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

Civil Rights Timeline: Jan. 15, 1929 - Dec. 21, 1956 Jan. 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--the Dexter 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 Parks 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 Court order outlawing discriminatory practices on Montgomery buses. In December 1955, returning home from her assistant tailor job in Montgomery, Parks refused a bus driver's order to surrender her seat to a white man. She was jailed and fined $14. Dec. 5, 1955 - Montgomery bus boycott- Although precipitated by the arrest of Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 was actually a collective response to decades of intimidation, harassment and discrimination of Alabama's African American population. By 1955, judicial decisions were still the principal means of struggle for civil rights, even though picketing, marches 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 boycott's succeeded in desegregating public facilities in the South and also in obtaining civil rights legislation from Congress.  Civil Rights Timeline Sept. 24, 1957 - May 2, 1963 Sept. 24, 1957 - School integration - In September 1957 the state received national attention when Gov. Orval E. Faubus (in office 1955-67) tried to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower quickly intervened, in part by sending 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, or Supreme 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 either barred or limited access to African Americans, or maintained separate, invariably inferior, facilities for black patrons.