Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee - Organization founded in 1960 to coordinate civil
rights sit-ins and other forms of grassroots protest.
dedicated to replacing the culture of segregation with a “beloved community” of racial justice
and to empowering ordinary blacks to take control of the decisions that affected their lives. “We
can’t count on adults,” declared SNCC organizer Robert Moses. “Very few . . . are not afraid of
the tremendous pressure they will face. This leaves the young people to be the organizers, the
agents of social and political change.”
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like
hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels,
and theaters. It also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex—a provision added by
opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberal and female
members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope.
Law that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Law passed in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Selma-to-
Montgomery March in 1965; it authorized federal protection of the right to vote and permitted
federal enforcement of minority voting rights in individual counties, mostly in the South.
which allowed federal officials to register voters. Black southerners finally regained the suffrage
that had been stripped from them at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition, the Twenty-
fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the poll tax, which had long prevented poor
blacks (and some whites) from voting in the South.
Black power - Post-1966 rallying cry of a more militant civil rights movement.
Prison-Industrial Complex - As the prison population grew, a “prison-industrial complex”
emerged. Struggling communities battered by deindustrialization saw prisons as a source of
jobs and income. Between 1990 and 1995, the federal government and the states constructed
more than 200 new prisons. In 2008, five states spent more money on their prison systems than
on higher education. Convict labor, a practice the labor movement had managed to curtail in the
late nineteenth century, revived in the late twentieth. Private companies in Oregon “leased”
prisoners for three dollars per day. A call to Trans World Airlines for a flight reservation was
likely to be answered by a California inmate.
Rodney King - The continuing frustration of urban blacks exploded in 1992 when an all-white
suburban jury found four Los Angeles police officers not guilty in the beating of black motorist
Rodney King, even though an onlooker had captured their assault on videotape. The deadliest
urban uprising since the New York draft riots of 1863 followed. Some fifty-two people died, and
property damage approached $1 billion. Many Latino youths, who shared blacks’ resentment
over mistreatment by the police, joined in the violence. The uprising suggested that despite the
civil rights revolution, the nation had failed to address the plight of the urban poor.
rights sit-ins and other forms of grassroots protest.
dedicated to replacing the culture of segregation with a “beloved community” of racial justice
and to empowering ordinary blacks to take control of the decisions that affected their lives. “We
can’t count on adults,” declared SNCC organizer Robert Moses. “Very few . . . are not afraid of
the tremendous pressure they will face. This leaves the young people to be the organizers, the
agents of social and political change.”
Civil Rights Act of 1964 - prohibited racial discrimination in employment, institutions like
hospitals and schools, and privately owned public accommodations such as restaurants, hotels,
and theaters. It also banned discrimination on the grounds of sex—a provision added by
opponents of civil rights in an effort to derail the entire bill and embraced by liberal and female
members of Congress as a way to broaden its scope.
Law that outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and employment.
Voting Rights Act of 1965 - Law passed in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Selma-to-
Montgomery March in 1965; it authorized federal protection of the right to vote and permitted
federal enforcement of minority voting rights in individual counties, mostly in the South.
which allowed federal officials to register voters. Black southerners finally regained the suffrage
that had been stripped from them at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition, the Twenty-
fourth Amendment to the Constitution outlawed the poll tax, which had long prevented poor
blacks (and some whites) from voting in the South.
Black power - Post-1966 rallying cry of a more militant civil rights movement.
Prison-Industrial Complex - As the prison population grew, a “prison-industrial complex”
emerged. Struggling communities battered by deindustrialization saw prisons as a source of
jobs and income. Between 1990 and 1995, the federal government and the states constructed
more than 200 new prisons. In 2008, five states spent more money on their prison systems than
on higher education. Convict labor, a practice the labor movement had managed to curtail in the
late nineteenth century, revived in the late twentieth. Private companies in Oregon “leased”
prisoners for three dollars per day. A call to Trans World Airlines for a flight reservation was
likely to be answered by a California inmate.
Rodney King - The continuing frustration of urban blacks exploded in 1992 when an all-white
suburban jury found four Los Angeles police officers not guilty in the beating of black motorist
Rodney King, even though an onlooker had captured their assault on videotape. The deadliest
urban uprising since the New York draft riots of 1863 followed. Some fifty-two people died, and
property damage approached $1 billion. Many Latino youths, who shared blacks’ resentment
over mistreatment by the police, joined in the violence. The uprising suggested that despite the
civil rights revolution, the nation had failed to address the plight of the urban poor.
