1955

Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had allegedly whistled at a white woman four days prior; he was found brutally slain three days later.

1957

U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond (D-S.C.) began what remains the longest speaking filibuster in Senate history (24 hours and 18 minutes) in an effort to stall the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

1963

During the March on Washington, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech before an estimated 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.