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Congress of Racial Equality Founded
- Civil Rights- the rights of citizens to gain equality.
- Congress of Racial Equality was founded by a group of students in Chicago with the goal of direct action without violence.
- A peaceful protest made by CORE at a coffee shop, gained national attention and helped CORE spread to northern cities.
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Dodgers Hire Jackie Robinson
- Color Line- a barrier created by custom, laws, and economic difference, between whites and non-whites.
- Jackie was the first African American major league baseball player which came with a lot of taunting, he wasn't welcome at first.
- After Jackie was hired, other professional sports opened up to African American players like football and basketball.
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Executive Order 9981
- Segregation- the separation of the blacks and whites in public places and in marriage.
- Executive Order 9981 was signed by President Truman and ended segregation in the military.
- The blacks and whites were separated in the military and President Truman ended it for political and moral reasons.
- President Truman didn't want to fight Nazism and anti-Semitism when there was a color line at home.
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Advocates for Black Nationalism
- Nation of Islam- a religious group, also known as Black Muslims, that promoted complete separation from the white society.
- Malcolm X- a very prominent Black Muslim
- Rather than seeking integration, Malcolm and the Nation of Islam promoted black nationalism.
- Malcolm rejected nonviolences as a strategy for change.
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Brown v. Board of Education Ruling
- Thurgood Marshall- this was the NAACP's attorney in the case.
- Linda Brown was a 7 year old black girl that had to walk a mile to her school when there was a perfectly good one 7 blocks from her house. Her dad sued the white school for not accepting her admission, and it went all the way up to the supreme court.
- The case stayed in court for a year and a half and during that time, Earl Warren became the new chief justice. He convinced everyone to vote in favor of Brown and they won.
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
- Rosa Parks- a black woman that refused to give up her seat to a white man and triggered the bus boycott.
- Boycott- protesting something by not using their resources or associating with them.
- Martin Luther King Jr. lead the boycott and the African Americans in Montgomery devised a carpool plan so they could get around town without the busses.
- The boycott lasted 381 days and they got the government to ban segregation on busses.
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Integration of Central High School
- Little Rock Nine- the first nine black students who integrated into an all white school.
- Little Rock Nine students were not welcomed into their new school.
- Students were escorted, with troops, to school.
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First Lunch Counter Sit-in
- Jim Crow Laws- local laws enforcing segregation in the south.
- Sit-in- a group of people occupy a space as a form of protest.
- Four African American college students sat down to eat at a Woolworth's drugstore in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were refused service because of the color of their skin so they stayed until it closed. They came back the next day with more people until the shop finally gave in.
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Freedom Rides
- Civil Disobedience- the refusal to follow certain laws as a peaceful protest.
- SNCC- the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was a committee formed by college students and they organized sit-ins and other nonviolent protests.
- The leaders of SNCC trained members to not follow laws that seemed unjust and to never act with violence even if they were physically attacked.
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Birmingham Campaign
- SCLC- Southern Christian Leadership Conference- an African American civil rights organization.
- Martin Luther King lead the marches and protests and when they were arrested for marching without a permit, he knew that he would be in jail for awhile due to a lack of bail money but he knew that the protests should continue.
- King wrote a letter from jail explaining why African Americans use civil disobedience to protest segregation and unjust laws.
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March on Washington
- NAACP- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is a civil rights organization founded to fight prejudice.
- It was organized by the leaders of the country's major civil rights organizations and around 250,000 people marched with them.
- There were about 60,000 whites involved in the protest along with union members, clergy, students, entertainers, and celebrities.
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
- Plessy v. Ferguson- supreme court case that upheld a states right to pass laws that allow or require racial segregation.
- President Kennedy cautiously supported the bill and once he was executed President Johnson continued to push for it to be passed.
- The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination of race, sex, religion, or national origin.
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Voting Rights Act of 1965
- Disenfranchise- depriving someone of the right to vote
- The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave African Americans the right to vote by outlawing literacy tests and other tactics to deny them voting rights.
- The act also made sure that there would be federal government to supervise voting registration to make sure African Americans got it.
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Watts Riot + Kerner Commission
- Kerner Commission- commission established to investigate the causes of the Watts Riot.
- Ghettos- a part of the city where people belonging to a single ethnic group live, in this case, African Americans.
- Many people died and were injured in the riots.
- The Kerner Commission decided that the riots were caused by the African Americans and they thought that violence was the only way to move the system.
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Black Panther Party Founded
- Black Power- a movement in support of rights and political power for black people.
- Bobby Seale and Huey Newton founded the Black Panther Party to demand economic and political rights and they were prepared to use violence if it was needed.
- The name Black Panther was a message, if the black panther was attacked, it would not back up, it would do whatever it could to survive.
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Civil Rights Act of 1968
- Discrimination- unjust treatment of a certain group of people
- Martin Luther King decided to shift his focus from integration to economic equality. He took on the issue of racial discrimination in housing.
- Days after MLK died, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed and it banned discrimination in housing sales and rentals.
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Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education
- Desegregation- the ending of racial segregation
- Before this case, children went to all black or all white schools but this case made it so children were bused to different schools to create more racially balanced schools.
- The school district thought that the judge had gone too far but the Court had a unanimous decision to back up the judge.
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Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
- Affirmative Action- a policy favoring people that suffer from discrimination.
- The case was based on whether or not race would be one of the criteria for being accepted into a college.
- The Supreme Court decided that it could but then it was found unconstitutional so they had to let Bakke into medical school.
