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Period: to
1955 to 1965
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Emmet Till
Fourteen year-old Emmet Till was kidnapped, beaten and shot while visiting his cousins in Mississippi. His alleged crime was flirting with a white woman. J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant were charged for the murder, but were acquitted by a jury of all-white southerners. -
Rosa Parks
NAACP member Rosa Parkds refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger. She is arrested, and in response to her arrest black leaders in Montgomery launch a bus boycott that lasts more than a year. The Buses are finally desegregated on Dec. 21, 1956. -
Little Rock 9
An attempt to intergrate Little Rock Central High School is blocked by Alabama governor Orval Fabus who sends the Alabama national guard. President Eisenhower is forced to send federal troops to enforce Federal law and protect the nine black students. -
The First Sit In
Four black college students begin a sit-in at a Woolworth's restaurant in North Carolina. The black waitress refuses them service but they remain at the counter. In the following days more and more black students join the original four, triggering sit-ins across the country. -
Freedom Riders
Student volunteers took bus trips through the south trying to force new anti-segregation laws to be enforced. Many of the "freedom riders" are attacked by angry white mobs, and refused protection by the police. Of the first busses to try this, one bus was attacked and burned when it recieved a flat tire. The second bus was attacked by the KKK -
Bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church
The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed on Sunday, September 15, 1963 as an act of white supremacist terrorism. The bomb killed four girls attending their bible school. -
The Arrest of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were among those arrested for protesting segregation at the Monson Motor Lodge in St. Augustine, Florida. -
Mississippi Burning
Three Mississippi civil rights workers were killed for aiding blacks in gaining a right to vote. The boys went missing on June 26, 1964. The bodies of the civilrights workers, one black teen and two white, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, were dug up around a week later.
