"I have a dream:" Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement

Timeline created by drandrade in History

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Event Date:	Event Title:	Event Description:
01/15/1929	MLK Jr. Born	Martin Luther King Jr. born to schoolteacher Alberta King and Baptist minister Martin Luther King Sr. in Sweet Auburn district in Atlanta, Georgia
02/25/1948	Ordained	Dr. King is ordained to the Baptist ministry and appointed associate pastor at Ebenezer, at the young age of 19.
06/18/1953	Married	Dr. King marries Coretta Scott in Marion, Alabama
05/17/1954	Separate but Equal no more	The Supreme Court of the United States rules unanimously in Brown vs. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
11/17/1955	First child born	The Kings’ first child, Yolanda Denise, is born in Montgomery, Alabama.
12/05/1955	Bus Boycott Begins	Bus boycott launched in Montgomery, Ala., after an African-American woman, Rosa Parks, is arrested December 1 for refusing to give up her seat to a white person. A meeting of movement leaders is held. Dr. King is unanimously elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association
11/13/1956	Bus Boycott Ends	The United States Supreme Court affirms the decision of the three-judge district court in declaring Alabama’s state and local laws requiring segregation on buses unconstitutional, ensuring victory for the boycott
02/14/1957	SCLC created, many speeches given	Black ministers form what became known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King is named first president one month later. In this typical year of demonstrations, King traveled 780,000 miles and made 208 speeches.
02/18/1957	Time Magazine	Martin Luther King Jr. is featured on the cover of Time Magazine
09/09/1957	First Civil Rights Act	The first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction is passed by Congress, creating the Civil Rights Commission and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.
10/23/1957	Second child born	A second child, Martin Luther III, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King.
09/03/1958	Arrested	Dr. King is arrested on a charge of loitering (later changed to “failure to obey an officer”) in the vicinity of the Montgomery Recorder’s Court. He is released on $100.00 bond.
09/17/1958	First book	King's first book is published, "Stride Toward Freedom" (Harper), which containts his recollections of the Montgomery bus boycott.
02/02/1959	Visits India	Dr. and Mrs. King spend a month in India studying Gandhi’s March techniques of nonviolence as guests of Prime Minister Jawaharal Nehru. King had a lifelong admiration for Mohandas K. Gandhi, and credited Gandhi's passive resistance techniques for his civil-rights successes.
02/01/1960	Lunch Counter Sit-Ins	The first lunch counter sit-in to desegregate eating facilities is held by students in Greensboro, North Carolina, and soon after spreads across the nation. In Atlanta, King is arrested during a sit-in waiting to be served at a restaurant. He is sentenced to four months in jail, but after intervention by John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, he is released.
06/24/1960	Meets JFK	Dr. King meets with John F. Kennedy (candidate for President of the United States) about racial matters.
01/30/1961	Third child born	A third child, Dexter Scott, is born to Dr. and Mrs. King in Atlanta, Georgia.
05/14/1961	Freedom Rides begin	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 for Racial Equality (CORE), leaves shortly after the Supreme Court has outlawed segregation in interstate transportation terminals. The bus is burned outside of Anniston, Alabama on May 14. A mob beats the Freedom Riders upon their arrival in Birmingham, Alabama. They are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
03/28/1963	Fourth Child Born	The King’s fourth child, Bernice Albertine, is born.
04/16/1963	Letter From Birmingham Jail written	Arrested after demonstrating in defiance of a court order, King writes "Letter From Birmingham Jail." This eloquent letter, later widely circulated, became a classic of the civil-rights movement.
08/28/1963	"I Have A Dream" speech	The March on Washington, the first large-scale integrated protest march, is held in Washington, D.C. Dr. King delivers his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in front of 250,000 civil-rights supporters on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Afterwards he and other Civil Rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the White House.
01/03/1964	Man of the Year	King appears on the cover of Time magazine again, this time as its Man of the Year.
07/02/1964	Civil Rights Act of 1964	Dr. King attends the signing of the Public Accommodations Bill, (Part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House.
09/18/1964	Audience with the Pope	Dr. King has an audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican.
12/10/1964	Nobel Peace Prize	Dr. King receives the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. He is the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Peace at age 35.
03/21/1965	March to Montgomery	Over three thousand protest marchers leave Selma for a march to Montgomery, Alabama protected by federal troops. They are joined along the way by a total of twenty-five thousand marchers. Upon reaching the capitol, they hear an address by Dr. King.
08/06/1965	Voting Rights Act of 1965	President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act, which King sought, authorized federal examiners to register qualified voters and suspended devices such as literacy tests that aimed to prevent African Americans from voting.
03/28/1968	Things Get Ugly	Dr. King leads six thousand protesters on a march through downtown Memphis in support of striking sanitation workers. Disorder breaks out during which black youths loot stores. One sixteen-year-old is killed and fifty people are injured. This was the first time one of his events had turned violent.
04/03/1968	Final Speech	Dr. King’s last speech titled “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” is delivered at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.
04/04/1968	Death	Dr. King is assassinated by James Earl Ray as he stands talking on the balcony of his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. He dies in St. Joseph’s Hospital from a gunshot wound in the neck.
Timespan Dates:	Timespan Title:	Timespan Description:
01/15/1929 to 04/04/1968	MLK Jr.'s Life and the Civil Rights Movement	A brief collection of some of the most important moments in the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement