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Jackie Robinson becomes the first African American to play in the MLB. This has a huge effect on the portrayal of African Americans as baseball was the most popular sport in America.
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This executive order ended racial discrimination within the military. This now required by law equal treatment for all service members.
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Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till from Chicago is murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days before his death. The woman's husband and brother beat the boy to death, gouged out his eye, and shot him in the head all before dumping his body into the Tallahatchie River.
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Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery Alabama for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. She was later bailed out by Civil Rights Leader Nixon.
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The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a protest against segregation on or during the use of public transportation. It lasted 381 days and directly led to a Supreme Court ruling that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
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President Eisenhower passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which established a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department. This also gave the government the power to protect voting rights.
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A non-violent protest against a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. This led to a larger-scale sit-in movement led by the SNCC.
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Riots erupted on the University of Mississippi campus where many gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran. More than 2000 whites rioted and two people were killed.
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A march by over 1000 school students in Birmingham Alabama. This event was organized by James Bevel and the purpose was to walk downtown to talk to the mayor about segregation in their city.
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37-year-old civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot around midnight in a neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi. He was on the way home from a NAACP meeting and was shot in the back.
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The infamous I Have a Dream Speech was delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr during the March on Washington. The speech called for civil and economic rights as well as an end to racism.
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A terror bombing on a church in Birmingham, Alabama by a white supremacist group. Four girls were killed and many others were injured.
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Freedom Summer was a campaign launched by Civil Rights Activists to register as many African-American voters as possible in Mississippi. More than 1000 people were arrested, 80 beat, 37 churches bombed or burned, 30 homes or businesses bombed or burned, and four civil rights workers were killed.
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Malcom X was assassinated at the age of 39. He was shot multiple times and died from his wounds in Manhattan, NYC.
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Three marches in Alabama along a 54 mile highway from Selma to Montgomery. These marches were in protest of Jim Crow laws and in advocation for the right to vote.