Undated photo shows Rosa Parks riding on the Montgomery Area Transit System bus. Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on Dec. 1, 1955 and ignited the boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation in public transportation. In 1955, Montgomery's racially segregated buses carried 30,000 to 40,000 blacks each day. Students of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford as she walks toward the school building on the first day of school in 1957. Schools in Arkansas integrated races after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Freedom Riders sit on a bus during a trip from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961. The Freedom Riders would brave mobs and endure savage beatings to desegregate interstate travel.
Sarah Jean Collins, 12, lies in bed after being blinded by the dynamite that killed her sister in the bombing of a Birmingham church in September 1963. Four African American girls were killed in the blast.
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