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14th Amendment
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. -
13th Amendment
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. It eliminates all possibilities of slavery to exist in the country. This was supposed to be an end all for slavery, but people did not take it too seriously for the early years. -
15th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. All peoples that are citizens are allowed vote. This applies to all citizens that they are free and allowed to vote, no matter what race or ethnicity. -
Jim Crow Laws
The Jim Crow laws were a number of laws requiring racial segregation in the United States. These laws were enforced in different states between 1876 and 1965. "Jim Crow" laws provided a systematic legal basis for segregating and discriminating against African Americans."Jim Crow" was a racist term for a black person. -
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. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 US 537 (1896) 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". -
Non-violent Protest
When Protesters protest peacefully, like a march or a large gathering speech. Many of these happened during the Civil Rights Movement to get the attention of the country. -
Civil Disobedience
The refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest. These also occurred from some protests for Civil Rights. -
Desegregation
Desegregation is the ending of policy of segregation. It took a long time for this to happen to all America, but eventually we realized it was wrong and unfair for a nation of freedom for all. -
CORE
Founded in 1942, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) 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. -
Sharecropping
Sharecropping is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. This was used as a way to keep slaves legally and was mainly used in the south. -
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. -
Lynching
(of a mob) kill (someone), especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. A prime example of this would be the case of Emmett Till. -
Emmett Till
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after a white woman said she was offended by him in her family's grocery store. He was a catalyst for Civil Rights and made more people stand up and say this is wrong. -
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". She was one of the first noticed African American to stand up and fight for what she believes in. It made others do as well. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery bus boycott was a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, and was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. This showed that how segregation was treated and when something changed, people did not like it. :P -
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. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957, Pub.L. 85–315, 71 Stat. 634, 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. It was mainly focused for voting rights on African Americans. -
Orval Faubus
He stopped the enrollment of nine black students. He was a prime example of segregation at its finest, and showed how some people feel on the matter. He was a stepping stone for the Civil Rights Movement. -
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
In institutions of higher education, affirmative action refers to admission policies that provide equal access to education for those groups that have been historically excluded or underrepresented, such as women and minorities. -
Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States, in 1961 and subsequent years, in order to challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v. Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were unconstitutional. The Southern states had ignored the rulings and the federal government did nothing to enforce them. -
Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez is best known for his efforts to gain better working conditions for the thousands of workers who labored on farms for low wages and under severe conditions. Chavez and his United Farm Workers union battled California grape growers by holding nonviolent protests. -
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. This still showed how people felt about african americans attending a desegregated school. -
Betty Friedan
She 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. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now fully equal partnership with men." -
U of Alabama Integration
When integration for schools were beginning to take place, George Wallace proceeded to stand in front of his school to show off African Students wishing to enroll in the school. -
George C. Wallace
During his inaugural address on Jan. 14, 1963, newly elected Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace vowed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." It was just a single line in a speech given 50 years ago. He stated his point on segregation and was also another stepping stone in the Civil Rights Movement. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He acted as a leader and lead into a world of no segregation and unequal rights. -
March on Washington
Many people marched to Washington to allow more jobs to be opened up and to be freely worked by everyone. It allowed all to work and be free to work where they want. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
It is a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It was supposed to say that all people should be treated equally, but few people actually followed it for a few years. -
Lester Maddox
He allowed no blacks in his restaurant and protested the newly passed laws. He was another one unhappy with the equalities bestowed on African Americans, and greatly disliked them. Another prime example of a pro racist person to be brought down. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Voting Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson (1908-73) on August 6, 1965, aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the 15th Amendment (1870) to the Constitution of the United States. -
Watts Riots
This took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, an African-American motorist was arrested for suspicion of drunk driving. It was an act to show that people can be arrested over skin color and may be "more suspicious" because of it. -
Stokely Carmichael
Stokely Carmichael, “Black Power” Soon after he was named chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Stokely Carmichael began to tout the slogan and philosophy of Black Power. In the speech below he explains Black Power to an audience at the University of California, Berkeley. -
Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party or the BPP was a revolutionary black nationalist and socialist organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton. They sometime used violence for their protests and was for the segregation of their people. -
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. He proved to the world that an African American can do what they want, through a lot of work and dedication and willpower. -
Hector P. Garcia
He was appointed to the United States Commission on Civil Rights in 1968, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1984; and was named to the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II in 1990. He had a great court influence on the Civil Rights Movement. -
Title IX
It is a federal law that states: "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.
