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• Ruby Bridges integrated an all-white elementary school in New Orleans, Louisiana

• Ella Baker among others organized SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) at Shaw University

• Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three Olympic gold medals, and was named Athlete of the Year by the United Press

• CORE Freedom Rides began, with the aim of desegregating public buses -- many brave women and men participated

• (March 6) Executive Order by John F. Kennedy promoted affirmative action to abolish racial biases in hiring on projects where federal funds were involved

• Meredith v. Fair case argued by Constance Baker Motley. The decision allowed James Meredith to be admitted to the University of Mississippi.

• (September 15) Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Weston, ages 11-14, killed in the bombing of 16th Street Church in Birmingham, Alabama

• Dinah Washington (Ruth Lee Jones) died (singer)

• (April 6) Mrs. Frankie Muse Freeman becomes the first woman on the new U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

• (July 2) US Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law

• Fannie Lou Hamer testified for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention

• Viola Liuzzo murdered by Ku Klux Klan members after participating in civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

• affirmative action was required to eliminate racial bias in hiring on federally-funded projects, as defined by Executive Order 11246

• Patricia Harris became the first African American woman ambassador (Luxemburg)

• Mary Burnett Talbert died (activist: anti-lynching, civil rights)

• Dorothy Dandridge died (actress, singer, dancer)

• Lorraine Hansberry died (playwright, wrote Raisin in the Sun)

• (August 14) Halle Berry born (actress)

• (August 30) Constance Baker Motley appointed a federal judge, the first African American woman to hold that office

• (June 12) in Loving v. Virginia, Supreme Court ruled that laws prohibiting interracial

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Booker T. Washington opens Tuskegee Institute in Alabama

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