1954
In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the decision widely regarded as having sparked the modern civil right era, the Supreme Court rules deliberate public school segregation illegal, effectively overturning “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson.
1955
Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American from Chicago, is beaten, shot and lynched by whites after allegedly whistling at a white woman in a store in Mississippi.
In Alabama, Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man, precipitating the Montgomery bus boycott, lead by Martin Luther King. Jr.
1956
Autherine Lucy receives a letter granting permission to enroll at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. She is the first African American admitted to the state school.
In January 1956, following the successful Montgomery bus boycott, King’s home is bombed by local segregationists.
Motions are filed in U.S. District Court calling for an end to bus segregation.
Violence erupts on the campus of the University of Alabama and in Tuscaloosa’s streets for three days.
Autherine Lucy is forced to flee the University of Alabama campus; the University’s Board of Trustee bars her from the campus.
Autherine Lucy is ordered by the courts to be re-admitted to the university of Alabama, only to be expelled by the Trustees.
Montgomery bus boycott ends in victory on December 21, after the city announces it will comply with a November Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation on buses illegal. African Americans board the first desegregated buses in Montgomery.
1957
In September, federal troops are sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine African-American students at Central High School from white mobs trying to block the school’s integration and to enforce court-ordered desegregation of schools.
1959
Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as states. Hawaii elects Hiram Fong (of Chinese ancestry) and Daniel Inouye (of Japanese ancestry) to serve in Congress. They are the first two Asian Americans to serve in that body.
1960
To Kill a Mockingbird is published.
In Greensboro, N. C., the first lunch counter sit-in by four African-American college students inspires more throughout the South.
1961
James Meredith becomes the first African-American student admitted to the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Freedom Riders begin arriving in the deep South to test new Interstate Commerce Commission regulations and court order barring segregation in interstate transportation. Violence necessitates the deployment of federal troops.
Violence over integration erupts at the University of Mississippi.
The film, To Kill a Mockingbird, is released.
The United Farm Workers Union, under the leadership of Cesar Chavez, organizes to win bargaining power for Mexican-American agricultural workers.
1963
Dogs and power hoses are directed at peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
Civil rights leader Medgar W. Evers is murdered in his home in Jackson, Mississippi.
Over a quarter of a million people participate in the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and hear Martin Luther King, Jr., deliver his “I Have a Dream” speech.
On September 15, a Birmingham church is bombed, killing four African-American girls attending Sunday school: Denise McNair, age 11, and Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Adie Mae Collins, all 14 years old.
1964
Civil rights workers James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman are kidnapped and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by white law enforcement officials and members of the Ku Klux Klan.
On July 2, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
1965
March for Voting Rights is held in Selma, Alabama.
The Voting Rights Act passes and is signed into law on August 6, effectively ending literacy test and a host of other obstacles used to disenfranchise African Americans and other minorities.
*Special thanks to One Book One Chicago for the information on this page. Used with their permission.
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