In early April, convinced that only national legislation is capable of eliminating legal, institutional segregation, Movement strategists embark on a campaign designed to break the practice in one of its toughest strongholds – Birmingham—and to garner enough national attention in the process that the Kennedy administration will be compelled to draft and champion a comprehensive civil rights bill.

As a way of demonstrating support for ending segregation and solidarity with Movement activists, U.S. postal worker William Moore – member of the Baltimore chapter of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and former U.S. Marine – embarks on April 20th upon a solo freedom journey from Chattanooga, TN, to Jackson, MS.

Following Gov. George W. Wallace’s 1962 campaign promise to defend segregation at all costs, “…to the point of standing in the schoolhouse door, if necessary,” he does just that on June, 11, 1963, when three black students—Vivian Malone of Mobile, James Hood of Gadsden, and Dave McGlathery of Huntsville—arrive to register at the University of Alabama.

On the evening of June 11, following Gov. Wallace’s infamous stand in the schoolhouse door, President Kennedy addresses the nation on the issue of civil rights, for the first time roundly condemning segregation and announcing his intention to submit a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress.

Returning home after a late meeting following President Kennedy’s national address on civil rights, NAACP state field director Medgar Evers is murdered in his driveway in the early hours of June 12, shot at close range with a high-powered rifle by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, of Greenwood. His two children and wife Myrlie witness his death.

Clyde Kennard, a WWII veteran, returned to his home of Eatonville Mississippi to help the family farm. Kennard had finished the first three years of his political science degree in Chicago and intended to transfer to a University in Mississippi to complete his degree.

Following President Kennedy’s civil rights address in June, SCLC leaders plan a mass action of national scale designed to ensure passage of civil rights legislation. Drawing together tens of thousands of Movement allies from across the nation – workers with SNCC, CORE, NAACP, and SCLC, as well as members of labor unions, interdenominational organizations, and student groups—the August 28 march from the Washington monument to the Lincoln memorial is the largest demonstration of its kind in history. 

On September 15, less than three weeks after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a dynamite bomb planted by Klansmen explodes inside 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls: Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14). More than 20 others are injured in the attack, timed to occur during a “Youth Day” tribute to the part of local young people in the Birmingham Campaign.

n the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, Chicago’s schools were overcrowded and underfunded, and the Chicago Board of Education refused to allow black students to transfer to white schools. The Chicago Board disregarded the Brown ruling to integrate schools by claiming they were following a neighborhood schools policy that required students to attend a school if it was within walking distance of their home.

On November 10, 1963, Malcolm X delivered what is considered by many to be one of the most important speeches of the 20th century, “Message to the Grass Roots,” at the Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference in Detroit.

After an ongoing boycott of white-owned stores proves incapable of breaking segregation, student activists trained in nonviolence sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in downtown Jackson.

Movement activists from the Delta returning from Citizenship School training in South Carolina are brutally beaten by law enforcement in the Winona, MS jail after they attempt to eat at the bus depot’s white lunch counter.

SNCC members John O’Neal and Doris Derby join actor/journalist Gilbert Moses and thespians at Tougaloo College to form the Drama Workshop, which grows into the Free Southern Theater (FST).

In a radical challenge to the concept of voter “qualification” (which in Mississippi required prospective voters to pass an arcane literacy test), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee holds an unofficial statewide “Freedom Ballot” based on the principle of “One Man, One Vote.”