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The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus to a white person, triggering a successful, year-long African American boycott of the bus system. -
The Little Rock 9
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. Only 20% of African Americans were registered to vote: past efforts to disenfranchise black voters such as literacy tests, poll taxes -
The Sit-in Movement
The sit-ins started on 1 February 1960, when four black students from North Carolina A&T College sat down at a Woolworth lunch counter in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. The students joseph McNeil, Izell Blair, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond purchased several items in the store before sitting at the counter reserved for white customers. -
The Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), -
James Meredith and the Desegregation of the University of Mississippi
September 1962, after a legal battle, an African-American man named James Meredith attempted to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Chaos briefly broke out on the Ole Miss campus, with riots ending in two dead, hundreds wounded and many others arrested -
Protests in Birmingham
In the spring of 1963, activists in Birmingham, Alabama launched one of the most influential campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement: Project C, better known as The Birmingham Campaign. -
The March on Washington
March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. One of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and demanded civil and economic rights for African Americans. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal -
The Selma March
1965, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) made Selma, Alabama, the focus of its efforts to register black voters in the South. That March, protesters attempting to march from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were met with violent resistance by state and local authorities -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. -
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and mortally wounded as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee
