Reconstruction to Today

  • Sharecropping

    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.
  • Civil Disobedience

    the refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, as a peaceful form of political protest.
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    Black Codes

    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.
  • 13th Amendment

    Abolition of slavery.
  • 14th Amendment

    Granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. and declared that no state could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property "without due process of law"
  • 15th Amendment

    No matter your race, color, history as a slave you couldnt be barred from voting.
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    Jim Crow Laws

    were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States.
  • Poesy v. Ferguson

    court case stating Jim Crow laws are constitutional.
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    Thurgood Marshall

    NAACP lawyer who represented Linda Brown; later became the first African American on the Supreme Court.
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    Orval Faubus

    Orval Eugene Faubus was an American politician who served as 36th Governor of Arkansas from 1955 to 1967.
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    Rosa Parks

    NAACP secretary who was arrest for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger; the NAACP used her case to fight the segregated bus laws.
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    Hector P. Garcia

    was the founder of the American G.I. Forum. Was a Mexican-American physician. Promoted civil rights for Mexican-Americans and war veterans.
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    Lester Maddox

    A populist Democrat, Maddox came to prominence as a segregationist, when he refused to serve black customers in his Atlanta restaurant, in defiance of the Civil Rights Act
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    George Wallace

    pro-segregation governor of Alabama who ran for pres. in 1968 on American Independent Party ticket of segregation and law and order, loses to Nixon; runs in 1972 but gets shot and is left paralyzed
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    Betty Friedan

    American feminist, activist and writer. Best known for starting the "Second Wave" of feminism through the writing of her book "The Feminine Mystique" - an account of housewives' lives in which they subordinated their own aspirations to the needs of men; bestseller was an inspiration for many women to join the women's rights movement. She founded the National Organization for Women
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    Cesar Chavez

    He was a labor organizer and union worker who founded the National Farm Workers Association, which would later be called the United Farm Workers Association. He worked for the cause bringing attention to the conditions Hispanic farm workers faced while working on US farms. He accomplished this through non-violent methods such as marches and boycotts.
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    Martin Luther King Jr.

    Led the African-American struggle to achieve full rights of U.S. citizenship and showed how mass peaceful action could solve intractable social and political problems. He voiced the hopes and grievances of the African-American race and persuaded them to allow him to be their leader in the Civil Rights movement.
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    Stokely Carmichael

    new leader of SNCC who replaced John Lewis; Stokely turned SNCC away from its nonviolent tradition when he began the chant "what do we want - black power!"
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    Emmet Till

    Teenage boy who flirted with a white woman at a local grocery. The woman's husband, and half brother, forced their way into his uncle's home and abducted him at gunpoint. They severely beat him and gouged one of his eyes. Afterwards, they took him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River and shot him in the head. The two men tied the boy to a metal fan and dumped his corpse in the river. His murder is said to have catalyzed the Civil Rights movement.
  • CORE

    Congress of Racial Equality, and organization founded in 1942 that worked for black civil rights.
  • Brown v. Board of Education

    This case ended racial segregation in schools across America. Before this case, black children went to schools that were far inferior to white schools. The case started with Oliver and his daughter in Topeka, Kansas, as his daughter had to take a dangerous 1 mile route to a black school when there was a white one that was only 7 blocks away from their home.
  • Lynching

    kill someone, especially by hanging, for an alleged offense with or without a legal trial.
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    Montgomery Bus Boycott

    when the blacks of Montgomery, Alabama, decided that they would boycott the city buses until they could sit anywhere they wanted.
  • Little Rock Nine

    9 African American students who were the first to integrate Little Rock Central High School; they were prohibited from attending school for the first three weeks because Governor Faubus used the National Guard and later the mob to keep them out; President Eisenhower finally sent the 101st Airborne (paratroopers) to escort the students to school
  • SCLC

    a civil-rights organization founded in 1957 by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Civil Rights Act of !957

    the act that kick-started thecivil rights legislative programme that was to include the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Eisenhower had not been known for his support of the civil rights movement.
  • Affirmative Action

    a controversial practice of giving minorities an advantage in hiring and admittance to college; Bakke v. University of CA struck down the strict quota system associated with it because it led to reverse discrimination; race cannot be the only factor in determining who gets hired or admitted to a college but it can be one of numerous factors
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    Sit-ins

    The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, which led to the Woolworth department store chain removing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States.
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    Freedom Riders

    Civil Rights advocates, both black and white, who traveled to the South from the North on buses in 1961 as volunteers for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Object was to protest racial segregation and in bus terminals by testing to see if those terminals were still segregated despite a 1960 Supreme Court ruling. Despite harassment and violence, the Freedom Riders maintained their nonviolent stance and ultimately forced the integration of 120 bus terminals in the South.
  • Ole Miss Integration

    where locals, students, and committed segregationists had gathered to protest the enrollment of James Meredith, a black Air Force veteran attempting to integrate the all-white school.
  • U of Alabama Integration

    When African American students attempted to desegregate the University of Alabama in June 1963, Alabama's new governor, flanked by state troopers, literally blocked the door of the enrollment office.
  • March on Washington

    demonstration in which more than 200,000 people rallied for economic equality and civil rights
  • Non-Violent Protest

    is 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.
  • Civil Rights Act of 1964

    A federal law that authorized federal action against segregation in public accommodations, public facilities, and employment.
  • Desegregation

    the ending of a policy of racial segregation.
  • Voting Rights Act of 1965

    law passed at the time of the civil rights movement. It eliminated various devices that had traditionally been used to restrict voting by black people. It authorized the enrollment of voters by federal registrars in states where fewer than fifty percent of the eligible voters were registered or voted.
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    Watts Riots

    The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965. On August 11, 1965, an African-American motorist was arrested for suspicion of drunk driving.
  • Black Panthers

    A militant Black Power organization founded in the 1960s by Huey Newton and others.
  • Title IX

    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."