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Unit 9: Civil Rights

Terms in this set (21)

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Legalized segregation in publicly owned facilities on the basis of "separate but equal."
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Overrules Plessy v. Ferguson. Racial segregation violates 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause ("separate is inherently unequal")
Jim Crow Laws
Legalized segregation based on race. Limited rights of blacks. Literacy tests, grandfather clauses and poll taxes limited black voting rights
Kerner Commission
created in July, 1967 by President LBJ to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States. Concluded that white racism was the cause of the riots after MLK's assassination
Civil Disobedience
A nonviolent, public refusal to obey allegedly unjust laws.
Voting Rights Act of 1965
a law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African-American suffrage
Freedom Summer
1964 effort to register African American voters in Mississippi; 3 white men were killed and buried in a dam for helping register black voters
Birmingham, Alabama
City in the deep south known for its strict enforcement of total segregation in everyday life. Location of MLK's arrest, Sunday morning church bombing, and a peaceful protest that resulted in police dogs attacking protesters, tear gas, and fire hoses being used.
Freedom Riders, 1961
civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern U.S. in 1961. They wanted to challenge local laws or customs that enforced segregation in seating and bus terminals and the non-enforcement of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions, which ruled segregated public buses unconstitutional.
Sit-ins
protests by black college students, 1960-1961, who took seats at "whites only" lunch counters and refused to leave until served; Their success prompted the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
students whose purpose was coordinate a nonviolent attack on segregation and other forms of racism
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
1957 group founded by Martin Luther King Jr. to fight against segregation using nonviolent means
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
challenged racial segregated public facilities and supported those who fought for the rights of African-Americans
de facto segregation
Segregation resulting from economic or social conditions or personal choice; the concentration of African-Americans in inner city neighborhoods. Not legal segregation
de jure segregation
Racial segregation that occurs because of laws or administrative decisions by public agencies.
Rosa Parks
United States civil rights leader who refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery (Alabama) and so triggered the national civil rights movement (born in 1913)
Non-violent protest
Showing disapproval without damaging property or causing any threat
Little Rock Nine
1957 - Governor Faubus sent the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine Black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. Eisenhower sent in U.S. paratroopers to ensure the students could attend class.
Malcolm X
Charismatic Black Muslim leader who promoted separatism between blacks and whites in the early 1960s
Emmett Till
Murdered in 1955 for whistling at a white woman by her husband and his friends. They kidnapped him and brutally killed him. his death led to the American Civil Rights movement.
James Meredith
He was a civil rights advocate who spurred a riot at the University of Mississippi. The riot was caused by angry whites who did not want Meredith to register at the university. The result was forced government action, showing that segregation was no longer government policy.
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