During the early 20th century in the American South, racial segregation was the norm, and blacks had limited opportunities. But the 1950s brought forces to bear that would launch a powerful civil rights campaign. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a gifted orator who had been influenced by India’s Mahatma Gandhi in his belief in nonviolent protest, rose quickly to lead the movement. It was a movement of children and adults, preachers and lawyers, sharecroppers and presidents. Those in the movement felt a sense of urgency, a sense that, no matter what, they could not turn back.

Rosa Parks is fingerprinted at a police station after her arrest in Montgomery, Alabama. On December 1, 1955, Parks, a seamstress, boarded a bus headed for home. When a white man boarded, four black passengers were asked to stand in back. Parks refused. She was arrested for breaking Alabama’s segregation laws. A yearlong boycott of the Montgomery bus system, in response to Parks’ arrest, ended only after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional. (Library of Congress)

September 4, 1957, Elizabeth Eckford — one of nine black students attempting to attend Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas — is met with jeers. The Arkansas governor, defying a federal order, has National Guard troops stop the black students. Eventually, the U.S. Army, dispatched to Little Rock by President Eisenhower, safeguarded the entry of the “Little Rock Nine.” Still, the black students suffered a yearlong ordeal marked by mistreatment by white students, says historian Taylor Branch. (National Park Service)

“Freedom Riders” hang anti-segregation signs from bus windows. In the early 1960s, the Congress of Racial Equality, an integrated group that promoted nonviolent methods to achieve racial equality, sent members to ride on public buses and trains to protest segregation of transportation networks. Freedom riders were beaten in Birmingham, Alabama; firebombed near Anniston, Alabama; and mobbed and handcuffed in Jackson, Mississippi. (Library of Congress)

Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledges the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. King spoke to a gathering of more than 200,000 people who had come to Washington to demand legislation to ensure black people be given the same civil rights as whites. His “I Have a Dream” speech brought the crowd to life, with its simple images and repeated phrases; King said his people would not be satisfied “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (© AP Images)

President Lyndon Johnson shakes hands with Martin Luther King Jr. after presenting him with one of the pens used to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law banned discrimination in public places and in employment, and provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities. In a television address after signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson said of segregation: “It cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.” (Library of Congress)