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Slavery
Slavery is when people are forced to work for others without being paid and without their consent.
Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an African American woman who became famous for her role in the Civil Rights Movement. In 1955, she made history when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most important leaders for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. He fought for racial equality.
The KKK
The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group that was founded in the US to prevent rights of African Americans after the Civil War ended.
Lynching
The act of killing someone for an alleged crime without a legal trial, for example the murder of Emmett Till.
Harriet Tubman
An abolitionist and former slave that has become famous for her involvement with the operations of the Underground Railroad.
Segregation
The act of separating people based on race or ethnicity, usually by law. In the US this occurred with African Americans.
Branding
Practice where slaves were poked with red hot iron to mark them as property and humiliate them.
Civil War
The civil war broke out in the US between the North and the South mostly because the South wanted to keep slaves while the North wanted to forbid it.
Atlantic Slave Trade
A trade route over the sea where they transported slaves from Africa to America and raw materials like cotton and sugar from America to Europe. Europe manufactured products like textiles and guns which they sent to Africa.
Civil Rights Movement
A social and political movement that aimed to gain equal rights for African Americans in the US.
Cotton Gin
Machine that revolutionized the production of cotton and led to an expansion of both plantations and enslaved people.
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were local laws in the United States that enforced racial segregation and discrimination against African Americans, primarily in the Southern states, from the late 1800s until the 1960s.
Abolitionist
An abolitionist is a person who fights to end slavery. They believe slavery is wrong and that it should be forbidden.
Civil Rights Act
Laws from the 1960s that banned racial discrimination, such as segregation in public spaces.
Underground Railroad
Secret network of routes, safe houses, and individuals that helped enslaved African Americans escape from the South to freedom in the North or Canada up until the Civil War.