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Lunch Sit In
Lunch counter sit-in by four college students in Greensboro, N.C. begins and spreads through the South. -
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Important parts of the Movement
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SNCC
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee is founded -
Freedom Riders
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) put together Freedom Rides into the South to test out the new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations and court orders barring segregation in interstate transportation. Riders were beaten by mobs in several places, including Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala. One of the buses was burned down during the rides. -
James Meredith
Becomes the first African American student admitted to the University of Mississippi. -
March On Washington
Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech. -
Church Bombing
A Birmingham church is bombed killing four African American girls attending Sunday school: Denise McNair, age 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Adie Mae Collins, all 14 years old. -
Jimmie Lee Jackson
Jimmie Lee Jackson is killed by Alabama state troopers as he attempts to prevent the troopers from beating his mother and grandfather. -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American justice of the Supreme Court. -
Assassination of MLK
Martin Luther King, Jr. is murdered in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.