lent reaction from white segregationists.King witnesses the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2. This is the most far-reaching civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. Among other provisions, it guarantees blacks the right to vote and access to public accommodations. It also authorizes the federal government to sue to desegregate public public facilities and schools.In July, riots erupt in New York City's Harlem after a fifteen year old black boy is shot by an off-duty policeman. The initial rioting is followed by uprisings throughout the summer in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, as well as in Bedford-Stuyvesant; Rochester, NY, New Jersey; Chicago and Philadelphia.On August 4, the bodies of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner are found by FBI agents in a shallow grave near Philadelphia, Mississippi. All three had been shot. Chaney had been brutally beaten. Neshoba county sheriff Lawrence Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Price, are arrested for conspiring to violate the Civil Rights Code. Ultimately, Price and six others are convicted. Sheriff Rainey is found not guilty.In September, New York City begins busing students to end segregation in public schools.King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway on December 10. He is the twelfth American, third black and at age thirty-five, the youngest person to win the coveted prize.1965The Selma campaign is initiated on February 2, when King is arrested for demonstrating as part of the SCLC's voter registration drive. Several days later, a federal district court bans the literacy test and other technicalities used against black voter applicants, and on February 9, King meets with President Johnson at the White House to discuss voting rights.Jimmie Lee Jackson, a twenty-six year old black man, is fatally shot by state troopers during a demonstration in Marion, Alabama, on February 18.Three days later, on Fe...
