The civil rights era: a brief timeline
1954 The US Supreme Court bans segregation in
public schools with Brown v. Board of Education.
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested in Montgomery, Ala., for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. Montgomery bus boycott begins.
1957 President Eisenhower sends paratroopers to Central High in Little Rock, Ark., to escort nine black students into the school.
1960 The sit-in campaign begins at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C.
1961 The freedom rides through the South begin.
1962 A riot erupts at the University of Mississippi when James Meredith, the first black, is enrolled. Two are killed.
1963 The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested in Birmingham, Ala.
Police turn fire hoses and dogs on the protesters.
1963 250,000 people march on Washington to demand civil rights legislation. King gives "I Have a Dream" speech.
1964 President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act.
1968 King is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
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