Civil Rights Movement

Martin Luther King Jr.

He opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Nobel Peace Prize (1964)

Rosa Parks

Refused to give up her seat to a white passenger. After she was jailed, the Montgomery bus boycott was organized.

Malcolm X

Malcolm X was an advocate of black power and was the figurehead of the Nation of Islam for some time.

Stokely Carmichael

A leader of the Black Nationalist movement in 1966, he coined the phrase "Black Power". Broke off from the nonviolent movements.

Huey Newton

Co founded Black Panthers and embraced separatism

James Meredith

United States civil rights leader whose college registration caused riots in traditionally segregated Mississippi (born in 1933)

NAACP

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

SNCC

Student non-violent coordinating committee, also known as 'Snick.'

Black Panthers

Led by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, they believed that racism was an inherent part of the U.S. capitalist society and were militant, self-styled revolutionaries for Black Power.

SCLC

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, churches link together to inform blacks about changes in the Civil Rights Movement, led by MLK Jr., was a success

Twenty-fourth Amendment

Ratified by the states on January 23, 1964, this amendment prohibits congress and states from using any method to keep someone from voting based on ethnicity.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

A law designed to help end formal and informal barriers to African American voting. Under the law, hundreds of thousands of African Americans were registered and the number of African American elected officials increased dramatically.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

This act made racial, religious, and sex discrimination by employers illegal and gave the government the power to enforce all laws governing civil rights, including desegregation of schools and public places.

Freedom Summer

Name given to the voting campaign in the summer of 1964 that helped African Americans register to vote

Sit-in

Nonviolent protests in which a person sits and refuses to leave.

Boycott

A group's refusal to have commercial dealings with some organization in protest against its policies

March on Washington

In August 1963, civil rights leaders organized a massive rally in Washington to urge passage of President Kennedy's civil rights bill. The high point came when MLK Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech to more than 200,000 marchers in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

Lyndon B. Johnson

He was the president that assured the nation that "we shall overcome" when he signed the Voting Rights act of 1965. He also took steps to end discrimination earlier when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Freedom Rides

Freedom Riders rode in interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the ruling of unsegregated public places

Brown v. Board of Education

Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, overturned Plessey v Ferguson.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus, Dr. Martin L. King led a boycott of city busses. After 11 months the Supreme Court ruled that segregation of public transportation was illegal.

Jim Crow Laws

State level legal codes of segregation, such as literacy requirements and poll taxes