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Thurgood Marshall
was a courageous civil rights lawyer during a period when racial segregation was the law of the land. At a time when a large portion of American society refused to extend equality to black people, Marshall astutely realized that one of the best ways to bring about change was through the legal system. Between 1938 and 1961, he presented more than 30 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court. He won 29 of them. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision
Supreme Court reverses Plessy by stating that separate schools are by nature unequal. Schools are ordered to desegregate "with all deliberate speed" -
Rosa Park
Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery. -
Freedom riders oppose segregation
Blacks and whites take buses to the South to protest bus station segregation. Many are greeted with riots and beatings -
Bombing of Birmingham church
4 black girls are killed by bomb planted in church -
Civil Rights Act passed
Overcoming Senate filibuster, Congress passes law forbidding racial discrimination in many areas of life, including hotels, voting, employment, and schools -
March for civil right
More than 200,000 Americans, most of them black but many of them white marched to Washington -
Malcolm X
The former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X was shot and killed by assassins identified as Black Muslims as he was about to address the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. He was 39. -
Watts Riots
In first of more than 100 riots, Los Angeles black suburb erupts in riots, burning, looting, and 34 deaths -
Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis
