page_title: Timeline of African-American history
section_title: 1960–1969
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of African-American history / 20th century / 1960–1969
caption_attribution_description: English: en:Bloody Sunday (1965) - en:Alabama officers await demonstrators at the en:Edmund Pettus Bridge.
context_page_description: This is a timeline of the African-American history in what is now the United States, from 1565 to the present.
context_section_description: 1960
  February 1 – Four black students sit at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking six months of the Greensboro sit-ins.
  February 13 – The Nashville sit-ins begin, although the Nashville students, trained by activist and nonviolent teacher James Lawson, had been doing preliminary groundwork towards the action for two months. The sit-in ends successfully in May.
  February 17 – Alabama grand jury indicts Dr. King for tax evasion.
  February 19 – Virginia Union University students, called the Richmond 34 stage sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Richmond, Virginia.
  February 22 – The Richmond 34 stage a sit in the Richmond Room at Thalhimer's department store.
  March 3 – Vanderbilt University expels James Lawson for sit-in participation.
  March 4, 1960 – Houston's first sit-in, led by Texas Southern University students, was held at the Weingarten's lunch counter, located at 4110 Almeda in Houston, Texas. 
  March 7 – Felton Turner of Houston is beaten and hanged upside-down in a tree, initials KKK carved on his chest.
  March 19 – San Antonio becomes first city to integrate lunch counters.
  March 20 – Florida Governor LeRoy Collins calls lunch counter segregation "unfair and morally wrong".
  April 8 – Weak civil rights bill survives Senate filibuster.
  April 15–17 – The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is formed in Raleigh, North Carolina.
  April 19 – Z. Alexander Looby's home is bombed, with no injuries. Looby, a Nashville civil rights lawyer, was active in the cities ongoing sit-in movement.
  May – Nashville sit-ins end successfully.
  May 6 – Civil Rights Act of 1960 signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
  May 28 – William Robert Ming and Hubert Delaney obtain an acquittal of Dr. King from an all-white jury in Alabama.
  June 24 – King meets Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK).
  June 28 – Bayard Rustin resigns from SCLC after condemnation by Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
  July 11 – To Kill a Mockingbird published.
  July 31 – Elijah Muhammad calls for an all-black state. Membership in the Nation of Islam estimated at 100,000.
  August – Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker replaces Ella Baker as SCLC's Executive Director.
  October 19 – Dr. King and fifty others arrested at sit-in at Atlanta's Rich's Department Store.
  October 26 – Dr. King's earlier probation revoked; he is transferred to Reidsville State Prison.
  October 28 – After intervention from Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), King is free on bond.
  November 8 – John F. Kennedy defeats Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election.
  November 14 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South (William Frantz Elementary School) following court-ordered integration in New Orleans, Louisiana. This event was portrayed by Norman Rockwell in his 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With.
  December 5 – In Boynton v. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that racial segregation in bus terminals is illegal because such segregation violates the Interstate Commerce Act. This ruling, in combination with the ICC's 1955 decision in Keys v. Carolina Coach, effectively outlaws segregation on interstate buses and at the terminals servicing such buses.
  1961
  January 11 – Rioting over court-ordered admission of first two African Americans (Hamilton E. Holmes and Charlayne Hunter-Gault) at the University of Georgia leads to their suspension, but they are ordered reinstated.
  January 31 – Member of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and nine students were arrested in Rock Hill, South Carolina for a sit-in at a McCrory's lunch counter.
  March 6 – JFK issues Executive Order 10925, which establishes a Presidential committee that later becomes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
  May 4 – The first group of Freedom Riders, with the intent of integrating interstate buses, leaves Washington, D.C. by Greyhound bus. The group, organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals.
  May 14 – The Freedom Riders' bus is attac
caption: The Edmund Pettus Bridge on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965.
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