1954
|
24 January
|
King delivers a trial sermon, "The Three Dimensions
of a Complete Life," at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church
in Montgomery, Alabama.
|
7 March
|
By a unanimous vote, Dexter Avenue Baptist Church calls King
to its pastorate.
|
17 May
|
In Brown
v. Board of Education of Topeka, the U.S. Supreme
Court declares racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional.
|
June
|
Malcolm X, formerly Malcolm
Little, becomes a minister of the Nation of Islam’s New
York Temple No. 7.
|
 |
1 September
|
King begins his pastorate at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
|
 |
5 September
|
King delivers his first sermon as pastor of Dexter and presents
his "Recommendations
to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church for the Fiscal Year 1954-1955,"
which are accepted by the congregation.
|
1955 |
2 March
|
Fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin is arrested for allegedly
violating Montgomery’s ordinance requiring segregation
on the city’s buses. King, Jo
Ann Robinson of the Women’s Political Council, Rosa
Parks of the Montgomery NAACP,
and others later meet with city and bus company officials.
|
11 April
|
Roy
Wilkins is chosen to succeed Walter
White as Executive Director of the NAACP.
|
 |
5 June
|
King is awarded his doctorate in systematic theology from
Boston University.
|
26 August
|
Rosa
Parks, the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP,
informs King that he has been elected to the executive committee.
|
 |
28-31 August
|
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago,
is murdered by white men after allegedly whistling at a white
woman while vacationing with relatives near Money, Mississippi.
|
 |
10 October
|
The U. S. Supreme Court orders the University of Alabama
to admit Autherine Lucy,
a black applicant.
|
25 November
|
The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) outlaws segregation
on public transportation in interstate travel and in waiting
rooms.
|
1 December
|
Rosa
Parks is arrested for refusing to vacate her seat and
move to the rear of a city bus in Montgomery to make way for
a white passenger. Jo Ann
Robinson and other Women’s Political Council members
mimeograph thousands of leaflets calling for a one-day boycott
of the city’s buses on Monday, 5 December.
|
 |
2 December
|
E.
D. Nixon calls King to talk about the arrest of Parks
and to arrange for a meeting of black leaders at Dexter that
evening.
|
5 December
|
Rosa
Parks is convicted and fined fourteen dollars. In the
afternoon, eighteen black leaders meet to plan the evening
mass meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church. The group organizes
itself as the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and
elects King as president.
|
13 December
|
Parks
authorizes the NAACP
to undertake the legal aspects of her case. In a statement
to the press, King suggests that the boycott could last for
a year.
|
1956
|
12 January
|
After the city of Montgomery rejects an MIA compromise to
end the boycott, the MIA executive board decides to boycott
the buses indefinitely.
|
23 January
|
Mayor Gayle declares that there will be no more discussions
with black leaders until the MIA is willing to end the boycott.
At a meeting of the MIA executive board, King offers his resignation,
but it is not accepted. A large crowd attending a mass meeting
at Beulah Baptist Church affirms support for the boycott.
|
27 January
|
According to King’s later account
in Stride
Toward Freedom, he receives a threatening phone call
late in the evening, prompting a spiritual revelation that
fills him with strength to carry on in spite of persecution.
|
30 January
|
At 9:15 p.m., while King is speaking before two thousand
congregants at a mass meeting at First Baptist Church, his
home is bombed. Coretta Scott
King and their daughter, Yolanda Denise, are not injured.
King addresses a large crowd that gathers outside the house,
pleading for nonviolence.
|
6 February
|
After several days of demonstrations, white citizens and
students riot at the University of Alabama against the court-ordered
admission of Autherine Lucy,
the first black student in the school’s history. The
university’s board of trustees responds by barring Lucy
from attending classes.
|
 |
28 February
|
"In Friendship," a northern-based organization
dedicated to help raise funds for the southern civil rights
struggle, is founded in New York City by Bayard
Rustin, Stanley D. Levison, and Ella
J. Baker.
|
19 March
|
King, the first of eighty-nine leaders to be tried on boycott-related
charges, appears in a Montgomery courtroom for his four-day
trial. He is convicted on 22 March.
|
 |
24 April
|
Bus lines in thirteen southern cities discontinue segregation
in response to the 23 April Supreme Court ruling of Flemming
v. South Carolina Electric and Gas Company striking
down segregated seating on buses in Columbia, S.C., and making
segregation on any public transportation illegal. However,
officials in Alabama and Georgia pledge to resist the ruling.
|
1 June
|
Alabama outlaws the NAACP
throughout the state. State injunctions elsewhere require
the disclosure of NAACP
membership lists. NAACP
membership in the South plummets from 128,716 members in 1955
to 79,677 in 1957.
|
5 June
|
In response to the outlawing of the NAACP,
the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) is
organized in Birmingham, led by Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
|
|
The three-judge U.S. District Court panel rules two-to-one
in the case of Browder
v. Gayle that segregation on Alabama’s intrastate
buses is unconstitutional.
|
27 June
|
King addresses the forty-seventh annual NAACP
Convention in San Francisco on "The
Montgomery Story."
|
11 August
|
King testifies
before the platform committee of the Democratic National Convention
in Chicago, recommending a strong civil rights plank in the
party platform.
|
13 November
|
The U.S. Supreme Court affirms the lower court opinion in
Browder v. Gayle
declaring Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws unconstitutional.
|
14 November
|
King speaks
at MIA mass meetings at Hutchinson Street Baptist Church and
Holt Street Baptist Church, where eight thousand attendees
vote unanimously to end the boycott when the court mandate
arrives.
|
21 December
|
Montgomery City Lines resumes full service on all routes.
King, Ralph
Abernathy, E.
D. Nixon, and Glenn
Smiley are among the first passengers to ride the buses
in an integrated fashion.
|
25 December
|
The home of minister and civil rights activist Fred L. Shuttlesworth
is bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.
|
