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U.S. Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling.
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Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus as required by city ordinance; boycott follows and bus segregation ordinance is declared unconstitutional. Federal Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation on interstate trains and buses.
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Coalition of Southern congressmen calls for massive resistance to Supreme Court desegregation rulings.
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Arkansas Gov. Orval Rubus uses National Guard to block nine black students from attending a Little Rock High School; following a court order, President Eisenhower sends in federal troops to ensure compliance.
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Four black college students begin sit-ins at lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, restaurant where black patrons are not served. Congress approves a watered-down voting rights act after a filibuster by Southern senators.
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Freedom Rides begin from Washington, D.C., into Southern states.
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President Kennedy sends federal troops to the University of Mississippi to quell riots so that James Meredith, the school's first black student, can attend. The Supreme Court rules that segregation is unconstitutional in all transportation facilities. The Department of Defense orders full integration of military reserve units, the National Guard excluded.
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Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is killed by a sniper's bullet. Race riots prompt modified martial law in Cambridge, Maryland.
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King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.
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Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, leaves four young black girls dead.
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Three civil rights workers disappear in Mississippi after being stopped for speeding; found buried six weeks later.
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Congress passes Civil Rights Act declaring discrimination based on race illegal after 75-day long filibuster.
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Malcolm X assassinated.
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March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand protection for voting rights; two civil rights workers slain earlier in the year in Selma.
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New voting rights act signed.
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Edward Brooke, R-Massachusetts, elected first black U.S. senator in 85 years.
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Thurgood Marshall first black to be named to the Supreme Court.
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Carl Stokes (Cleveland) and Richard G. Hatcher (Gary, Indiana) elected first black mayors of major U.S. cities.
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Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; James Earl Ray later convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
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Poor People's March on Washington -- planned by King before his death -- goes on.
