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Jim Crow Laws
By 1838, "Jim Crow" had become a pejorative expression meaning "Negro". When southern legislatures passed laws of racial segregation directed against blacks at the end of the 19th century, these became known as Jim Crow laws. They weren't actual laws, white people just made the segregation worse by saying that blacks couldn't do this or that, even though it wasn't an actual law. -
Black Codes
In the U.S, the Black Codes were 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 having them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt. If they refused any of it, they would get arrested as vagrants. -
Sharecropping/Tenant farming
Sharecropping is a form of agriculture that a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their part of land. There are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. In the early years, most blacks in rural areas of the South were left without land and forced to work as laborers on large white-owned farms and plantations in order to earn a living. -
13th Amendment
For section 1, "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." The 13th amendment was created to abolish slavery for good. The freed slaves still did't have a lot of actual freedom, they were just not owned. -
14th amendment
It's said that any person born in the U.S are citizens of the United States. Also that no state can make laws that violate someone's rights or deprive someone of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. It had included the freed slaves after the civil war. -
15th amendment
As said in section, "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." Meaning it gave black men the right to vote. To prevent from black men voting, the would make tests so that blacks couldn't get any of the questions right. -
Lynching
Lynching it to kill someone, usually by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial. From 1882-1968, about 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States and out of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black. Once the African Americans were given their freedom, many people felt that the freed blacks were getting away with too much freedom and felt they needed to be controlled. -
Plessy v. Ferguson
In 1896 the U.S Supreme Court took up a case that was the constitutionality of segregation under the "separate but not equal" doctrine. It started when an African American man named Homer Plessy refused to sit in a Jim Crow car, that broke the Louisiana law. The court had ruled a state law saying that "implies merely a legal distinction” between races didn't the 13th and 14th amendment. -
19th amendment
The 19th amendment gave the women the right to vote. It was 1848 when movement for women's rights started. It took 70 years for women have the right to vote. -
Civil Disobedience
Also called passive resistance, it's a refusal to obey the demands or commands of a government or occupying power, without acting towards violence. It has been a major use and philosophy of nationalist movements in the American civil rights movement. It's also a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law rather than a rejection of the system as a whole. -
20th amendment
The 20th amendment is an amendment that sets the dates at which federal United States government elected offices end. It also defines who wins the presidency if the president dies. This amendment was ratified on January 23, 1933. -
Hector P. Garcia
Hector P. Garcia was a Mexican-American physician, surgeon, World War II veteran, civil rights advocate, and founder of the American G.I in 1948. But in 1984, President Reagan awarded García the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award. García was the first Mexican American ever to receive that award. He also opened a medical building in Corpus Christi, where he witnessed the struggles of veterans and migrant workers in 1946. -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. is an important man in the civil rights movement for African Americans during the 1950s up until his death in 1968. He highly believed in nonviolent protesting like the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. He had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for what he did. -
Brown v. Ferguson
Schools were segregated, saying that they were "separate but equal." The segregation of public schools was unconstitutional. It was also misinterpreted in Plessy v. Ferguson. -
Nonviolent Protest
Nonviolent protesting is the practice of achieving goals such as social change through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, or other methods, while being nonviolent. This action brings up the desires of a person or large group that knows something needs to change to improve the current situation of anything. Nonviolent protest was widely used during the American civil rights movement. -
Rosa Parks
In 1955, she refused to give up her seat for a white man. That's what she is most known for, it helped instigate a boycott on the buses and the civil rights movement as well. This bus boycott lasted for more than a year and it costed Rosa's job. Only by a few years later, it was taken up to the Supreme Court and it was deemed as unconstitutional. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
In the boycott, all African Americans stopped riding the bus. They all got rides from taxi drivers, friends, neighbors, and some white housewives. It ended a little over a year later when the Supreme Court over ruled that it was unconstitutional. -
Orval Faubus
September of 1957, Faubus became the national symbol of racial segregation when he used national guardsmen to block the entrance of nine black students who had been ordered by a federal judge to mix Little Rock's Central High School. In 1958, he made a speech about the segregation of blacks and whites, then became a hero to people who believed it was right. Northern parts of the U.S. put money into defeating him. -
Civil Rights Act of 1957
