Civil Rights Era, Pt. 2 (Integration)

Students from the North came down to support the movement.

Angry Southerners responded with violence, including murder.

The Sixties. The phrase is freighted with complex meaning for those who lived through that decade. It is impossible to convey the full sense of the world-changing, revolutionary change that swept the nation during that decade.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:

 "The Sixties," as they are known in both scholarship and popular culture, is a term used by historians, journalists, and other objective academics to describe the counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling. Conservatives denounce the decade as one of irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order. The decade was also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos, especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time.
The 1960s became synonymous with the new, radical, and subversive events and trends of the period. Commentator Christopher Booker described this era as a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm.

There is much, much more there to explore, including lists of significant people and events and year-by-year timelines. Feel free to explore the Wikipedia entry on The Sixties for possible items for your essay. There is also a handy timeline here: timeline

Here is a sampling of events:

War on Poverty

Freedom Summer

Freedom Riders

Selma to Montgomery 

Bloody Sunday 

Voting Rights Act of 1965 

24th Amendment 

Civil Rights Murders

Watts Riots

Assassination of MLK