This is the first episode of the groundbreaking documentary series examining America’s civil rights years. Individual acts of courage inspire black Southerners to fight for their rights: Mose Wright testifies against the white men who murdered young Emmett Till, and Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.

Monday, 1/16/07 from 9-10 p.m. ET

August 1955
Emmett Till killed in Money, Mississippi.
September 1955
J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, two white men, accused of Till murder and identified by Till's uncle, Mose Wright, in court. Both acquitted.
December 1, 1955
Rosa Parks arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man on Montgomery city bus.
December 5, 1955
Community leaders organize 40,000 Montgomery blacks in one-day boycott of bus system; community votes to continue protest. Boycott lasts until December 21, 1956, after US Supreme Court rules Montgomery bus segregation is unconstitutional.
February 1956
Autherine Lucy, first black woman admitted to University of Alabama, is suspended when whites riot in protest.
September 1957
Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus calls out the state National Guard to prevent nine black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School. President Dwight D. Eisenhower responds by sending in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the children into the school.
February 1960
Sit-in by four black college students at lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, is followed by sit-ins at lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, and throughout the South.
April 15-17, 1960
Formation of SNCC in Raleigh, North Carolina.
October 1960
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., arrested and jailed; presidential candidate John F. Kennedy assists in his release.
May 4, 1961
Thirteen Freedom Riders leave Washington, DC, on their bus trip through the South.
May 14, 1961
Savage attacks on Freedom Riders in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
May 20, 1961
Mob attacks Freedom Riders in Montgomery, Alabama; federal marshals dispatched by Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
May 24, 1961
Freedom Riders arrive in Jackson, Mississippi, where they are arrested.
1961-1962
The Albany Movement campaign ends in tactical defeat for King after eight and a half months of work and many arrests.
September 1962
White violence flares as James Meredith attempts to enroll at the University of Mississippi. President John F. Kennedy and Governor Ross Barnett try secret negotiations but once again it takes federal troops to end the crisis.

May 1963
Birmingham campaign tries new tactic: Children's March. Commissioner of Public Safety "Bull" Connor's use of dogs and firehoses on marchers brings world attention to the civil rights struggle.
May 1963
Medgar Evers joins boycott of Jackson merchants.
June 1963
President Kennedy asks Congress for Civil Rights Act.
June 1963
Students in Jackson protest beatings and arrests of demonstrators.
June 11, 1963
President John F. Kennedy makes televised speech on civil rights. Medgar Evers assassinated.
August 28, 1963
More than 200,000 people march from Washington Monument to Lincoln Memorial "for jobs and freedom."
September 1963
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, bombed: four girls killed.
June 15, 1964
First Freedom Summer volunteers gather in Oxford, Ohio.
June 21, 1964
Three young civil rights workers - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner - disappear outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.
July 2, 1964
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Civil Rights Act.
August 4, 1964
Bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner found.
August 6, 1964
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party convention.
August 20, 1964
Freedom Democrats arrive at Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City.
January 1965
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) join forces in voter registration campaign in Selma.
March 7, 1965 (Bloody Sunday)
In Selma, 600 people gather to begin march to Montgomery. They are repelled by Alabama State Troopers at Edmund Pettus Bridge.
March 9, 1965
In second attempt to reach Montgomery, 2,000 marchers are stopped at Pettus Bridge. Unitarian minister James Reeb beaten by hostile whites; dies two days later.
March 15, 1965
President Johnson requests passage of Voting Rights Bill.
March 21, 1965
3,200 gather for the march from Selma to Montgomery, arrive March 25.
August 6, 1965
President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act.
August 11-16, 1965
Riots in Watts, Los Angeles