Washington: George Floyd's death on May 25 in Minneapolis was the latest in a series of deaths of black men and women at the hands of police in the US.
At least 9,300 people have been arrested at protests since Floyd's death.
Race relations have topped the political agenda in the United States since the 1950s.
The 1950s: African-Americans making a stand against widespread discrimination.
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In Little Rock, Arkansas, on Sept. 25, 1957 nine black teenagers had to be escorted by federal troops past an angry white mob and through the doors of Central High School.
It had been three years since the Supreme Court had declared "separate but equal" in America's public schools unconstitutional, but the decision was met with bitter resistance across the South.
Linda Brown Smith was a third grader when her father started a class-action suit in 1951 of the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which led to the US Supreme Court's 1954 landmark decision against school segregation.
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In 1955 Rosa Parks, a black woman, refused to give up her seat on a segregated city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested for her defiance.
Parks' act became a symbol of the emerging civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King Junior helped lead the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott that Rosa Parks set in motion.
With that campaign, King began enacting his philosophy of nonviolent, direct social action.
On June 11, 1963 Alabama Governor George Wallace took a symbolic stand against racial integration at the University of Alabama.
He blocked a doorway on campus, defying a federal court order allowing two black students to enroll at the school.
Wallace backed down after Alabama National Guard troops under federal control are ordered to the campus, and the students are allowed to enter.
On August 28, 1963, 250,000 Americans marched to the Lincoln memorial in Washington to demand civil rights, jobs and freedom.
It was here that King made his 'I had a dream' speech that has reverberated down through history.
On New Year's day, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln announced the emancipation of slaves, which freed all slaves in states then in rebellion against Washington.
The march on Washington marked one hundred years of that historic event and how much more needed to be achieved in terms of civil rights.
The march helped pressure Congress to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965, respectively.
A new generation of black leaders emerged into prominence, including the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X - from different regions and religions - but all of whom demanded racial and economic equality.
King based his civil disobedience campaign on Mahatma Gandhi, whilst Malcolm X advocated confrontation, and achieving equality "by any means necessary."
Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Malcolm Little was cared for in foster homes following his father's death and his mother's emotional breakdown.
Little ended up being jailed for ten years on burglary charges in his early 20s. He served seven of them.
While in jail he became a Nation of Islam follower and dropped his surname in favor of "X'' to represent his family's lost African ancestral name.
Malcolm X's fiery rhetoric came in stark contrast to that of more non-violence-minded civil rights contemporaries like Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Who are you? You don't know. Don't tell me negro - that's nothing. What were you before a white man named you a negro?" he demanded of his audience.
But he eventually left the Nation of Islam, adopted a more conciliatory tone and converted to Sunni Islam before being gunned down by Nation of Islam adherents at a speech in New York City in 1965 at the age of 39.
In July 1964 riots were trigged in the New York district of Harlem riots after police shot dead a 15-year-old black boy.
A story that would echo down the decades to come.
By the end of 1964 Kennedy was dead, and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, into law.
Still the violence continued...in Maryland, Harlem, Rochester, there were protests, police brutality, looting and fear.
On March 7, 1965, marchers set out from Selma to seek voting rights for disenfranchised blacks.
The marchers were beaten by law enforcement on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in what became known as "Bloody Sunday."
A shocked nation watched the police brutality on television and demanded that Washington intervene and protect voter registration rights for blacks.
The violence of the first march was underplayed in this Universal Newsreel.
The voice over says: "The long anticipated freedom March from Selma to Alabama's capital of Montgomery finally gets under way, as Dr. Martin Luther King, addresses the crowd at the starting point. Twice before the marchers had been turned back by State troopers. Now they march under a Federal Court Order and with the protection of federalised National Guard units and regular troops, a total of nearly three thousand men. The Freedom March has been a historical venture in non-violent protest."
On March 21-24, with federal protection, about 25,000 marchers completed the trek. The events led Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, helping integrate governments in the South.
In 1967 riots erupted again across the country.
In response President Lyndon Johnson created the Kerner Commission to examine the causes of the race riots in the late 1960s.
The panel recommended that Johnson spend billions on revitalizing poor cities, improving police relations and ending housing and job discrimination.
King was fatally shot on April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
Seven days after his assassination President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which provided equal housing opportunities regardless of race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, or national origin.
The Black Panthers were a political organization founded on 22 October 1966, to demand civil rights for ethnic minorities.
The Panthers disbanded 16 years after their founding.
The Million Man March on Oct. 16, 1995 converged on the National Mall in Washington D.C.. It was organised by the Nation of Islam.
The National Park Service estimated the attendance at the 1995 march to be around 400,000, but subsequent counts by private organizations put the number at 800,000 or higher. The National Park Service no longer provides crowd estimates on Mall activities.
The original march brought hundreds of thousands to Washington to pledge to improve their lives, their families and their communities. Women, whites and other minorities were not invited to the original march, but organizers welcomed all on a march to mark its 20th anniversary in 2015.
In July 2019 federal prosecutors decided not to bring criminal charges against a white New York City police officer in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black man whose dying words — "I can't breathe" — became a national rallying cry against police brutality.
Now another man has died gasping for breath.
The current wave of protests began after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee against George Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes while the handcuffed black man called out that he couldn't breathe.
AP
