A young black girl, named Linda Brown, had to attend a black school, which was much farther than the seven blocks to the local white school. Her father, and many other parents with the same issue, tried to get their children into the closer white school, to no avail. It was said that the schools were equal, (they weren't), and as the principle kept refusing them, a legal case was made against the Topeka Board of Education. The case, taken all the way to the Supreme Court, was won in the favor of Oliver Brown. The unanimous ruling was that separate establishments are inherently unequal, undoing the decision made in Plessy v. Ferguson. All schools were required to be integrated, but it was quite a while before this was fully accomplished. There was a lot of resistance to this decision.

Picture taken on first day of desegregation in Ft Myer Elementary, courtesy of the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/weekinreview/10liptak.html?pagewanted=all...

The Bus Boycott was a social protest against the segregation of the Montgomery public transit system. It began December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks defied the segregation laws and stayed in her seat, resulting in her arrest. From that day until December 20, 1956, the Montgomery PTS was boycotted by people who were equally unhappy with the segregated busses. It ended a little over a year after it first started, with the case Browder v. Gayle, the ruling being that bus segregation was unconstitutional and busses must be integrated. This Boycott, being primarily organized by Martin Luther King, brought him into national attention as a leader in the rising Civil Rights Movement.

Picture shows the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to move, now an exhibit in the Henry Ford Museum, courtesy of Wikipedia and the Henry Ford Museum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_Bus_Boycott

The Little Rock Nine was the term given to nine black high school students, the first nine to attend a previously all-white school. These students were chosen based on good grades and attendance. After their enrollment, they were initially prevented by the Arkansas state governor from going to school. This event, known as the Little Rock Crisis, was ended by an intervention from then-President Eisenhower.

Picture courtesy of NPR.

The Freedom Riders were a group of civil rights activists who rode on interstate busses to exercise their right to ride in a non-segregated bus. They would ride throughout the South, where this right, decided in Boynton v. Virginia, was not enforced at all. The riders would arrange mixed-groups on a bus, with one person obeying the norm to bail out any arrested riders. The rides, starting on May 4, 1961, didn't originally cause any strong defiance. However, they were met with violence from Klansmen in Anniston and in Birmingham. The rides nonetheless continued throughout the summer of 1961, sending a shockwave of inspiration to many African-Americans across the nation.

Picture courtesy of The Smithsonian.

Medgar Evers, a well-known activist and NAACP secretary, was assassinated in his driveway, I'm June 12, 1963, just a few hours after JFK's speech supporting civil rights. He was a driving force in the Movement, and had just returned from a meeting with NAACP lawyer. He left his car with NAACP shirts when he shot in the back with an Enfield 1917 rifle. He stumbled a few feet, then collapsed. He died nearly an hour later in a local hospital.

Picture courtesy of The Columbus Post.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on August 28, 1963, was one of the biggest protest marches in US history. The march called for civil and economic equality among African-Americans. Its most notable moment was when Martin Luther King Jr delivered his famous "I Had A Dream" speech urging for racial equality. The protestors marched from the Washington
Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, starting without the leaders, who were meeting with members of Congress.

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.org

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X, a human rights activist and Muslim minister, was preparing a speech for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Suddenly, someone shouted, and as he and his guards tried to quiet the distraction, a man ran onstage and fired a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun into his chest. Two more gunmen rushed the stage and opened fire on Malcolm X. He was pronounced dead soon after reaching the hospital, with 21 gunshot wounds, including ten buckshot wounds. Reactions to his death varied from sadness to pity to sympathy.

Picture courtesy of libcom.org.

The Selma to Montgomery marches were protest marches that grew out of the voting rights protests. There were three marches arranged by leaders of civil rights organizations in order to focus the anger over Jimmy Lee Jackson's death into fighting for voting rights.

The Voting Rights Act prevented the actions taken to stop African Americans from voting, such as poll taxes, and literacy tests. It is widely considered a landmark civil rights legislation.

Martin Luther King, a frontman for the civil rights movement, was shot at the Lorraine Motel, in front of his room on the second floor. He was instantly knocked out, and died shortly after. The civil rights movement lost some momentum because of this event.