1960s

Four students' lunch-counter protest sparks a wave of sit-ins across the South.

250,000 gather as Dr. King delivers "I Have a Dream," pressing for jobs and freedom.

Landmark law outlawing segregation and employment discrimination.

Marchers for voting rights are beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, spurring the Voting Rights Act.

Federal protection of the ballot finally enforces the 15th Amendment.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale form the party for self-defense and community programs.

King is murdered in Memphis while supporting striking sanitation workers; uprisings follow nationwide.

Chicago police, acting on FBI COINTELPRO intelligence, kill the 21-year-old Black Panther leader in his bed.

Student activists form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

A six-year-old desegregates an elementary school under federal escort.

Interracial riders challenge segregated buses and terminals, met with mob violence.

Meredith enrolls amid riots and federal intervention.

Children marchers face dogs and fire hoses; the images shock the nation.

The NAACP leader is murdered outside his Mississippi home.

Klan members kill four girls in Birmingham, a crime that hardens national resolve.

Volunteers register Black voters in Mississippi; three are murdered by the Klan.

The revolutionary leader is killed in Harlem, having reshaped Black political consciousness.

Six days of unrest in Los Angeles expose Northern racial inequality.

Stokely Carmichael popularizes the slogan during the Meredith March.

The Supreme Court strikes down bans on interracial marriage.

Passed days after King's death, it bans housing discrimination — though redlining's damage endures.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise gloved fists in Mexico City.

Alabama Governor George Wallace pledges eternal segregation in his inaugural address.

The poll tax in federal elections is abolished.

One of the deadliest urban uprisings of the decade.