Unit 13 Vocabulary

Morgan v. Virginia

(1946) Supreme Court declared that segregation on interstate buses was an undue burden on interstate commerce

NAACP

(National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) created in 1909 by a group of liberals (including Du Bois, Jane Addams and John Dewey) to eradicate racial discrimination

Freedom Summer

A campaign in Mississippi during the summer of 1964 to register as many African American voters as possible. Mississippi had previously outlawed African American voters almost entirely.

Thurgood Marshall

American civil rights lawyer, first black justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. Marshall was a tireless advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor

Malcolm X

An Islamic civil rights activist. At first rejected integration and nonviolence and called on blacks to defend themselves — with violence if necessary. After a series of scandals in the Nation of Islam, he left it and went to Mecca. He returned with a different attitude and started working for integration rather than against it. In 1965, he was assassinated by three Muslim gunmen, probably for his exit of the NoI.

Voting Rights Act 1965

Banned literacy tests and sent thousands of fed voting officials to the south to supervise registration. This got a huge jump in the black voter rate

James Meredith

Black air force veteran who faced violent opposition when he attempted to register for classes at the University of Mississippi; JFK sent in 400 federal marshals and 3,000 troops to facilitate his enrollment and put a stop to the rioting and violence.

Black Power

Carmichael's idea for blacks to unite, recognize their heritage, build a sense of community, define their own goals, and lead their own organizations

Earl Warren

Chief Justice and former governor of California; brought originally taboo social issues, such as civil rights to African Americans, to the attention of Congress and the country. Known for the "Brown v. Board of Education" case of 1954.

CORE

Congress of Racial Equality, and organization founded in 1942 that worked for black civil rights

Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, 1965, 1968

Eisenhower passed this bill to establish a permanent commission on civil rights with investigative powers but it did not guarantee a ballot for blacks. It was the first civil-rights bill to be enacted after Reconstruction which was supported by most non-southern whites. Passed under the Johnson administration, this act outlawed segregation in public areas and granted the federal government power to fight black disfranchisement. The act also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to prevent discrimination in the work place. This act was the strongest civil rights legislation since Reconstruction and invalidated the Southern Caste System. This was passed as a Great Society program under the Johnson administration. It prohibited the use of literacy tests as a part of the voter registration process which were initially used as a method to control immigration to the United States during the 1920s. The act enabled federal examiners to register anyone who qualified in the South, giving the power of the vote to underrepresented minorities. This barred discrimination in housing sales or rentals. This act was a part of a series of new legislation that encouraged desegregation of blacks in America. The act was a key piece of legislation which ensured blacks more equal rights.

Orval Faubus

He was the governor of Arkansas during the time of the Little Rock Crisis. He attempted to block the integration of the school by using the national guard, leading to a confrontation with the Eisenhower and ultimately integration of the school

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

Laws written to separate blacks and whites in public areas/meant African Americans had unequal opportunities in housing, work, education, and government

Selma

MLK organizes a march in Selma. Tens of thousands of black protesters petition for the right to vote outside of the city hall and are ignored. They then marched to the gov'na's mansion in Montgomery. Police meet them with tear gas and clubs. "Bloody Sunday" is highly publicized and Americans in the North are shocked.

Rosa Parks

NAACP member who initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 when she was arrested for violating Jim Crow rules on a bus; her action and the long boycott that followed became an icon of the quest for civil rights and focused national attention on boycott leader Martin Luther King, Jr.

Eugene Bull Connor

Police Commissioner who personally supervised a brutal effort to break up the peacful marches, arrestion hundreds of demonstrators and using attack dogs, tear gas, electric cattle prods, and fires hoses in full view of television cameras.

Sweatt v. Painter

Segregated law school in Texas was held to be an illegal violation of civil rights, leading to open enrollment. The Court ruled that separate professional schools for blacks failed to meet the test of equality.

SCLC

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by MLK, which taught that civil rights could be achieved through nonviolent protests.

SNCC

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founded by young black adults, seeking immediate change, not gradual.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Supreme Court case about Jim Crow railroad cars in Louisiana; the Court decided by 7 to 1 that legislation could not overcome racial attitudes, and that it was constitutional to have "separate but equal" facilities for blacks and whites.

I Have a Dream

The March on Washington was a massive demonstration of black and white people in Washington in response to Kennedy's bill. Here, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous "I had a dream" speech to millions of people and inspired the nation. CULTURAL.

Fannie Lou Hammer

This person was an integral part of the Mississippi freedom Summer and Freedom Democratic Party.

Twenty-Fourth Amendment

This prevents both congress and the states from levying a poll tax against voters. This stopped the practices of stopping African Americans from voting all together.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

Topeka board of education denied Linda Brown admittance to an all white school close to her house. Thurgood Marshall argued that a separate but equal violated equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Warren decided separate educational facilities were inherently unequal.

Martin Luther King Jr

U.S. Baptist minister and civil rights leader. A noted orator, he opposed discrimination against blacks by organizing nonviolent resistance and peaceful mass demonstrations. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Nobel Peace Prize (1964)

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

When MLK is in jail during the Birmingham protests, he writes this letter, which explains the civil rights movement to critics. The letter was published and circulated countrywide.

sit-ins

a form of protest in which people sit and refuse to leave (a form of civil disobedience- used to promote the Civil Rights Movement)

Little Rock Nine

a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. we went to central high and it was tight

Freedom Riders

organized mixed-race groups who rode interstate buses deep into the South to draw attention to and protest racial segregation, beginning in 1961. This effort by northern young people to challenge racism proved a political and public relations success for the Civil Rights Movement

affirmative action

policies of the government aimed at increasing access to jobs, schooling, and oppurtunities to people previously discriminated against...Bakke vs. Board of Regents

de facto segregation

segregation "by fact", segregation that results from factors like housing patterns rather than law.

de jure segregation

segregation by law, segregation that is required by government

Shirley Chisholm

the first black woman elected to Congress; often criticized the seniority system in Congress and the Vietnam War

race riot/watts

1965, The first large race riot since the end of World War II. In 1965, in the Watts section of Los Angeles, a riot broke out. This was the result of a white police officer striking a black bystander during a protest. This triggers a week of violence and anger revealing the resentment blacks felt toward treatment toward them.

Kerner Commission

created in July, 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 60s race riots. It blames the riots on an "explosive mixture" of poverty, slum housing, poor education, and police brutality caused by "white racism" and advised federal spending to create new jobs for urban blacks, construct additional public housing, and end school segregation

Stokely Carmichael

a leader of SNCC; he made the group more radical and exclusively black

apartheid

a legal system that was the physical seperation of different races into different geographic areas

Black Panthers

a militant political party formed by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton; wanted the government to fix blacks' problems and to combat police brutality

Nation of Islam

a religious group that preached black separation and self-help; one of its more prominent members was Malcom X