Terms and personalities

• Black Codes/Jim Crow Southern states enacted a new form of Black Codes called "Jim Crow" laws. These laws made it illegal for blacks and whites to share public facilities.
• Plessy v. Ferguson a 1896 Supreme Court decision which legalized state ordered segregation so long as the facilities for blacks and whites were equal (separate but equal)
• W.E.B Dubois 1st black person to earn Ph.D. from Harvard encouraged blacks to resist systems of segregation and discrimination helped create NAACP in 1910
• Booker T. Washington African American progressive who supported segregation and demanded that African American better themselves individually to achieve equality.
• Marcus Garvey (Liberia Plan) immigrant from Jamaica who believed that African Americans should build a separate society; founded UNIAAC mass movement called Pan-Africanism; his plan failed to build up Liberia and imprisoned for fraud in selling of Black Star Line Stock
• Brown v. The Board of Education landmark court case ruled that segregated schools were "inherently unequal" ordered their integration "with all deliberate speed".
• NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Interracial organization founded in 1909 to abolish segregation and discrimination and to achieve political and civil rights for African Americans
• Thurgood Marshall attorney for NAACP successfully argued the Brown v. Board of Ed case and would later become the first African-American Supreme Court Justice.
• Emmett Till 14 year old who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Helped spread the modern Civil Rights movement.
• Claudette Colvin young woman who at the age of 15 in March 1955 refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus (before Rosa Parks)
• Rosa Park refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery local leaders organized a boycott in protest
• Montgomery Bus Boycott A civil rights protest where African Americans refused to take the city buses in Montgomery Alabama to protest the segregation of the seating on the buses. One of the first large-scale Protests against segregation Rosa parks and MLK jr were main participants in this boycott.
• Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Social activist who played a huge role in the Civil rights movement he sought for equality and human rights for African Americans. His most popular movements were the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington he also had a famous "I have a dream" speech during the March on Washington which called for equality for everyone. He believed in using nonviolent passive resistance
• Southern Christian Leadership Conference a civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. Bayard Rustin Ralph Abernathy Fred Shuttlesworth and others. It staged the Montgomery bus boycott and More. It advocated for the confrontation of segregation through nonviolent protests
• Gov. Orval Faubus called in the national guard to prevent integration of little rock central high school
• Little Rock Nine a group of nine Black students who enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas Orval Faubus called in the Arkansas National Guard to block the Black students' entry into the high school. Later President Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school. It drew national attention to the civil rights movement.
• Civil Rights Act of 1957 the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. An Act to secure and protect the civil rights of people of the United States
• Greensboro (NC) sit-ins act of nonviolent protest against a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro North Carolina led by local college students
• CORE the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played an important role for African Americans in the civil rights movement.
• SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee)-a group established in 1960 to promote and use non-violent means to protest racial discrimination; they were the ones primarily responsible for creating the sit-in movement
• Freedom Riders (1961) groups of white and African Americ in Freedom Rides which were bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated busesan civil rights activists who participated
• 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.
• Birmingham AL the city where segregation protesters were jailed for "parading without a permit" and eventually jails were so full that the police force responded to protesters with fire hoses and police dogs
• Gov. George Wallace Alabama governor who was extremely opposed to desegregation and admitted to supporting the Jim Crow laws
• Medgar Evers civil rights activist and leader who became the NAACP's first field secretary. He organized protests recruited workers to the civil rights movement pushed for school integration and was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith
• March on Washington event led by Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC which focused on the issues of employment discrimination and civil rights abuses of minorities
• Eugene "Bull" Connor politician who was the Commissioner of Public Safety for Birmingham Alabama. He supported and enforced segregation and opposed civil rights
• 24th Amendment abolished and forbids the federal and state governments from imposing taxes on voters during federal election
• Civil Rights Act of 1964 act that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race color religion sex or national origin
• Selma March/Bloody Sunday march that took place from Selma to Montgomery and occurred because African Americans wanted to ensure their right to vote by the Constitution; the march was called "Bloody Sunday" because law enforcement officers beat unarmed marchers with billy clubs and sprayed them with tear gas
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 act that prohibits racial discrimination in voting
• Kerner Commission A group that was appointed by President Johnson to study the causes of urban violence and that recommended the elimination of defacto segregation in American society.
• Black Power A slogan used to reflect solidarity and racial consciousness used by Malcolm X. It meant that equality could not be given but had to be seized by a powerful organized Black community.
• Stokeley Carmichael He was a black activist as member of CORE. As the movement progressed he started to become more militant creating the cry of black power. Became leader of SNCC.
• Malcolm X spokesman for Nation of Islam vocal advocate for black empowerment helped promote Islam within black community
• Nation of Islam (NOI) religious and political group founded in the US in the 1930s by Master Fard Muhammad in order to bring back the spiritual mental social and economic condition of blacks in the US
• Black Panthers Marxist-Leninist group founded by college students in 1966; ideology of black nationalism socialism and armed self defense (specifically against police brutality)
• Zeitgeist feeling or mood of an era or time period
• The Feminine Mystique book by Betty Friedan published in 1963; described pervasive dissatisfaction of women in mainstream society post WWI
• Title VII & IX Title VII: protects employees and job applicants from employment discrimination based on race color religion sex and national origin (1964); Title IX: no person in the US should be discriminated against based on gender under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance (1972)