Civil Rights

Rosa Parks

Refused to give up her seat on the bus for a white person and was arrested, her actions led to several bus boycotts

Thurgood Marshall

Lawyer who believed biggest change for civil rights was through the law; work on Brown vs. BOE; first black man into the supreme court

Little Rock Nine

First black students to attend all white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas; faced much discrimination but won their challenge to uphold Brown vs. BOE

Martin Luther King Jr.

Considered leader of the Civil Rights Movement; fought for equality through “civil disobedience” – a non-violent method of attaining equality; he encouraged all supporters not to sink to the level of the racists fighting against them

Malcolm X

Militant black leader; heavily involved in the Black Muslims and fought for black separatism

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Landmark ruling that outlawed any form of discrimination against racial, ethnic, religious minorities and women

Brown vs. Board of Education

Landmark Supreme Court case that overturned the ruling that schools could be segregated and declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional; ruled on May 17, 1954

Desegregation

The act of eliminating the separation of groups from the main group with regards to public locales (schools, churches, organizations)

Apartheid

Any system or practice that separates people according to race, class, etc

Segregation

The act of separating one group (often a minority group) from the main group

Human Rights

Fundamental rights granted to all people simply because one is a human being

14th amendment

Guaranteed that all people born in the US were considered natural citizens, regardless of race, and no state could take away this right

13th Amendment

Formally abolished slavery and was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865

Civil Rights

Rights to personal liberty

Freedom Riders

Civil Rights activists who went on bus rides into the segregated south to spread the word of outlawing segregation

Bloody Sunday

Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965) Six hundred marchers assembled in Selma on

Sunday, March 7, and, led by John Lewis and other SNCC and SCLC activists, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River en route to Montgomery. Just short of the bridge, they found their way blocked by Alabama State troopers and local police who ordered them to turn around. When the protesters refused, the officers shot teargas and waded into the crowd, beating the nonviolent protesters with billy clubs and ultimately hospitalizing over fifty people.

George Wallace

Four-time governor of Alabama and four-time candidate for president of the United States

“Stood in a schoolhouse doorway” to attempt to block integration

Wallace was elected governor the first time in 1962, with what was the largest popular vote in state history and with the declaration: “….I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Eugene “Bull” Connor

Commissioner of Public Safety for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, during the American Civil Rights Movement. Connor's office, under the city commission government, gave him responsibility for administrative oversight of the Birmingham Fire Department and the Birmingham Police Department, which had their own chiefs.

Connor's actions to enforce racial segregation and deny civil rights to black citizens, especially during the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Birmingham campaign of 1963, made him an international symbol of racism. Bull Connor directed the use of fire hoses and police attack dogs against civil rights activists; that included the children of many protestors.

KKK-Ku Klux Klan

They were responsible for the deadly bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham

The majority of the Ku Klux Klan's members were middle-aged, working class, Protestant white men who viewed African American demands for racial equality as a threat to their social, economic, and political order. Klansmen supported segregation in all public and private facilities, especially in public schools, public transit, and restaurants.

Emancipation Proclamation

The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."

President Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war.

Jim Crow Laws

State and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States.

Frederick Douglass

(1818-1895) was a prominent American abolitionist, author and orator. Born a slave, Douglass escaped at age 20 and went on to become a world-renowned anti-slavery activist.

W. E. B. Du bois

Maintained that education and civil rights were the only way to equality, and that conceding their pursuit would simply serve to reinforce the notion of blacks as second-class citizen

He was the first black man to have earned his Ph.D from Harvard University in 1895.

Medgar Evers

Was one of Mississippi's most prominent civil rights activists. He fought racial injustices in many forms, including how the state and local legal system handled crimes against African Americans.

Very well known for his involvement in the Emmett Till murder.

Fannie Lou Hamer

She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi's Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Jesse Jackson

Civil rights leader and two-time Democratic presidential candidate Jesse Jackson (1941–) became one of the most influential African-Americans of the late 20th century. He rose to prominence working within Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and was at the Memphis hotel with King when he was assassinated.

Coretta Scott King

An American author, activist, and civil rights leader, and the wife of Martin Luther King, Jr. from 1953 until his death in 1968. Helped lead the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Embraced a civil rights agenda which accepted segregation and championed equal opportunity. Quality education became her top public priority. As she told the Conference on Negro Education, "wherever the standard of education is low, the standard of living is low" and urged states to address the inequities in public school funding.

Fred Shuttlesworth

A Baptist Minister who was one of the top leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, working with Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC.

Brown Vs. Board of Education

On May 17, 1954, the Court unanimously ruled that "separate but equal" public schools for blacks and whites were unconstitutional. The Brown case served as a catalyst for the modern civil rights movement, inspiring education reform everywhere and forming the legal means of challenging segregation in all areas of society.