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Civil Rights Movement
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Plessy v. Ferguson
The turning point court case that helped build the Jim Crow Laws, also known as the "seperate but equal" laws. -
De jure Segregation
Racial separation that is required by law is known as de jure segregation. The Supreme Court first approved of de jure segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Malcolm X
Malcolm X was an African-American Muslim minister, public speaker, and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans -
Martin Luther King, JR.
Born on the fifteenth of January, in 1929, Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the African-American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States, and he has become a human rights icon. he is most commonly known for his stand on non-violent protest. -
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael also known as Kwame Ture, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "Snick") and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students denied black children equal educational opportunities. The decision overturned earlier rulings going back to Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. It started after Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving her seat on the bus up. -
S.C.L.C.
In January 1957, in the afterglow of the Montgomery Bus Boycott victory and consultations with Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, and others, Dr King invited some 60 black ministers and leaders to Ebenezer Church in Atlanta. Their goal was to form an organization to coordinate and support nonviolent direct action as a method of desegregating bus systems across the South, and it was called the Southern Christian leadership Conference. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School (a very recently desegregated white school) in 1957. They were the first black students to do anything of the sort at the time. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were Civil Rights activists who rode on interstate buses into the segregated southern United States to test the United States Supreme Court decision Boynton v. Virginia (of 1960). The first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C., on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. -
De facto Segregation
The Jim Crow Laws were legally ended in 1964 by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Continued practices of expecting African Americans to ride in the back of busses or to step aside onto the street if not enough room was present for a Caucasian person and "separate but equal" facilities are instances of de facto segregation. -
Freedom Summer
Freedom Summer (also known as the Mississippi Summer Project) was a campaign in the United States launched in June 1964 to attempt to register as many African American voters as possible in Mississippi, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. -
The National Voting Rights Act
The National Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the United States. -
Selma March
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American Civil Rights Movement. They were the culmination of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by Amelia Boynton and her husband. The first march took place on March 7, 1965, the second on March 9, 1965, and the third on March 21, 1965. -
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an African-American revolutionary organization established to promote Black Power, and by extension self-defense for blacks. It was active in the United States from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. -
The Kerner Commission
The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner, was an 11-member commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States and to provide recommendations for the future. -
Martin Luther King JR.'s Assasination
King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis. King was shot at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968 while he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony. The bullet entered through his right cheek smashing his jaw and then traveled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder. -
Civil Rights Act of 1968
This act,signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, is more commonly known as the Equal Housing act, and prevented segregation in housing, there were no federal provisions.
