Civil Rights Study Guide

Birmingham Campaign

- A strategic nonviolent protest organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.
- It aimed to bring attention to the city's segregation policies and to challenge the injustice through peaceful demonstrations and a series of coordinated marches and sit-ins.
- The Children's Crusade was when hundreds of schoolchildren marched to challenge segregation, facing arrest and brutal police violence. Their courage drew national attention, helping to shift public opinion and accelerate civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Martin Luther King Jr.

- A prominent leader in the American civil rights movement, known for his advocacy of nonviolent protest. He played a key role in various civil rights campaigns, including the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. His "I Have a Dream" speech is one of the most iconic speeches in American history.

16th Street Bombing

- A racially motivated bombing by the KKK that occurred at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963.
- The bombing resulted in the deaths of four African American girls and drew national attention to the violence and racism faced by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.
- It would take decades for those responsible to be convicted.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

- Landmark legislation that outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
- It ended unequal application of voter registration requirements and racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations.
- Made segregation illegal in all public facilities
- Allowed voting in the South for the first time for many African Americans since Reconstruction

Freedom Summer

- A 1964 voter registration drive in Mississippi aimed at increasing African American voter registration. Organized by civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), it faced violent resistance from white supremacists.

Jackie Robinson

- The first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era.

- His breaking of the baseball color line in 1947 challenged the racial segregation that had existed in professional baseball and paved the way for other African American athletes.

Thurgood Marshall

- A prominent civil rights attorney who successfully argued the case of Brown v. Board of Education before the Supreme Court, leading to the desegregation of public schools.
- He later became the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

Little Rock 9

- A group of African American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, 1957, following the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.
- Their enrollment was met with violent opposition, requiring federal intervention to ensure their safety and right to attend the school.

Freedom Riders

- Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States in 1961 to challenge the non-enforcement of Supreme Court decisions prohibiting segregation in interstate travel.

Rosa Parks

- An African American woman whose refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955 sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement.

Woolworths

- A department store chain where sit-ins took place in 1960.
- African American students staged sit-ins at the store's segregated lunch counters to protest racial segregation, sparking similar protests across the South.

Brown v. Board of Education

- A landmark Supreme Court case in 1954 that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional, overturning the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson.

Plessy vs. Ferguson

- A Supreme Court case in 1896 that upheld racial segregation under the "separate but equal" doctrine, allowing states to maintain segregated facilities for African Americans and whites.

SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

- A civil rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders.
- It played a central role in organizing nonviolent protests and advocating for civil rights legislation.
- Challenged the non-enforcement of laws

NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People)

- One of the oldest and most influential civil rights organizations in the United States, dedicated to achieving legal and social justice for African Americans.

Medgar Evers

- A civil rights activist who served as the Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP.
- He was assassinated in 1963 by a white supremacist for his work in organizing boycotts and voter registration drives.

March on Washington

- A massive civil rights demonstration was held in Washington, D.C., in 1963, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech
- This was a march in support of the Civil Rights Bill