Ending a 20-year split, the two largest labor federations in the U.S. merge to form the AFL-CIO, with a membership estimated at 15 million - 1955

Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of a Montgomery, Ala. bus, fueling the growing civil rights movement's campaign to win desegregation and end the deep South's "Jim Crow" laws - 1955

Teamsters official William Grami is kidnapped, bound and beaten near Sebastopol, Calif. He was leading a drive to organize apple plant workers in the area - 1955