Rosa Louise McCauley Parks
(February 4, 1913 – October 24, 2005)

Rosa Louise McCauley—known to history by her married name,
Rosa Parks—is born in Tuskegee, Alabama on February 4, 1913.

A lifelong civil rights activist, Parks’ name is synonymous with
her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated
bus in 1955, a defining moment of the civil rights movement.

    
CARLATA BRADLEY

Martin Luther King Jr.  (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

 
CAMILLE BOHANNON

June 21, 1788: New Hampshire becomes the ninth and last
necessary state to ratify the Constitution of the United States,
thereby making the document the law of the land.

This date marked the end of government under the Articles
of Confederation and the beginning of the new government
established by the Constitution.

            
CAMILLE BOHANNON

On June 12, 1987, in one of his most famous Cold War
speeches, President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet
Leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall,
a symbol of the repressive Communist era in a divided
Germany.

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.was fatally
shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story
room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation
workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet
struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord.