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Civil Disobedience
Henry David Thoreau wrote the essay Civil Disobedience to show his opposition to slavery and Amican imperialism. His essay has influenced many prominent civil rights activist including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He argues in the essay that American citizens should really follow their own consciences, and that those who opposed slavery should stop paying taxes because paying taxes to a govt. that supported those things was basically offering them support. -
Sharecropping/Tenat Farming
After the American Civil War, souther plantation owners were chalenged 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 tenent farming. Both methods required the planters to divide their plantations into smaller parcels of land, which they continued down. -
Black Codes
Under the Reconstruction plicies of President Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866. They enacted a series of restrictive laws kown as "black codes: which were designed to restrict freed blacks activity and ensure their availability as a abor force now that slavery had been abolished. for instance, many states required blacks to sign yearly labor contracts, if they refused they risked being arrested and fines. -
13th Amendent
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, officially ended the institutuion of slavery. "Niether slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the Unites States, or any place subject to their constitution." The ratification came eight months after the end of the war, but it represented the culmination of the struggle against slavery. -
14th Amendment
Two years after the Civil War, the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 divided the South into five military district, where new state governments, based on universal manhood sufferage, were to be established. The 14th amendment resolved pre-Civil War questions of African American citizenship by stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.” -
15th Amendment
The 15th Amendment granted African American men the right to vote. It reads " the right of cixtizens of the US to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the US or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." One day after it was ado;pted, Thomas Peterson-Mundy of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, became the first African American to vote. -
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, in the southern and border states between 1877 and the mid- 1960s. Jim cor was more than a series of anti-black laws, it was a way of life. Under jim crow, african americans were releated to the status of second class citizens. Jim corw laws touched every aspect of everyday life. In 1905, Gorgia established seperate parks for blacks and whites. -
Lynching
The lynching era encompasses roughly the five decades between the end of Reconstruction and the beginning of the Great Depression. During these years there is n estimate of 2018 seperate incidents of lynching in which 2462 african american men, women, and children met their deaths in the grasp of southern mobs, mostlty whites. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
Homer PLessy was a guy who was 7/8 white ad 1/8 black but under the eyes of everyone else he was considered black. Plessy rode in a train car that was meant for whites only and refused to move to the all black car when asked to. He was then put in jail. He took this to the Supreme Court but lost. They said it was ok to have sepereate for cars for whites and blacks as long as they were equal but they were not as the whites always recieved what was best. -
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Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and cicil rights advocate. He earned his place in American history on the basis of two accomplishments. one of them is, as a legal counsel for the National Association fo the Advancement of Colored People, he guided the litigation that destroyed the Jim Crow segregation laws. -
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Orval Faubus
In September 1957 Arkansas Democratic Governer Orval Faubus became the national symbol of racial segregation when he used Arkansas National Guardsmen to block the enrollemnt of nine black students who had been ordered by a federal judge to desgregate Little Rock's Cebtral High School. President Eisenhower finally ordered federal troops to Little Rock to ensure the judge's order was obeyed, to protect the black students, and maintain order for the remainder of the school year. -
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Rosa Parks
By refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus in 1955 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. Supreme Court ruked that bus segregation was unconstitutional. Over the next half-century, Parks became a nationally recognized symbol of dignity and strength. -
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Hector P. Garcia
Born in Mexico in 1914, Garcia grew up in Mercedes, Texas. He earned undergraduate and medical degrees from The University of Texas and served in the Army with distinction in WW II. In 1946, Garcia opened a medical practice in Corpus Christi, where he witnessed the struggles of veterans and migrant workers.In 1948, Garcia founded the American GI Forum, orginizing veterans to fight for educational and medical benifits, and later, against poll taxes and school segregation. -
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Lester Maddox
Maddox became infamous when he was photographed on July 3, 1964 weilding an axe handle at negroes attempting to enter his whites only cafeteria. After a court battle Maddox closed his restaurant rather than admit the darker races. Later Maddox ran for govener defeting ex govener Eliss Anall. Althoug many feared he would run Gorgia as a whites only place, Maddox appointed more black to states offices that all previous goveners and was starngly popular among a good portion of African Americans. -
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George Wallace
On January 14, 1963, George Wallace is inaugurated as the govener of Alabama, promising his followers, " Segregation now, sgregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" His inauguration speech was written by Ku Klux Klan leader Asa Carter. -
19th Amendment
The 19th Amendment, guarenteering women the right to vote, is formally adopted into the US Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby. Its two sections read simply: “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” and “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” -
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Beety Friedan
She also helped advance the women’s rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women. She advocated for an increased role for women in the political process and is remembered as a pioneer of feminism and the women’s rights movements. -
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Cesar Chavez
Mexican-American Cesar Chaver was a prominent union leader and labor orginizer. hardened by his early experience as a migrant worker, Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. His union joined with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Comittee in its first strike against grape growers in California, the two orginizations merged and became United Farm Workers. Using nonviolent methods, he drew attention for his causes through boycotts, marches, and hunger strikes. -
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Martin Luther King Jr.
King was a Baptist minister and social activist who played a key role in the american civile rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassinationin 1968. He saught equility for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and victims of injustice through peacefull protest, He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington, which helped bring about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting rights act of 1965. -
Federal Housing Authority
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) revolutionized home ownership by creating our current financial mortgaging system. In the process, it produced a lending structure which helped to solidify the racial segregation that still exists today.
The FHA has insured over 35 million home mortgages and 47,205 multifamily project mortgages since 1934. FHA has 4.8 million insured single-family mortgages and 13,000 insured multifamily projects in its portfolio. -
20th Amendment
The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addresses the terms of elected Federal officials, including the President, Vice-President, and members of Congress. It defines the actual dates on which those terms begin and end. It also provides for guidelines to be followed in the scenario that there is no President-elect. -
Brown v. Board
The Court's unanimous decision overturned provisions of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which had allowed for "seperate but equal" public facilities, including public schools in the United States. The Brown v. Board decision helped break the back of state-sponsered segregation, and provided a spark to the American civil rights movement. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott, African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to pretest against segregated seating, took place from December 5, 1955 to December 20 1956. Four days before the boycott began, Rosa Parks, an African-American woman, refused to give her seat to a white man on a bus. She was arrested and fined. The boycott began on the day of Park's court hearing and lasted 381 days. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was introduced in Eisenhower’s presidency and was the act that kick-started thecivil rights legislative programme that was to include the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Eisenhower had not been known for his support of the civil rights movement. Rather than lead the country on the issue, he had to respond to problems such as in Little Rock. -
Sit-ins
On February 1, 1960, a new tactic was added to the peacefull activists stategy. Four African American college students walked up to a whites only lunch counter at the local WoolWorth's store in Greensboro, Noth Carolina and asked for coffe. When service was refused the students sat there patiently. Desptie threats and intimadation these students sat there till closing time. When others would beat them they would not defind themselves, they wanted this to be a nonviolent thing. Sit ins were began -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative action is an outcome of the 1960's Civil Rights Movement, intended to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment. President Kennedy was the first to use 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." -
24th Amendment
The 24th amendment was important to the Civil Rights Movement as it ended mandatory poll taxes that prevented many African Americans. Poll taxes, combined with grandfather clauses and intimidation, effectively prevented African Americans from having any sort of political power, especially in the South. When the amendment passed, five southern states, Virginia, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi still had poll taxes. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was born in the presidency of John F Kennedy who was elected president in 1960. His support of civil rights issue in previous years had been patchy – he had opposed Eisenhower’s1957 Act to keep in with the Democrats hierarchy as he had plans to run for president as well as Johnson. -
26th Amendment
The long debate over lowering the voting age in America form 21 to 18 began during WW II and intensified during the Vietnam War, when young man denied the right to vote were being conscripted to fight for their country. In the 1970 case Oregon v. Mitchell, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the right to regulate the minimum age in federal elections, but not at the state and local level. -
Title IX
On this day in 1972, Title IX of the education amendments of 1972 is enacted into law. Title IX prohibits federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against students or employees based on sex. It begins: “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.”
