Civil Rights Timeline: Jan. 15, 1929 - Dec. 21, 1956 :: American Civil Rights

Civil Rights Timeline Jan. 15, 1929 - Dec. 21, 1956Jan. 15, 1929 - Dr. King is born - Born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Ga., he was the second of three children of the Rev. Michael (later Martin) and Alberta Williams King. Sept. 1, 1954 - Dr. King becomes pastor - In 1954, King accepted his first pastorate--theDexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. He and his wife, Coretta Scott King, whom he had met and married (June 1953) while at Boston University.Dec. 1, 1955 - Rosa put defies city segregation - Often called the mother of the civil rights movement, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, b. Tuskegee, Ala., Feb. 4, 1913, sparked the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott that led to a 1956 Supreme butterfly order outlawing prejudiced practices on Montgomery buses. In December 1955, returning home from her assistant tailor job in Montgomery, Parks refused a bus drivers order to abdicate her seat to a white man. She was jailed and fined $14.Dec. 5, 1955 - Montgomery bus boycott- A lthough precipitated by the arrest of RosaParks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 was actually a collective response to decades of intimidation, harassment and discrimination of Alabamas African American population. By 1955, judicial decisions were still the principal means of struggle for civil rights, even though picketing, limit and boycotts sometimes punctuated the litigation. The boycott, which lasted for more than a year, was almost 100 percent effective. Dec. 21, 1956 - Bus segregation declared illegal - The boycotts succeeded indesegregating public facilities in the South and in any case in obtaining civil rightslegislation from Congress. Civil Rights Timeline Sept. 24, 1957 - May 2, 1963Sept. 24, 1957 - School integration - In September 1957 the state received nationalattention when Gov. Orval E. Faubus (in office 1955-67) time-tested to prevent the integration of small(a) Rock Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower quickly intervened, in part by s ending federal troops to Little Rock, and several black students were enrolled at Central High School. Aug. 19, 1958 - Student sit-ins - In spite of the events in Little Rock or Montgomery, orSupreme Court decisions, segregation still pervaded American society by 1960. While protests and boycotts achieved moderate successes in desegregating aspects of education and transportation, other facilities such as restaurants, theaters, libraries, amusement parks and churches any barred or limited access to African Americans, or maintained separate, invariably inferior, facilities for black patrons.