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