Founded in 1942 by an interracial group of University of Chicago students, CORE pioneered key tactics of the modern civil rights movement, using sit-ins and other forms of civil disobedience to challenge segregation. Winning victories in northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, CORE became active in the South with the lunch counter sit-ins of 1960. The following year CORE organized "Freedom Rides," sending black and white students south to disrupt segregated interstate bus service. Drawing much of its membership from college campuses, CORE kept up civil disobedience campaigns in the North as well as the South. Here is a timeline of more than 600 CORE actions as reported in several CORE publications and the New York Times. See the accompanying maps of CORE actions. Sources and methods are explained below. Research and database by Arianne Hermida. The maps are hosted by Tableau Public and may take a few seconds to respond. If slow, refresh the page. 

Sources: CORE-lator 1950-1968 (incomplete); Seattle CORE-lator (incomplete); Chicago Defender, and several CORE documents. The New York Times articles are from the database developed for Dynamics of Collective Action in the U.S, 1960-1995. Stanford University: Susan Olzak, Doug McAdam, John McCarthy, Sarah Soule. http://web.stanford.edu/group/collectiveaction/cgi-bin/drupal/. We gratefully acknowledge that contribution and note that we have reformatted, recoded, and are using only selections from that massive dataset.

Research and data compilation: Arianne Hermida

Methods note: This database is not complete and is not necessarily geographically representative. We have gathered information from the sources listed above, each of which had agendas that shaped how and what it covered. "Titles" are in almost all cases taken directly from the source. "Dates" are mostly event dates but in some cases represent the date of the publication. "Descriptions" were written by our researchers or by the Dynamics of Collective Action team.

 

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Additional Black Freedom Movements maps and charts

NAACP at the Grass Roots 1909-1977

From an early date, the NAACP was a grass roots organization with a membership that expanded across the nation. These interactive maps and charts show the growth of the NAACP from a single branch with a few members in New York City to 80 branches by 1917, to 400 branches in 1923, then surging to more than 1,000 branches and 300,000 members during World War II, and then the regional surge into the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

SNCC sit-ins and other demonstrations 1960-1970

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was arguably the most dynamic and influential of the 1960s new left and civil rights era organizations. We map more than 500 SNCC sit-ins, boycotts, and other actions and explore our yearbook/ database of SNCC actions

Black Panther Party in six cities

Founded in Oakland, the Black Panther authorized only 12 additional chapters. Still the Party stages actions across a wider geography. Here are maps and timelines showing more than 500 BPP actions. In addition we show in detail the six metropolitan areas where the Panthers enrolled that largest number of members and made the greatest impact: Oakland-SF Bay Area; New York; Chicago; Los Angeles; Seattle; Philadelphia.