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Brown v Board of Education
A landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. -
Martin Luther King, Jr.
An American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. -
Montgomery Bus Boycott
A political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. -
Rosa Parks
An African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement." She refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. -
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
An African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The SCLC had a large role in the American Civil Rights Movement. -
Little Rock Nine
The Little Rock Nine was a group of African-American students who were enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The ensuing Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, and then attended after the intervention of President Eisenhower, is considered to be one of the most important events in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. -
Greensboro Sit-ins
A series of nonviolent protests which led to the Woolworth's department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the Southern United States. -
Freedom Riders
Civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and following years to test the United States Supreme Court decisions Boynton v. Virginia and Irene Morgan v. Commonwealth of Virginia -
Stokely Carmichael
A Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced "snick") and later as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party. He popularized the term "black power." -
"I Have a Dream" Speech
A 17-minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. -
March on Washington
One of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march. -
Malcolm X
An African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. -
Civil Rights Act of 1964
A landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. -
Bloody Sunday
Some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge six blocks away, where state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back into Selma. Two days later on March 9, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a "symbolic" march to the bridge. -
Selma Marches
Three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL). -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
A landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S. -
Black Power
The term emphasizes racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values. "Black Power" expresses a range of political goals, from defense against racial oppression, to the establishment of social institutions and a self-sufficient economy. -
Black Panther Party
An African-American revolutionary leftist organization active in the United States from 1966 until 1982. The Black Panther Party achieved national and international notoriety through its involvement in the Black Power movement and U.S. politics of the 1960s and 1970s.
