Civil Rights VFL

February 21

Thurgood Marshall

Stunning victory came from Brown v. Board where he argued Brown and spent years laying the groundwork to chip away at Jim Crow, local laws that required segregated facilities.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

A 1954 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” education for black and white students was unconstitutional.

Rosa Parks

A seamstress and NAACP officer who took a seat in the front row of the “colored” section of a Montgomery bus and refused to move.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Led the Montgomery Improvement Association to organize the bus boycott. His speech filled the audience with a sense of mission.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

An organization formed in 1957 by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders to work for civil rights through nonviolent means.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

An organization formed in 1960 to coordinate sit-ins and other protests and to give young blacks a larger role in the civil rights movement.

Sit-in

A form of demonstration used by African Americans to protest discrimination, in which the protesters sit down in a segregated business and refuse to leave until they are served.

Freedom Riders

One of the civil rights activist who rode buses through the south in the early 1960s to challenge segregation.

James Meredith

Won a federal court case allowing him to enroll to Ole Miss, but when he arrived on campus, Governor Ross Barnett refused to let him register. Riots broke out and he had to be accompanied to class.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

A law that banned discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, or religion in public places and most work places.

Freedom Summer

A 1964 project to register African-American voters in Mississippi.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Voice at the 1964 Democratic National Convention where she described how she was jailed for registering to vote in 1962 and police forced other prisoners to beat her.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

A law that made it easier for African Americans to register to vote by eliminating discriminatory literacy tests and authorizing federal examiners to enroll voters denied at the local level.

de facto segregation

Racial separation established by practice and custom, not by law.

de jure segregation

Racial separation established by law.

Malcolm X

Studied the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in prison and later became an Islamic minister and gained a following.

Nation of Islam

A religious group, popularly known as the Black Muslims, founded by Elijah Muhammad to promote black separatism and the Islamic religion.

Black Power

A slogan used by Stokely Carmichael in the 1960s that encouraged African American pride and political and social leadership.

Black Panthers

A militant African-American political organization formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to fight police brutality and to provide services in the ghetto.

Civil Rights Act of 1968

A law that banned discrimination in housing.

Affirmative Action

A policy that seeks to correct the effects of past discrimination by favoring the groups who were previously disadvantaged.