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13th Amendment
abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War. -
Sharecropping/Tenant Farming
a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. Sharecropping became widespread in the South as a response to economic upheaval caused by the end of slavery during and after Reconstruction. -
Black Codes
laws passed by Democrat-controlled Southern states in 1865 and 1866, after the Civil War. These laws had the intent and the effect of restricting African Americans' freedom, and of compelling them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. Black Codes were part of a larger pattern of Southern whites trying to suppress the new freedom of emancipated African American slaves, the freedmen. Black Codes were also enacted by Northern states to ban free blacks from residing in those states. -
14th Amendment
one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. -
15th Amendment
prohibits the federal and state governments from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". It was ratified on February 3, 1870, as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments. -
Jim Crow Laws
state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States. Enacted by white Democratic-dominated state legislatures in the late 19th century after the Reconstruction period, these laws continued to be enforced until 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities in the states of the former Confederate States of America, starting in 1896 with a "separate but equal" status for African Americans in railroad cars. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
a landmark constitutional law case of the US Supreme Court decided in 1896. It upheld state racial segregation laws for public facilities under the doctrine of "separate but equal". -
19th Amendment
prohibits the states and the federal government from denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States on the basis of sex. It was adopted on August 18, 1920. Until the 1910s, most states did not give women the right to vote. The amendment was the culmination of the women's suffrage movement in the United States, which fought at both state and national levels to achieve the vote. It effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett. -
20th Amendment
moved the beginning and ending of the terms of the president and vice president from March 4 to January 20, and of members of Congress from March 4 to January 3. It also has provisions that determine what is to be done when there is no president-elect. The Twentieth Amendment was adopted on January 23, 1933. -
Federal Housing Authority
a United States government agency created in part by the National Housing Act of 1934. It sets standards for construction and underwriting and insures loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building. The goals of this organization are to improve housing standards and conditions, provide an adequate home financing system through insurance of mortgage loans, and to stabilize the mortgage market. -
Hector P. Garcia
a Mexican-American physician, surgeon, World War II veteran, civil rights advocate, and founder of the American G.I. Forum.On March 26 of the same year, he called a meeting to address the concerns of Mexican American veterans. This meeting developed into the American G.I. Forum, a recognized voice for Mexican Americans in the post-World War II era. -
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Desegregation
the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. Desegregation was long a focus of the Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, particularly desegregation of the school systems and the military. -
Thurgood Marshall
An Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving from October 1967 until October 1991. Marshall was the Court's 96th justice and its first African-American justice. Before becoming a judge, Marshall was a lawyer who was best known for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education -
Brown v. Board
a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. -
Nonviolent Protest
the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, satyagraha, or other methods, while being nonviolent. -
Rosa Parks
an activist in the Civil Rights Movement, whom the United States Congress called "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement". On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake's order to give up her seat in the "colored section" to a white passenger, after the whites-only section was filled. Parks was not the first person to resist bus segregation. -
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama. The campaign lasted from December 5, 1955—the Monday after Rosa Parks, an African American woman, was arrested for refusing to surrender her seat to a white person—to December 20, 1956, when a federal ruling, Browder v. Gayle, took effect. -
Orville Faubus
an American politician who served as 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967. A Democrat, he is best remembered for his 1957 stand against desegregation of the Little Rock School District during the Little Rock Crisis, in which he defied a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court made in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education by ordering the Arkansas National Guard to prevent black students from attending Little Rock Central High School. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
primarily a voting rights bill, was the first federal civil rights legislation passed since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The purpose of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 was to show the federal government's support for racial equality following the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown decision. Opposition to the legislation, including the longest one-person filibuster in history, resulted in limited immediate impact, but the Act paved the way for a series of more effective civil rights bills in the 1960s. -
Affirmative Action
a set of laws, policies, guidelines, and administrative practices "intended to end and correct the effects of a specific form of discrimination." These include government-mandated, government-sanctioned, and voluntary private programs that tend to focus on access to education and employment, specifically granting special consideration to historically excluded groups such as racial minorities or women. -
Cesar Chavez
an American labor leader and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers union, UFW) in 1962. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
an American Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using the tactics of nonviolence and civil disobedience inspired by the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi. -
George Wallace
An American politician and the 45th Governor of Alabama.Wallace is remembered for his Southern neo-dixiecrat and pro-segregation "Jim Crow" positions during the mid-20th century period of the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 Inaugural Address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," and standing in front of the entrance of the University of Alabama in an attempt to stop the enrollment of black students. -
Lester Madox
An American politician who served as the 75th Governor of the U.S. state of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. A populist Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a staunch segregationist,[1] when he refused to serve black customers in his Atlanta restaurant, in defiance of the Civil Rights Act. -
Sit-ins
a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. -
24th Amendment
prohibits both Congress and the states from conditioning the right to vote in federal elections on payment of a poll tax or other types of tax. The amendment was proposed by Congress to the states on August 27, 1962, and was ratified by the states on January 23, 1964. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
a landmark civil rights and US labor law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It prohibited unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. -
Civil Disobedience
the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is sometimes defined as having to be nonviolent to be called civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is sometimes, therefore, equated with nonviolent resistance. -
Head Start
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. The program's services and resources are designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children's physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop strong cognitive skills. -
Lynching
the practice of murder by extrajudicial action. Lynchings in the United States rose in number after the American Civil War in the late 1800s, following the emancipation of slaves; they declined after 1930 but were recorded into the 1960s. Lynchings most frequently targeted African-American men and women in the South, with lynchings also appearing in the North during the Great Migration of blacks into Northern areas. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country. -
Upward Bound
a federally funded educational program within the United States. The program is one of a cluster of programs now referred to as TRIO, all of which owe their existence to the federal Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (the War on Poverty Program) and the Higher Education Act of 1965. Upward Bound programs are implemented and monitored by the United States Department of Education. -
Betty Friedan
an American writer, activist, and feminist. A 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. In 1966, Friedan co-founded and was elected the first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), which aimed to bring women "into the mainstream of American society now [in] fully equal partnership with men." -
26th Amendment
Prohibits the states and the federal government from using age as a reason for denying the right to vote to citizens of the United States who are at least eighteen years old. The drive to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 grew across the country during the 1960s, driven largely by the broader student activism movement protesting the Vietnam War. On March 23, 1971, a proposal to lower the voting age to 18 years was adopted by both houses of Congress and sent to the states for ratification. -
Title IX
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.
