Chapter 21

Essential Question In what ways did African Americans fight discrimination during the civil rights era? 6/4/2018

Vocabulary Terms 6/4/2018

THURGOOD MARSHALL Was an American civil rights lawyer, solicitor general, and the first African American to serve as associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 6/4/2018

Brown v. Board of Education A 1954 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” education for black and white students was unconstitutional. 6/4/2018

Rosa Parks A seamstress and an NAACP officer who refused to give her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus. 6/4/2018

Martin Luther King Jr. Led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. 6/4/2018

Southern Christian Leadership Conference Purpose was “to carry on nonviolent crusades against the evils of second-class citizenship.” 6/4/2018

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Founded in April 1960, by young people who had emerged as leaders of the sit-in protest movement initiated on February 1 of that year by four black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. 6/4/2018

Sit-ins A form of demonstration used by African Americans to protest discrimination, in which the protestors sit down in a segregated business and refuse to leave until they were served. 6/4/2018

Freedom rider One of the civil rights activists who rode buses through the South in the early 1960s to challenge segregation. 6/4/2018

James Meredith Won a court case that allowed him to enroll in the all-white University of Mississippi. 6/4/2018

Medgar Evans NAACP field secretary and WWII veteran was killed by a sniper. 6/4/2018

Freedom Summer A 1964 project to register African-American voters in Mississippi. 6/4/2018

Fannie Lou Hamer The daughter of a Mississippi sharecropper, would be the voice at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Described how she was jailed for registering to vote in 1962. 6/4/2018

Voting Rights Act of 1965 The act eliminated the so-called literacy tests that had disqualified many voters. 6/4/2018

Racial separation established by practice and custom, not by law. De facto segregation Racial separation established by practice and custom, not by law. 6/4/2018

Racial separation established by law. De jure segregation Racial separation established by law. 6/4/2018

Malcolm X Joined the Nation of Islam. Developed a philosophy of black superiority and separatism from whites. 6/4/2018

Nation of Islam African American movement and organization, founded in 1930 and known for its teachings combining elements of traditional Islam with black nationalist ideas. Promotes racial unity and self-help and maintains a strict code of discipline among members. 6/4/2018

Stokely Carmichael Plunged headlong into the civil rights revolution. Answered the phone with words, “Ready for the Revolution.” Changed his name to Kwame Toure. Embraced the concept that African nations should unite. 6/4/2018

Black Panthers A militant African American political organization formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to fight police brutality and to provide services in the ghetto. 6/4/2018

Polarization Separation into opposite camps. 6/4/2018

Kerner Commission A group that was appointed by President Johnson to study the causes of urban violence and tha recommended the elimination of de facto segregation in American society. 6/4/2018

A law that banned discrimination in housing. Civil Rights Act of 1968 A law that banned discrimination in housing. 6/4/2018

Affirmative Action A policy that seeks to correct the effects of past discrimination by favoring the groups who were previously disadvantage. 6/4/2018

Quota Requirement that a certain number of positions are filled by minorities. 6/4/2018