CIVIL+RIGHTS+jp

Civil Rights

1948: Truman signs Executive Order 9981, which states, "It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.

1955: Fourteen-year-old Chicagoan __[|Emmett Till]__ is visiting family in Mississippi when he is kidnapped, brutally beaten, shot, and dumped in the Tallahatchie River for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Two white men, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, are arrested for the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury

NAACP member __[|Rosa Parks]__ refuses to give up her seat at the front of the "colored section" of a bus to a white passenger, defying a southern custom of the time. In response to her arrest the Montgomery black community launches a bus boycott, which will last for more than a year, until the buses are desegregated Dec. 21, 1956. 1957: Formerly all-white Central High School learns that __[|integration]__ is easier said than done. Nine black students are blocked from entering the school on the orders of Governor __[|Orval Faubus]__. __[|President Eisenhower]__ sends federal troops and the National Guard to intervene on behalf of the students, who become known as the "__[|Little Rock Nine]__."

1963: About 200,000 people join the __[|March on Washington]__. Congregating at the __[|Lincoln]__ Memorial, participants listen as Martin Luther King delivers his famous "__[|I Have a Dream]__" speech.

1964: __[|President Johnson]__ signs the __[|Civil Rights Act of 1964]__. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation.