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Slideshow: Bleary Days for Eyes on the Prize
Pictured left to right are: Gloria Ray, Terrance Roberts, Melba Pattillo, Jefferson Thomas, Carlotta Walls, Thelma Mothershed, Minnijean Brown, Elizabeth Eckford and Ernest Green. These are undated photos of the nine students who entered Little Rock Central High under the protection of federal troops with bayonets in 1957 when Gov. Orval E. Faubus tried to block enforcement of the Supreme Court's 1954
Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing school segregation and directed the Arkansas National Guard to keep the students from enrolling at the all-white high school. President Eisenhower responded by sending in members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into the school Sept. 25, 1957. AP Photo
Marchers cross the Alabama River on the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, Alabama, March 21, 1965. The civil rights marchers, eight abreast, are led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the start of their five-day, 50-mile march to the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. They were fighting for voter-registration rights for blacks, who were discouraged from registering to vote, particularly in small towns in the South.
Seven of nine black students walk onto the campus of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a National Guard officer as an escort, Oct. 15, 1957.
Rosa Parks, whose refusal to move to the back of a bus touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and the beginning of the civil rights movement, is fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey on Feb. 22, 1956. Parks was among 100 people charged with violating segregation laws.
AP Photo/Gene Herrick
Martin Luther King Jr., speaks at a Selma, Alabama, church in this January 1965 photo. A never-before-published speech given by King in Selma during a 1965 visit is included in
Ripples of Hope, a collection of 110 speeches from the 1780s to the 1990s, on topics from women's suffrage to gay rights. AP Photo
An undated 1954 photo shows lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. From left, Louis L. Redding, Robert L. Carter, Oliver W. Hill, Thurgood Marshall and Spottswood W. Robinson III.
AP Photo/Courtesy of the NAACP
The driver is all alone as his empty bus moves through downtown Montgomery, Alabama, April 26, 1956, as blacks continue to boycott the buses even though the company has ordered an end to segregation. However, police have threatened arrest if the blacks desegregate. The "Ease That Squeeze" sign refers to traffic problems, not seating on the bus.
Thurgood Marshall, center, chief legal counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is surrounded by students and their escort from Little Rock, Arkansas, as he sits on the steps of the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., Aug. 22, 1958, after he filed an appeal in the integration case of Little Rock's Central High School. The students are, from left: Melba Patillo, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, escort Daisy Bates, Marshall, Carlotta Walls, Minnijean Brown and Elizabeth Eckford.
A federal marshal reads a court order halting a planned voter registration protest march at Selma, Ala., March 9, 1965. The order was read after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., standing behind man with folded arms, led about 2,000 persons from a church to a bridge over the Alabama River. The marchers were allowed to continue over the bridge but then were turned around. The other civil rights activists standing with King are not identified.
A billboard along the highway in Birmingham, Alabama, reads "Save our republic! Impeach Earl Warren," June 22, 1963. Similar signs are erected along many Alabama highways by the John Birch Society in reaction to U.S. Chief Justice Warren's support of civil rights changes, including the 1954 landmark decision in
Brown v. Board of Education declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. AP Photo
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