Civil Rights Movement Vocabulary

 A landmark 1954 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” and race-based segregation of public school students to be unconstitutional.

• Albany Movement

• Brown v. Board of Education

• Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Civil Rights Movement

A national movement undertaken by African Americans or Blacks and their supporters in the 1950s and 1960s to end segregation and ensure equal rights for minorities.

• Civil Rights Movement

• Brown v. Board of Education

• Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Martin Luther King Jr.

Black civil rights leader of the 1950s and 1960s, from Atlanta, who opposed segregation. He believed in nonviolence and organized the March on Washington. He received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

• Martin Luther King Jr.

• Civil Rights Movement

• John Lewis

• Lester Maddox

On August 28, 1963, approximately 250,000 people, mostly African American or Black, gathered before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, to demand equal protection under the law for African Americans or Blacks. It was at this event that Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

• March on Washington

• Albany Movement

• Sibley Commission

• Civil Rights Movement

A partnership of civil rights organizations and churches that worked for desegregation and other civil rights. The SCLC, led by Martin Luther King Jr. promoted nonviolent direct action to meet its goals.

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)

• Albany Movement

• Sibley Commission

• March on Washington

An organization formed in 1960 to further the cause of equal rights for minorities. It is most famous for organizing sit-ins at universities, and freedom rides into the South

• Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee

• Albany Movement

• March on Washington

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Refusal to comply with certain laws or to pay taxes and fines, or as a peaceful form of protest.

• Civil Rights

• Brown V. Board of Education

• Civil Disobedience

Separation of races

• Integration

• Segregation

• Civil Disobedience

The systematic practice of discriminating against and segregation Black people, especially as practiced in the American South from the end of Reconstruction to the mid-20th century.

• Desegregate

• Jim Crow Laws

• Integration

• NAACP

An organization that had begun in 1909 and was one of the main organizations in the 1940s working to overturn segregation laws; works through court to fight in equality

• Boycott

• Civil Rights

• KKK

• NAACP