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14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford that had held that black people could not be citizens of the United States. -
15th Amendment
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870. -
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow Laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in Southern states of the former Confederacy, with, starting in 1890, a "separate but equal" status for African Americans. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal." -
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
NAACP is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is “to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term colored people. -
19th Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits any United States citizen to be denied the right to vote based on sex. It was ratified on August 18, 1920. -
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) was created to combat the discrimination that Hispanics face in the United States. Established February 17, 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas, LULAC was a consolidation of smaller, like-minded civil rights groups already in existence. Since its creation, the organization has grown; it has a national headquarters, active councils in many states, and a professional staff. -
Federal Housing Authority
Federal Housing Authority is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying. The goals of this organization are to improve housing standards and conditions, provide an adequate home financing system through insurance of mortgage loans, and to stabilize the mortgage market. -
Social Security
Social Security refers to the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) federal program. The original Social Security Act (1935) and the current version of the Act, as amended, encompass several social welfare and social insurance programs. -
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) is a U.S. civil rights organization that played a pivotal role for African-Americans in the Civil Rights Movement. Membership in CORE is still stated to be open to "anyone who believes that 'all people are created equal' and are willing to work towards the ultimate goal of true equality throughout the world.” -
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady of the United States, holding the post from 1933 to 1945 during her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office. President Harry S. Truman later nicknamed her the "First Lady of the World" in tribute to her human rights achievements. -
Mendez v. Westminster
Mendez v. Westminster was a 1946 federal court case that challenged racial segregation in Orange County, California schools. In its ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in an en banc decision, held that the segregation of Mexican and Mexican American students into separate "Mexican schools" was unconstitutional. -
March on Washington
March on Washington lasted from 1933-1947. It was organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. Martin Luther King was heavily influenced by Randolph and his ideals. The March on Washington Movement was formed as a tool to organize a mass march on Washington, D.C., designed to pressure the U.S. government into desegregating the armed forces and providing fair working opportunities for African Americans. -
Delgado v. Bastrop ISD
Delgado v. Bastrop ISD made the segregation of children of Mexican descent in Texas illegal. -
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Civil Rights
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Sweatt v. Painter
Sweatt v. Painter was a U.S. Supreme Court case that successfully challenged the "separate but equal" doctrine of racial segregation established by the 1896 case Plessy v. Ferguson. The case was influential in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education four years later. -
Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez was an American farm worker, labor leader and civil rights activist, who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association. -
Non-Violent Protests
Non-Violent Protests is the practice of achieving goals through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other methods, without using violence. It is largely synonymous with civil resistance. -
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order that she give up her seat in the colored section to a white passenger, after the white section was filled. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott a seminal event in the U.S. civil rights movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person, to December 20, 1956. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action known as positive discrimination in the United Kingdom, refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group "in areas of employment, education, and business". -
Orval Faubus
Orval Faubus was the 36th Governor of Arkansas, serving from 1955 to 1967. He is best known for his 1957 stand against the desegregation of the Little Rock School District during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to stop African-American students from attending Little Rock Central High School. -
Civil Rights Act 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, enacted September 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction following the American Civil War. -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. It emerged from a series of student meetings led by Ella Baker held at Shaw University in April 1960. SNCC grew into a large organization with many supporters in the North who helped raise funds to support SNCC's work in the South, allowing full-time SNCC workers to have a $10 per week salary. -
Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta was a labor leader and civil rights activist who, along with César Chávez, co-founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. -
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.
A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the 20th century. -
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969), a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963). -
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience. King has become a national icon in the history of American progressivism. -
Great Society
Great Society was a set of domestic programs in the United States announced by President Lyndon B. Johnson at Ohio University and subsequently promoted by him and fellow Democrats in Congress in the 1960s. Two main goals of the Great Society social reforms were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. -
24th Amendment
The 24th Amendment Ended the Poll Tax
January 23, 1964. On January 23, 1964, the United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials. -
Civil Rights Act 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted July 2, 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States[1] that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women. -
Upward Bound
Upward Bound is a federally funded educational program within the United States. The program is one of a cluster of programs referred to as TRIO, all of which owe their existence to the federal Higher Education Act of 1965. The goal of Upward Bound is to provide certain categories of high school students better opportunities for attending college. -
Head Start
The Head Start Program is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families. The program's services and resources are designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children’s physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop strong cognitive skills. It was launched in 1965. -
Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party was an African-American revolutionary socialist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s. The organization initially set forth a doctrine calling primarily for the protection of African-American neighborhoods from police brutality. -
Voting Rights Act 1965
Voting Rights Act 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. -
Medicare
Medicare is a national social insurance program, administered by the U.S. federal government since 1965, that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans ages 65 and older and younger people with disabilities as well as people with end stage renal disease. -
Militant Protests
Some forms of militiant protests included the Black Panther Party. They were the opposite of nonviolent protests to get their cause known. -
National Organization for Women (NOW)
NOW is an organization founded in 1966 and which has a membership of 500,000 contributing members set up for the advancement of women. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. -
Hector P. Garcia
Hector P. Garcia was a Mexican-American physician, surgeon, World War II veteran, civil rights advocate, and founder of the American G.I. Forum. As a result of the national prominence he earned through his work on behalf of Hispanic Americans, he was instrumental in the appointment of Mexican American and American G.I. Forum charter member Vicente T. Ximenes to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1966. -
United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC)
United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC) is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez. This union changed from a workers' rights organization that helped workers get unemployment insurance to that of a union of farmworkers almost overnight. -
25th Amendment
The 25th Amendment to the US Constitution (ratified February 10, 1967) specifies the following procedure: Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. -
Barbara Jordan
Barbara Jordan was an American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives. -
American Indian Movement (AIM)
American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States, founded in 1968 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with an agenda that focuses on spirituality, leadership, and sovereignty. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. -
Tinker v. De Moines
Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old junior high school student in December 1965 when she and a group of students decided to wear black armbands to school to protest the war in Vietnam. The students and their families embarked on a four-year court battle that culminated in the landmark Supreme Court decision: Tinker v. Des Moines. On February 24, 1969 the Court ruled 7-2 that students do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate -
26th Amendment
The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution barred the states or federal government from setting a voting age higher than eighteen. It was adopted in response to student activism against the Vietnam War and to partially overrule the Supreme Court's decision in Oregon v. Mitchell. It was adopted on July 1, 1971. -
Title IX
Title IX is a portion of the Education Amendments of 1972. It states (in part) that 'No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.' -
La Raza Unida (Mexican Americans United)
La Raza Unida (Mexican Americans United) was an American political party centered on Chicano nationalism. During the 1970s the Party campaigned for better housing, work, and educational opportunities for Mexican-Americans. -
Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights Movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. -
Edgewood ISD v. Kirby, Hernandez v. Texas
In Edgewood Independent School District et al. v. Kirby et al., a landmark case concerning public school finance, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed suit against commissioner of education William Kirby on May 23, 1984, in Travis County on behalf of the Edgewood Independent School District, San Antonio, citing discrimination against students in poor school districts. -
George Wallace
George Wallace was an American politician and the 45th governor of Alabama, having served two nonconsecutive terms and two consecutive terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. After four runs for U.S. president, he earned the title "the most influential loser" in 20th-century -
Sonia Sotomayor
Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991, and her nomination was confirmed in 1992. In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Her nomination was slowed by the Republican majority in the United States Senate, but she was eventually confirmed in 1998.
