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Brown v, Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Landmark 1954 Supreme Court case that overturned the “separate but equal” principle established by *Plessy v. Ferguson* and applied to public schools. Few schools in the South were racially desegregated for more than a decade.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

Thirteen-month bus boycott that began with the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. The successful protest catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr., a local pastor, into national prominence as a civil rights leader.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr. and other black ministers to encourage nonviolent protests against racial segregation and disfranchisement in the South.

Little Rock Nine

Nine students who, in 1957, became the first African Americans to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Federal troops were required to overcome the resistance of white officials and the violence of white protesters.

White Citizens Council (WCC)

Organization created in protest following the *Brown v. Board* decision. The WCC consisted primarily of businessmen and professionals who intimidated black members of the community by threatening their jobs, denied bank loans to African Americans, and rejected rock ’n’ roll music.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Civil rights organization that grew out of the sit-ins of 1960. The organization focused on taking direct action and political organizing to achieve its goals.

Great Migration

Population shift of more than 400,000 African Americans who left the South beginning in 1917–1918 and headed north and west to escape poverty and racial discrimination. During the 1920s another 800,000 black people left the South.

McCarran-Walter Immigration Act

1952 legislation that made it possible for Japanese non-citizens to become U.S. citizens. However, the act still maintained a race-based system of discriminatory national-origin quotas.

Thurgood Marshall

NAACP’s chief lawyer who convinced the supreme court in 1950 to disband the separated law school that Texas had established for black people

Jackie Robinson

First black baseball player to enter the major leagues

Earl Warren

Chief justice during the Brown v. Board decision. Read that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place”

Martin Luther King Jr.

Emereged as the civil rights movements most charismatic leader

Rosa Parks

Black seamstress and NAACP activist who refused to give up her seat to a white man on the Mongomery bus. Her arrest sparked a movement by the entire black community to fight for equality.

A. Phillip Randolph

Black church and secular leader. Was a prominent voice in the civil rights movement

Bayard Rustin

Leader in social movements for civil rights, nonviolence, and gay rights

Emmett Till

14 year old from Chicago who was visiting his great uncle from Mississippi when he was kidnapped and brutally beaten to death for flirting with a white woman in a country store

freedom rides

Integrated bus rides through the South organized by CORE in 1961 to test compliance with Supreme Court rulings on segregation.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

August 28, 1963 rally by civil rights organizations in Washington, D.C. that brought increased national attention to the movement.

Civil rights act of 1964

Wide-ranging civil rights act that, among other things, prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and employment and increased federal enforcement of school desegregation.

Freedom Summer

1964 civil rights project in Mississippi launched by SNCC, CORE, the SCLC, and the NAACP. Some eight hundred volunteers, mainly white college students, worked on voter registration drives and in freedom schools to improve education for rural black youngsters.

Voting Rights Act

1965 act that eliminated many of the obstacles to African American voting in the South and resulted in dramatic increases in black participation in the electoral process.

Black Panther Party

Organization founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to advance the black power movement in black communities.

Affirmative Action

Programs meant to overcome historical patterns of discrimination against minorities and women in education and employment. By establishing guidelines for hiring and college admissions, the government sought to advance equal opportunities for minorities and women.

School busing

Mandatory nationwide initiative to integrate schools, begun in 1971 to comply with the 1954 Supreme Court decision *Brown v. Board*. The practice of school busing continued in the U.S. well into the 1990s. Also known as “busing” or “desegregation busing.”

Eugene “Bull” Connor

white supremacist in charge if law enforcement. ordered mass arrests of protestors including MLK

Robert Kennedy

JFKs brother and 64th attorney general. Worked out a compromise to let the freedom rides continue with minimal violence

James Meredith

Had his registration to the University of Mississippi as an undergrad blocked by Mississippi governer Ross Barnett

George Wallace

Alabama governer who stood in front of the administration building at the University of Alabama to block the entrance of two undergrads

John lewis

chairman of the SNCC who expressed the frustration of militan black people with both the Kennedy administration and Congress. “The revolution is at hand…we will not wait for the president, nor the Justice Department, nor Congress. But we will take matters into our own hands

Megar Evans

Head of the NAACP in Mississippi. Shot and killed in the driveway of his home by white supremacist Byron de la Beckwith.

Fannie Lou Hammer

MFDP delegate who had lost her job for her voter registration activities. Offered a passionate testimony that was broadcast on television

Malcom X

Helped convert thousands of disciples in black ghettos by denouncing whites and encouraging black people to embrace their African heritage and beauty as a people

Stokely Carmichael

SNCC’s chairman, proclaimed black power as the central goal of the freedom struggle and linked the cause of African American freedom to revolutionary conflicts in Cuba, Africa, and Vietnam

Huey Newton

1966 along with Bobby Seale formed the Black Panther Party

Bobby Seale

leader of the Black Panther Party