1. Civil Rights
The Fight for Equality

2. 1888
Legal segregation begins in Mississippi with a law that segregated passengers on trains.

11. 1896
Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that segregation is legal as long as the facilities are equal. This case established the separate-but-equal concept.

13. 1954
Supreme Court rules in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation in the schools was unconstitutional. The ruling stated that the fact that schools were separate made them inherently unequal.

15. Thurgood Marshall

20. 1955
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till is murdered in Money, Mississippi for allegedly speaking to a white woman in a store.

24. Carolyn Bryant

25. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam

29. Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.
1955
Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus.

34. 1957
9 African American teens are escorted into Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

40. 1960
Ruby Bridges became the first African American child to attend a white school in Louisiana.

44. James Meredith becomes the first African American to attend Ole Miss.
1962
James Meredith becomes the first African American to attend Ole Miss.

52. 1963
Dr. Martin Luther King delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington.

54. Fannie Lou Hamer is arrested, jailed, and beaten in Winona, MS.
1963
Fannie Lou Hamer is arrested, jailed, and beaten in Winona, MS.

56. 1963
Medgar Evers is murdered in the driveway of his home by Byron De La Beckwith.

59. 1964
Freedom Summer: Campaign designed to register African American voters. Over 1,000 people volunteered knowing that they were risking their safety.

60. Volunteers

62. Volunteers

67. James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman

68. Philadelphia, MS

69. Edgar Ray Killen

70. 1964
Civil Rights Act is passed on July 2, 1964 under President Kennedy outlawing segregation in public places.

71. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN.
1968
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, TN.

75. Who killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
James Earl Ray
Who killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

76. Most Mississippi schools integrated peacefully in the 1970s.