📖 Key Terms

📖 Key Terms

Fair Housing Act (1968)

The last major civil rights law — banned racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals. Passed on April 11, 1968, one week after Martin Luther King's assassination. Signed by President Johnson. Difficult to enforce because housing discrimination is hard to prove.

Southern Strategy

The Republican Party's deliberate appeal to white racial resentment in the South, using coded language ('law and order,' 'states' rights,' 'silent majority') to win voters angered by civil rights legislation. Used by Nixon in 1968 and subsequent Republican campaigns. Caused the political realignment of the South from Democrat to Republican.

Affirmative Action

Policies requiring employers and universities to actively recruit and promote minorities and women to correct historical discrimination. Nixon's 'Philadelphia Plan' (1969) required federal contractors to set targets for minority hiring. Remains one of the most debated legacies of the Civil Rights era.

Poor People's Campaign

Martin Luther King's planned march on Washington (1968) to demand economic justice for all poor Americans — Black, white, Hispanic, and Native American. Represented King's shift from racial to economic justice. The campaign went ahead after his assassination but failed to achieve its goals.

White flight

The movement of white families from cities to suburbs following desegregation. Left inner cities with a declining tax base, fewer services, and concentrated poverty. One of the main reasons why legal desegregation did not produce actual integration in housing and schools.

Watergate (1972-1974)

Political scandal in which President Nixon authorised a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and then tried to cover it up. He resigned in August 1974 to avoid impeachment. Watergate destroyed public trust in government and ended the Nixon presidency, but the political direction he had set — the Southern Strategy — endured.