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Abraham Lincoln frees American slaves in the South
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The KKK is formed to fight against rights for African Americans.
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Court decides having separate facilities for white and black people is legal.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) is founded to fight racist discrimination.
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Court says having separate schools for black and white students is not legal.
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An African-American boy, aged 14, is killed for 'wolf-whistling' at a white woman. His murderers are identified but go free.
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Rosa Parks starts the boycott when she refuses to give up her bus seat for a white man.
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Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law to help protect voter rights. The law allows federal prosecution of those who suppress another’s right to vote.
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Freedom Rides were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions.
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Martin Luther King Jr delivers 'i have a dream' speech.
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A bomb at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama kills four young girls and injures several other people prior to Sunday services. The bombing fuels angry protests.
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In the summer of 1964, forty one Freedom Schools opened in the churches, on the back porches, and under the trees of Mississippi.
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This march went down in history as Bloody Sunday for the violent beatings state troopers inflicted on protesters as they attempted to march peacefully from Selma, Ala., to the state capital, Montgomery.
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Black religious leader Malcolm X is assassinated during a rally by members of the Nation of Islam.