation.
1897	Social Democratic Party founded by Debs, absorbs American Railway Union. William McKinley, President.
1898	Wilmington, NC "Race Riot." AKA The Wilmington Insurrection. An armed and organized gang of white Democrats deposed, assassinated, and confiscated the property of black and Republican elected leadership of Wilmington.
1900	Socialist Labor Party rejected by American Federation of Labor, attempts to form rival unions, then breaks up to become Socialist Party. Debs campaigns for president as Social Democrat.
1901	Socialist Party of America founded. MicKinley assassinated by loner with anarchist leanings, Leon Czolgosz. Theodore Roosevelt, President.
1903	Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst form the Women's Social and Political Union in London. Beginning of militant suffragism.
1904	Debs campaigns for President as Socialist.
1905	W.E.B. DuBois founds Niagara Movement. Industrial Workers of the World founded. Debs, Address at Founding Convention. Women's Trade Union League organizes daily street meetings near factory gates at noon and closing time in New York City.
1906	DuBois, Niagara Address (We Claim Our Rights)
1908	Debs campaigns as Socialist. Race riot in Springfield, Ill. Suffragists begin open-air soapbox campaigns.
1909	Lincoln Emancipation Conference, precipitated by race riot, draws a prestigious mix of progressives and old abolitionists. They discuss founding a new organization to enforce civil rights for African Americans. William Taft, President.
1910	National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) founded.
1911	Triangle Factory Fire, Manhattan, March 25. 146 dead due to locked doors and obstructions in upper story tenement garment factory. International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
1912	Debs campaigns as Socialist; receives 6% (897,011 votes); most successful Socialist campaign in U.S. history. Woodrow Wilson elected President. Alice Paul organizes the Congressional Union within NAWSA. The Progressive Party (T. Roosevelt) endorses woman suffrage.
1916	Marcus Garvey, Universal Negro Improvement Association. National Woman's Party founded by militants Alice Paul and Lucy Burns. Trained in London by the Pankhursts, they broke with NAWSA over their conciliatory tactics and state rather than federal orientation. In the same year, Carrie Chapman Catt, newly elected president of NAWSA, repudiated the states right platform and announced a "winning plan" for a federal amendment.
1917	Bolshevik November Revolution. America enters World War I.
1918	Debs, Canton, OH speech. Arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison under Sedition Act. Statement to the Court.
1919	Bolsheviks form Russian Communist Party. Red Scare. Palmer Raids. Emma Goldman deported. J. Edgar Hoover forms FBI’s Radical Division. American Communist Party formed and immediately forced underground. Red Summer: Beginning in Texas, race riots broke out across the country with the most violent occurring in Chicago and Washington DC, but also in Charleston, SC, Knoxville, TN, Omaha, NE and other places. In general they were the result of competition between blacks and whites over labor.
1920	Debs runs as Socialist for president while in prison. (919,000 votes). Nineteenth Amendment ratified granting suffrage to women. Warren G. Harding elected president.
1921	U.S. Communist Party formed. Debs released.
1923	National Woman’s Party, led by Alice Paul, promotes ERA in Congress.
1929	Communist Party re-emerges as Communist Party of the United States, a member of Comintern (Soviet-led international Communist organization).
ca. 1934	Elijah Muhammad founds Nation of Islam.
1941	Dec. 8, Roosevelt asks Congress to declare war against Japan
1941-1945	American Communists pursue common anti-Nazi interests with US and make wartime accommodations to capitalism. During this period their membership climbs to all-time high of 60,000-80,000. However, as much as 30% turnover means that at any one time there are many more former Communists than active Communists in the US.
1947	CORE organized out of Fellowship of Reconciliation to desegregate interstate bus travel.
1949	Eleven leaders of Communist Party of the US are convicted of violating the Smith Act, which outlawed groups teaching and advocating the violent overthrow of the government.
1954	Brown v. Board of Education. Army-McCarthy Hearings.
1955	August 28: Emmett, Till, aged 14, is lynched for allegedly whistling at a white girl in a grocery store in Money, MS. A photo of the open casket makes national and international news. Dec. 1: Rosa Parks provides catalyst for Montgomery bus boycott.
1957	Schools are integrated in Little Rock. Foundation of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). First March on Washington organized by Philip Randolph.
1959	Greensboro sit-ins.
1960	Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) founded. April 28: Robert Alan Haber and Sharon Jeffreys organize human rights conference which marks the debut of SDS. They invite the four instigators of the Greensboro sit-ins. Also present: James Farmer and Michael Harrington. May 13: "Black Friday" in Berkeley/Bay Area as police attack demonstrators outside San Francisco City Hall where members of HUAC are holding hearings on "Communist subversion" in Bay Area. Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffmann, unbeknownst to each other, are both present and experience radicalization.
1961	Freedom Riders begin desegregating interstate buses. Beaten and jailed in Birmingham. King organizes Albany demonstration, antagonizes SNCC. Kennedy appoints President’s Commission on the Status of Women, chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt.
1962–1963	Massive demonstrations in Birmingham.:
	March 7, 1962	A Cornell University student group invites Malcolm X of the Nation of Islam and James Farmer of CORE to debate on "separation vs. integration"
	June 11-15, 1962	SDS gathers in Port Huron for national convention, produces Port Huron Statement.
1963	King, Letter from Birmingham Jail. March on Washington. King, I Have a Dream. 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham is bombed; four little girls are killed. President’s Commission on the Status of Women published. President Kennedy assassinated. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique.
1964	Freedom Summer for the Mississippi Voter Registration Project.
	March	Malcolm X leaves Nation of Islam to form Organization for Afro-American Unity. Travels to Mecca.
	April 3	Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet", speech delivered at Corey United Methodist Church, Cleveland.
	July	Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sex amendment to Title VII, job discrimination clause of Civil Rights Act, passed through efforts of Alice Paul and NWP.
	4 August	Gulf of Tonkin incident provides Johnson with warrant to escalate the Vietnam War.
		Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP), led by Sharon Jeffries,.organizes in nine American cities. Cleveland and Swarthmore chapters emphasize radical group process. Peace Research and Education Project (PREP) organizes around issue of Vietnam War. Democratic National Convention: Delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party are denied a role in the Democratic Convention. Johnson elected President. SNCC staff retreat generates position paper on women in the organization.
	September	Berkeley Free Speech Movement kicks off. Savio, Speech at Berkeley.
	December	King receives Nobel Peace Prize.
1965	Malcolm X assassinated by members of Nation of Islam. King and SNCC speak out against Johnson’s Vietnam War policy. First anti-war demonstration in Washington organized by SDS. Tom Hayden goes to Hanoi. Watts riots. Casey Hayden and Mary King, Memo on Sex and Caste.
1966	Stokely Carmichael becomes leader of SNCC, initiating Black Power movement. Founding of NOW (National Organization for Women).
1967	Massive antiwar March on Washington. "Revolutionary Contingent" attempts to levitate Pentagon, marks appearance of Yippies. Summer of Love in San Francisco. CORE becomes separatist organization. Shulamith Firestone and Pam Allen found New York Radical Women. Ti-Grace Atkinson elected president of NOW-New York.
1968	Eldridge Cleaver, Political Struggle in America. Nixon elected President. Consciousness raising developed by NYRW. Mary Daly publishes The Church and the Second Sex. First issues of Voice of the Women’s Liberation Movement; Notes from the First Year.
	30 Jan	Tet offensive begins in Vietnam.
	March	Robert F. Kennedy enters presidential campaign. On March 31, Johnson declines to run.
	April	3 April, King, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop. 4 April, King assassinated.
	June	Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated.
	Aug	Democratic National Convention disrupted by widespread demonstrations. Johnson vice president Hubert Humphrey nominated.
1969	Indictment of Chicago Eight. SDS merges with Progressive Labor Party. Weathermen launch Days of Rage in Chicago. Founding of Redstockings out of breakup of NYRW. Ti-Grace Atkinson leaves NOW to form New York Radical Feminists. National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) founded. Shirley Chisholm, For the Equal Rights Amendment.
1970	Kent State massacre. Invasion of Cambodia. Firestone publishes The Dialectic of Sex. Kate Millett publishes Sexual Politics. Newsweek runs cover story on feminism (16 March). Ladies Home Journal sit-in, 19 March, results in August supplement on feminism. Party of NOW members from Pittsburgh disrupt Senate hearing with demands for action on ERA. Rita Mae Brown resigns from NOW-NY over issue of lesbianism. Chicago Seven acquitted of conspiracy charges, five members convicted on incitement charges (later overturned).
1971	Jane Collective begins performing illegal abortions in Chicago. Lorraine Rothman invents the Del-Em, a safe, cheap suction device for early abortions.
1972	1st issue of Ms. (July). Congress passes the ERA. Congress passes Title IX banning sex discrimination in federally assisted educational programs.
1973	Members of Jane collective arrested. Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton result in making abortion constitutional. First publication of Our Bodies, Our Selves. Mary Daly publishes Beyond God the Father. Heide, For the Revolution: Tomorrow is Now.
1974	First conference on "Women and the Environment." Passage of Equal Credit Opportunity Act
1975	Kathie Sarachild and Carol Hanisch publish Feminist Revolution, attacking liberal feminism. End of early radical feminism. National Womens Health Network founded. Members of Rothman’s Feminist Womens Health Center arrested for practicing medicine without a license.
1978	Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology.
1980-1981	Women’s Pentagon Actions (November 80-81, ecofeminist)
1980	Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature.
1984	Mary Daly, Pure Lust.
1989	Webster v. Sullivan returns abortion regulation to states. Interest in self-help abortion techniques revives briefly.