Civil rights time line

Dec. 1, 1955: Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott begins, protesting race-based seating requirements; it helps launch the civil rights movement.

July 11 and July 17, 1959: Lexington's first recorded sit-ins take place at Varsity Village restaurant on Rose Street near the University of Kentucky campus.

Feb. 1, 1960: Four black students sit at a "white only" Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., gaining national attention.

Feb. 27, 1960: 25 blacks and whites stage a sit-in at H.L. Green & Co.'s lunch counter in Lexington.April 2, 1961: CORE protesters hold a stand-in at the Kentucky Theatre.

April 25, 1961: 200 demonstrators participate in a "Freedom Parade" through downtown Lexington's Main Street.

June 12, 1963: Civil rights activist Medgar Evers is killed in Jackson, Miss.

Aug. 2, 1963: Nine blacks are arrested for lying in the aisles of Lexington's Sears Roebuck department store while protesting Sears' hiring practices.

Aug. 28, 1963: 250,000 people join in the civil rights march on Washington.

Aug. 30, 1963: More than 250 demonstrators march in downtown Lexington. Targets of protest are the Lexington Herald and Leader and some stores accused of racial discrimination.

Sept. 15, 1963: Four girls are killed in a bombing at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.

March 5, 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. leads 10,000 blacks and whites in a march on the Capitol in Frankfort to lobby for a state public accommodations bill.

July 2, 1964: Federal Civil Rights Act is passed.

Feb. 21, 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated in New York City.

April 4, 1968: King is assassinated in Memphis.

COMPILED BY NEWS RESEARCHER LINDA MINCH

This story was originally published July 4, 2004 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Civil rights time line."