After Brown v. the Board of Education decision in 1954, American public schools slowly begin to integrate. In 1957, nine African American students, shielded by federal troops, enter Central H.S. in Little Rock, Arkansas. On Dec.1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, AL - thus beginning the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerges as the leader of the African American protest movement. The election of 1960. The impact of the Kennedy assassination put American society into a state of mourning. Congress passes the Civil Rights of 1964. This act prohibited discrimination against African Americans in employment, voting and public accommodations.