Civil Rights Study Guide Part 1

National Association for The Advancement of Colored People

Plessy V. Ferguson

Separate but equal 

Segregation by tradition or custom.

Ruled that the exclusion of African Americans from juries violated their rights
to equal protection under the law.

founded the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Chicago.

Used sit-ins as a form of protest, first popularized by Union workers in the 1930s. They also successfully integrated many public facilities.

Attorney who focused on ending segregation in public schools.   

Case involved a young African American girl named Linda Brown who was denied
admission to her neighborhood school. The court ruled segregation in public
schools to be illegal.

called for a massive resistance against the Brown V. Board ruling.

Called on African Americans to boycott Montgomery’s buses on the day Rosa Parks
appeared in court.

Civil rights leader who was elected to lead the Montgomery bus boycott. Believed
in having a peaceful protest. The boycott lasted over a year.

African American churches served as forums for protest and planning meetings and
mobilized volunteers.

Established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957.

Set out to eliminate segregation and to encourage
African Americans to vote.

Was intended to protect the rights of African Americans to vote.

 urged students to establish the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in
1960.

African American college students from the South made up most of the members and a few whites joined as well.

Urged the SNCC to start helping rural Southerners who often faced violence when they tried to vote.

voter registration efforts took place in 1964. The Ku Klux Klan brutally murdered three SNCC workers with the complicity of local officials.

was evicted from her farm after registering to vote. The police arrested and beat her before she was able to make it home after registering to vote. She
still went on to help organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and challenged the legality of the state’s segregated Democratic Party at the 1964 National Convention.

Banned the NAACP from being active in Alabama and fought the bus boycotts.

In May 1961 teams of Black and White volunteers boarded several buses together and drove through the South. The buses were met by angry white mobs in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery. In
Anniston, someone threw a firebomb onto one of the buses. In Birmingham, Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor had told the local klan to beat the riders until it looked like a bulldog got a hold of them. The violence made national news shocking America and drawing the federal government’s attention
to the plight of African Americans in the South.

African American appointed to judgeship by President Kennedy on the 2nd Circuit Appeals court in New York.

Ordered the Justice Department to take legal action against Southern cities that maintained segregated bus terminals.

Church that was bombed by the KKK on September 15, 1963. Four young girls were killed. New reports regarding the attacks on children led to greater support for the Civil Rights Movement.

1st field secretary for the NCAAP, focused his efforts on voter registration and boycotts. His death made him a martyr of the Civil Rights
movement.

On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 black and white people gathered in Washington DC to hear speeches and sing songs calling for freedom and equality for all Americans.

An attempt to kill a bill by having a group of senators take turns speaking continuously so that a vote cannot take place.

A motion that ends debate and calls for an immediate vote.

The law made segregation illegal in most places of public accommodations, and it gave citizens of all races and nationalities equal access to public
facilities. It also established the (EEOC) Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a permanent federal agency.

Little Rock, Arkansas was under a federal court order requiring that nine African American students be admitted to Central High School. Governor Orval Faubus used the armed forces of the state to oppose the federal government- He was the first to challenge the Constitution since the Civil War.  After the African American students entered the building angry whites beat at least two reporters and
broke many windows. President Eisenhower immediately ordered the U.S. Army to send troops to Little Rock and federalized the Arkansas National Guard. A few hours later the 9 African American students arrived in an army station wagon
and walked into the high school.  Federal Authority had been upheld, but the troops had to stay in Little Rock for the rest of the year