Word Terms - Help Page

Step #1 - On this page you can look up words about the Civil Rights Movement that you don't know and find their meanings. The words are listed in alphabetical order. After you find your word, scroll to the bottom of this page.

Boycott: When people refuse to buy a product or use a service. (then the company loses money)

Civil Rights Movement:  The fight for freedom and equality for black people in America

Civil War:  The war between the Northern United States and the Southern United States.  After the North won, slavery was made illegal.

Discrimination:  Treating someone differently just because of the color of their skin.

Integrate:  Allow for both whites and blacks to be together and treated equally.

KKK (Ku Klux Klan):  A group of people who believed that whites were superior (better) to blacks.  They fought to keep blacks separated from whites. They were often violent.  They tried to frighten blacks away from trying to exercise their civil rights by burning crosses in their yards, bombing their churches or homes or even kidnapping black people and hanging them.  This was called lynching.

Little Rock Nine: The first nine black high school students who attended an all white school in Little Rock, Arkansas after segregation in schools was made illegal.

Lynching:  When a black person was kidnapped and killed by tying a rope around their neck and hanging them from a tree.  In the eighty years between 1882 and 1962, thousands of black people were lynched.

Negroes: The name that African-American people were called at the time of segregation

Non-violent: Means that the protesters would never use force to get what they wanted.  They would only use peaceful ways.  They would never fight back, even if they were hit.  Martin Luther King believed this was the best way to change things for blacks.  "It takes strength to try to persuade people rather than hit them."

Segregation:  Segregation was a whole way of life that white people set up to keep black and whites separated from each other.  Segregation laws were meant to make black people feel inferior to, or not as good as, whites.

Separate but Equal Law: 1896 law (Plessy vs. Ferguson) that said it was ok make black people sit in their own train car while white people sat in another car, as long both train cars were equal. This new law allowed everything to be segregated including hotels, bathrooms, schools, even drinking fountains.

Slaves:  African people who were kidnapped from their homes, taken by boat to American, and forced to work without pay.  They worked sixteen or eighteen hours a day, every day, year after year.  Most worked picking tobacco and cotton.

South:  The Southern United States.  These states included Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, North and South Carolina

Step #2 - Click on the icon to return to your bus stop.

Bus Stops

Bus Stop #1 The 1930's 40's- Before Civil Rights	Bus Stop #2 Rosa Parks/ Bus Boycott	Bus Stop #3 Ruby Bridges goes to school	Bus Stop #4 Lunch Counter Sit-ins	Bus Stop #5 Freedom Rides
Bus Stop #6 Birmingham Protests	Bus Stop #7 March on Washington	Bus Stop #8 Church Bombings	Bus Stop #9 Martin Luther King Jr. killed	Bus Stop #10 Present Day Year 2002-03

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