Civil Rights Test Review Guide

 Alejandra Rodriguez

Using the internet for this: This assignment is due by the end of class tomorrow, Wednesday,
November 6. You must post this to Yachay and the definition and explanation must be in your
own words.
For each person, write a short definition, and an explanation of the role they played in the Civil
Rights movement with two or more examples in a paragraph. For the people below, you should
‘google’ the person’s name and ‘civil rights’ or ‘impact on civil rights’.
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower - President Eisenhower was President of the United States from 1951-
1961. He was only a limited supporter of civil rights. He urged advocates of desegregation to go
slowly. In 1957 President Eisenhower used Federal troops to force Central High School in Little
Rock, Arkansas to desegregate and allow the “Little Rock 9” to attend the school.
2.   Stokely Carmichael- Stokely Carmichael was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, on
June 29, 1941. He rose to prominence as a member and later the chairman of the SNCC, working
with Martin Luther King Jr. and other Southern leaders to stage protests. Carmichael later lost
faith in the tactic of nonviolence, promoting "Black Power" and allying himself with the militant
Black Panther Party. Renaming himself Kwame Ture, he spent most of his later years in Guinea,
where he died in 1998. 
3. T. Eugene Connor- Born on July 11, 1897, in Selma, Alabama, Eugene "Bull" Connor was a
radio sportscaster before entering state politics, and became Birmingham's public safety
commissioner in 1937. With the growing Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s,
Connor maintained racist policies that came to a fruition with the jailing and televised water-
hosing of peaceful protesters. He died in Birmingham on March 10, 1973.
4. Medgar Evers- Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was born on July 2, 1925, in Decatur,
Mississippi. In 1954, he became the first state field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. As
such, he organized voter-registration efforts and economic boycotts, and investigated crimes
perpetrated against blacks. Evers was assassinated outside of his Mississippi home in 1963, and
after years of on-again, off-again legal proceedings, his killer was sent to prison in 1994. In
2017, President Barack Obama designated Evers's home a national historic landmark.
 
5. Malcolm X- Malcolm X was an African American civil rights leader prominent in the Nation
of Islam. Until his 1965 assassination, he vigorously supported Black Nationalism. Malcolm X
was a minister, human rights activist and prominent Black Nationalist leader who served as a
spokesman for the Nation of Islam during the 1950s and 1960s. Due largely to his efforts, the
Nation of Islam grew from a mere 400 members at the time he was released from prison in 1952
to 40,000 members by 1960. 
6. George Wallace- George C. Wallace was a four-time governor of Alabama and three-time
presidential hopeful. He is best remembered for his 1960s segregationist politics. George C.
Wallace was born in Clio, Alabama, on August 25, 1919. After law school and military service,
he embarked on a career as a judge and local politician. He served four terms as Alabama
governor, from the 1960s through the 1980s, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. presidency three
times. Despite his later efforts to revise his public image, Wallace is remembered for his strong
support of racial segregation in the '60s. He died in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 13,
1998.  
7. Richard Loving- In 1967, Richard Loving and his wife Mildred successfully fought and
defeated Virginia's ban on interracial marriage via a historic Supreme Court ruling. Their story is
the subject of the 2016 film 'Loving.' A construction worker and avid drag-car racer, he later
married Mildred Jeter. With Richard being of English and Irish descent and Mildred of African-
American and Native-American heritage, their union violated Virginia's Racial Integrity Act.
The couple was ordered to leave the state and their case was eventually taken up by the
American Civil Liberties Union. 
8. Thurgood Marshall- Thurgood Marshall was instrumental in ending legal segregation and
became the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court. Thurgood Marshall (July 2,
1908 to January 24, 1993) was an American lawyer who was appointed as an associate justice of
the Supreme Court in 1967. He was the first African-American to hold the position and served
for 24 years, until 1991. Marshall studied law at Howard University. As counsel to the NAACP,
he utilized the judiciary to champion equality for African Americans. 
9. James Meredith- James Meredith is a civil rights activist who became the first African
American to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. James Meredith is an American civil
rights activist, writer and Air Force veteran.  A Mississippi-native, Meredith joined the military
after high school and attended an all-black college before becoming the first African American
student to attend the University of Mississippi in 1962. After he graduated, Meredith earned a
law degree and became involved in politics. 
10. Rosa Parks- Rosa Parks was a civil rights activist who refused to surrender her seat to a white
passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Her defiance sparked the Montgomery
Bus Boycott; its success launched nationwide efforts to end racial segregation of public facilities.
Rosa Parks was a civil rights leader whose refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger on a
segregated bus led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her bravery led to nationwide efforts to end
racial segregation. Parks was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award by the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the
Congressional Gold Medal.    
11. Jackie Robinson- Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier when he became the first black
athlete to play Major League Baseball after joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Robinson
became the first black athlete to play Major League Baseball in the 20th century when he took
the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Throughout his decade-long career, Robinson
distinguished himself as one of the game's most talented and exciting players, recording an
impressive .311 career batting average. He was also a vocal civil rights activist. 
12. Michael Schwerner- Michael Schwerner was born in New York City on 6th November,
1939. After graduating from Cornell University in 1961, Schwerner worked as a social worker in
Manhattan. He married Rita Levant in June 1962 and the following year they joined the
Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). In January 1964 the Schwerner's became CORE field-
workers in Meridian, Mississippi, in preparation for Freedom Summer. On 21st June, 1964,
Schwerner and two of his friends, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, went to Longdale to
visit Mt. Zion Methodist Church, a building that had been firebombed by the Ku Klux Klan
because it was going to be used as a Freedom School.
 13. Bobby Seale- Bobby Seale is an African-American political activist and co-founder and
national chairman of the Black Panther Party. Born in Texas in 1936, Bobby Seale is one of a
generation of young African-American radicals who broke away from the usually nonviolent
Civil Rights Movement to preach a doctrine of militant black empowerment, helping found the
Black Panthers (later renamed the Black Panther Party) in 1966. In the 1970s, as the Black
Panthers faded from public view, Seale took on a quieter role, working toward improving social
services in black neighborhoods and other causes.    
 
 
 
14. Harry S. Truman- Sworn in as the 33rd president after Franklin Delano Roosevelt's sudden
death, Harry S. Truman presided over the end of WWII and dropped the atomic bomb on Japan.
Harry S. Truman was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s vice president for just 82 days before
Roosevelt died and Truman became the 33rd president. In his first months in office, he dropped
the atomic bomb on Japan, ending World War II. His policy of communist containment started
the Cold War, and he initiated U.S. involvement in the Korean War. Truman left office in 1953
and died in 1972.   
15. Emmett Till- Emmett Till was an African-American teenager who was brutally murdered for
allegedly flirting with a white woman. His death, which took place at the time when racial hatred
and crimes against blacks were mounting, marked a turning point in the emerging Civil Rights
Movement in the United States. The black community and the civil rights activists, both black
and white, were enraged after the men’s admission to the crime and pushed the federal
government harder to investigate the case. The Emmett Till murder proved to a catalyst in the
African-American Civil Rights Movement and played a pivotal role in the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.
16. Martin Luther King Jr- Martin Luther King Jr. was a scholar and minister who led the civil
rights movement. After his assassination he was memorialized by Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and civil-rights activist who had a seismic impact
on race relations in the United States, beginning in the mid-1950s. Among his many efforts, King
headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Through his activism and
inspirational speeches, he played a pivotal role in ending the legal segregation of African-
American citizens in the United States, as well as the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, among several
other honors. He continues to be remembered as one of the most influential and inspirational
African-American leaders in history.
 
 
 
17. Cesar Chavez (not the boxer) - Union leader and labor organizer Cesar Chavez dedicated his
life to improving treatment, pay and working conditions for farm workers. Born near Yuma,
Arizona, on March 31, 1927, Cesar Chavez employed nonviolent means to bring attention to the
plight of farmworkers and formed both the National Farm Workers Association, which later
became United Farm Workers. As a labor leader, Chavez led marches, called for boycotts and
went on several hunger strikes. It is believed that Chavez's hunger strikes contributed to his death
on April 23, 1993, in San Luis, Arizona.
18. Dolores Huerta- Dolores Huerta is an activist and labor leader who co-founded what would
become the United Farm Workers. Dolores Huerta has worked to improve social and economic
conditions for farm workers and to fight discrimination. To further her cause, she created the
Agricultural Workers Association (AWA) in 1960 and co-founded what would become the
United Farm Workers (UFW). Huerta stepped down from the UFW in 1999, but she continues
her efforts to improve the lives of workers, immigrants and women.
19. WEB Dubois- W.E.B. Du Bois was an influential African American rights activist during the
early 20th century. He co-founded the NAACP and wrote 'The Souls of Black Folk.' Scholar and
activist W.E.B. Du Bois became the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard
University in 1895. He wrote extensively and was the best-known spokesperson for African
American rights during the first half of the 20th century. Du Bois co-founded the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.
20. Booker T Washington- Educator Booker T. Washington was one of the foremost African-
American leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, founding the Tuskegee Normal and
Industrial Institute, now known as Tuskegee University. Born into slavery in Virginia in the mid-
to-late 1850s, Booker T. Washington put himself through school and became a teacher after the
Civil War. In 1881, he founded the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama (now
known as Tuskegee University), which grew immensely and focused on training African
Americans in agricultural pursuits. A political adviser and writer, Washington clashed with
intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois over the best avenues for racial uplift.
 
General Topics: Define and state its significance in a paragraph. You should ‘google’ your term
and the word
‘Significance’.

1) Montgomery Bus Boycott- The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a civil-rights protest during

which African Americans refused to ride city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest
segregated seating. The boycott took place from December 5, 1955, to December 20, 1956, and
is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation.
2) Lunch Counter Sit INS and Freedom Society- By 1960, the Civil Rights Movement had
gained strong momentum. The nonviolent measures employed by Martin Luther King Jr. helped
African American activists win supporters across the country and throughout the world.

3) The Great Society- Great Society was a set of domestic policy initiatives designed to eliminate
poverty and racial injustice in the United States, reduce crime and improve the environment. It
was launched by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 to 1965.

4) Non-violent protests- “Nonviolence works because it removes physical resistance from the
political equation. Protests that might otherwise be dismissed as riots or mob violence can be
seen simply as dissent. The focus rests on the object of the protest, not the behavior of the
protestors. It also transforms the community of protest.

5) NFWA (National Farm Workers) - The UFW seeks to empower migrant farmworkers and

improve their wages and working conditions. It also works to promote nonviolence and to
educate members on political and social issues.

6) Delano Grape Boycott- The Delano grape strike was a labor strike by the Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee and the United Farm Workers against grape growers in
California. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and lasted more than five years. Due largely
to a consumer boycott of non-union grapes, the strike ended with a significant victory for the
United Farm Workers as well as its first contract with the growers.

7) NAACP- Is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as a bi-

racial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du
Bois, Mary White Covington and Moorfield Storey.

8) SCLC- Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Under the leadership of Martin Luther
King, Jr., the organization drew on the power and independence of black churches to support its
activities. “This conference is called,” King wrote, with fellow ministers C. K. Steele and Fred 
Shuttles worth  in January 1957, “because we have no moral choice, before God, but to delve
deeper into the struggle and to do so with greater reliance on non-violence and with greater
unity, coordination, sharing and Christian understanding”

9) Civil Rights Act of 1964- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a landmark civil rights and labor
law in the United States that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or
national origin.
 
10) Jim Crow Laws- Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in
the Southern United States. All were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by white
Democratic-dominated state legislatures after the Reconstruction period.

11) Selma Bridge- The Edmund Pettus Bridge was the site of the conflict of Bloody Sunday on
March 7, 1965, when armed police attacked and brutally beat Civil Rights
Movement demonstrators with horses, Billy clubs, and tear gas as they were attempting to
march to the state capital, Montgomery. The marchers crossed the bridge again on March 21 and
successfully walked to the Capitol building.

12) Black Panthers- The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-
Defense, was a revolutionary political organization founded by Bobby Seale and Huey
Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States from
1966 until 1982, with chapters in numerous major cities, and international chapters operating in
the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, and in Algeria from 1969 until 1972.

13) Assassination of Martin Luther King- Was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis,
Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital, where he
died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and a Nobel Peace
Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.

14) KKK (Ku Klux Klan)- The Ku Klux Klan  commonly called the KKK or the Klan, is an
American white supremacist hate group, whose primary target are African Americans. The Klan
has existed in three distinct eras at different points in time during the history of the United States.
Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-
immigration and especially in later iterations Nordicismand anti-Catholicism.

15) Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech- Martin Luther King Jr “I Have a
Dream” speech was delivered in Washington D.C. on August 28, 1963. It was part of a civil
rights demonstration called the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”

16) Voting Rights Act of 1965- This act was signed on august 6, 1965, by President Lyndon
Johnson. In this act the discriminatory laws were eradicated and let all people right to vote. This
“act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution” became a law while African
Americans had a tremendous obstacles in their right to vote, also in taxes, literacy tests and
others.

17) Freedom Riders (Freedom Summer) of 1961- Freedom Riders were civil rights activists who
rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961 and subsequent years to
challenge the non-enforcement of the United States Supreme Court decisions Morgan v.
Virginia (1946) and Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which ruled that segregated public buses were
unconstitutional.

18) Plessy v. Ferguson- Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), was a landmark decision of
the U.S. Supreme. The decision legitimized the many state laws re-establishing racial
segregation that had been passed in the American South after the end of the Reconstruction Era.

19) Birmingham Church Bombing- The Birmingham church bombing occurred on September
15, 1963, when a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama a church with a predominantly black congregation that also
served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders.

20) Watts riot's- The Watts riots, sometimes referred to as the Watts Rebellion, took place in
the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles from August 11 to 16, 1965.