Ms. Judith Dixon
1954
May 17 - Supreme court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated schools are illegal.
1955
December 1 - Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama , for not giving up her seat to a white person.
December 5 - Montgomery bus boycott begins; it last until December 21, 1956.
1956
November 13 - Supreme Court rules that segregation of Montgomery buses is illegal.
1957
January 10-11 - southern Leadership conference (SCLC) is founded with Martin Luther King Jr., as president.
September - In Little Rock, Arkansas, national Guard and angry mobs prevent African American students from integrating white Central High School.
September 23 - "Little Rock Nine" enter Central High for the first time. Two days later, on September 25, they receive protection from federal troops ordered in by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
1960
February 1 - In Greensboro, North Carolina, African American students "sit in" at a white lunch counter. Lunch counter sit-ins spread throughout the South.
April 15-17 - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is founded by students from nine states.
November 24, 1960 - Four black first grade girls integrate two public schools in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ruby Bridges is one of the first graders.
December 5 - Supreme Court bans segregation in bus terminals.
1961
May-September - Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) "Freedom Rider" challenge segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals; SNCC riders join them.
November - Albany Movement begins. Members of SNCC, NAACP, and Martin Luther King Jr., work to end segregation in Albany, Georgia. The campaign ends unsuccessfully in August 1962.
1962
April - SNCC, SCLC, CORE, and NAACP from the Council of Federal Organizations (COFO) to begin united voter registration drive. Their first major project. "The Freedom Vote," begins in the Fall of 1963.
September - Federal troops are needed to halt riots when African American James Merideth enters all white University of Mississippi.
1963
April - May - Campaign for civil rights in Birmingham, Alabama, is led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
June 11 - Alabama governor George Wallace stands in doorway of school to stop integration of the University of Alabama.
June 12 - Medgar Evers, leader of the Mississippi NAACP, is murdered.
August 28 - March on Washington draws more than 250,000 people.
September 15 - Four young African American girls are killed in bombing of Sixteenth street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
1964
January 23 - Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlaws poll tax in federal elections.
March - Malcolm X forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity after leaving the Nation of Islam.
June - August - "Freedom Summer": 1,000 young volunteers work to register voters in Mississippi.
June 21 - Ku Klux Klan murder civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman in Mississippi.
July 2 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil rights Act into law.
1965
January - March - Voting rights campaign takes place in Selma, Alabama.
February 21 - Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.
August 6 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Voting Rights Act into law.
August 11 -16 - African Americans riot in Watts, Los Angeles.
1966
June 16 - Stokely Carmichael publicly uses term Black Power which signals a new direction for the movement.
October - Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale start the Black Panther Party for self-defense in Oakland, California.
1967
October 2 - Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African American Supreme Court Justice.
1968
April 4 - Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.