1960s Timeline

Oct. 20, 1961 - A Negro student revolt has pushed the city of McComb, a segregationist stronghold in southwestern Mississippi, to the...

Oct. 20, 1961 - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said today that he would not portray a Georgia senator in the film version of the novel...

Oct. 17, 1961 - Bill Russell (right) and four other Negro players on the Boston Celtics and two on the St. Louis Hawks left Lexington,...

Oct. 17, 1961 - In Talladega, Alabama today, a Ku Klux Klansman was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for dragging a white man and...

Oct. 16, 1961 - Three major railroads serving the South — the Illinois Central, the Southern, and the Louisville & Nashville — have...

Oct. 11, 1961 - Dizzy Gillespie (pictured), the jazz trumpeter, charged today that he had been denied access to a swimming pool in a...

Oct. 7, 1961 - A concert by Dizzy Gillespie (left) and his band at Tulane University in New Orleans on Tuesday has been canceled because...

Oct. 6, 1961 - President Kennedy today hailed the progress in desegregating schools in Memphis, New Orleans, and elsewhere. He said that...

Oct. 5, 1961 - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. charged today that "an apparent reign of terror" was being waged against Negroes taking...

Oct. 3, 1961 - A century of segregation ended in Memphis, Tenn., today when 13 Negro first-graders were admitted to white schools. Police...