Discrimination and Violence
This organization used violence and intimidation, including bombings, to enforce white supremacy in the South.
What is the KKK (Ku Klux Klan)?
This 1954 Supreme Court case ruled that "separate but equal" public schools were unconstitutional.
What is Brown v. Board of Education?
This civil rights leader co-founded the SCLC after the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Who is Martin Luther King Jr.?
This bus boycott began the same day Rosa Parks stood trial for her arrest, and lasted 381 days before the Supreme Court ordered Montgomery's buses integrated.
What is the Montgomery Bus Boycott?
This 1964 law banned segregation in public accommodations and employment, but left one major gap that would require a second law the following year to close.
What is the Civil Rights Act?
This voting exemption allowed white voters to skip literacy tests/poll taxes if their grandfather had voted before the Civil War.
What is the grandfather clause?
This Supreme Court case (1896) had originally established the "separate but equal" doctrine.
What is Plessy v. Ferguson?
This organization led the legal campaign for Brown v. Board, with Thurgood Marshall as lead counsel.
What is the NAACP?
SNCC and this other organization, led by James Farmer, jointly organized the 1961 Freedom Rides to test enforcement of desegregated interstate travel.
What is CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)?
Passed after the violence of "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, this 1965 law finally closed that gap by banning literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices.
What is the Voting Rights Act?
This fee, required to vote, disproportionately excluded poorer Black (and some poor white) voters.
What is a poll tax?
This civil rights organization recruited nine Black students to enroll at Central High School in 1957 specifically to test whether Brown v. Board's ruling would actually be enforced.
What is the NAACP?
This organization, founded by student activists, led the First Selma March and was central to Freedom Summer.
What is SNCC?
This Birmingham police commissioner became infamous for ordering the use of dogs and high-pressure fire hoses against peaceful demonstrators, including children.
Who is Bull Connor?
Originally proposed by JFK, this law was ultimately passed under LBJ using intense political pressure, overcoming a 75-day Senate filibuster in the process.
What is the Civil Rights Act?
This voting requirement forced Black applicants in Mississippi to answer a question about one of 285 sections of the state constitution.
What is a literacy test?
This governor used the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students from entering Central High School in 1957.
Who is Orval Faubus?
Despite being a Texan Southerner with no prior civil rights record, this president pushed through both the CRA and VRA.
Who is Lyndon B. Johnson?
This U.S. Attorney General sent federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders after they were attacked in Alabama, and then pressured a federal regulatory body to actually enforce desegregation.
Who is Robert F. Kennedy?
In this joint session address to Congress following Bloody Sunday, LBJ borrowed a phrase from the movement itself to announce the coming Voting Rights Bill.
What is the "We Shall Overcome" speech?
This was the approximate percentage of eligible Black voters registered in Mississippi before Freedom Summer began in 1964.
What is under 7%?
This phrase from Brown v. Board II (1955) was so vague that Southern states used it to delay school integration for years.
What is "with all deliberate speed"?
This organization, founded by MLK and Ralph Abernathy, institutionalized non-violent direct action as a repeatable strategy.
What is the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)?
Under pressure from the Attorney General, this federal agency issued new regulations in September 1961 banning segregation in interstate bus terminals.
What is the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission)?
This constitutional amendment, ratified in 1964, banned poll taxes in federal elections, though state elections weren't fully covered until a Supreme Court ruling two years later.
What is the 24th amendment?