March 2: Claudette Colvin (a fifteen-year-old African American girl) refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white woman after the driver demands it. She is carried off the bus backwards whilst being kicked and handcuffed and harassed on the way to the police station.

March 5: WBBJ-TV signs on the air in the Jackson, Tennessee, with WDXI as its initial call-letters, to expanded American commercial television in mostly-rural areas.

March 7: The Broadway musical version of Peter Pan, which had opened in 1954 starring Mary Martin, is presented on television for the first time by NBC-TV with its original cast, as an installment of Producers' Showcase. It is also the first time that a stage musical is presented in its entirety on TV almost exactly as it was performed on stage. This program gains the largest viewership of a TV special up to this time, and it becomes one of the first great TV family musical classics.

March 17: The Richard Riot occurs in Montreal.

March 19: KXTV of Stockton, California, signs on the air in the United States, being the 100th commercial television station in this country.

March 20: Evan Hunter's movie adaptation of the novel Blackboard Jungle premieres in the United States, featuring the famous single, Rock Around the Clock, by Bill Haley and His Comets. Teenagers jump from their seats to dance to the song. (source: Wikipedia)