Poor People’s Campaign: Martin Luther King’s unsuccessful last protest to force
Americans to recognize that capitalism impoverished millions.
Project Confrontation: The code name for the 1963 civil rights demonstrations
in Birmingham, Alabama.
Racism: The practice of discriminating against ethnic groups different from
one’s own.
Reconstruction: The federal government’s attempts after the Civil War to
restore the defeated Confederate states to the Union and to assist the former
slaves.
Restrictive Covenant: A binding agreement to exclude minorities in the sale or
rental of housing.
Revolutionary Action Movement: A radical underground group whose
demands anticipated the Black Panthers.
Sambo: A black person compelled to act deferentially toward whites.
Segregation: The enforced separation of the races.
Selma to Montgomery March: A 1965 march across Alabama led by Martin
Luther King to dramatize the need for a federal voter registration law.
Sit-ins: This tactic, borrowed from the labor movement, was designed to
compel change by blocking business as usual.
Southern Christian Leadership Conference: This nonviolent, direct-action
organization was founded by Martin Luther King in 1957.
Southern Conference Educational Fund: Continued SCHW’s support of the civil
rights movement through publicity and fund-raising.
Southern Conference for Human Welfare: An organization of New Deal liberals
committed to ending poverty and racism in the South.
Southern Manifesto: A defiant statement against the Browndesegregation deci-
sion signed by almost all southerners in Congress.
Southern Regional Council: An interracial organization formed in 1944 that
opposed segregation and promoted black voter registration.
Standing in the Door: The vow of Alabama governor George Wallace to block
black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama in 1963.
State Sovereignty Commission: A southern state agency that aimed at disrupt-
ing the civil rights movement.
States’ Rights: The constitutional claim that states are entitled to operate with-
out the federal government’s interference in education and voting.Glossary xxxiiiTHEC_A01.qxd 9/12/08 10:57 PM Page xxxiii