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Brown vs. Board of Education
The Supreme Court rules unanimously against school segregation, overturning its 1896 decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson -
African American boycott of the bus system
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on \Montgomery Alabama bus to a while person triggering a successful year long African American boycott of the bus system -
Segregation of busses is unconstitutional
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the segregation of Montgomery, Ala., buses is unconstitutional. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Helps found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to work for full equality for African Americans. -
College students hold a sit in
Four African American college students hold a sit-in to integrate a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N,C. launching a wave of similar protest across the south. -
Freedom Rides
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) begins to organize Freedom Rides throughout the South to try to de-segregate interstate public bus travel. -
Malcolm X becomes national miniser
African American Radical Malcolm X becomes national Minister of the Nation of Islam. He rejects the nonviolent civil-rights movement and integration, and becomes a champion fo African American separatism and black pride. At one point he states that equal rights should be secured "by any means necessary" a postion he later revises -
March on Washington, D.C.
More than 200,000 people march on Washington, D.C., in the largest civil rights demonstration ever; Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his "I Have a Dream" speech. -
Nobel Peace Prize
Martin Luther King, Jr. is awarded the Noble Peace Prize for all his work in the civil rights movements.