abolition: the elimination of slavery; abolitionism was a nineteenth century movement whose goal was the total and immediate abolition of slavery. The movement was led by many courageous African Americans who had escaped (or been set free) from slavery, as well as white intellectuals.

assassination: the murder of a political leader or public figure. Assassination victims of the 1960s included President John F. Kennedy, former attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, and Black leaders Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers.

backlash: the intense negative reaction of some whites to economic or social advances won by the Black community and the civil rights movement. Such renewed resistance to change was often expressed in acts of violence.

boycott: the systematic refusal to purchase goods from, use the services of, or otherwise deal with a merchant, company, or public accommodation, in order to force the party to change its policies or practices.

Brown v. Board of Education: landmark 1954 school desegregation case in which the U.S. Supreme Court nullified the legal basis for segregation in the public schools. The victory was won by Thurgood Marshall and his team of NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers with a carefully laid out strategy after a long series of lower court cases.

Civil Rights Act of 1964: legislation enacted by Congress during the Johnson administration, banning segregation in public facilities as well as racial discrimination in employment and education. It is thought that the 1963 March on Washington, with more than 200,000 demonstrators calling for equal employment opportunities and an end to discrimination generally, helped to ensure passage of the law.

coalition: an alliance of separate organizations or individuals who join together for the purpose of increasing their political clout and working toward mutual goals

communism/anticommunism: an economic system that is state-run and based on the common ownership of the property, goods, and services of a nation; the word also refers to the political doctrine espousing this system (based on the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), the revolutionary movement toward it, and the American political party that favors its ideals. Anticommunism was a right-wing ideology that made its way into mainstream American politics in the mid-twentieth century. Anticommunists were determined to rid the United States of the "communist menace," and their efforts led to the barring of Communists (and suspected Communists) from trade unions, government employment, universities, and many industries.

counterintelligence: espionage tactics aimed at gathering enemy secrets and preventing government sabotage.

"all deliberate speed": words used by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1955 in its ruling on how communities were to implement the Court's Brown decision of the previous year. With the vague directive that school integration was to be carried out "with all deliberate speed," the Court disappointed movement activists who had hoped for a more forceful and specific mandate from the justices.

Emancipation Proclamation: 1863 Civil War decree of President Abraham Lincoln, abolishing slavery in the rebel states. Lincoln himself was not an abolitionist, and his proclamation was an attempt to undermine the Southern economy by depriving it of its main labor force--African American slaves. Slavery in the United States was officially eliminated by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1866.

executive order: a rule or order issued by an executive branch of a government (e.g., the president of the United States) and carrying the force of law.

Freedom Riders: Black and white civil rights activists who traveled together on interstate buses through the South in 1961, hoping to force integration of the bus lines. The journeys were initiated by CORE and carried on by SNCC. At each stop on the route, the riders would enter the bus terminal and attempt to use the segregated facilities together. Throughout the project, teams of Freedom Riders were variously beaten, bombed, and arrested for their efforts.

Freedom Summer: 1964 voter registration drive in Mississippi, part of a broad campaign to increase Black enfranchisement in the South. Sponsored by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), which included CORE and SNCC, the project enlisted hundreds of college students and encompassed voter registration, formation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and establishment of "freedom schools" and community centers. In June 1964, the first month of the project, three young civil rights workers, two white and one African American, disappeared and were later found dead.

Great Society: phrase describing the theme of the Johnson adminis- tration's domestic agenda. Johnson, and John F. Kennedy before him, placed an emphasis on federal programs and legislation that addressed the social and economic problems of the 1960s, including poverty and the movement for full equality for Black Americans. Great Society measures targeted such areas as education, housing, health, job discrimination, and voting rights. Johnson's War on Poverty was also part of the Great Society agenda.

injunction: a court order forbidding or requiring a certain action.

interposition: actions taken by a state to intervene between its citizens and the federal government.

Jim Crow: term describing the laws and customs that maintained the almost total separation of African Americans from whites in the South. The Jim Crow character--a stereotypical portrayal of an old Black man--was first used in a minstrel show by a white comedian in 1832, but the identity of the original Jim Crow is uncertain.

job discrimination: hiring practice involving a bias against one race or class of persons, with a corresponding preference for another group of persons. The civil rights movement lessened some of the job discrimination faced by African Americans, although employment bias remains today.

literacy test: a test of one's ability to read and write. Such tests were widely administered to would-be Black voters who tried to register in the South. The use of such tests was simply a pretext to prevent African Americans from voting (and thus exercising any political power), and the practice was banned by the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

lynching: murder by mob violence, without due process of law. More than 3,400 African Americans were lynched in the United States between the years of 1882 and 1962, 94 percent of them in the South. Such vigilante killings of Black men were at times spurred by an "offense" as simple as saying "Bye, baby" to a white woman, as in the case of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till.

mass meetings: large gatherings of movement activists and members of the Black community. Often held in churches, the meetings were enlivened by powerful speeches and communal song, motivating and inspiring people to action.

National Guard: an armed force recruited by the states and equipped by the federal government. The Guard can be called into action by the state or the federal government, and its purpose is to maintain the peace in situations of domestic crisis. The governor of Arkansas mobilized the Arkansas National Guard in 1957 in an attempt to prevent nine Black children from attending Central High School in Little Rock.

nonviolence: the practice of avoiding violence as a means to resolve conflict or end injustice. It can be either philosophical or tactical. Those who use it as a tactic do so because they believe that to respond to a particular violent act with violence will not produce the desired results and may result in unnecessary deaths to those protesting an injustice. Philisophical nonviolence, such as practiced by Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian struggle against the British, is based on the premise that you can win over your opponent through love. The civil rights movement used nonviolent resistance during the sit-ins, the Montgomery bus boycott, and innumerable demonstrations and marches. Many activists underwent special training in order to face arrest and even beatings without resorting to violent retaliation. As a practitioner of philosophical Christian nonviolence, Martin Luther King, Jr., urged his followers to combat hate with love. He believed that to do otherwise would compromise the righteousness of the movement.

"one man, one vote": the democratic principle holding that every individual of voting age possesses the right to vote, and that every person's vote should carry equal weight. The principle was borrowed by SNCC workers from the burgeoning African independence movements of the early 1960s.

pacifism: opposition to violence and war as a means of resolving conflict. Pacifism is often grounded in religious beliefs, and wartime pacifists who refuse conscription into military service are known as conscientious objectors.

Pan-Africanism: political philosophy, espoused by W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, among others, that perceives people of African descent as linked by a common origin, history, cultural roots, and political destiny, and that advocates mutual cooperation and solidarity within the African diaspora.

political convention: a meeting of one of the two major political parties of the United States, held every four years, which includes delegates from each state and the District of Columbia and whose purpose is to select a candidate to run for the office of president of the United States.

poll tax: a tax levied on individuals as a requirement for voting. In the South, such taxes effectively prohibited African Americans and poor whites from voting; the practice was outlawed in connection with federal elections by the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the Constitution in 1964, and in regard to local elections two years later.

Reconstruction: the postÐCivil War era (1865-77) when the nation attempted to rebuild the Union and politically enfranchise former slaves and freedmen in the South. During this time sixteen Black men served in Congress, including two Senators, and one served as acting governor of Louisiana. Most had more formal education than President Lincoln; many were college educated (including a graduate of Eton), and five were lawyers. More important was the mushrooming of local leaders in constitutional conventions and state legislatures, and their holding office at the local level. The states of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana had the most Black elected officials. The progressive reforms enacted by these legislatures aided poor white as well as Black southerners: imprisonment for debt was ended, public schools were created, and universal male suffrage was enacted. This era was ended by the increasing repression of white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the inability of the federal government to ensure fully the rights of newly freed Black citizens and their white allies. The compromise election of 1876, whereby Rutherford B. Hayes became President on the condition that he remove federal troops from the South, effectively ended the Reconstruction era. After 1877 full political, social, and economic power in the Southern states was returned to the land owners of the former Confederacy, thereby setting the stage for the coming of legally sanctioned segregation and discrimination in the region.

segregated buses: public buses on which Black riders were required to sit in the rear and/or to give up a seat if any white passengers were left standing. In the 1950s, racial segregation prevailed on public buses and trains throughout the South. Prior to the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56 and the earlier bus boycott in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, many Black passengers throughout the South were arrested or ejected from city buses for not complying with the customs of segregation.

segregation: the separation of the races by law in all aspects of society-- schools, housing, restaurants, clubs, buses and trains, theaters, and all kinds of public and private facilities. In the South, segregation was a way of life from the end of Reconstruction forward. The separate facilities maintained for African Americans were almost invariably inferior to those reserved for whites, and the implied message of segregation was that Black people were inferior, second-class citizens.

separate-but-equal doctrine: the legal principle, first set forth in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, that separate facilities and accommodations for Black people were constitutional so long as these resources were equal in quality to those provided for the white community. For many decades, Southern communities used the separate-but-equal doctrine to justify racial segregation, but in fact the accommodations and services provided to African Americans were universally inadequate and inferior. The high court invalidated the doctrine in its 1954 Brown decision.

sit-ins: the civil-rights strategy under which activists--most often students--would sit peacefully and request service at a whites-only establishment, such as a lunch counter. Black and white demonstrators sometimes conducted sit-ins together, and were often met with violence, harassment, or arrest. Sit-in participants did not retaliate against hostilities, but remained steadfastly in their seats.

states' rights: rights belonging to the individual states rather than to the federal government. The Bill of Rights stipulates that all rights not specifically assigned to the federal government, nor expressly denied to the states, must belong to the states. Southern "states' righters" prior to the Civil War claimed that the individual states had the power to secede from the union (e.g., over the issue of slavery). In the twentieth century, states' rights advocates have at times maintained that individual states need not comply with federal civil rights laws or court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education.

unconstitutional: illegal by reason of failing to comply with the principles of the United States Constitution.

voter registration: the government process of enrolling citizens to vote in elections. Many communities in the South made it difficult for Black people to register by administering literacy and other tests, levying poll taxes, and severely restricting the hours when the registrar's office was open. Civil rights movement activists conducted voter registration drives to assist and encourage Black voters to sign up.

Voting Rights Act of 1965: national legislation that nullified the local laws and practices which prevented or discouraged Black Southerners from registering and voting; strongly endorsed by President Johnson, who signed the bill into law.

War on Poverty: a three-billion-dollar program of the Lyndon Johnson administration, launched in 1964 and designed to help economically disadvantaged Americans. War on Poverty programs included the Job Corps for youths, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)--a "domestic Peace Corps" of middle-class young people working in poor communities--legal services for the poor, the Food Stamps program, and Project Head Start--the enrichment program for disadvantaged preschoolers. The War on Poverty effort was underfunded and politically controversial. It came to an end after 1967, in part because federal funds were increasingly being funneled toward the Vietnam War.