1955
Jan 3

Civil Service Reports on Impact of Federal Loyalty Program

Jan 20

Sit-ins Integrate Baltimore Lunch Counters at Read’s Stores

Mar 2

Nine Months Before Rosa Parks: Four African-American Women Challenge Discrimination on Montgomery, Alabama, Bus

Mar 2

Screen Actors Guild to Expel Members Who Refuse to Testify About Political Associations

Mar 17

John Marshall Harlan, II Joins Supreme Court

Mar 28

“Blackboard Jungle” Banned in Memphis

Apr 15

First Abortion Conference in the U.S.

Apr 21

“Inherit the Wind” Opens on Broadway

Apr 27

California Supreme Court Imposes Exclusionary Rule on Police

Apr 30

Ruth Shipley Retires – “Queendom” of Passports Ends

May 17

Rock Around the Quad! 1,000 Princeton Students “Riot” Over “Rock Around the Clock”

May 22

Lock Up Your Teenagers! Fats is Coming

May 31

“All Deliberate Speed:” Implementing “Brown v. Board of Education”

Jun 10

Censorship Office: Film on Famous Scopes Trial “Unfair” to “Religious-Thinking People”

Jun 23

Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Rebuffs President Eisenhower Over Segregated National Guard

Jul 10

E. Frederic Morrow Becomes First African-American Presidential Aide

Aug 2

ACLU Wins Passports for Two Who Were Denied, One for No Reason and One for a Bad Reason

Aug 12

A.D.A. Head Proclaims (Somewhat Prematurely) “End of the McCarthy Era”

Aug 18

Pete Seeger Asserts First Amendment Right at HUAC Hearing

Aug 21

Houston Claims Success in Anti-Rock and Roll Campaign

Aug 26

“Blackboard Jungle” Removed as U.S. Entry in Venice Film Festival

Aug 28

Emmett Till, 14, Murdered in Mississippi

Sep 1

Blacklist Victim Philip Loeb Commits Suicide

Sep 1

Huck Finn Whitewashed – No Slavery, No African-Americans in TV Movie

Sep 21

Daughters of Bilitis Founded; First U.S. Lesbian Group

Oct 6

Allen Ginsberg Reads “Howl” for the First Time

Oct 7

ACLU Condemns Secret Recording of Juries

Oct 10

“The Ladder:” First National lesbian Magazine Releases First Issue

Oct 15

“Right to Travel” Art Exhibit Opens: Paintings by Rockwell Kent

Oct 19

NAACP Called a “Threat” to Georgia

Oct 19

Public Housing Residents Threatened with Eviction for Not Signing Loyalty Oath

Oct 22

Future Civil Rights Hero Frank M. Johnson Appointed District Court Judge in Alabama

Oct 24

Can We Say “Virgin”? Supreme Court Okays Film “The Moon is Blue”

Oct 25

Paul Child, Husband of Famous Chef Julia Child, “Cleared” by FBI

Nov 7

The Road to FOIA Begins – Rep. John Moss Opens Hearings on Government Secrecy

Nov 17

Civil Rights Bloc Formed in Congress

Dec 1

Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat to a White Person– Inspires Historic Montgomery Bus Boycott

Dec 5

Rosa Parks Convicted for Refusing to Give Up Her Seat; Bus Boycott Begins

Dec 15

“Man With the Golden Arm” Opens Without Hollywood Seal of Approval – Challenges Censorship Code

Dec 24

Folk Group The Weavers’ Concert at Carnegie Hall Signals End to Blacklist and the Worst of the Cold War

1955

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