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Black Codes
By late 1865, when the 13th Amendment officially outlawed the institution of slavery, the question of freed blacks’ status in the postwar South was still very much unresolved. Under the lenient Reconstruction policies of President Andrew Johnson, white southerners reestablished civil authority in the former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866. -
13th Amendment
Abolish Slavery and peonage in the US. 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
Guarantees that states may not interfere with U.S citizens privileges; that states may not deny a citizen the right to due process of law or equal protection under the law; defines American citizenship. -
15th 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 race, color, or previous condition of servitude. -
Sharecropping
Any former slaves expected the federal government to give them a certain amount of land as compensation for all the work they had done during the slavery era. Union General William T. Sherman had encouraged this expectation in early 1865 by granting a number of freed men 40 acres each of the abandoned land left in the wake of his army. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
In 1896, Homer Plessy denied to sit in a jim crow car, breaking an Louisiana Law. The court found that the the state law "implys merely a legal distinction" between white and blacks and did not violate the 13th or the 14th amendment. -
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 -
20th Amendment
Changes the start of congressional and presidential terms; provides for cases in which a presidential or vice-presidential candidate fails to qualify or dies before taking office. -
Nonviolent Protest
Personal practice of being harmless to self and others under every condition. It comes from the belief that hurting people, animals or the environment is unnecessary to achieve an outcome and refers to a general philosophy of abstention from violence based on moral, religious or spiritual principles. -
Hector P. Garcia
Dr. Hector Perez Garcia was an advocate for Hispanic-American rights during the Chicano movement. He was the first Mexican-American member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and was awarded the Medal of Freedom -
Civil Disobedience
Right movements, 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 and the Freedom Rides. -
Lynching
Throughout the late 19th century racial tension grew throughout the United States. More of this tension was noticeable in the Southern parts of the United States. In the south, people were blaming their financial problems on the newly freed slaves that lived around them. Lynchings were becoming a popular way of resolving some of the anger that whites had in relation to the free blacks. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. -
Brown v. Ferguson
The Brown v. Ferguson case helped break segregation in public schools. The court saw that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." -
Thurgood Marshall
The biggest achievement made by Thurgood Marshall in his career life and as a civil rights lawyer was his victory in the Brown v. Board of Education case. -
Desegregation
1955 In Brown II, the Supreme Court orders the lower federal courts to require desegregation "with all deliberate speed." 1955 Between 1955 and 1960, federal judges will hold more than 200 school desegregation hearings. -
Rosa Parks
Parks became known as the mother of the civil rights movement because she refused to leave her set on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. What many people don't know is this wasn't a first. Others also protested the segregated bus system and Parks had run-ins with that particular bus driver before her famous December 1 protest. -
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. -
Civil Rights Act of 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 -
Orville Faubus
In 1957, Governor Faubus deployed National Guardsmen to block Supreme Court-ordered school integration. Ultimately, President Dwight Eisenhower used federal authority to force Faubus to comply with the desegregation orders. Interestingly, in a Gallup Poll administered in 1958, Americans chose Faubus as one of their "ten most admired men." -
Jim Crow Laws
The Jim Crow laws were a number of laws requiring racial segregation in the United States. These laws were enforced in different states between 1876 and 1965. "Jim Crow" laws provided a systematic legal basis for segregating and discriminating against African Americans. -
Sit-ins
Tactic of non-violent student sit-ins spread. The Greensboro sit-ins at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, launched a wave of anti-segregation sit-ins across the South and opened a national awareness of the depth of segregation in the nation. -
Affirmative Action
intended to provide equal opportunities for members of minority groups and women in education and employment. In 1961, 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." -
George Wallace
George Wallace was the governor of Alabama in the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, who held the dubious distinction of being one of America's most outspoken supporters of racial segregation. As governor, he fought integration, standing symbolically in the doorway of the University of Alabama to block two black students from enrolling there. -
Betty Friedan
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. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was 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. -
Lester Madox
Lester Garfield Maddox, a devout segregationist, owned and operated a restaurant called the “Pickrick Cafeteria." The restaurant faced several problems, the largest of which was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made racial segregation illegal. It was Maddox’s open defiance of the Civil Rights Act that thrust him into the national spotlight. In 1964, he refused to serve three black students and chased them out with a gun while his white customers used axe handles. -
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. -
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. It was considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. -
Upward Bound
provide certain categories of high school students better opportunities for attending college. The categories of greatest concern are those with low income, those with parents who did not attend college, and those living in rural areas. -
Head Start
Head Start is 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 -
Veterans Act of 1965
Benefits were increased for veterans with a service-connected disability, children of certain veterans, and widows of veterans whose death was service-connected, and higher subsistence allowances were provided for veterans receiving rehabilitation t,raining. Basic pay for members of t’he uniformed services was increased, and a
new life insurance program was established. -
Federal Housing Authority
Housing Act–prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin and sex. The bill was the subject of a contentious debate in the Senate, but was passed quickly by the House of Representatives in the days after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. -
Cesar Chavez
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 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. -
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 -
Title IX
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is a federal law that states; 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.
