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The Supreme Court rules on the Brown v. Board of education case unanimously agreeing that segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.
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Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger which was against the “law” in this time. Her arrest resulted in a boycott.
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Formerly all-white Central High School learns that integration is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor Orval Faubus. President Eisenhower sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the “Little Rock Nine”
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(Raleigh, N.C.) The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded at Shaw University, providing young blacks with a place in the civil rights movement. The SNCC later grows into a more radical organization, especially under the leadership of Stokely Carmichael (1966–1967).
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During civil rights protests in Birmingham, Ala., Commissioner of Public Safety Eugene "Bull" Connor uses fire hoses and police dogs on black demonstrators. These images of brutality, which are televised and published widely, are instrumental in gaining sympathy for the civil rights movement around the world.
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About 200,000 people join the March on Washington. Congregating at the Lincoln Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
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Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.
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The militant Black Panthers are founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.
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Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg upholds busing as a legitimate means for achieving integration of public schools.
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Congress passes the Civil Rights Restoration Act
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After two years of debates President Bush reverses himself and signs the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
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The first race riots erupt in south of Los Angeles.
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James Fowler is convicted for the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson 40 years after Jackson's death.
