Civil Rights Vocab

Chapter 20

De Jure Segregation

• Segregation based on the law

• Practiced in the South (Jim Crow Laws)

De Facto Segregation

• Segregation by tradition, practice, or custom.

• Practiced in the North

Thurgood Marshall

• African American lawyer who headed the legal team that argued the Brown case.

• Served on the US Supreme Court from 1965-1991.

Brown v. BOE

• 1954

• Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional.

• Overturned the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson

Rosa Parks/ Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Rosa Parks challenged segregation of public transportation by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus.

• This began a boycott of the public transportation system in Montgomery that lasted over a year.

• December, 1956- Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s laws requiring segregation of busses unconstitutional.

SCLC

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference

• Civil Rights group established by Dr. King in 1957.

• Set out to eliminate segregation from American society and to encourage African Americans to register to vote using non-violent resistance.

Sit-in

• A form of civil disobedience used to challenge segregation in the South.

• Protesters sit and refuse to move.

SNCC

• Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee.

• Grassroots movement formed in 1960 by young civil rights activists.

• Made up mostly of college students.

• (John Lewis)

Freedom Ride

• Teams of African-Americans and whites who traveled into the south on busses challenging segregation laws and drawing attention to the South’s refusal to integrate bus terminals.

• Freedom Riders faced extreme violence in the South.

March on Washington

• 1963 demonstration in which more than 200,000 people rallied for economic equality and civil rights.

• Location of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Outlawed discrimination in public places and employment based on race, religion, or national origin.

Freedom Summer

• 1964 effort to register African American voters in Mississippi.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

• A law that banned literacy tests and empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration.

24th Amendment

• Banned poll taxes as a voting requirement.

Kerner Commission

• Group set up to investigate the causes of race riots in American cities in the 1960s.

• Concluded that the single most important cause of violence was long-term racial discrimination.

Malcolm X

• Well known leader of the black power movement.

• Joined the Black Muslims, who viewed themselves as their own nation (tried to be as economically sufficient as possible.)

• Did not advocate violence, but did advocate self-defense.

Black Power

• Movement in the 1960s that urged African Americans to use their collective political and economic power to gain equality.

• Stokely Carmichael

Black Panthers

• Organization of militant African Americans founded in 1966.

• Organized armed patrols of urban neighborhood to protect blacks from police violence as well as anti-poverty programs.