Civil Rights Vocabulary

Basic freedoms and protections.

• Civil Rights

• Martin Luther King, Jr

• Segregation

• Non-violence

A movement to gain equal rights for African Americans.

• Civil Rights Movement

• Segregation

• Rosa Parks

• Martin Luther King, Jr

A major leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He called for nonviolent protest.

• Martin Luther King, Jr

• Rosa Parks

• Plessy v. Ferguson

• Discrimination

The practice or policy of separating a race, class, or group from the rest of society.

• Segregation

• discrimination

• prejudice

• freedom rides

Unfair treatment of people based upon race or gender.

• discrimination

• segregation

• freedom rides

• protest

A Supreme Court Case in 1896 that said segregation laws were legal.

• Plessy v. Ferguson

• Martin Luther King, Jr

• Rosa Parks

• Brown v. Board of Education

The act of protesting in a peaceful way, without violence.

• nonviolent protest

• segregation

• discrimination

• prejudice

A type of nonviolent protest where a group of people occupy a place.

• sit in

• segregation

• Rosa Parks

• freedom rides

A nonviolent protest where African Americans and whites rode buses together through the south.

• freedom rides

• sit in

• discrimination

• prejudice

A civil rights activist who was arrested after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white man.

• Rosa Parks

• Martin Luther King, Jr

• freedom rides

• segregation