The Civil Rights Movement Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, individuals, legal precedents, and events of the American Civil Rights Movement as detailed in the lecture slides.

13th Amendment

A Civil War amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned slavery and all involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

14th Amendment

A Civil War amendment that defined a citizen as any person born or naturalized in the U.S., guaranteeing equal protection under the law and overturning Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

15th Amendment

A Civil War amendment that prohibited governments from denying U.S. citizens the right to vote based on race, colour, or past servitude.

Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857)

A Supreme Court ruling that stated Black people were not eligible for U.S. citizenship, which was later overturned by the 14th Amendment.

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

A Supreme Court ruling that upheld state segregation laws, establishing the precedent that "separate but equal" public facilities were legal under state police powers.

Jim Crow Laws

State and local statutes enacted predominantly in the Southern United States that mandated racial segregation and restricted Black political and social rights.

NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909 to fight racial discrimination in court cases and ensure the political and educational equality of minority group citizens.

Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

A landmark Supreme Court decision on May 17, 1954, that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, declaring that separate educational facilities are inherently unequal and violate the 14th Amendment.

Thurgood Marshall

The lawyer working for the NAACP who represented Oliver Brown in the Brown v. Board of Education case.

Linda Brown

A third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, whose refusal of enrollment into a local white elementary school in 1951 led her father, Oliver Brown, and the NAACP to sue the Topeka Board of Education.

Emmett Till

A 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Money, Mississippi, in August 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman.

Mamie Till-Mobley

The mother of Emmett Till who insisted on an open-casket funeral so the world could see the brutality inflicted on her son, sparking widespread outrage in the Civil Rights Movement.

Rosa Parks

An African American woman and local NAACP secretary whose arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Claudette Colvin

A 15-year-old student who was arrested in Montgomery in March 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat, nine months before Rosa Parks.

Montgomery Bus Boycott

A 381-day protest organized by civil rights leaders against city bus segregation from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, ending when the Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.

SCLC

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded in January 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, and 60 activists to coordinate non-violent civil rights protests through Black churches.

Little Rock Nine

A group of nine African American students who integrated Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in September 1957 under the protection of federal troops.

Governor Orval Faubus

The Governor of Arkansas who ordered the National Guard to prevent the Little Rock Nine from entering Central High School in September 1957.

101st Airborne Division

The U.S. Army unit dispatched by President Eisenhower on September 24, 1957, to escort the Little Rock Nine into classes and enforce federal court orders.

Greensboro Four

Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, the four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College who initiated the Greensboro Sit-In on February 1, 1960.

SNCC

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an organization formed following the sit-in movement by Ella Baker and student activists to execute non-violent direct action protests.

CORE

The Congress of Racial Equality, an organization founded in 1942 in Chicago that aimed to end segregation and discrimination through non-violent direct action, such as the Freedom Rides.

Freedom Riders

Civil rights activists organized by CORE and SNCC in 1961 who rode integrated interstate buses through the South to challenge non-enforced federal anti-segregation rulings.

James Meredith

The first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi in 1962, whose admission required intervention by US Attorney General Robert Kennedy and federal marshals.

March Against Fear

A 220-mile march from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, initiated in 1966 by James Meredith to promote Black voter registration, during which Meredith was shot and wounded.

Bull Connor

The white supremacist Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama, who ordered police to arrest demonstrators and use attack dogs, cattle prods, and high-pressure firehoses against them.

"Letter from Birmingham Jail"

An open letter written on newspaper margins and toilet paper by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 12, 1963, defending nonviolent action in response to white clergymen who termed his efforts "unwise and untimely."

Children's Crusade

A May 1963 tactic in the Birmingham Campaign where thousands of Black students aged 6 to 18 marched against segregation, leading to mass arrests and violent police reaction.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

A massive rally on August 28, 1963, where approximately 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, featuring Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark civil rights legislation proposed by President Kennedy and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson that banned employment discrimination and ended segregation in public places.

Freedom Summer of 1964

A 10-week campaign organized by SNCC in Mississippi where over 1,000 predominantly young, white volunteers joined Black organizers to expand Black voter registration and operate Freedom Schools.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner

Three civil rights workers (one African American and two white) who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964.

Jimmie Lee Jackson

A young African American demonstrator fatally shot by an Alabama state trooper in Marion in February 1965, inspiring the Selma to Montgomery march.

Edmund Pettus Bridge

The bridge in Selma, Alabama, where 600 peaceful protesters were brutally attacked with whips, nightsticks, and tear gas by Alabama state troopers on "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Federal legislation passed in August 1965 that banned literacy tests for voter registration and authorized federal oversight of registration in non-compliant areas.