MARCH ON WASHINGTON
On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people from all over the United States participated in the March on Washington. The purpose of this peaceful demonstration was to press upon President John F. Kennedy, the Congress, and the American people the necessity and urgency of securing civil rights and economic equality for African Americans. The great mass of demonstrators - black and white, young and old, rural and urban - processed in an orderly fashion from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Monument, singing the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement, "We Shall Overcome." Assembled in the shadow of Lincoln's seated statue and along the reflecting pool in front of it, the patient crowd heard four civil rights leaders speak before Mahalia Jackson sang "I've Been 'Buked and I've Been Scorned." The historic march reached its climax with Martin Luther King Jr.'s masterful delivery of his eloquent and inspired "I Have a Dream" speech.

The elation from the success of the March on Washington did not last. Less than three weeks later, on September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four African American girls in Bible class and wounding 14 others. More than 8000 people attended the funeral of three of the girls, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave the eulogy.

SIXTEENTH STREET BAPTIST CHURCH BOMBING
On September 15, 1963, four young black girls were killed and 20 other people wounded when a bomb planted by Ku Klux Klan member Robert Edward Chambliss exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The terrorist attack revealed the growing hostility of segregationists towards the Civil Rights Movement as it was making inroads in the Deep South. At the time of the bombing, Birmingham was in a battle over the desegregation of schools; only weeks before, the National Guard had been called in to protect black students. For civil rights leaders, the bombing, which followed less than three weeks after the euphoria of the 1963 March on Washington, was a reminder of the long struggle that remained.

Eight thousand people attended a joint funeral for three of the girls. Martin Luther King Jr. gave the eulogy to a community which, having witnessed seven bombings within the previous six months, was torn between exhaustion and rage.

SELMA MARCHES
On March 7, 1965, as 600 marchers tried to cross the Pettus Bridge on their way from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, more than 80 km (50 mi) away. The goal of the march was to draw national attention to the struggle for black voting rights in the state. Police beat and tear-gassed the marchers just outside of Selma, and televised scenes of the violence, on a day that came to be known as Bloody Sunday, resulted in an outpouring of support to continue the march. SCLC petitioned for and received a federal court order barring police from interfering with a renewed march to Montgomery. Two weeks after Bloody Sunday, more than 3000 people, including a core of 300 marchers who would make the entire trip, set out toward Montgomery. They arrived in Montgomery five days later, where King addressed a rally of more than 20,000 people in front of the capitol building.

THE 1963 MARCH ON WASHINGTON
The 1963 March on Washington attracted an estimated 250,000 people for a peaceful demonstration to promote Civil Rights and economic equality for African Americans. Participants walked down Constitution and Independence avenues, then - 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed - gathered before the Lincoln Monument for speeches, songs, and prayer. Televised live to an audience of millions, the march provided dramatic moments, most memorably the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Far larger than previous demonstrations for any cause, the march had an obvious impact, both on the passage of civil rights legislation and on nationwide public opinion. It proved the power of mass appeal and inspired imitators in the antiwar, feminist, and environmental movements. But the March on Washington in 1963 was more complex than the iconic images most Americans remember it for. As the high point of the Civil Rights Movement, the march - and the integrationist, nonviolent, liberal form of protest it stood for - was followed by more radical, militant, and race-conscious approaches.

It was A. Philip Randolph who first conceived of a march on Washington. In 1941 his threat to assemble 100,000 African Americans in the capital helped convince President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign an executive order banning discrimination in the defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. More than 20 years later, Randolph revived his idea. His primary interest, as always, was jobs - African Americans were disproportionately unemployed and underpaid. In a December 1962 meeting, Randolph and Rustin began planning the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

THE FAMOUS "I HAVE A DREAM" SPEECH
On August 28, 1963, King delivered the keynote address to an audience of more than 200,000 civil rights supporters. His "I Have a Dream" speech expressed the hopes of the Civil Rights Movement in oratory as moving as any in American history: "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The speech and the march built on the Birmingham demonstrations to create the political momentum that resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations, as well as discrimination in education and employment. As a result of King's effectiveness as a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement and his highly visible moral stance he was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize for peace.

TITLE VII OF THE 1964 CIVIL RIGHTS ACT AND VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF ACT 1965
On July 2, 1965, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act went into effect. This provision prohibited job discrimination in private business. In an executive order issued in 1965, President Johnson used the expression "affirmative action." Such affirmative action, Johnson wrote, was to be taken to ensure that applicants and employees "are treated without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." The president's speech further elaborated the idea behind affirmative action: "You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and ... bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with all the others' and justly believe that you have been completely fair."

On August 6, 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This piece of legislation eased the registering of black voters in many Southern counties by eliminating voter examinations. Armed with the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, African Americans, and in fact all Americans, were equipped to pursue full civil rights for all citizens.

MURDER OF EMMETT TILL
Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. When he was 14, he was sent to Mississippi to spend the summer with his uncle. Because of his Northern upbringing, Till was not accustomed to the racial taboos of the segregated South; he bragged to his Southern black friends that in Chicago he even had a white girlfriend. These unbelieving friends dared him to enter a store and ask a white woman for a date. Inside, Till hugged Carol Bryant's waist and squeezed her hand, then whistled at her as his friends rushed him away.

On August 28, 1955, Carol Bryant's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, abducted Till from his uncle's home. Three days later, his naked, beaten, decomposed body was found in the Tallahatchie River; he had been shot in the head. The two white men were tried one month later by an all-white jury, and despite the fact that they admitted abducting Till, they were acquitted because the body was too mangled to be positively identified.

Till's murder became a rallying point for the Civil Rights Movement. Photographs of his open casket were reprinted across the country, and protests were organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and such leaders as W. E. B. Du Bois. The public outrage over the injustice of the trial helped ensure that Congress included a provision for federal investigations of civil rights violations in the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

THE MONTGOMERY BUS BOYCOTT
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a leading member of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was ordered by a bus driver to give up her seat to a white passenger. When she refused, she was arrested and taken to jail. Local leaders of the NAACP, especially Edgar D. Nixon, recognized that the arrest of the popular and highly respected Parks was the event that could rally local blacks to a bus protest.

The Montgomery bus boycott lasted for more than a year, demonstrating a new spirit of protest among Southern blacks. King's serious demeanor and consistent appeal to Christian brotherhood and American idealism made a positive impression on whites outside the South. Incidents of violence against black protesters, including the bombing of King's home, focused media attention on Montgomery. In February 1956 an attorney for the MIA filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking an injunction against Montgomery's segregated seating practices. The federal court ruled in favor of the MIA, ordering the city's buses to be desegregated, but the city government appealed the ruling to the United States Supreme Court. By the time the Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision in November 1956, King was a national figure.