1960s and public protests

  • Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat and this sparked the Civil Rights Movement.

  • Period: to

    Montgomery Bus Boycott

  • JFK was elected president

  • Freedom Riders

    seven Black and six white activists–mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.
  • Martin Luther King Jr.

    He gave his "I Have a Dream" speech
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964—legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination—into law on July 2 of that year.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.
  • Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

    Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.
  • Bloody Sunday

    On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.