Civil Rights Movement Lecture: From Anti-Lynching to Freedom Summer

Vocabulary flashcards covering key historical figures, events, organizations, and legal milestones of the African American Civil Rights Movement mentioned in the lecture.

NAACP Anti-Lynching Campaign

An early legislative effort involving nearly 200 unsuccessful attempts to pass a national anti-lynching law in Congress, led in Washington, D.C. by James Weldon Johnson starting in 1916.

East St. Louis Race Massacre (July 1917)

An outbreak of mass racial violence in Illinois across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, where dozens were killed and neighborhoods burned; survivors were subsequently interviewed by W. E. B. Du Bois for the NAACP.

1917 NAACP Silent Protest Parade

One of the first full-scale modern demonstrations organized by the NAACP, involving thousands of people marching through the streets of New York City in July 1917 to protest racial terror and violence.

Greenwood District

The African American neighborhood and business district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where roughly 34 square blocks of homes and businesses were destroyed during a racial massacre in late May and early June 1921.

Georgia's Nineteenth Amendment Vote

The state legislature's 1920 rejection of women's suffrage (voting 39 to 10 in the Senate and 118 to 29 in the House against ratification), which barred women in Georgia from voting on Election Day in 1920.

NAACP Legal Strategy Redirection (1940)

A decisive tactical shift away from 30 years of unsuccessful lobbying toward courtroom litigation focusing on housing, education, and voting rights, led by attorney Thurgood Marshall.

Texas White Primary Case (1944)

An 8-to-1 Supreme Court victory secured by the NAACP that struck down whites-only party primaries, tearing down a major obstacle to African American political participation.

Macio Snipes

An African American veteran from Taylor County, Georgia, who was killed in July 1946 the day after voting in the Democratic primary; his lynching motivated President Harry Truman to address the NAACP in 1947.

Topeka High School Dual Athletic Teams

The segregated extracurricular sports system within Topeka's integrated-classroom high school in 1950, which fielded the 'Trojans' for white students and the 'Ramblers' for African American students.

Truman Administration 1952 Amicus Brief

A friend-of-the-court brief submitted to the Supreme Court by the Attorney General and Solicitor General arguing that racial segregation was an international embarrassment exploited by communist adversaries.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A unanimous, concise Supreme Court decision that struck down the doctrine of 'separate but equal' 58 years after Plessy v. Ferguson, affecting 17 states with mandatory public school segregation.

Emmett Till

A 14-year-old Chicago youth lynched in Mississippi in August 1955 whose killers were acquitted at trial; FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declined to launch a federal investigation, citing local jurisdiction.

Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956)

A year-long citywide transit boycott sparked by Rosa Parks' arrest in December 1955, bringing national prominence to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church pastor Martin Luther King Jr.

Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-Ins (1960)

Nonviolent demonstrations initiated on February 1, 1960, by four college students at a segregated F. W. Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, sparking sit-ins across the South.

SNCC 1962 Georgia Church Burnings

The retaliatory destruction of African American churches used by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for voter registration in Terrell, Lee, and Baker counties; visited in the fall of 1962 by Jackie Robinson.

"Jail, Not Bail"

A protest strategy adopted by civil rights demonstrators during the 1963 Birmingham campaign to fill municipal jails to capacity rather than paying bail fines to be released.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail"

An April 1963 open letter written by Martin Luther King Jr. answering local clergy critics and asserting that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'

Medgar Evers

A World War II veteran and NAACP field secretary shot and killed in his Jackson, Mississippi driveway in June 1963 while carrying 'Jim Crow must go' T-shirts on the night of President Kennedy's national civil rights address.

Senator Richard Russell

The U.S. Senator from Georgia who led congressional opposition in the Senate against President Kennedy's proposed 1963 civil rights legislation.

16th Street Baptist Church Bombing

A September 1963 bombing of an African American church and civil rights staging ground in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls aged 11 to 14 on a Sunday morning.

Michael Schwerner

A leader in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration campaign who was targeted and murdered after white supremacists burned local churches to lure him into the backwoods.