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14th Amendment
“all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves recently freed. In addition, it forbids states from denying any person "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" or to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” -
15th Amendment
the constitutional amendment passed after the Civil War that guaranteed African American's the right to vote. -
Jim Crow Laws
From the 1880s into the 1960s, a majority of American states enforced segregation through "Jim Crow" laws (so called after a black character in minstrel shows). From Delaware to California, and from North Dakota to Texas, many states (and cities, too) could impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race. The most common types of laws forbade intermarriage and ordered business owners and public institutions to keep their black and white clientele separated. -
Eleanor Roosevelt
Civil rights leaders that advocated for the basic rights of all citizens -
Plessy V. Ferguson
In a major victory for supporters of racial segregation, the U.S. Supreme Court rules seven to one that a Louisiana law providing for "equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races" on its railroad cars is constitutional. -
Thurgood Marshall
Distinguished lawyer, Supreme Court Justice, and supporter of the rights of Americans with little voice in government. -
Lyndon B. Johnson
.He was elected vice president of the United States in 1960, and became the 36th president in 1963, after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. During his administration, Johnson initiated the "Great Society" social service programs, signed the Civil Rights Act into law -
NAACP
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) A US civil rights organization set up in 1909 to oppose racial segregation and discrimination by nonviolent means -
Orval Faubus
Faubus trained to be a teacher at Commonwealth College in Arkansas. He became interested in politics and joined the Democratic Party. -
Rosa Parks
Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus spurred a city-wide boycott. The city of Montgomery had no choice but to lift the law requiring segregation on public buses. -
Hector P. Garcia
Garcia's achievements are of historical importance. Through peaceful protest and legal recourse, he confronted the violators of the civil rights of "his people" at the same time that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. worked for equal rights for African Americans. -
George Wallace
American politician and the 45th governor of Alabama -
19th Amendment
The 19th amendment guarantees all American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation and protest. -
Betty Friedan
Betty Friedan was a feminist writer and rights activist.she wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963), exploring the idea of women finding personal fulfillment outside of their traditional roles. -
Cesar Chavez
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican-American labor leader who used non-violent methods to fight for the rights of migrant farm workers in the southwestern USA. Chavez founded a group that advocates for the rights of farm workers, acting to increase wages and improve the working conditions and safety of farm workers. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Among many efforts, King headed the SCLC. Through his activism, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-American citizens in the South and other areas of the nation. -
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)
created to combat the discrimination that Hispanics face in the United States. Established February 17, 1929 in Corpus Christi, Texas, LULAC was a consolidation of smaller, like-minded civil rights groups already in existence. -
Dolores Huerta
Dolores Huerta has worked to improve social and economic conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination. -
Barbara Jordan
American politician and a leader of the Civil Rights movement. She was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate after Reconstruction and the first southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives. -
Social Security
Any government system that provides monetary assistance to people with an inadequate or no income. -
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in 1942 as the Committee of Racial Equality by an interracial group of students in Chicago. -
Mendez V. Westminister
Judge Paul McCormick of the U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, Central Division ruled first that the segregation violated California’s own laws, but then he went on, writes Professor Philippa Strum, the resident senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, “to suggest a new interpretation of the federal equal protection clause.” -
Delgado V. Bastrop ISD
District Judge Ben Rice agreed that segregation of Mexican American students was not authorized by Texas law and violated the equal protection of the law clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Rice issued an injunction against the state and the school districts forbidding further segregation of students of “Mexican or Latin descent.” -
Sweatt V. Painter
the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the separate school established for blacks lacked "substantive equality" for a number of reasons, including the fact that the school had fewer faculty members and an inferior law library and other facilities. -
Hernandez V. Texas
ruled that Mexican Americans (and all other racial groups) were due equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. -
Brown V. Board of Education
United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. -
Sonia Sotomayor
She graduated from Yale Law School and passed the bar in 1980. She became a U.S. District Court Judge in 1992 and was elevated to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998. In 2009, she became the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, in which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest segregated seating, took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and is regarded as the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the U.S. On December 1, 1955, four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to yield her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. She was arrested and fined. -
Southern Christian Laedership Conference (SCLC)
The SCLC was the black civil rights organization founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
the U.S. first civil rights legislation that established the Civil Rights Commission (CRC) to protect individual’s rights to equal protection and permitted courts to grant injunctions in support of the CRC. -
Civil Rights Movement
movement in the United States beginning in the 1960s and led primarily by Blacks in an effort to establish the civil rights of individual -
Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
(SNCC) was founded in April 1960, by young people who had emerged as leaders of the sit-in protest movement initiated on February 1 of that year by four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. -
Non-Violent Protest
Nonviolence is a philosophy and strategy for social change that rejects the use of violence. -
Militant Protest
In his famous 1963 speech to the March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., explicitly embraced “the marvelous new militancy” of the anti-racist struggle of those years. Praising its sensitivity to what he called “the fierce urgency of Now,” he went on to contrast this militancy favorably with “the tranquillizing drug of gradualism” that continued to plague the more reformist wing of the movement -
March on Washington
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (or "The Great March on Washington," -
Great Society
the goal of the Democratic party under the leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson, chiefly to enact domestic programs to improve education, provide medical care for the aged, and eliminate poverty. -
24th Amendment
forbid the use of the poll tax as a requirement for voting in national or U.S. Congressional elections. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
) Differed from earlier attempts to address minority rights by focusing on ending discrimination in the work place -
Medicare
A federal program that pays for certain health care expenses for people aged 65 or older. Enrolled individuals must pay deductibles and co-payments, but much of their medical costs are covered by the program. -
Voting Rights of 1965
prohibits the states and their political subdivisions from imposing voting qualifications or prerequisites to voting, or standards, practices, or procedures that deny or curtail the right of a U.S. citizen to vote because of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. -
Affirmative Action
an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups and women. -
National Organization for Women (NOW)
the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and pushed for legislation guaranteeing equality -
United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC)
On August 22, 1966, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), later renamed the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), was formed. The UFWOC was established when two smaller organizations, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), both in the middle of strikes against certain California grape growers, merged and moved under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO. -
Black Panthers
The Black Panther Party was a progressive political organization that stood in the vanguard of the most powerful movement for social change in America since the Revolution of 1776 and the Civil War. Violent Protest for racial equality. -
25th Amendment
In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President. -
American Indian Movement
American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American activist organization in the United States. AIM gained international press when it seized the Bureau of Indian -
Tinker V. Des Moines
the Supreme Court ruled that the students had the right to wear armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War. Justice Abe Fortas wrote for the majority. He first emphasized that students have First Amendment rights -
La Raza Unida
The Raza Unida Party was established on January 17, 1970, at a meeting of 300 Mexican Americans at Campestre Hall in Crystal City, Texas. La Raza Unida is determined to renew our most basic values: Caring for all life, responsibility to community, and strength to act for community well being. -
26th Amnedment
the United States Constitution standardized the voting age to 18 -
Edgewood V. Kirby
State District Judge Harley Clark ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. He found that the state’s public school financing structure was unconstitutional and ordered the Texas Legislature to formulate a more equitable funding system.
