VFL 10 - The Civil Rights Movement

"No" - Rosa Parks

Thurgood Marshall

First African-American supreme court justice. Directed a group of law students and was responsible for helping the NAACP lawyers win 29/32 supreme court cases, one being Brown v. Board of Education

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 front-row seat of the “colored” section of a Montgomery bus and refused to move for a white man in order to protest segregation

Martin Luther King Jr.

Pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church who led the protests against segregation and for civil rights

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 activists who rode buses through the South in the early 1960s to challenge segregation

James Meredith

Won a federal court case that allowed him to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi. When he arrived, he faced Governer Ross Barnett who refused to let him register as a student

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 workplaces

Freedom Summer

a 1964 project to register African-American voters in Mississippi

Fannie Lou Hamer

The voice of the MFDP (Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party), who told of her hardships on a televised speech

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

A man who believed strongly in black superiority and separitism from whites, as he was alienated from white society at a young age

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