Early Civil Rights
(late 1800s)
(late 1800s)
Passed at the end of Reconstruction, these state laws separated races and allowed open discrimination in the South for many decades
The Jim Crow Laws
Civil rights organization, co-founded by W.E.B. DuBois 1909, designed to educate African Americans and pursue racial equality among all races
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
This landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case and decision declared segregation in the public school system unconstitutional; considered to be the first milestone of the modern civil rights movement
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
He is considered to be the hero and champion of the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s - "I Have a Dream"
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat on a city bus in 1955 sparked this key moment of the modern civil rights movement
Montgomery Bus Boycott
This 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case and decision allowed segregation to continue in the South for almost another 60 years
Period when African Americans began moving to the North for job opportunities and to escape from southern segregation
The Great Migration
Civil rights group, founded by college students in 1960, organized nonviolent demonstrations to challenge segregation and political exclusion in the early 1960s
The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
The NAACP's chief legal counsel who won 29 civil rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court; he later became the first African American Supreme Court justice in 1967
Thurgood Marshall
This became one of the most famous forms of nonviolent protest by young African Americans in the early 1960s due to the Greensboro Four in 1960
The Sit-In Movement
The doctrine that was established under the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which legalized segregation in the South
Separate-but-Equal Doctrine
African American campaign to promote the fight for democracy overseas and at home in the U.S. for African Americans during WWII
The Double V Campaign
This was a series of nonviolent protests organized by CORE and SNCC in 1961 that protested the South's refusal to integrate interstate buses - several groups were met by violent mobs in Alabama
The Freedom Rides
An early member of SNCC who coined the term and supported Black Power in the late 1960s - called for blacks to define their own goals and lead their own organizations
Stokely Carmichael
This event saw President Dwight D. Eisenhower issue an executive order placing the Arkansas National Guard under federal control in order to integrate Central High School in 1957
The Little Rock Crisis
These were the two most common methods of disenfranchising African Americans in the South during segregation
Early civil rights movement, founded by W.E.B. DuBois in 1905, which called for immediate inclusion - an attempt to demand full and immediate equality for African Americans
The Niagara Movement
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King organized a series of nonviolent protests to challenge the strict segregation policies of this city - many demonstrators were jailed, beaten, and hosed by police and firemen
Birmingham, Alabama
The key leader for civil rights for migrant farm workers - organized the United Farm Workers and led boycotts of California grapes and lettuce
Cesar Chavez
This was a series of three protests for voting rights in 1965 led by MLK, John Lewis, and the SCLC in Alabama - the first march saw protesters beaten by city and state police as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge
The Selma Marches
The lowest period in African American history (1877-1920) - this is when racism, discrimination, and prejudice was more open and pronounced than ever
The Nadir
Civil rights group, founded in 1942, whose purpose was to bring about equality for all and to combat discrimination policies in industries and interstate travel
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
Voting project organized by SNCC in 1964 to help register African Americans voters in Mississippi - recruited a trained white northern college students
Freedom Summer
This civil rights organization became a militant self-defense group which sought to protect the rights and restoration of Native American culture - engaged in armed conflict with the government in the 1970s
The American Indian Movement (AIM)
The passage of these two acts is considered the culmination of the modern civil rights movement - brought an end to segregation and voter discrimination in the South
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965