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This highly influential court case desegragated schools on the grounds that segregation was unconstitutional, but also opened the door to segregation protests in other aspects of life.
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President Eisenhower signs the Executive Order 10590, which established the President's Committee on Government Policy to enforce a nondiscrimination policy in Federal employment.
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Teenager Emmet Till is murdered for whistling at a white woman.
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Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white person on a Montgovery bus.
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The Supreme Court decided that the segregation of Alabama and Montgomery laws instigating segregation were unconstitutional.
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The ACMHR decides to test the ruling in Browder v. Gayle by riding white sectionsof Birmigham's city buses, resulting in 22 demonstrators being arrested.
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Arkansas governor Orval Faubus refused to integrate Central High, using the National Guard to bar nine African American students from entering.
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In response to Faubus' actions in Little Rock, Eisenhower placed the National Guard under federal command and sent soldiers to Little Rock to protect the nine students attending Central High.
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President Eisenhower signs the the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
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Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth council organized the most successful sit-in to date on drug-store lunch counters in Oklahoma city, launching a successful six-year campaign.
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Ruby Bridges becomes the first African American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the south after and integration act signed for New Orleans.
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President Kennedy delivers his historic civil rights speech asking for equality and justice and promising a bill in congress the next week.
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The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held, and Martin Luther King Jr. gives his "I Have a Dream" speech.
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The 16th Street Baptist Church is bombed in Birmingham, killing four girls and inspiring the Alabama Project.
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Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
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Malcom X is shot to death in Manhattan
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Civil Rights workers in Selma, Alabama begin a march to Montgomery, but are blockaded by police - many were injured and one was killed.
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The Black Panthers is founded Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, CA.
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Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.