Civil Rights Quiz

The American Civil Rights Movement (broadly 1954-1968) was a decades-long struggle by Black Americans and their allies to end racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement that had persisted since the end of the Civil War and the betrayal of Reconstruction. The movement used tactics of nonviolent direct action - Marches, sit-ins, boycotts, and Freedom Rides - To expose the violence and injustice of Jim Crow laws and compel the federal government to act.

Key Events and Leaders

The movement's landmark events include the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955-56, sparked by Rosa Parks's arrest and led by a young Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.); the Little Rock Crisis (1957); the Sit-In Movement at Greensboro (1960); the Freedom Rides (1961); the Albany Movement; the Birmingham Campaign (1963, with Bull Connor's fire hoses and police dogs); the March on Washington (1963, where King delivered "I Have a Dream"); the Freedom Summer (1964); and Bloody Sunday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma (1965). American history is inseparable from the ongoing struggle for the promises of the Declaration of Independence to be extended to all.

The movement's legislative achievements include the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin), the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (prohibiting discriminatory voting practices), and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (prohibiting housing discrimination). Key figures include Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, John Lewis, Thurgood Marshall, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, and many more. Constitutional amendments like the 13th, 14th, and 15th laid the legal groundwork that the Civil Rights Movement fought to enforce.