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On May 17, 1954, a decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case declared the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional. -
On Dec. 5, 1955 the Montgomery Bus Boycott began. It is one of the most powerful stories of organizing and social change in U.S. history. -
On Sept. 25, 1957, nine Black students who had been forced to withdraw from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of unruly white crowds were escorted to class by members of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division and the National Guard. -
On Feb. 1, 1960, four African-American North Carolina AT University students, Ezell Blair Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, began a sit-in protest at a Woolworth's whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, where they had been refused service. -
On August 28, 1963, more than a quarter million people participated in the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, gathering near the Lincoln Memorial. More than 3,000 members of the press covered this historic march, where Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the exalted "I Have a Dream" speech. -
On July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights bill into law in a White House ceremony. -
On March 7, 1965, civil rights demonstrators were attacked by state troopers and county possemen in Selma, Alabama, in an event known as "Bloody Sunday". -
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol to sign the Voting Rights Act. Following a ceremony in the Rotunda, the president, congressional leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and others crowded into the President's Room near the Senate Chamber for the actual signing. -
On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM, while he was standing on a balcony at a Memphis hotel, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and fatally wounded. Only hours earlier King -- the prophet for racial and economic justice in America -- ended his final speech with the words, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised Land." -
On April 11, 1968, seven days after King’s assassination, Congress finally passed the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act protects buyers and renters of housing from discrimination by sellers, landlords, or financial institutions and makes it unlawful for those entities to refuse to rent, sell, or provide financing for a dwelling based on factors other than an individual’s financial resources.