Guided trail
The Civil Rights Movement: Brown to the Mountaintop
From the courtroom victory of 1954 to the bullet in Memphis in 1968 — the campaigns, the people, and the laws that broke the legal back of Jim Crow.
- 1EventBrown v. Board of Education
1954: the Supreme Court strikes down "separate but equal" in public schools.
- 2EventThe murder of Emmett Till
1955: the lynching of a 14-year-old, and an open casket that forced the nation to look.
- 3EventThe Montgomery Bus Boycott
1955–56: Rosa Parks's arrest sparks a 381-day boycott — and launches Martin Luther King Jr.
- 4EventThe Little Rock Nine
1957: nine students integrate Central High behind federal troops.
- 5EventThe Greensboro sit-ins
1960: four students sit down at a "whites only" counter and a wave of sit-ins follows.
- 6EventThe Freedom Rides
1961: integrated riders brave mob violence to desegregate interstate travel.
- 7EventThe Birmingham Campaign
1963: children march into fire hoses and police dogs, and the nation recoils.
- 8EventThe March on Washington
August 1963: 250,000 gather, and King tells America of his dream.
- 9EventThe Civil Rights Act of 1964
1964: segregation in public life and employment is outlawed.
- 10EventSelma and Bloody Sunday
1965: "Bloody Sunday" on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
- 11EventThe Voting Rights Act of 1965
1965: the federal government finally enforces the right to vote.
- 12EventDr. King assassinated
April 4, 1968: King is killed in Memphis, supporting striking sanitation workers.