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Jim Crow Laws enforce strict seperation of races. Segregation imposed by law is de jure segregation.
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President Roosevelt bans discrimination in defense industries.
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Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma is published. The book brought the issue of American prejudice to everyone's attention.
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Jackie Robinson joins Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African American to play major league baseball.
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President Truman orders desegregation in military.
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Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott began the day Rosa Parks was escorted off the bus. During this time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. begins to address crowds about segregation.
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The SCLC organized Prayer Pilgrimmage in Washington which helped Congress to pass civil rights legislation.
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Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas is desegregated. Nine African American students are integrated into the school for the first time.
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Four African American college students sit in at a restaurant to protest against segregation.
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A group of African Americans, known as the Freedom Riders, ride buses from D.C. to the deep south to test new desegration laws in transportation.
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James Meredith enrolls at University of Mississippi.
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King joins demonstration personally and gets put in jail.
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Kennedy delivers moving televised address about civil rights.
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The March on Washington occurs to support civil rights.
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A bomb explodes on Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.
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President John F. Kennedy is assassinated.
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The Civil Rights Act banned segregation in public accomodations and gave federal government the ability to compel state and local school boards to desegregate their schools.
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"Bloody Sunday" marchers and protestors are attacked by the police on bridges.
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 banned literacy tests and empowered the federal government to oversee voting registration and elections in states that had discriminated against minorities.
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Malcolm X begins the start of Black Power, a stand African Americans took to stand up against racism.
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King is assassinated.
