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14-year-old African American Emmett Till was brutally murdered by two white men in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His mother held an open-casket funeral to show the world the brutality inflicted on her son's body. -
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a unanimous landmark decision ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, as "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Following the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, African American residents organized a large-scale boycott of the public transit system that lasted over a year. -
Nine African American students enrolled at the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They were initially blocked by the state's governor, Orval Faubus, until President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened with federal troops to ensure their entry and protection -
Four African American college students sat at a "whites-only" lunch counter at a Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave when denied service. The sit-in continued for days as more students joined. -
Interracial groups of civil rights activists rode interstate buses into the Southern United States to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions that outlawed segregation in interstate bus travel and terminals. -
On March 7, civil rights marchers attempting to walk from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery to advocate for voting rights were brutally attacked by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, an event captured on television. -
While imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama for participating in nonviolent demonstrations, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a letter in response to white clergymen who criticized his methods. -
More than a quarter of a million people gathered in Washington, D.C. for the March for Jobs and Freedom, where leaders gave speeches and Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. -
A dynamite bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan members exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church, a center for civil rights meetings, killing four young African American girls in the basement. -
This amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished the poll tax as a voting requirement in all federal elections. -
This landmark legislation, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public places, employment, and federally assisted programs. -
This act aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their 15th Amendment right to vote. It banned literacy tests and provided for federal oversight of voter registration in certain areas. -
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, which banned marriage between white and non-white persons, was unconstitutional.