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Sharecropping / Tenant
After the American Civil War southern plantation owners were challenged to find help working the lands that slaves had farmed. Taking advantage of the former slaves' desire to own their own farms, plantation owners used arrangements called sharecropping and tenant farming. Both methods required the planters to divide their plantations into smaller parcels of land, which they continued to own. -
Black Codes
In the United States, the Black Codes were laws passed by Democrat-controlled Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. -
13th Amendment
Abolishes slavery -
14th Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. -
15th Amendment
No citizen denied by race. -
Lynching
(of a mob) kill (someone), especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
was a landmark constitutional law case of the US Supreme Court decided in 1896. It upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal -
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. ... They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1896 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans in railroad cars. -
Thurgood Marshall
Marshall marries University of Pennsylvania student Vivian “Buster” Burrey.
He was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil rights advocate.
Marshall gifts his name to establish the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund to benefit Public Historically Black Colleges and Universities. -
Civil Disobedience
The third major figure who contributed greatly to the development of the practice of civil disobedience was Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968). He made civil disobedience the distinguishing feature of the civil rights movement in the United States. In this he was deeply influenced by Gandhi's methods. -
CORE
Founded in 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality became one of the leading activist organizations in the early years of the American Civil Rights Movement. In the early 1960s, CORE, working with other civil rights groups, launched a series of initiatives: the Freedom Rides, aimed at desegregating public facilities, the Freedom Summer voter registration project and the historic 1963 March on Washington. CORE initially embraced a pacifist, non-violent approach to fighting racial segregation. -
Hector P. Garcia
García opened a medical practice in Corpus Christi, where he witnessed the struggles of veterans and migrant workers. His work inspired a lifetime commitment to social reform. García became known as the "doctor to the barrios," offering low- and no-cost treatment to impoverished patients. -
Desegregation
Desegregation did not happen overnight. In fact, it took years for some states to get on board, and some had to be brought on kicking and screaming. But before the Court ever got involved with school integration, the desegregation wheels were put into motion by another branch of the government - the president himself. In 1948, Harry Truman issued an executive order to integrate the armed forces after WWII. -
Brown V. Board of Education
This case was the consolidation of four cases arising in separate states relating to the segregation of public schools on the basis of race. In each of the cases, African American minors had been denied admittance to certain public schools based on laws allowing public education to be segregated by race. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. -
Non-Violent Protest
We must use the weapon of love.” The tactic of non-violence proved effective in hundreds of civil rights protests in the racially segregated South. The Montgomery bus boycott lasted 382 days. ... The SCLC continued to lead non-violent boycotts, demonstrations, and marches protesting segregation throughout the South. -
Emmett Till
14 year old boy who got lynched for speaking "fresh" to a white lady. Although the lady says he never said anything to her. -
Rosa Parks
Civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama bus, which spurred on the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott that helped launch nationwide efforts to end segregation of public facilities. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. Rosa Parks received many accolades during her lifetime, including the NAACP's highest award. -
Little Rock Nine
In the Little Rock Nine of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. -
Civil Rights of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, enacted September 9, 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. -
SCLC
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC, which is closely associated with its first president, Martin Luther King Jr, had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. -
Orval Faubus
Orval E. Faubus became the national symbol of racial segregation when he used Arkansas National Guardsmen to block the enrollment of nine black students who had been ordered by a federal judge to desegregate Little Rock's Central High School. His action created a national crisis with President Dwight D. Eisenhower finally ordering federal troops to Little Rock to ensure the judge's order was obeyed, to protect the black students, and maintain order for the remainder of the school year. -
Sit-ins
The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, which led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
Affirmative Action
an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women sought to achieve a multicultural staff through affirmative action, a similar effort to promote the rights or progress of other disadvantaged persons -
Freedom riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States. -
Cesar Chavez
After working as a community and labor organizer in the 1950s, Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. This union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in its first strike against grape growers in California in 1965. -
Ole Miss Integration
On September 30, 1962, riots erupted on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school. -
Betty Friedan
After the Friedans' first child, Daniel, was born in 1948, Betty Friedan returned to work. She lost her job, however, after she became pregnant with her second child, Jonathan. Friedan then stayed home to care for her family, but she was restless as a homemaker and began to wonder if other women felt the same way she did—that she was both willing and able to be more than a stay-at-home mom. -
U of Alabama Intergration
Segregation forever!” When African American students attempted to desegregate the University of Alabama in June 1963, Alabama's new governor, flanked by state troopers, literally blocked the door of the enrollment office. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
In the spring of 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. organized a demonstration in downtown Birmingham, Alabama. Entire families attended. City police turned dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators. Martin Luther King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, but the event drew nationwide attention. -
March on Washington
On 28 August 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators took part in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the nation’s capital. The march was successful in pressuring the administration of John F. Kennedy to initiate a strong federal civil rights bill in Congress. During this event, Martin Luther King delivered his memorable ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech. -
Lester Maddox
Lester Garfield Maddox, a devout segregationist, owned and operated a restaurant called the “Pickrick Cafeteria,” that was located at 891 Hemphill Avenue near the Georgia Tech campus. As depicted in this WSB clip, after Maddox had renamed it the Lester Maddox Cafeteria in the Fall of 1964, the restaurant itself was known more for what it represented than for its good food and affordable prices. -
Civil Rights act of 1964
Landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. -
Voting rights act of 1964
The Voting Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. -
Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton in October 1966. -
George Wallace
Wallace also harbored presidential aspirations. In 1968, he ran as an Independent candidate, supported mainly by white, working-class Southerners. In his 1972 campaign, however, he ran as a Democrat. While on the campaign trail in Maryland later that year, Wallace was shot by a would-be assassin named Arthur Bremer. His injuries left him permanently paralyzed below the waist. He managed to still complete the campaign, but ultimately lost the Democratic nomination to George McGovern. -
Stokley Carmichael
The phrase "Black Power" quickly caught on as the rallying cry of a younger, more radical generation of civil rights activists. The term also resonated internationally, becoming a slogan of resistance to European imperialism in Africa. In his 1968 book, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Carmichael explained the meaning of black power. -
Title IX
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. The Title IX regulation describes the conduct that violates Title IX.
