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Emmett Till
Emmett Till was visiting his family in Mississippi, when he was kidnapped. He was also beaten and then shot. When he was dead his killers; two white men, were thrown in a river for just whistling at a white woman because he was black. -
Rosa Parks refuses to get off bus.
In Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger. After the white section was filled, Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. She was called the Mother of the Freedom Movement. -
James Meredith
James Meredith became the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Violence and riots surrounding the incident cause President Kennedy to send 5,000 federal troops. -
Letter from Birmingham Jail
The Letter from Birmingham Jail or Letter from Birmingham City Jail, is also known as The Negro Is Your Brother, King wrote the letter from the city jail in Birmingham, Alabama. He wrote the letter on the margins of a newspaper, which was the only paper available to him. -
A Birmingham church is bombed.
The explosion at the African-American church, which killed four girls, marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 -
Civil Rights Workers Dead.
The bodies of three civil-rights workers—two white, one black—are found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Johnson. They had been working to register black voters in Mississippi, and, on June 21, had gone to investigate the burning of a black church. They were arrested by the police on speeding charges, incarcerated for several hours, and then released after dark into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, who murdered them. -
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act.
Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and other such requirements that were used to restrict black voting are made illegal.
