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Executive Order
Executive Order 9981 is issued by President Harry S. Truman to abolish segregation in the armed forces. The event demonstrates that the federal government can end segregation and institutional racism against African Americans. -
Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which was a merger of five separate cases, essentially put an end to racial segregation in public schools. Despite this progress, segregation persisted in many institutions. This motivates African American leaders to fight for equal learning opportunities for their children. -
Murder of Emmett Till
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago, is killed in Mississippi because he is thought to have flirted with a white woman. After Jet magazine prints a picture of Till's beaten body in an open casket at his funeral, the case brings international attention to the civil rights movement. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white passenger. Her uncompromising stance results in an annual Montgomery bus boycott. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Martin Luther King, Charles K. Steele, and Fred L. Shuttlesworth start the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and King becomes its first president. The SCLC is a big part of organizing the civil rights movement, and its ideas are based on nonviolence and disobeying the law. King says that it is important for the civil rights movement not to fall to the level of the racists and hatemongers who are against them. -
Georgia Protests
Martin Luther King Jr. is one of 60 Black pastors and civil rights leaders from several southern states who meet in Atlanta, Georgia to plan peaceful protests against segregation and racial discrimination. -
Protests in the South
Freedom riders were a group of black and white activists who traveled by bus through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals and tried to use "whites-only" bathrooms and lunch counters. White protesters were very violent during the Freedom Rides, which brought attention to their cause around the world. -
Birmingham Protests
A campaign to end the city of Birmingham, Alabama's system of racial segregation was launched in the spring of 1963 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC, along with Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR). Sit-ins, economic boycotts, massive protests, and marches on City Hall were all a part of the campaign. -
Letter from Birmingham Jail
During anti-segregation riots in Birmingham, Martin Luther King is arrested and imprisoned; he writes his iconic "Letter from Birmingham Jail," arguing that citizens have a moral obligation to defy unjust laws. -
The March on Washington
The March on Washington is attended by about 200,000 people. Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech is given at the Lincoln Memorial, where people gather to listen.