Civil Rights Movement Revision Sheet

1. 📌 Essentials

• Reconstruction aimed to rebuild the South and establish civil rights but failed to prevent poverty and racial discrimination.
• 14th Amendment: grants citizenship and equal protection; 15th Amendment: prohibits voting denial based on race.
• Jim Crow laws institutionalized racial segregation, justified by Plessy v. Ferguson's "separate but equal" doctrine.
• Disenanchisement tools: poll taxes, literacy tests, felony disenfranchisement laws.
• Key leaders: Frederick Douglass (abolitionist), Booker T. Washington (vocational training, segregation), W.E.B. Du Bois (immediate civil rights, NAACP).
• NAACP (founded 1909): used legal strategies, court cases, protests to challenge segregation.
• Major milestones: Brown v. Board (1954), Civil Rights Acts (1957, 1964), Voting Rights Act (1965), Fair Housing Act (1968).
• rights strategies: sit-ins, marches, Freedom Rides, legal challenges, grassroots activism.
• The “New Negro” movement (1920s): cultural pride, racial self-expression.
• Key court case: Brown v. Board of Education declared segregation unconstitutional.

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