Civil Rights Movement Flashcards

Flashcards about The Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1966

Rosa Parks

An activist arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A protest organized by the African American community in Montgomery, Alabama, in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks, advocating for desegregation of the city's buses.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Reverend who became the leader of the Montgomery bus boycott and a prominent figure in the Civil Rights Movement, advocating for nonviolence, Christian love, and unity.

Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA)

Organization formed by Montgomery's black ministers to coordinate an extended boycott of city buses, with Dr. King as their leader.

Women's Political Council (WPC)

An organization of black professional women founded in 1949, led by Jo Ann Robinson, that helped spread the word about Mrs. Parks's arrest and organized the bus boycott.

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund

Mounted several significant legal challenges to segregation laws.

Jackie Robinson

Broke the color barrier in major league baseball in 1947.

Ralph Bunche

Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for arranging the 1948 Arab-Israeli truce.

Bebop

A new form of jazz created by African American musicians in the 1940s that revolutionized American music and asserted a militant black consciousness.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme Court case that sanctioned 'separate but equal' segregation.

Emmett Till

A fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after speaking informally to a white woman.

Brown v. Board of Education

A 1954 Supreme Court case that challenged segregation in public schools.

Thurgood Marshall

NAACP special counsel who argued that regulations forcing a black law student to sit, eat, and study in areas apart from white students inevitably created a 'badge of inferiority.'

Earl Warren

Chief Justice who worked to achieve a unanimous decision overturning Plessy in Brown v. Board of Education.

Southern Manifesto

A document signed by 101 members of Congress from the former Confederate states urging their states to refuse compliance with desegregation.

Orval Faubus

Governor of Arkansas who defied a federal court order to desegregate public schools in Little Rock, leading to a crisis.

Little Rock

City in Arkansas where the tense controversy over school integration became a test case of state versus federal power in 1957.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

Black civil rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy to exploit the momentum of the Montgomery movement.

Greensboro Sit-in

A protest that started on February 1, 1960, by four black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College at a whites-only lunch counter in Woolworth's.

Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Group established in 1960 that emphasized fighting segregation through direct confrontation, mass action, and civil disobedience.

Freedom Rides

An interracial ride through the South planned by James Farmer, the national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), to test compliance with court orders banning segregation in interstate travel and terminal accommodations.

Albany Movement

Coalition formed in 1961 in Albany, Georgia, of activists from SNCC, the NAACP, and other local groups to integrate public facilities and win voting rights.

James Meredith

An Air Force veteran who tried to register as the first black student at 'Ole Miss' in the fall of 1962.

March on Washington

Historic gathering of more than 250,000 people in Washington, DC, in 1963 marching for jobs and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Federal legislation that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment on the basis of race, skin color, sex, religion, or national origin.

Freedom Summer

Voter registration effort in rural Mississippi organized by black and white civil rights workers in 1964.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)

Sent a slate of delegates to the Democratic National Convention looking to challenge the credentials of the all-white regular state delegation.

Malcolm X

Since 1950 the preeminent spokesman for the black nationalist religious sect, the Nation of Islam (NOI).

Voting Rights Act

Legislation in 1965 that overturned a variety of practices by which states systematically denied voter registration to minorities.

League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

Launched in Texas in 1928, sought to secure equal rights and equal opportunity for their community by stressing its American identity.

House Concurrent Resolution 108

Allowing Congress to pass legislation to terminate a specific tribe as a political entity.