Brown v. Board of Education
-Supreme court overturned the separate but equal standard for education, which had stood since Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896
-declared that separate but equal schools for black children violated the constitution
Martin Luther King Jr. (his philosophy and education and family)
-encouraged people to organize peaceful protests (inspired by Thoreau and Gandhi) -born in 1929 in Atlanta, graduated from Morehouse College, received doctorate in theology from Boston University
March on Selma
-King announced a march from Selma, AL to Montgomery to show blacks' determination to vote
-Gov. George Wallace refused to allow the march and 500 participants were beaten by state troopers
-only 300 were allowed to make the march, but they were joined by over 25,000 in Mont. for the march to the capital to petition Gov. Wallace
SCLC
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
-made up of 60 black ministers who gathered in Atlanta to fight for civil rights
Montgomery Bus boycott
-Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat for a white passenger (which was required according to Jim Crow Laws) -blacks staged a 1 year bus boycott- led by King (Rosa's minister), Ralph Abernathy (black minister) and AL's state chairman of the NAACP
CORE
Congress of Racial Equality
-a civil rights group formed in 1942 and committed to nonviolent civil disobedience)
Freedom Riders
-organized the freedom riders movement- freedom riders staged sit-ins on buses (where they sat in the white sections) -(idea for freedom rides came from James Farmer who borrowed the idea from the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation
SNCC
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee -formed by Ella Baker (a SCLC leader)
-laid the foundation in voter registration and anti-segregationist activism
-black civil rights organization founded in 1960
-many younger activists and college students involved
Black Panthers
-political and social movement among black Americans
-believed that racism was an inherent part of the U.S. & were militant, self-styled revolutionaries for Black Power
-founded in Oakland CA in 1966- by Bobby Seale and Huey Newton
-emphasized black economic and political power
-Seale and Newton created the panthers and began to carry firearms
-recruited Eldridge cleaver as chief publicist
Civil Rights Act of 1964
-outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment based on race, skin color, sex, religion, or national origin -prohibited segregation in public accommodations (hotels, restaurants, gas stations, theaters and parks) introduced by Kennedy, passed by Johnson
-increased federal govt's power to ban discrimination
blacks still didn't have the right to vote
Ku Klux Klan
all over south-KKK and other racist groups bombed black churches and homes of civil rights activists
-revived in 1960s- several women were now active in it
-very violent, some members were convicted, but not until 1990s, not as big a movement as during reconstruction (only 2000 members)
Malcolm X
-X emerged as a leading Black Muslim- street criminal until he converted to Islam in prison
-emphasized African cultural heritage and economic self-help
-X encouraged blacks to claim their rights by any means necessary
-X did not follow civil disobedience he was more violent
-X was assassinated by Feb. 1965
MLK Jr Assassinated
-early April, 1968-a white assassin (James earl ray- an ex-convict) killed MLK in Memphis as he stood on a motel balcony
-the murder ignited black riots in over 150 towns/cities
Thurgood Marshall
NAACP lawyer who argued the Clarendon County case in the Supreme Court
Emmett Louis Till
black teenager killed in Mississippi for allegedly talking to a white woman
NAACP
In 1909 the National Advancement of Colored People was formed to improve the position of black people through legal action. It wanted to abolish segregation, bring about equal voting and educational opportunities and to use the supreme court to abolish discrimination as unconstitutional. Most of its support came from middle-class African Americans.
Jim Crow Laws
allowed states to impose legal punishments on people for consorting with members of another race.
WEB Dubois
first African American to get PhD from Harvard
conducted many studies in black society in America
concluded racism and social change can happen with agitation and protest
supported integration and equal rights
founding member of NAACP
Little Rock Nine
Ark. Gov Faubus ordered National Guard to stop 9 black students from going to Central High School
Eisenhower ordered 101st Airborne to Little Rock to restore order and protect the nine
Faubus shut down all state schools
Booker T. Washington
-Former slave
-attended Hampton University and became principal of Tuskegee University
-Believed in "work and wait"
-Blacks should learn trades, vocational, & industrial learning
