Key Events in the American Civil Rights Movement

A Pictorial Overview

1954 – Brown vs. Board of Education

1957 - Little Rock Central High School desegregated

1955-57 – Montgomery Bus Boycott

1961 - Freedom Riders Oppose Segregation

April 16, 1963 - "Letter from Birmingham Jail"

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their "thus sayith the Lord" far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

August 28, 1963 - March on Washington

1963 - Bombing of Birmingham Church

1964 - Selma to Montgomery March

1965 - Malcolm X Assassinated

1965 – Watts Riots in Detroit

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. Assassinated