Abolished slavery in the United States.
13th Amendment
A violent and often racially motivated form of vigilante justice
Lynching
Landmark Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation as long as facilities were "separate but equal."
Plessy v Ferguson
Scholar and co-founder of the NAACP who advocated for immediate civil rights and full political representation for African Americans.
W.E.B. Du Bois
Period in U.S. History immediately after the Civil War.
Reconstruction
The first African American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era, breaking the color barrier.
Jackie Robinson
Granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the U.S.
14th amendment
A fee required to vote, often used to disenfranchise African Americans.
Poll Tax
A system of racial segregation and discrimination in the Southern United States.
Jim Crow
Prominent African American leader and educator who advocated for vocational training and economic self-reliance.
Booker T. Washington
The mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the early 20th century.
The Great Migration
Indian philosopher who inspired civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.
Mohandas Gandhi
Guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
15th amendment
A test used to deny suffrage to African Americans by requiring them to pass a difficult reading and writing test.
Literacy Test
A civil rights organization founded in 1909 to fight for the rights of African Americans.
NAACP
Journalist and civil rights activist who documented and protested against lynching in the United States.
Ida B. Wells
Period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States
Red Summer
Executive order 9981, issued by this president in 1948, desegregated the military.
Harry Truman
A set of laws aimed at limiting the rights of African Americans and maintaining white supremacy.
Mississippi Plan
The act of depriving a group of people, often based on race, of their voting rights.
Disenfranchisement
A controversial 1915 silent film that depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes and perpetuated racist stereotypes.
Birth of a Nation
Leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) who promoted black nationalism and the Back-to-Africa movement.
Marcus Garvey
Group of African Americans who advised the president on civil rights issues
Black Brain Trust
Harlem minister and civil rights leader who would go on to serve in Congress
Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
Laws passed in Southern states after the Civil War to restrict the freedoms and rights of African Americans.
Black codes
Allowed individuals to vote if their ancestors had been eligible to vote before the Civil War, effectively exempting many white voters from new voting restrictions.
Grandfather Clause
An organization founded in the 1940s that used nonviolent direct action to challenge segregation and discrimination.
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Labor leader who organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and advocated for civil rights within the labor movement.
A. Philip Randolph
Depression era strategy in which blacks would spend "black dollars" at black-owned businesses
Buy Black Campaign
CORE co-founder who pioneered the sit-in technique
James Farmer