1872    Reconstruction: U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

1961    American civil rights movement: The Freedom Riders bus is fire-bombed near Anniston, Alabama, and the civil rights protesters are beaten by an angry mob.

1964    American civil rights movement: civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

1965    Bloody Sunday: A group of 600 civil rights marchers are forcefully broken up in Selma, Alabama.

1965    Martin Luther King Jr. leads 3,200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1965    Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.

1966    James Meredith, civil rights activist, is shot while trying to march across Mississippi.

1993    A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

1994    Byron De La Beckwith is convicted of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.