ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602090031
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
1948
President Harry S. Truman integrates the U.S. Military.
1954
In the case of Brown v. Board of Education (Topeka, Kan.), the U.S. Supreme Court rules that segregated schools are ``inherently unequal.'' A year later, the court orders that all U.S. schools be integrated with ``all deliberate speed.''
1955
Montgomery, Ala., seamstress Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man, sparking the landmark 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that brings to prominence a fresh-out-of-theology-school Martin Luther King Jr.
1957
The first Civil Rights Act in 82 years is passed, establishing a federal Civil Rights Commission.
In the fall, Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus calls out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Central High School in Little Rock. Eventually, President Eisenhower orders paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce integration. The next year, Faubus closes the school.
1960
In February, four black freshman students at North Carolina A&T State University stage a multiday sit-in at the lunch counter of the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro. Within weeks, similar acts of civil disobedience occur throughout the South.
1961
Sponsored by the Congress of Racial Equality, black and white ``Freedom Riders'' take buses through the South in May to test whether a Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation in interstate travel is being enforced. One of the buses is firebombed in Alabama. Within months, the Interstate Commerce Commission orders the integration of all forms of interstate transportation.
1962
Albany, Ga., is the site of the first large-scale community uprising since the Montgomery bus boycott. Over several months 2,000 people are arrested, including Martin Luther King Jr.
1963
Protests in Birmingham become the most public yet when police with clubs, dogs and fire hoses are turned on demonstrators. A week later, Birmingham store owners agree to desegregate all facilities.
Medgar Evers, head of the Mississippi NAACP, is shot to death at his home in Jackson, Miss., on June 12.
Thousands of protesters march on Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28. It is a high point of the civil-rights movement and the occasion of King's famous ``I Have a Dream'' speech.
1964
The ``Freedom Summer'' takes place, with hundreds of students - many of them white - heading to Mississippi to help register blacks to vote. The effort turns tragic when three activists are murdered.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, banning segregation in public accommodations, is passed in July.
Martin Luther King Jr. wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his civil-rights activism.
1965
Malcolm X, a former Nation of Islam minister, is assassinated Feb. 21 in New York after abandoning his belief in complete separation of blacks and whites.
In March, about 700 protesters begin a march from Selma, Ala., to the state capital in Montgomery but are stopped with tear gas, clubs and whips by state troopers and local police. Two weeks later, King leads a second march to Montgomery that begins with about 3,000 people and reaches Montgomery four days later with 25,000.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is passed in August, opening the door for blacks in the Deep South to go to the polls.
Four days after the Voting Rights Act becomes law, a nearly week-long riot erupts in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Thirty-four people, mostly blacks, are killed.
1966
Black Power appears.
1967
The peak year of urban race riots, the worst being in Detroit.
1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibits discrimination in the sale or rental of most housing, is passed during the same month.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. Martin Luther King leads 1963 Birmingham protestby CNB2. 1955: Seamstress Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give her
seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Ala.