September 9, 1957 is when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. It had originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell. This Act marked the first time since Reconstruction, that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. -
Desegregation
Desegregation is the ending of a policy of racial segregation, where blacks, whites and all races come together. Three years after the US Supreme Court declared school segregation laws unconstitutional, but the public schools of Nashville, Tennessee, had put up a "stairstep plan" that began with a select group of first-graders and added one grade a year until all twelve grades were desegregated. Brown v. Board case deals with the segregation of schools. -
Sit-ins
Four African American college students wanted to eat at a whites-only establishment. Their service was refused so they peacefully sat until served. This one lasted about 5 months. -
Affirmative Action
Affirmative Action is an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education. On March 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925. It included a supply that government contractors "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." -
George Wallace
Wallace won governorship in Alabama in 1962 during his second time running. He had done it on a platform of racial segregation , states' rights, and was backed by the KKK. His infamous line in his speech is, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." -
Cesar Chavez
By his early experience as a migrant worker, Cesar Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962. He teamed up with the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee in its first strike against grape growers in California, and the two organizations later came together to become the United Farm Workers. While using nonviolent methods, Chavez drew attention for his causes via boycotts, marches and hunger strikes. -
Betty Friedan
Betty wrote a book called The Feminine Mystique in 1963. She had broken new grounds by expanding the idea of women finding personal success outside of their traditional roles. She also helped advance the women’s rights movement as one of the founders of the National Organization for Women. She had advocated for an increased role for women in the political process. Friedan is remembered as a pioneer of feminism and the women’s rights movements. -
Head Start
Head Start, a federal preschool program, improved educational opportunities for poor children in Mississippi during the 1960s. The program also gave a political and economic boost to the state's civil rights activists. The structure gave civil rights activists in Mississippi access to a well-paying Head Start job that covered them from segregationist economic and political outcome. -
Upward Bound
Upward Bound is a federally funded educational program in the United States. This program is one of many programs now referred to as TRIO. They owe their existence to the federal Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (the War on Poverty Program) and the Higher Education Act of 1965. -
24th amendment
The United States ratified the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any poll tax in elections for federal officials on Jan. 23, 1964. The 24th amendment was important to the Civil Rights Movement as it ended mandatory poll taxes that prevented many African Americans. These taxes combined with grandfather clauses and intimidation, prevented African Americans from having any sort of political power in the South. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
This act in 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. It is considered one of the top legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. It was first proposed by President Kennedy and it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress then signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson. -
Lester Maddox
In 1965, he announced that he was running for 1966 Democratic governor of Georgia. He had the support of the Ku Klux Klan. When he had his restaurant, they would hand out axe handles to use against any African Americans that would try to come in. -
Veteran Rights Act of 1965
The death of voting-rights activists in Mississippi gained national attention with many other acts of violence and terrorism. The attack by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery, begged the President and Congress to take over Southern legislators' resistance to voting rights legislation. President Johnson called for a voting rights law and hearings began soon on the bill that would become the Voting Rights Act. -
Thurgood Marshall
Between the time of 1967 and 1991, as an attorney for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall traveled through the U.S. to represent his clients in a racist conflict. He had argued in 32 cases before the Supreme Court. Marshall had taken legal action that destroyed the Jim Crow segregation. -
Federal Housing Authority
The Federal Hosing Authority, Civil Rights Act of 1968 or Fair Housing Act, prohibits discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of a house based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The U.S made it a federal crime to “by force or by threat of force, injure, intimidate, or interfere with anyone … by reason of their race, color, religion, or national origin." This 1968 act expanded on acts before this and didn't allow discrimination concerning the sale and others. -
26th amendment
In section 1of the amendment states that, "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." Lowering the voting age in America from 21 to 18 began during World War II and the Vietnam War. It was when young men denied the right to vote were being drafted to fight for their country. -
Title IX
Title IX doesn't allow sex discrimination in educational buildings that receive federal funding. Supreme Court decisions and guidance from the U.S. Department of Education have given it a wide stance covering sexual harassment and sexual violence. Schools are legally required to respond to hostile educational environments and failure to do so is a violation, meaning a school could risk losing its federal funding.
