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Key dates in civil rights era

August 25, 2013 at 4:43AM
A Montgomery (Ala.) Sheriff's Department booking photo of Rosa Parks taken Feb 22, 1956, is shown Friday, July 23, 2004, in Montgomery, Ala. Dozens of photographs from the civil rights-era were recently discovered in a storage room used by the Montgomery County Sheriff's office. Chief Deputy Derrick Cunningham said he was performing some house cleaning duties when he found a photo-album containing well-preserved mug shots of protesters, including Parks and The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who wer
A Montgomery (Ala.) Sheriff's Department booking photo of Rosa Parks taken Feb 22, 1956, is shown Friday, July 23, 2004, in Montgomery, Ala. Dozens of photographs from the civil rights-era were recently discovered in a storage room used by the Montgomery County Sheriff's office. Chief Deputy Derrick Cunningham said he was performing some house cleaning duties when he found a photo-album containing well-preserved mug shots of protesters, including Parks and The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. who were arrested during the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956. (AP Photo/Montgomery County (Ala.) Sheriff's office) ORG XMIT: MIN2013082418300501 (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

1941: A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, calls for march on Washington.

1954: Brown vs. Board of Education: Supreme Court rules that segregation in public schools is illegal.

Aug. 28 1955: Emmett Till, 14, a black teen, is kidnapped, beaten, shot and lynched.

Dec. 1 1955: Rosa Parks begins Montgomery bus boycott; Supreme Court rules that segregation on buses is illegal.

1957: Desegregation of Central High in Little Rock, Ark.

1960: Four black college students are refused service and are asked to leave a Woolworth store in Greensboro, N.C. They remain, inspiring a passive resistance movement.

1961: Freedom Riders protest segregation in South, facing violent mobs.

1962: James Meredith becomes first black student to be admitted to the University of Mississippi.

1963: Birmingham, Ala., unleashes dogs and high-powered fire hoses against demonstrators from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

June 12, 1963: Medgar Evers, field secretary for the NAACP, is assassinated by a Ku Klux Klan member.

June 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders and asks them to call off march.

Aug. 28, 1963: About 250,000 people march to demand civil rights legislation. King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Sept. 15, 1963: Four girls are killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

Nov. 22, 1963: Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas.

Jan. 23, 1964: Ratification of 24th Amendment, which bars the imposition of a tax as a requisite to vote in federal elections. Poll taxes had been used to prevent blacks from voting.

July 2, 1964: Civil Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, approved. It ends segregation in schools, workplace and public places.

Freedom Summer 1964: Civil rights organizations seek to increase voter registration among blacks in Mississippi.

Oct. 14, 1964: At 35, King becomes youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Feb. 21, 1965: Malcom X is assassinated.

March 7, 1965: "Bloody Sunday": Marchers protesting the death of activist Jimmie Lee Jackson are beaten. It is the first in a series of Selma to Montgomery Marches.

Aug. 6, 1965: Voting Rights Act becomes law.

Aug. 11, 1965: Watts riots in Los Angeles begin; 34 people die in five days of violence.

October 1966: Black Panther Party forms.

June 12, 1967: Prohibition on interracial marriage ruled unconstitutional.

June 13, 1967: Thurgood Marshall nominated for the Supreme Court.

July 1967: 12 Street Riot: Police raid in unlicensed Detroit bar erupts into one of the worst race riots in U.S. history.

April 4, 1968: King is assassinated in Memphis.

1978: Racial quotas at the University of California Davis ruled unconstitutional.

1982: Voting Rights Act is extended.

2003: Affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School is upheld.

June 24, 2013: High court orders the re-examination of the University of Texas' affirmative action policy.

June 25, 2013: Key portion of Voting Rights Act is struck down.

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