Civil Rights Vocab

1. Civil Rights Vocab Chapter 18 – Unit 4 – 19 words

2. De Jure Segregation • Segregation based on the law • Practiced in the South (Jim Crow Laws)

3. De Facto Segregation • Segregation by tradition, practice, or custom. • Practiced in the North

4. Thurgood Marshall • African American lawyer who headed the legal team that argued the Brown case. • Served on the US Supreme Court from 1965-1991.

5. Brown v. BOE (1954) • Supreme Court ruled that segregation of schools was unconstitutional. • Overturned the decision in Plessy v. Ferguson Brown v. Board of Education video

6. Rosa Parks/ Montgomery Bus Boycott • Rosa Parks challenged segregation of public transportation by refusing to give up her seat on a public bus. • This began a boycott of the bus system in Montgomery that lasted over a year. • December 1956- Supreme Court ruled that Alabama’s laws requiring segregation of busses unconstitutional.

7. SCLC • Southern Christian Leadership Conference • Civil Rights group established by Dr. King in 1957. • Set out to eliminate segregation from American society and to encourage African Americans to register to vote using non-violent resistance.

8. Civil Disobedience • Active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, or commands of a government • Civil disobedience is sometimes, though not always, defined as being nonviolent resistance

9. Sit-in • A form of civil disobedience used to challenge segregation in the South. • Protesters sit and refuse to move.

10. SNCC • Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. • Grassroots movement formed in 1960 by young civil rights activists. • Made up mostly of college students

11. Freedom Ride • Teams of African-Americans and whites who traveled into the south on busses challenging segregation laws and drawing attention to the South’s refusal to integrate bus terminals. • Freedom Riders faced extreme violence in the South.

12. March on Washington • 1963 demonstration in which more than 200,000 people rallied for economic equality and civil rights. • Location of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech.

13. Civil Rights Act of 1964 • Outlawed discrimination in public places and employment based on race, religion, or national origin.

14. Freedom Summer • 1964 effort to register African American voters in Mississippi. Voter Registration attempts

15. Voting Rights Act of 1965 • A law that banned literacy tests and empowered the federal government to oversee voter registration.

16. 24th Amendment • Banned poll taxes as a voting requirement.

17. Kerner Commission • Group set up to investigate the causes of race riots in American cities in the 1960s. • Concluded that the single most important cause of violence was long-term racial discrimination.

18. Malcolm X • Well known leader of the black power movement. • Did not advocate violence, but did advocate self-defense.

19. Black Power • Movement in the 1960s that urged African Americans to use their collective political and economic power to gain equality. • Stokely Carmichael

20. Black Panthers • Organization of militant African Americans founded in 1966. • Organized armed patrols of urban neighborhood to protect blacks from police violence as well as anti-poverty programs.