1863 The Emancipation Proclamation is signed.
1865 The 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is ratified.
1948 President Truman integrates the armed services by executive order.
1954 Brown vs. Board of Education declares “separate but equal” unconstitutional.
1954Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago, is lynched while visiting relatives in Mississippi.
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a city bus. This triggered the Montgomery Bus Boycott which did not end until December 1956.
1957 Army troops are sent to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect nine black students integrating Central High School.
1957The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is formed, led by Martin Luther King, Jr.
1960 Four black college students are refused service at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, beginning the sit-in as a nonviolent weapon against segregation.
1961 Freedom Riders travel by bus through Alabama and Mississippi to challenge the segregation of bus terminals.
1962 James Meredith integrates the University of Mississippi.
1963 Medgar Evers is murdered as he returns from an NAACP meeting.
1963The Reverend Martin Luther King, jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
1963A bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham kills four young girls.
1964 The 24th Amendment prohibiting poll taxes in federal elections is ratified.
1964The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed by President Johnson. The act prohibits segregation in schools and other businesses and buildings open to the general public.
1964Three civil rights workers named James Chaney, Michael Schwerner , and Andrew Goodman are murdered in Mississippi.
1965 Malcolm X is assassinated.
1967 Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American Supreme Court Justice.
1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated.