1963
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King, SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) organize a series of demonstrations and protests to challenge segregation in Birmingham, Alabama.
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On April 12, Birmingham police arrest King for demonstrating without a city permit.
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On April 16, King writes his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in which he responds to eight white Alabama ministers who urged him to end the protests and be patient with the judicial process of overturning segregation.
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On June 11, President Kennedy delivers a speech on civil rights from the Oval Office, specifically explaining why he sent the National Guard to allow the admittance of two African-American students to the University of Alabama.
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On June 12, Byron De La Beckwith assassinates Medgar Evers, the first field secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Mississippi.
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On August 18, James Meredith graduates from Ole Miss.
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On August 28, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held in D.C. Around 250,000 people participate, and King delivers his legendary "I have a dream" speech.
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On September 15, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham is bombed. Four young girls are killed.
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On November 22, Kennedy is assassinated, but his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, uses the nation's anger to push through civil rights legislation in Kennedy's memory.
1964
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On March 12, Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam. Among his reasons for the break is Elijah Muhammad's ban on protesting for Nation of Islam adherents.
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Between June and August, SNCC organizes a voter registration drive in Mississippi known as Freedom Summer.
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On June 21, three Freedom Summer workers--Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman--disappear.
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On August 4, the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman are found in a dam. All three had been shot, and the African-American activist, Chaney, had also been badly beaten.
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On June 24, Malcolm founds the Organization of Afro-American Unity along with John Henrik Clarke. Its aim is to unite all Americans of African descent against discrimination.
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On July 2, Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination in employment and in public places.
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In July and August, riots break out in Harlem and Rochester, New York.
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On August 27, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDM), organized to challenge the traditional state democratic party that had excluded African Americans, sends a delegation to the national Democratic convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They ask to represent Mississippi at the convention. Offered two seats at the convention in turn, the MFDM delegates reject the proposal.
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On December 10, the Nobel Foundation awards MLK the Nobel Peace Prize.