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Brown versus Board of Education
¨The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was a watershed event in the history of the United States. The landmark ruling had it roots in Topeka, Kansas, in 1951 when, Oliver Brown, an African American minister and welder, called upon the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for legal assistance after the city's school board refused to enroll his daughter in an all-white school.¨ -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
¨Local authorities in Montgomery, Alabama, arrested Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, when she refused to vacate her seat in the white section of a city bus on December 1, 1955. To protest Parks' arrest and the continued segregation of Montgomery's bus lines, members of the city's black community formed the Montgomery Improvement Association on December 4, 1955, and launched a community wide boycott to compel the system's integration.¨ -
Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington D.C.
The Prayer Pilgrimage to Washington for Freedom took place on May 17, 1957, when a crowd of over thirty thousand nonviolent demonstrators, from more than thirty states, gathered at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the third anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. -
Temple Bombing (Atlanta, Ga.)
In the early hours of October 12, 1958, fifty sticks of dynamite exploded in a recessed entranceway at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation, Atlanta's oldest and most prominent synagogue, more commonly known as "the Temple." -
Albany Movement
In November 1961, residents of Albany, Georgia, launched an ambitious campaign to eliminate segregation in all facets of local life. -
Ole Miss Integration
On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white schools. -
John F. Kennedy's assassination
On November 22, 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in a presidential motorcade. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson just a few hours after House approval on July 2, 1964. -
Selma-Montgomery March
To protest local resistance to black voter registration in Dallas County, Alabama, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organized a mass march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, 1965. -
Dr. King's Assassination
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by a sniper's bullet while standing on the second-floor balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
