American Studies:
U.S. History
Mr. Brown
Study Guide for Civil Rights Era
Overview: Americans had grand expectations for themselves and their national future after World War
II. Just like in a popular song from the time, they had “high hopes”. The Fifties and most of the Sixties
were indeed prosperous times for many Americans, even under the shadow of the Cold War. For many
other Americans, though, it seemed like they had been left behind. After supporting FDR and the war
effort, they had been left in the dust. They—namely America’s non-white minority groups-had grand
expectations, too. The righteous anger would be channeled into a unified Civil Rights movement in the
mid Fifties. There would be significant achievements made by this movement. By 1970, however, the
Civil Rights “Era” was coming to a close. How did this movement really take off? What actually happened
at the street level? Why would such a powerful movement splinter by the late Sixties?
Essential Topic Questions:
 Why was a widespread movement for African-American civil rights both necessary and inevitable
by the middle of the 20th Century?
 How and why did the goals, tactics and public support for the American Civil Rights Movement
evolve?
Questions to Keep on Asking:
 Why do movements begin, succeed, or fail? What things make the most difference—leaders,
tactics, followers, the opposition, messages, the context?
Key Dates:
Test: BLOCK April 4
Assignment Packet due: April 4 (by 3:30 p.m.)
Reading Schedule: please pace yourself and keep up with this schedule. Take notes along the
way.
By March 18
Read Ch. 19.4, Ch.21.1 Key Terms: white flight, urban renewal, bracero, termination policy,
Longoria Incident, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, Brown v. Board of Education, Rosa Parks, Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., SCLC, Snick, sit-in, Plessy v. Ferguson,, Jim Crow laws, "Southern Manifesto",
Brown II
By March 23
Read Ch. 21.2, Ch. 21.3 Key Terms: Montgomery, freedom riders, James Meredith, Birmingham, "I
have a dream", JFK, RFK, and civil rights, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Freedom Summer, Robert Moses,
Fannie Lou Hamer, CORE, MFDP, Selma, Voting Rights Act of 1965, de facto v. de jure segregation, "white
flight", Watts riots, Malcolm X, Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, black power, Stokely Carmichael, Black
Panthers, Kerner Commission, Civil Rights Act of 1968, affirmative action
By April 2
Read Ch. 23.1, Ch. 23.2 Key Terms: barrios, Cesar Chavez, NFWA, Dolores Huerta, UFWOC, La Causa, La
Raza Unida, MAPA, Chicano, AIM, Trail of Broken Treaties, Alcatraz Island, feminism, Betty Friedan,
National Organization of Women, Equal Rights Amendment, New Right, “Freedom Trash Can”, Phyllis
Schlafly, Roe v. Wade, Gloria Steinem