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[[image - black and white photograph of large group of people seated in rows behind conference tables; a banner hanging behind them reads Lest We Forget "OUR FALLEN HEROES"; photo spans two pages]]

The Interstate Commerce Commission on November 25 bans segregation in interstate travel.
-Carl Murphy, editor and publisher, 40th Spingarn Medalist.
1956 - Louisiana, then Alabama and Texas, move to cripple the NAACP by securing injunctions barring the Association from operating in those states because it refused to turn over its membership lists. Georgia and Virginia also institute efforts to harass the NAACP.
-Jackie Robinson, the first Negro in major league baseball, 41st Spingarn Medalist.
1957 - Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1957 - the first Federal civil rights legislation since the Reconstruction era.
-Federal court orders desegregation of Little Rock public schools. Following the outbreak of violence as the first nine Negro students enter Central High School, President Eisenhower federalizes the Arkansas National Guard and orders 1,000 members of the 101st Airborne Division into Little Rock to restore and maintain order. Local NAACP leaders, Mr. and Mrs. L. C. Bates, courageously man the battlefront throughout this confrontation.
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 42nd Spingarn Medalist.
1958 - Sit-ins at lunch counters begun by Oklahoma NAACP Youth Council.
-U.S. Supreme Court overturns $100,000 contempt fine that Alabama had levied against NAACP for refusing to turn over its membership lists to the state.
-Mrs. Daisy Bates and Little Rock Nine, 43rd Spingarn Medalists.
1959 - FBI conducts exhaustive probe into the lynching of Mack Charles Parker in Poplarville, Mississippi, April 25.
-Federal court decision invalidates Florida Pupil Placement Act which sustained segregation.
-Four white men are convicted for the rape of a black student at Florida A & M College at Tallahassee.
-NAACP celebrates its Golden Anniversary at 50th Annual Convention in New York City, July 13-19.
1960 - Dr. Robert C. Weaver, who served as vice chairman under Dr. Tobias, is elected Chairman of NAACP Board of Directors, January 4.
-NAACP youths participate in sit-in demonstrations at lunch counters in Greensboro, N.C., February 1.
-Bishop Stephen G. Spottswood elected Chairman of NAACP Board in April, after Dr. Weaver resigned following Senate confirmation of his nomination by President Kennedy as Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency.
-Langston Hughes, 45th Spingarn Medalist.

1961 - NAACP Youth Division shifts its emphasis from sit-in demonstrations at lunch counters to direct action and selective buying to secure jobs for Negroes.
-The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights presents a 60-page memorandum, "Federally-Supported Discrimination," to President Kennedy, August 29, demanding that the Federal Government end racial discrimination in all of its agencies.
1962 - Dr. Robert C. Weaver, former NAACP Board Chairman, 47th Spingarn Medalist.
1963 - Centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation is celebrated.
-President Kennedy submits a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress, June 19.
-NAACP Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar W. Evers assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi, June 12.
-Forty-eighth Spingarn Medal is awarded posthumously to Medgar W. Evers.
-Dr. W.E.B. DuBoi dies in self-imposed exile, August 27, in Accra, Ghana.
-The historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom is held on August 28. Over two hundred thousand persons, black and white, participate.
-President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas, November 22.
-Roy Wilkins meets with President Johnson at the White House on November 29.
1964 - Congress enacts the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Johnson signs it into law on July 2.
-U.S. Supreme Court decision orders Alabama to permit the NAACP to resume operations in the state. Association had been banned from state since 1956.
-NAACP Board Committee tours Mississippi to test public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, beginning July 5.
-Roy Wilkins, 49th Spingarn Medalist.
-After four appeals to the Supreme Court, in the case of NAACP vs. Alabama the Association effectively ends efforts by southern states to cripple it when the High

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