Sit-in
The nonviolent protests in which a person sits and refuses to leave.
Black Power
A call to African Americans to unite, to recognize their heritage, build a sense of community, and define own goals, etc.
Freedom Rides
Freedom Riders were people who rode in interstate buses to the segregated southern United States to see if the desegregation laws were being followed.
Nation of Islam
A group, popularity known as the Black Muslims, founded by Elijah Muhammad to promote black seperationism and the Islamic religion.
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
The organization founded by pacifists in 1942 to promote racial equality through peaceful means. They were famous for freedom rides which drew attention to Southern barbarity, leading to the passing of civil rights legislation.
de facto segregation
Actual, as opposed to legal, separation of whites and African Americans.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Legislation that banned discrimination in all public facilities.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
In 1957 this group was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. to fight against segregation using
non-violent means.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Legislation that enabled more African Americans to register to vote.
Rosa Parks
United States civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat, on a bus, to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama. This triggered the bus boycot by the black community.
March on Washington
In August 1963, to show support for the Civil Rights Bill in Congress, Martin Luther King gave his famous "I have a dream..." speech to 250,000 people who attended the rally.
de jure segregation
Segregation by law.
interracial organization
An organization with both African Americans and white Americans as members.
nonviolent protest
A peaceful way of protesting against restrictive racial policies.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas (1954)
Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional, and that seperate but equal is unconstitutional.
Montgomery bus boycott
In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, Dr. Martin L. King led a boycott of city busses. After 11 months the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public transportation was illegal.
Integration
The act of uniting or bringing together, especially people of different races.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]
The American Civil Rights Movement formed by students whose purpose was to coordinate a nonviolent attack on segregation and other forms of racism.
Filibuster
A tactic for delaying or obstructing legislation by making long speeches.
Cloture
A rule for limiting or ending debate in a deliberative body.
Twenty-fourth Amendment
It outlawed taxing voters, i.e. poll taxes, at presidential or congressional elections, as an effort to remove barriers to Black voters.
Black nationalism
A belief in the separate identity and racial unity of the African American community.
James Meredith
United States civil rights leader whose college registration caused riots in traditionally segregated Mississippi. (born in 1933)
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 to work for racial equality.
National Urban League
An interracial organization formed in 1910 to help solve social problems facing African Americans who lived in the cities.
John Lewis
A long-time labor leader who organized and led the first important unskilled workers labor union, called in to represent union during sit-down strikes.
Eugene "Bull" Connor
Birmingham police commissioner who arrested over 900 marching kids and directed the fire station to blast them with fire hoses and let police dogs loose on them.
Black Panthers
A militant Black political party founded in 1965 to end political dominance by Whites.
Malcom X
He spread ideas of black nationalism, and disagreed w/ both the tactics and goals of the early civil rights movement. A minister of the nation of Islam, he rejected his original name because it was his family's slave name.
Jacki Robinson
He was the first African American to play major league baseball. He broke the color barriers, in sports, in 1947.
W.E.D. DuBois
He was the first African- American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. He was a founding member of the NAACP, and served as the director of publicity and research in that organization.
Plessey Vs. Ferguson
This was an 1896 case in which the court ruled that segregation of the races was legal in public places as long as it was "separate but equal".
Elijah Muhammad
He was the leader of the Nation of Islam who viewed white society as the enemy of the black man.
Mohandas Gandi
He was an Indian leader who used nonviolence to oppose the British rule of India. Martin Luther King Jr. was influenced by his teachings on nonviolence.
Letter From Birmingham Jail
A letter written by Martin Luther King Jr. while in jail to defend his tactics and timing that were criticized by a group of white clergy as being an ill-timed threat to law and order by an "outsider".
Martin Luther King Jr.
He was a Civil Rights leader advocated non-violence and civil disobedience as tools for change. He organized protests such as the March on Washington, and was know as a great speaker.
Thurgood Marshall
He was the first African American on the Supreme Court, and a well known Civil Rights lawyer.
Robert Kennedy
He was a Democrat who ran for president in 1968 promoting civil rights and other equality based ideals. He was ultimately assassinated in 1968.
Selma March
Martin Luther King organized this major demonstration in Alabama to press for the right of blacks to register to vote. A sheriff led local police in a televised brutal attack on demonstrators.
Lyndon Johnson
He was the President of the United States who signed the civil rights act of 1964 into law and the voting rights act of 1965. He wanted to create the 'Great Society', which was a number of economic programs designed to help the poor.
Robert Moses
He was one of SNCC's most influential leaders. He recruited black and white volunteers to help rural blacks register to vote
Little Rock Arkansas
This was the city that, in 1957, had protests around the Central high school because they admit 9 black students as a part of enforcing brown Vs. bored of education. The National Guard had to come and make sure that the law was inforced.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
The equal right of all citizens to the opportunity to obtain employment regardless of their gender, age, race, country of origin, religion, or disabilities.