On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 PM Central Standard Time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 39 years old. King had traveled to Memphis to support Black sanitation workers who were striking for better pay, …
Martin Luther King Jr.James Earl RayFBIMemphis Policecivil-rightsviolenceassassinationinstitutional-racismdemocratic-erosion
On March 11, 1965, Reverend James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister from Boston, died from injuries sustained two days earlier when he was attacked by white supremacists outside a Selma, Alabama restaurant. Reeb had answered Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for clergy to come to Selma following …
James ReebElmer CookWilliam Stanley HoggleNamon O'Neal HoggleLyndon B. Johnsoncivil-rightsviolencejudicial-failureinstitutional-racismvoting-rights
On March 7, 1965, approximately 600 voting rights activists began a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital of Montgomery to protest the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the systematic denial of voting rights to Black citizens. Led by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chairman John …
John LewisHosea WilliamsAlabama State TroopersAmelia BoyntonLyndon B. Johnsoncivil-rightspolice-brutalityvoting-rightsinstitutional-racismviolence
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers—James Chaney, 21, of Mississippi; Andrew Goodman, 20, of New York; and Michael Schwerner, 24, of New York—were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan with the direct participation of Neshoba County law enforcement officials. The killings, during the first week of …
James ChaneyAndrew GoodmanMichael SchwernerKu Klux KlanCecil Price+5 morecivil-rightsvoter-suppressionviolenceinstitutional-racismlaw-enforcement-complicity
On September 15, 1963, at approximately 10:24 AM, four members of the Ku Klux Klan detonated 19 sticks of dynamite attached to a timing device beneath the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The explosion killed four young African American girls—Addie Mae Collins (14), …
Ku Klux KlanRobert ChamblissThomas BlantonBobby Frank CherryFBIcivil-rightsterrorismviolenceinstitutional-racismjudicial-failure
On May 3, 1963, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor ordered police and firefighters to unleash high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs on more than 1,000 young students, some as young as eight years old, who were marching downtown to protest segregation. The previous day, on May 2, …
Bull ConnorMartin Luther King Jr.James BevelBirmingham PoliceBirmingham Fire Departmentcivil-rightsinstitutional-racismpolice-brutalityviolencedemocratic-erosion
On May 14, 1961, the first Freedom Ride bus—a Greyhound carrying civil rights activists challenging segregated interstate transportation—arrived in Anniston, Alabama, where an angry mob of approximately 200 white people, including Ku Klux Klan members, surrounded it. Local authorities had given the …
Congress of Racial EqualityBull ConnorRobert KennedyKu Klux KlanBirmingham Policecivil-rightsinstitutional-racismviolencepolice-complicitydemocratic-erosion
On February 6, 1956, the University of Alabama expelled Autherine Lucy, its first Black student, after a three-day white supremacist riot made her presence on campus untenable. University officials blamed Lucy for the violence and used her NAACP-supported lawsuit challenging her suspension as …
On August 28, 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till, an African American boy visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, was abducted from his great-uncle’s home and brutally murdered by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, two white men. Till had allegedly whistled at or made remarks to Carolyn …
Roy BryantJ.W. MilamMamie TillTallahatchie County Sheriffcivil-rightsinstitutional-racismviolencejudicial-failuredemocratic-erosion