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In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson.
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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.
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Musician Chuck Berry begins recording; his music will help shape rock-and-roll.
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The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the segregation of Montgomery, Ala., buses is unconstitutional.
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The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., helps found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to work for full equality for African Americans.
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For the first time since Reconstruction, the federal government uses the military to uphold African Americans' civil rights, as soldiers escort nine African American students to desegregate a school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Daisy Bates, an NAACP leader, advised and assisted the students and eventually had a state holiday dedicated to her.
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Althea Gibson becomes the first African American tennis player to win a major title by winning both the women's singles and doubles championships at Wimbledon.
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African American ballet dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey founds the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, now world-renowned.
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Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisin in the Sun" is the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.
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Great jazz trumpeter Miles Davis records "Kind of Blue," often considered his masteriece. The saxophonist on the album is another jazz giant, John Coltrane.
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Motown Records is founded in Detroit, Mich. Motown will go on to feature such legendary artists as Michael Jackson, Gladys Knight, Lionel Ritchie and Queen Latifah.
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Four African American college students hold a sit-in to integrate a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., launching a wave of similar protests across the South.
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The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins to organize Freedom Rides throughout the South to try to de-segregate interstate public bus travel.
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Basketball great Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in a single NBA game, setting a record that still stands.
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More than 200,000 people march on Washington, D.C., in the largest civil rights demonstration ever; Martin Luther King, Jr., gives his "I Have a Dream" speech.
