The Civil Rights Movement
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- 1954
- U.S. Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling.
- 1963
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.
- 1962
- 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.
- 1965
- March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand protection for voting rights; two civil rights workers slain earlier in the year in Selma.
- 1961
- Freedom rides begin from Washington, D.C: Groups of black and white people ride buses through the South to challenge segregation.
- 1960
- Four black college students begin sit-ins at lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, restaurant where black patrons are not served.
- 1967
- Thurgood Marshall first black to be named to the Supreme Court.
- 1968
- Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; James Earl Ray later convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison.
- 1983
- Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday established.
- 1992
- The first racially based riots in years erupt in Los Angeles and other cities after a jury acquits L.A. police officers in the videotaped beating of Rodney King, an African American.
- 1957
- 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.
- 1955
- 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.
- 1956
- Montgomery buses desegregate.