After high school, James Meredith spent nine years in the Army Air Force before enrolling in Jackson State College—an all-black school—in Mississippi. In 1961, he

In the summer of 1962, civil rights leaders attempted to desegregate public recreational facilities in Birmingham, Alabama, “…the most segregated city in America.” (Jennings and

In the spring of 1963, Medgar Evers, a NAACP organizer in Jackson, Mississippi, requested a meeting with the racist mayor of the town to address

On August 28, 1963, civil rights groups organized the March on Washington to promote four objectives: passage of a civil rights bill, the promotion of

Less than three weeks after the Washington March, on September 15, 1963, members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in

Civil Rights leaders considered Mississippi to be “the heart of the [Jim Crow] beast.” (Seeger and Reiser, p. 141.) It was far more dangerous than

Selma is an old cotton mill town on the Alabama River. In 1964 more than half of Selma’s residents were black, and the city was

Segregation and racial prejudice in the South were part of the actual legal system. They were part of the law: “de jure” segregation. But, although

The race riots reflected the increasing anger and hostility of the black community. To many at the time, the personification of black militancy was Malcolm

In October 1966, in Oakland, California, following what they believed to be the teachings of Malcolm X with some militant socialism thrown-in, Huey Newton (Defense