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19th 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 sex. -
26th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. -
13th Amendment
States that, 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. -
14th Amendment
States that, 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. -
15th Amendment
States that 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. -
20th Amendment
The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. -
24th Amendment
The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax.
A way to keep AA from voting because they were too poor to pay a poll tax -
Jim Crow Laws
were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965. -
Civil Disobedience
The American civil rights movement, which came to prominence during the 1950s, sought to end racial segregation in the southern United States by adopting the tactics and philosophy of civil disobedience through such protests as the Greensboro sit-in (1960) and the Freedom Rides. -
Sharecropping/ Tenant Farming
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
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. Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of Southern whites trying to suppress the new freedom of emancipated African American slaves, the freedmen. -
Lynching
In the South, members of the abolitionist movement or other people opposing slavery were usually targets of lynch mob violence before the Civil War. During the war, Southern Home Guard units sometimes lynched white Southerners whom they suspected of being Unionists or deserters. The largest lynching during the war and perhaps the largest lynching in all of U.S. history, was the lynching of 41 men in the Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas in October 1862. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
African-American train passenger Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, breaking a Louisiana law. Rejecting Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Court ruled that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks did not conflict with the 13th and14th Amendments. -
Desegregation
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces following World War II, a major advance in civil rights. Using the Executive Order meant that Truman could bypass Congress. Representatives of the Solid South, all white Democrats, would likely have stonewalled related legislation. -
Brown v. Ferguson
On May 17, 1954 the United States Supreme Court handed down its ruling in the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Court’s unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for “separate but equal” public facilities, including public schools in the United States. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
A seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. -
Rosa Parks
By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955, black seamstress Rosa Parks helped initiate the civil rights movement in the United States. The leaders of the local black community organized a bus boycott that began the day Parks was convicted of violating the segregation laws. -
Orville Faubus
Faubus' name became internationally known during the Little Rock Crisis of 1957, when he used the Arkansas National Guard to stop African Americans from attending Little Rock Central High School as part of federally ordered racial desegregation. His strong stand on this issue may seem surprising considering Faubus' 1954 run for governor as a progressive candidate promising to increase spending on schools and roads. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. Although influential southern congressman whittled down the bill's initial scope, it still included a number of important provisions for the protection of voting rights. -
Sit-Ins
On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peaceful activists' strategy. Four African American college students walked up to a whites-only lunch counter at the local WOOLWORTH'S store in Greensboro, North Carolina, and asked for coffee. When service was refused, the students sat patiently. Despite threats and intimidation, the students sat quietly and waited to be served. -
Affirmative Action
the term "affirmative action" in an Executive Order that directed government contractors to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." -
George C. Wallace
In 1962, when he ran again on a platform of racial segregation and states' rights and was backed by the Ku Klux Klan, he won the election. His inaugural speech concluded with the infamous line, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." -
Nonviolent Protest
King encouraged these nonviolent tactics so that the city’s jails would overflow. Police used high-pressure water hoses and dogs to control protesters, some of whom were children. By the end of the campaign, many segregation signs at Birmingham businesses came down, and public places became more open to all races. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
A Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. Inspired by advocates of nonviolence such as Mahatma Gandhi, King sought equality for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peaceful protest -
Desegregation
Despite victories against segregation and discrimination, African Americans continued to face unequal opportunities, and new approaches, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and the Black Power Movement, was the definite ending to the Jim Crow Laws. -
Lester Madox
The restaurant featured a wide selection of free segregationist literature and the “Make a Wish for Segregation” wishing well. Although Maddox owned the restaurant to make a living, he utilized its ability to attract media attention to voice his opinions and to gain support in the community. The restaurant faced several problems, the largest of which was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made racial segregation illega. In 1964, he refused to serve three black students -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, passed additional legislation aimed at bringing equality to African Americans, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. -
Upward Bound
The program is one of a cluster of programs now referred to as TRIO, all of which owe their existence to the federal Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and the Higher Education Act of 1965. Upward Bound programs are implemented and monitored by the United States Department of Education. -
Veteran Rights Act of 1965
Truman's mandate, which did not erase military segregation all at once (complete integration did not occur until the mid-1950s), served in many respects as the basis for the various legislation signed into law years later to include the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that guaranteed civil and voting rights for all people. -
Head Start
A program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive early childhood 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. -
Hector P. Garcia
A recognized voice for Mexican Americans in the post-World War II era. Besides providing veterans a social and political network, the forum also raised funds to pay the poll taxes of the indigent and campaigned against the Bracero Program, infamous for exploiting migrant laborers. , Arthur Goldberg and George McGovern. The organization, and the attention it drew to poverty and discrimination in Texas. -
Cesar chavez
The National Farm Workers Association in 1962. His union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in its first strike against grape growers in California, and the two organizations later merged to become the United Farm Workers. Stressing nonviolent methods, Chavez drew attention for his causes via boycotts, marches and hunger strikes. -
Betty Friedan
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, which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now fully equal partnership with men." -
Thurgood Marshall
A U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil rights advocate. He guided the litigation that destroyed the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He fought the case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which invalidated state-enforced racial segregation in the public schools. -
Federal Housing Authority
The Civil Rights Act of 1968, enacted April 11, 1968, also known as the Fair Housing Act, is a landmark part of legislation in the United States that provided for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, religion, or national origin and made it a federal crime to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin. -
Title IX(9)
On June 23, 1972, the President signed Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, into law. Title IX is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.
