(25/26) APUSH: (CH 26) The Civil Rights Movement

Thurgood Marshall

Lead attorney for the NAACP who argued the Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court: He successfully dismantled the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson. He later became the first African American Supreme Court Justice, representing the "legal/litigation" strategy of the movement.

Rosa Parks

An NAACP secretary who was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama (1955): Her arrest served as the catalyst for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted over a year and brought Martin Luther King Jr. into the national spotlight as a civil rights leader.

Martin Luther King Jr.

A Baptist minister and leader of the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) who advocated for integration through nonviolent direct action: He provided the moral framework for the movement. His leadership in the Birmingham Campaign and the March on Washington helped pressure Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Stokely Carmichael

A leader of SNCC who grew disillusioned with nonviolence and popularized the term "Black Power.": His shift in ideology signaled the "militant turn" of the movement in the mid-1960s. He argued that African Americans should focus on self-reliance, racial pride, and independent political/economic organizations rather than just integration.

Malcolm X

A prominent minister of the Nation of Islam and human rights activist who challenged the mainstream civil rights movement's focus on nonviolence: He advocated for Black Nationalism and self-defense ("by any means necessary"). Though he later moderated his views after a pilgrimage to Mecca, his ideas laid the intellectual foundation for the Black Power movement and the Black Panthers.

rights liberalism

The idea that individuals are entitled to state protection from discrimination. This version of liberalism focused on identities — such as race or gender, and eventually sexuality — and was joined to the social welfare liberalism of the New Deal.

Executive Order 8802

An order signed by President Roosevelt in 1941 that prohibited "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin" and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Civil rights organization founded in 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer and other members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) that espoused nonviolent direct action.

States' Rights Democratic Party

Known popularly as the Dixiecrats, a breakaway party of white Democrats from the South that formed for the 1948 election. Its formation hinted at a potential long-term schism within the New Deal coalition.

American GI Forum

A group founded by World War II veterans in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1948 to protest the poor treatment of Mexican American soldiers and veterans.

Community Services Organization (CSO)

A Latino civil rights group founded in Los Angeles in 1948 that trained many Latino politicians and community activists, including Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954

Supreme Court ruling of 1954 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.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Yearlong boycott of Montgomery's segregated bus system in 1955-1956 by the city's African American population. The boycott brought Martin Luther King Jr. to national prominence and ended in victory when the Supreme Court declared segregated seating on public transportation unconstitutional.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

After the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King Jr. and other black ministers formed the SCLC in 1957 to coordinate civil rights activity in the South.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

A student civil rights group founded in 1960, under the mentorship of Ella Baker, that conducted sit-ins, voter registration drives, and other actions to advance racial equality throughout the 1960s.

Freedom Rides

A series of multiracial sit-ins conducted on interstate bus lines throughout the South by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1961. An early and important civil rights protest.

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.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Law that responded to demands of the civil rights movement by making discrimination illegal in employment, education, and public accommodations on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

A multiracial political party founded in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964, in order protest the exclusion of black voters from the state's mainline Democratic Party.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Law passed during Lyndon Johnson's administration that outlawed measures designed to exclude African Americans, and other people of color, from voting.

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 twentieth century and in various organizations in the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party.

Nation of Islam

A religion founded in the United States that became a leading source of black nationalist thought in the 1960s. Black Muslims fused elements of traditional Islamic doctrine with black pride, a strong philosophy of self-improvement, and a rejection of white culture.

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.

defacto segration

segregation by law; Jim

Crow laws primarily in Southern states

dejure segregation

segregation based on

customs instead of by law; primarily in Northern states

Caesar Chavez

a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers or UFW) with Dolores Huerta. He used nonviolent tactics—including strikes, boycotts (notably the 1965-1970 grape boycott), and hunger strikes—to secure collective bargaining rights, better pay, and safer conditions for migrant farmworkers.

Dolores Huerta

a crucial 20th-century labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) union with César Chávez in 1962. She championed Mexican American and Filipino farmworker rights through strikes, boycotts, and negotiations, famously coining the slogan "Sí, se puede".

Young Lords Organization (YLO)

An organization that sought self-determination for Puerto Ricans in the United States and in the Caribbean. Though immediate victories for the YLO were few, their dedicated community organizing produced a generation of leaders and awakened community consciousness.

United Farm Workers (UFW)

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.

Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF)

A Mexican American civil rights organization founded in 1967 and based on the model of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. MALDEF focused on legal issues and endeavored to win protections against discrimination through court decisions.

La Raza Unida

A political party founded in Texas in 1970 by Mexican Americans as an alternative to the two major political parties; (The United Race) ran candidates for state and local governments and expanded to other states

American Indian Movement (AIM)

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.

Little Rock 9

A group of nine African American students who enrolled in Little Rock Central High School following the Brown v. Board decision: Their enrollment was met with "massive resistance" and the Arkansas National Guard. President Eisenhower was forced to send in the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students, demonstrating that the federal government would use military force to uphold federal court orders and civil rights.

Greensboro Sit Ins

A series of nonviolent protests by college students at a Woolworth's lunch counter in North Carolina after being refused service: This sparked a mass movement of sit-ins across the South and led to the formation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). It demonstrated the power of student-led grassroots activism in challenging Jim Crow laws.

Civil Disobedience

The active, professed refusal of a citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government, often through nonviolent resistance.

Hernandez v. Texas (1954)

a landmark Supreme Court case ruling that Mexican Americans and all other racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. are entitled to equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The unanimous decision established that excluding Mexican Americans from juries was a violation of constitutional

Executive Order 10730

the action taken by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 24, 1957, to enforce school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas.