Civil Rights APUSH Vocab

Brown v. Board of Education ( of topeka)

Supreme Court ruling that overturned the "separate but equal" precedent established in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The Court declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal and thus violated the Fourteenth Amendment

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Law that responded to demands of the civil rights movement by making discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations illegal. It was the strongest such measure since Reconstruction and included a ban on sex discrimination in employment.

March on Washington

Officially named the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, on August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million people marched to the Lincoln Memorial to demand that Congress end Jim Crow racial discrimination and launch a major jobs program to bring needed employment to black communities.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Law passed during Lyndon Johnson's administration that empowered the federal government to intervene to ensure minorities' access to the voting booth.

black nationalism

a major strain of African American thought that emphasized black racial pride and autonomy. Present in black communities for centuries, it periodically came to the fore, as in Marcus Garvey's pan-Africanist movement in the early Glossary G-3 twentieth century and in various organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party

Black Panther Party

A militant organization dedicated to protecting African Americans from police violence, founded in Oakland, California, in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. In the late 1960s the organization spread to other cities, where members undertook a wide range of community-organizing projects, but the Panthers' radicalism and belief in armed self defense resulted in violent clashes with police.

United Farm Workers

A union of farmworkers founded in 1962 by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta that sought to empower the mostly Mexican American migrant farmworkers who faced discrimination and exploitative conditions, especially in the Southwest

American Indian Movement

Organization established in 1968 to address the problems Indians faced in American cities, including poverty and police harassment. AIM organized Indians to end relocation and termination policies and to win greater control over their cultures and communities

Cesar Chavez

• An activist who advocated for better rights for Mexican Americans and one of the founders of the United Farm Workers. SIG: He helped inspire the Chicano movement. He called for a boycott of table grapes and staged a hunger strike which led to the recognition of the UFW by California grape grower

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)

Martin Luther King Jr.

• U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations

Malcolm X

• a Black Muslim minister in the Nation of Islam and an influential black leader who moved away from King's non-violent methods of civil disobedience.

Thurgood Marshall

• American civil rights lawyer, first black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall was a tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor.