Freedom Riders are brutally attacked as they travel. Sit-in by four black college students at lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Sit-ins at lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee, and throughout the South begin. Thirteen Freedom Riders leave Washington, DC, on their bus trip through the South. Savage attacks on Freedom Riders in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
Freedom Riders arrive in Jackson, Mississippi, where they are arrested.
The civil rights movement discovers the power of mass demonstrations as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., emerges as its most visible leader. The unsuccessful anti-segregation campaign in Albany, Georgia, the violent reaction to the Children's March in Birmingham, Alabama, and the national triumph of the March on Washington, DC, under King's leadership, are profiled. President John F. Kennedy proposes the Civil Rights Act in wake of mounting national sentiment. The Albany Movement campaign ends in tactical defeat for King after eight and a half months of work and many arrests. Students in Jackson protest beatings and arrests of demonstrators.