Jim Crow laws in the South kept public buildings and facilities such as restaurants, libraries, parks, theaters, swimming pools and water fountains segregated. In 1960, four black students at the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina (Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, David Richmond and Ezell Blair) decided to protest the segregation of lunch counters.

Traveling Exhibit AMERICAN EXPERIENCE has partnered with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to create a traveling exhibit -- a moveable museum of sorts -- that tells the story of the 1961 Freedom Rides. A detailed narrative of the Rides is illustrated with vivid archival photos and newspaper clippings that document this pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement.

This act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964, prohibited discrimination in public places, provided for the integration of schools and other public facilities, and made employment discrimination illegal. This document was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. In a nationally televised address on June 6, 1963, President John F.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while standing on a hotel balcony in Memphis. Small-time convict James Earl Ray was sent to prison for the crime, but the King family believes the assassination was part of a larger government conspiracy.

Although segregation on public buses was twice banned-under Browder v. Gayle in 1956, and Boyton v. Virginia in 1960-the Supreme Court rulings continued to be ignored, especially in the Deep South. Consequently, the Congress of Racial Equality planned a peaceful demonstration by black and white volunteers known as the "Freedom Ride."

Mother (Nettie Hunt) and daughter (Nickie) sit on steps of the Supreme Court building on May 18, 1954, the day following the Court's historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Nettie is holding a newspaper with the headline "High Court Bans Segregation in Public Schools." Reproduction courtesy of Corbis Images Brown v.