Civil Rights Movement Highlights

• Rosa Parks was arrested on December 1, 1955. On December 5, Martin Luther King, Jr. was made the official spokesman for the Montgomery bus boycott.

• On November 13, 1956, segregation on buses was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The King family home was bombed, but nobody was hurt.

• The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was passed.

• In 1958, Dr. King was stabbed in Harlem, but he survived.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested and put in jail for his participation in a lunch counter sit-in in 1960. The sit-ins were protests in which African Americans sit at lunch counters insisting on being served. Because of their efforts, some cities desegregated their lunch counters.

• In 1961, segregation on interstate highways was banned. The Freedom Riders rode across the South to test the new law. Their bus was burned and the riders were beaten when they came to Anniston, Alabama.

• In April 1963, Dr. King spent eleven days in Jail in Birmingham, Alabama, where he wrote a famous letter about the lack of justice for black Americans. Four girls died in Birmingham when someone bombed a Baptist church.

• The March on Washington in 1963 was the largest civil rights demonstration in history. At this event, Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

• In 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine. At the White House, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed. And in December, Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

• In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was signed by President Johnson.

• In 1966, Dr. King moved into a slum apartment to call attention to how the poor people in Chicago lived. He started a campaign to end discrimination in Chicago schools, housing, and jobs.

• In March of 1968, when Dr. King was marching for the rights of sanitation workers, the march turned violent. It was the first of his events to get violent. In April, Dr. King was shot in Memphis, Tennessee.