Key Terms You Must Know

📖 Key Terms You Must Know

Non-violent direct action: A deliberate strategy of challenging unjust laws through peaceful protest — boycotts, sit-ins, marches — without responding to violence with violence. Inspired by Gandhi's campaigns in India, it was adopted by Martin Luther King as the central tactic of the Civil Rights Movement. The aim was to provoke a violent response from segregationists, make that violence visible through the media, and force the government to act.

Boycott: A refusal to use or buy a service or product as a form of protest. The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56) lasted 381 days. Because Black Americans made up around 75% of Montgomery bus passengers, the boycott caused severe financial losses to the bus company and the city, demonstrating that economic pressure was a powerful non-violent weapon.

Sit-in: A protest tactic where demonstrators occupy seats in a segregated space (typically a lunch counter or restaurant) and refuse to leave until served or arrested. The Greensboro sit-ins began on 1 February 1960 when four Black students sat at a Woolworth's lunch counter. The tactic spread to 54 cities within weeks and led to the desegregation of lunch counters across the South.

Freedom Rides (1961): Campaigns organised by CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in which integrated groups of Black and white protesters rode interstate buses across the Deep South to challenge segregation in bus terminals. Their buses were firebombed in Anniston and riders beaten in Birmingham. The violence forced the Kennedy administration to pressure the Interstate Commerce Commission into banning segregation in interstate travel facilities.

Civil disobedience: The deliberate, peaceful breaking of unjust laws as a form of protest. Civil rights protesters practised civil disobedience by sitting in "whites only" seats, drinking from "whites only" fountains, and ignoring segregation laws — accepting arrest to expose the injustice of those laws. The tactic forces authorities to either change the law or imprison peaceful protesters, making the injustice visible.

Jim Crow laws: State and local laws in the American South that enforced racial segregation from the 1870s to the 1960s. Named after a minstrel character, they required the separation of Black and white people in schools, transport, restaurants, hotels, parks, and public facilities. They also included measures to prevent Black Americans from voting (poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses). The Civil Rights Movement was fundamentally a campaign to abolish Jim Crow.

Desegregation: The process of ending legally enforced racial separation in public spaces and institutions. Key desegregation victories include: schools (Brown v Board, 1954), buses (after Montgomery Boycott, 1956), lunch counters (after sit-ins, 1960–61), interstate travel (after Freedom Rides, 1961), and broader civil rights guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965).

NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People): Founded in 1909, the oldest major civil rights organisation in the USA. The NAACP pursued change through legal challenge in the courts — its greatest legal victory was Brown v Board of Education (1954). Rosa Parks was an NAACP activist and secretary of the Montgomery chapter before her famous arrest in December 1955.

SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference): Founded in 1957 by Martin Luther King and other Black ministers following the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The SCLC coordinated non-violent direct action campaigns across the South, including the Birmingham Campaign (1963) and the Selma marches (1965). Its base in Black churches gave it both moral authority and a ready-made network of organisers.

CORE (Congress of Racial Equality): Founded in 1942, CORE organised the Freedom Rides of 1961. It was committed to non-violent direct action and interracial cooperation. CORE also played a major role in organising the March on Washington in August 1963.