African American History, Civil Rights, and Black Liberation Movements

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key figures, concepts, organizations, legislation, and cultural movements in Black and African American history from the lecture notes.

Négritude

A political, cultural, and literary movement from the 1930s - 1950s that protested colonialism and the assimilation of Black people into European culture.

Negrismo

A movement embraced by Black and mixed-race Latin Americans that celebrated African contributions to Latin American music, folklore, literature, and art.

Langston Hughes

Translated works from French to Spanish and English & English to Spanish and French.

Aimé Césaire

A Martinican poet, author, and politician; one of the founders of the Négritude movement and coined the word "négritude" in French.

Frantz fanon

An Afro-Caribbean psychiatrist, political philosopher, and revolutionary born in Martinique.

Léopold Senghor

A Senegalese politician, cultural theorist and poet who served as the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980. Ideologically an African socialist, Senghor was one of the major theoreticians of Négritude.

Josephine Baker

(June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer, actress, World War II spy, and civil rights activist.

Augusta Savage

A pioneering African American sculptor, teacher, and a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Nella Larsen

An American novelist, nurse, and librarian who became a prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance and American modernism.

Wilfredo Lam

One of the leading artists of the negrismo period, created The Jungle (1943).

Loïs Mailou Jones

Illustrator of some magazines by W.E.B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson, completed Les Fétiches.

Civil Rights Act of 1875

Outlawed racial discrimination in public places.

Brown v. Board of Education

A supreme court ruling that stated racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional.

Jitneys

Small buses that provided taxi services.

G.I. Bill of 1944

A race natural gesture of gratitude toward American veterans returning from WW2, which had about 1.2 mil African Americans.

Redlining

The discriminatory practice of withholding mortgages to African Americans and other people of color within a defined geographical area under the pretense of “hazardous” financial risk posed by those communities.

Housing segregation

The separation of people into distinct neighborhoods based on race or ethnicity.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

Made it illegal to discriminate in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

An interracial organization that fought discrimination and racial violence primarily through legal campaigns.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A 382-day nonviolent campaign where Black residents organized carpools and walked instead of riding segregated city buses.

National Urban League

An interracial organization that assisted African Americans migrating from the rural South during the Great Migration, helping them acclimate to northern urban life and secure housing and jobs.

A. Philip Randolph

Activist in the labor movement and organizer of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

Southern Christian Leadership conference (SCLC)

Coordinated the actions of churches and other local organizations to launch major protests, such as the Selma Voting Rights March.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

A civil rights organization established by chicago white and black students who collaborated with other organizations to organize sit-ins, voter registration drives, and the Freedom Rides of 1961.

Freedom Rides of 1961

A series of civil rights protests where interracial groups of activists rode interstate buses into the segregated Southern United States.

Selma Voting Rights March (1965)

A series of pivotal civil rights demonstrations in Alabama that fought against systemic voter suppression of Black Americans.

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Founded in 1960 when Ella Baker assisted students interested in the SCLC’s activism in founding their own organization after the students organized and staged the Greensboro sit-ins.

Greensboro Sit-ins

A landmark nonviolent protest of the Civil Rights Movement where a group of 4 remained seated until the store closed at a “whites only” counter.

Martin Luther King Jr.

An American Baptist minister and the primary leader of the civil rights movement. He fought for racial equality and human rights for Black Americans using nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience.

James Farmer

A prominent American civil rights leader and co-founder of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

John Lewis

An American civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman often called the "conscience of the U.S. Congress".

Roy Wilkins

A prominent American civil rights leader who spent over four decades guiding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Whitney Young

Was a prominent American civil rights leader, social worker, and strategist; the Executive Director of the National Urban League.

Civil disobedience

Including marches, sit-ins, litigation, economic boycotts, and the use of mass media.

March on Washington (1963)

A massive peaceful civil rights rally held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.

Bayard Rustin

An American civil rights leader, pacifist, and master strategist who served as the primary organizer of the March on Washington.

Pauli Murray

A 20th-century American civil rights activist, legal scholar, author, poet, labor organizer, and Episcopal priest.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Ended segregation and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, and religion.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Outlawed discriminatory barriers in voting.

Ella Baker

“Mother of the civil rights movement”.

Fannie Lou Hamer

A prominent American civil rights leader, voting rights activist, and community organizer who fought against racial segregation and voter suppression in Mississippi.

Black Freedom Movement

A broad, continuous struggle for civil rights, human rights, and self-determination waged by people of African descent in the United States.

Grassroots organization

A group of everyday people who use a bottom-up, community-driven approach to advocate for social, political, or environmental change.

Dorothy Height

Led the national council of negro women for 40 years and routinely worked on major civil rights projects.

Nicolás Guillén

A prominent Negrismo Cuban poet of African descent who examined the connections between anti-black racism in the U.S. and Latin America.

Charles Mingus

A jazz bassist who composed protest songs reliant on African American musical traditions.

Little Rock Crisis (1957)

A major confrontation over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, triggered when nine African American students attempted to integrate the all-white Little Rock Central High School (Little Rock Nine).

Freedom songs

Traditional spirituals, gospel hymns, and folk anthems used during the American Civil Rights Movement to unify communities, build solidarity, and protest racial segregation.

Harry Belafonte

An American singer, actor, and civil rights activist known as the "King of Calypso".

Mahalaia Jackson

An iconic American gospel singer widely known as the "Queen of Gospel".

Maya Angelou

An American memoirist, poet, civil rights activist, and performer.

“Year of Africa”

17 African nations declared their independence from European colonialism.

Diasporic solidarity

The mutual support, political organizing, and shared action that connect dispersed populations (diasporas) across borders to one another, to their homelands, or to other marginalized groups fighting similar systems of oppression.

Kwame Nkrumah

A major voice for continental unity, advocated for a "United States of Africa", and helped co-found the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963.

Black Power Movement

A movement that promoted self-discrimination, defended violence as a viable strategy, and strove to transform Black consciousness by emphasizing cultural pride.

Malcolm X

A muslim minister and activist who championed the principles of Black autonomy and encouraged African Americans to build their own social, economic, and political institutions instead of prioritizing integration.

Nation of Islam

Blended basic beliefs and practices of Islam with mythology and Black Nationalist ideology.

Black Panther Party

A revolutionary Black Power organization inspired by Malcolm X’s argument.

BPP Ten-Point Program

Called for freedom from oppression and imprisonment & access to housing, healthcare, education, and employment opportunities.

Bobby Seale

The co-founder and national chairman of the Black Panther Party.

Huey P. Newton

An American political activist and revolutionary who was important as the co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party.

Black is Beautiful movement

Celebrated Afrocentric aesthetics in natural hairstyles, fashion, celebrations, and the embrace of the Akan adrinkra symbols.

Black Arts movement

Galvanized the work of black artists, writers, musicians, and dramatists who envisioned art as a political tool to achieve black liberation.

Dashiki

A colorful, loose-fitting pullover garment with an ornate V-shaped collar, traditionally worn in West Africa.

Kwanzaa

A week-long, non-religious Pan-African holiday that honors African heritage, community, and culture.

Elizabeth Catlett

An African American artist who created paintings, sculptures, and prints that explored themes of race, gender, class, and history.

Katherine Cleaver

Legal scholar and activist who encouraged black people to embrace their natural beauty.

CROWN Act

Create a Respectful and Open Workplace for Natural Hair; prohibits discrimination based on hairstyles and hair texture.

Combahee River Collective

A radical Black feminist, lesbian, and socialist organization active in Boston, Massachusetts, from 1974 to 1980.