The Civil Rights - Timeline

The Civil Rights

1954 -- U.S. Supreme Court declares school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling.

1955 -- Federal Interstate Commerce Commission bans segregation on interstate trains and buses.

1962 -- President Kennedy sends federal troops to the University of Mississippi to quell riots so that James Meredith, the school's first black student, can attend.

1963 -- Civil rights leader Medgar Evers is killed by a sniper's bullet.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers "I Have a Dream" speech to hundreds of thousands at the March on Washington.

Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, leaves four young black girls dead.

1965 -- March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to demand protection for voting rights; two civil rights workers slain earlier in the year in Selma.

New voting rights act signed.

1968 -- Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee; James Earl Ray later convicted and sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Poor People's March on Washington -- planned by King before his death -- goes on.

1973 -- Maynard Jackson (Atlanta), first black elected mayor of a major Southern U.S. city.

1983 -- Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday established.

1989 -- L. Douglas Wilder (Virginia) becomes first black elected governor.

1990 -- President Bush vetoes a civil rights bill he says would impose quotas for employers; weaker bill passes muster in 1991.

1996 -- Supreme Court rules consideration of race in creating congressional districts is unconstitutional.