Civil Rights Study Guide Part 1

NAACP

NAACP

National Association for The Advancement of Colored People

Established the “Separate but equal”

Plessy V. Ferguson

Laws that segregated African Americans and other minorities were permitted as
long as equal facilities were provided.  

Separate but equal 

De facto Segregation

Segregation by tradition or custom.

Norris V. Alabama

Ruled that the exclusion of African Americans from juries violated their rights
to equal protection under the law.

James Farmer and George Houser

founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Chicago.

(CORE) Congress of Racial Equality

Used sit-ins as a form of protest, first popularized by Union workers in the 1930s. They also successfully integrated many public facilities.

Thurgood Marshall

Attorney who focused on ending segregation in public schools.   

Brown V. Board of Education

Case involved a young African American girl named Linda Brown who was denied
admission to her neighborhood school. The court ruled segregation in public
schools to be illegal.

Senator Henry F. Byrd

called for a massive resistance against the Brown V. Board ruling.

Jo Ann Robinson 

Called on African Americans to boycott Montgomery’s buses on the day Rosa Parks
appeared in court.

Martin Luther King Jr

Civil rights leader who was elected to lead the Montgomery bus boycott. Believed
in having a peaceful protest. The boycott lasted over a year.

Churches

African American churches served as forums for protest and planning meetings and
mobilized volunteers.

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth

Established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Set out to eliminate segregation and to encourage
African Americans to vote.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Was intended to protect the rights of African Americans to vote.

Ella Baker

 urged students to establish the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in
1960.

SNCC (Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

African American college students from the South made up most of the members and a few whites joined as well.

Robert Moses

Urged the SNCC to start helping rural Southerners who often faced violence when they tried to vote.

Freedom Summer

voter registration efforts took place in 1964. The Ku Klux Klan brutally murdered three SNCC workers with the complicity of local officials.

Fannie Lou Hamer

was evicted from her farm after registering to vote. The police arrested and beat her before she was able to make it home after registering to vote. She
still went on to help organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and challenged the legality of the state’s segregated Democratic Party at the 1964 National Convention.

John Patterson

Banned the NAACP from being active in Alabama and fought the bus boycotts.

Freedom Riders

In May 1961 teams of Black and White volunteers boarded several buses together and drove through the South. The buses were met by angry white mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery. In
Anniston, someone threw a firebomb onto one of the buses. In Birmingham, Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor had told the local klan to beat the riders until it looked like a bulldog got a hold of them. The violence made national news shocking America and drawing the federal government’s attention
to the plight of African Americans in the South.

Thurgood Marshall

African American appointed to judgeship by President Kennedy on the 2nd Circuit Appeals court in New York.

Robert Kennedy

Ordered the Justice Department to take legal action against Southern cities that maintained segregated bus terminals.

16th Street Baptist Church

Church that was bombed by the KKK on September 15, 1963. Four young girls were killed. New reports regarding the attacks on children led to greater support for the Civil Rights Movement.

Medgar Edwards

1st field secretary for the NCAAP, focused his efforts on voter registration and boycotts. His death made him a martyr of the Civil Rights
movement.

The March on Washington

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 black and white people gathered in Washington DC to hear speeches and sing songs calling for freedom and equality for all Americans.

Filibuster

An attempt to kill a bill by having a group of senators take turns speaking continuously so that a vote cannot take place.

Cloture

A motion that ends debate and calls for an immediate vote.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

The law made segregation illegal in most places of public accommodations, and it gave citizens of all races and nationalities equal access to public
facilities. It also established the (EEOC) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a permanent federal agency.

Little Rock 9

Little Rock, Arkansas was under a federal court order requiring that nine African American students be admitted to Central High School. Governor Orval Faubus used the armed forces of the state to oppose the federal government- He was the first to challenge the Constitution since the Civil War.  After the African American students entered the building angry whites beat at least two reporters and
broke many windows. President Eisenhower immediately ordered the U.S. Army to send troops to Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. A few hours later the 9 African American students arrived in an army station wagon
and walked into the high school.  Federal Authority had been upheld, but the troops had to stay in Little Rock for the rest of the year