Four black girls attending Bible class are killed and 14 others injured.Ten years after the Montgomery bus boycott, a sophisticated and determined civil rights leadership holds fast to nonviolent tactics to gain voting rights for all Americans. The commitment to the nonviolent approach almost wavers when marchers are beaten and tear-gassed. National attention puts pressure on white Alabama’s resistance to the voting rights movement. A solid victory results when President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The rise of the black power movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in March 1968, and President Johnson announcing that he would not run for reelection, made the election year of 1968 chaotic. The 1968 election was close, with Wallace winning 40 percent of the southern white vote overall, but less than a third in the surrounding South, where Nixon received 45 percent of the white vote. Nixon squeaked through to win the presidency....
