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The consolidation of five cases into one is decided by the Supreme Court, effectively ending racial segregation in public schools. Many schools, however, remained segregated. Click Here -
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her defiant stance prompts a year-long Montgomery bus boycott. -
Nine black students known as the "Little Rock Nine" are blocked from integrating into Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends federal troops to escort the students, however, they continued to be harassed. Little Rock Nine -
Six-year-old Ruby Bridges is escorted by four armed federal marshals as she becomes the first black student to integrate William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans. -
Governor George C. Wallace stands in the doorway at the University of Alabama to block two Black students from registering. The standoff continued until President John F. Kennedy sent in National Guard to the campus. -
The March on Washington is where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have A Dream" speech. Speech -
A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday service. This bombing fueled angry protests. -
In the Selma to Montgomery March, around 600 civil rights marchers walk to Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama in protest of Black voter suppression. Local police block and brutally attack them. After successfully fighting in court for their right to march, Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders lead two more marches and finally reach Montgomery, Alabama on March 25th. -
Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray is convicted of the murder in 1969. -
President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968 providing equal housing opportunity regardless of race, religion or national origin.