Civil Rights Movement Key Terms
March on Washington
1963 demonstration in which more than 200,000 people rallied for economic equality and civil rights
Lyndon B. Johnson
36th president of the U.S.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A federal law that authorized federal action against segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.
Black Panthers
A militant Black Power organization founded in the 1960s by Huey Newton and others.
CORE
Congress of Racial Equality
Selma March
March for voting rights
de facto segregation
Racial segregation, especially in public schools, that happens "by fact" rather than by legal requirement.
Stokely Carmichael
U.S. Civil Rights leader
James Meredith
U.S. Civil Rights leader whos college registration cause riots
SNCC
U.S. civil-rights organization formed by students and active especially during the 1960s, whose aim was to achieve political and economic equality for blacks through local and regional action groups.
Earl Warren
U.S. lawyer and political leader: Chief Justice of the U.S.
Martin Luther King Jr.
a baptist minister, introduced a speech
Freedom Rides
a bus trip made to parts of the southern U.S. by persons engaging in efforts to integrate racially segregated public facilities.
SCLC
a civil-rights organization founded in 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Freedom Summer
a highly publicized campaign in the deep South to register blacks to vote during the summer of 1964
Project "C"/ Protests in Birmingham
a plan advised by Martin Luther King Jr.
Rosa Parks
an African American steamstress, Civil Rights leader that refused to give up her seat on the bus
Twenty-fourth Amendment
an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1964, forbidding the use of the poll tax as a requirement for voting in national or U.S. Congressional elections.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
an independent federal agency created under the civil rights act of 1964, to eliminate discrimination
NAACP
an interracial U.S. organization working for political and civil equality of black people
Sit-in
an organized passive protest, especially against racial segregation, in which the demonstrators occupy seats prohibited to the, as in restaurants and other public places.
Jim Crow laws
any state law discriminating against black persons.
Plessy v. Ferguson
court case stating Jim Crow laws are constitutional
Brown v. Board of Education
court case stating that Jim Crow laws were unconstitutional
Thurgood Marshall
first black U.S. Supreme Court justice
Huey Newton/ Bobby Seale
founders of the Black Panther Party
Kerner Commission
group set up to investigate the causes of race riots in American cities in the 1960s
Voting Rights Act of 1965
law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. It authorized the enrollment of voters by federal registrars in states where fewer than fifty percent of the eligible voters were registered or voted.
de jure segregation
segregation that is imposed by law
Boycott
to refuse to have dealings with
Malcolm X
well-known African American radical, a famous speaker
Montgomery Bus Boycott
when the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted