| Term | Definition |
| Martin Luther King | A Baptist minister and American political activist who was the most famous leader of the American civil rights movement. Was assassinated in 1968. |
| Great Society | A set of domestic programs proposed or enacted in the U.S. on the initiative of President Johnson (1963-1969). The two main goals were the elimination of poverty and racial injustice. |
| Malcolm X | One of the most prominent Black Nationalist leaders in U.S. history. As a militant leader, Malcolm X advocated black pride, economic self-reliance, and violence. |
| Black Panthers | Active within the United States during the 1960s and 1970s this was a controversial African American civil rights and self-defence organization. |
| Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 | The common term applied to the nine African-American students who were prevented from attending this High School in 1957. The National Guard had to be sent in to assure their integration. |
| Lyndon B. Johnson | This man became president after the assassination of JFK. His domestic policy was call the Great Society but he is better known for sending ground troops into Vietnam. |
| Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-1956 | An African American civil rights activist and seamstress whom the U.S. Congress dubbed the "Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement". She is famous for not giving up her seat on a city bus to a white man. |
| Brown vs Board Of Education, 1954 | A landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning its earlier ruling, declaring the establishment of separate public schools for black and white students inherently unequal. Led to the integration of black and white students in schools. |
| Sit-ins | The occupation of seats in local restaurants protesting the fact that blacks had to eat in separtate areas. Many of these sit-ins provoked local authority figures to use brute force. But much attention to the civil rights movement. |
| Freedom Rides, 1961 | Protestors traveled by bus through the deep South to desegregate buses and bus terminals. One bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. Riders were usually severely beaten. Media coverage helped promote the civil rights movement. |
| The March on Washington, 1963 | More than 200,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. |
| Selma | State troopers attacked peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and rubber tubes. The national broadcast of the footage of lawmen attacking unresisting marchers seeking only the right to vote provoked a national response. |
| Voting Rights Act, 1965 | Suspended poll taxes, literacy tests and other voter tests designed to prevent blacks from voting. Blacks winning the right to vote changed the political landscape of the South forever. |
