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Define Brown v. Board of Education
The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation to be unconstitutional.
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Define Plessy v. Ferguson
The 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld a Louisiana segregation law on the theory that as long as the accommodations between the racially segregated cars were equal, the equal protection clause was not violated. The Court's ruling effectively established the constitutionality of racial segregation and the notion of separate but equal.
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Define Affirmative action
Programs, laws, or practices designed to remedy discriminatory hiring practices, government contracting, and school admissions.
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Define Civil rights
Those positive rights, whether political, social, or economic, conferred by the government on individuals or groups.
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Define Civil Rights Act of 1964
The federal law that banned racial discrimination in all public accommodations, including those that were privately owned; prohibited discrimination by employers and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate complaints of discrimination; and denied public funds to schools that continued to discriminate on the basis of race.
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Define Civil Rights Act of 1968
The federal law that banned race discrimination in housing and made interference with a citizen''s civil rights a federal crime.
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Define Civil War Amendments
The Thirteenth Amendment (ratified in 1865) banished slavery from all states and U.S. territories. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified in 1868) granted full U.S. and state citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and guaranteed to each person the equal protection of the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment (1870) forbade the denial or abridgement of the right to vote by any government on account of race.
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Define Economic equality
May be defined as either providing all groups the equality of opportunity for economic success or as the equality of results. In the United States, the latter has been the more common understanding of economic opportunity.
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Define Jim Crow Laws
Laws used by some southern states that required segregation of blacks and whites in public schools, railroads, buses, restaurants, hotels, theaters, and other public facilities. The laws excluded blacks from militias and denied them certain education and welfare services.
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Define Political equality
A condition in which members of different groups possess substantially the same rights to participate actively in the political system. In the United States, these rights include voting, running for office, petitioning the government for redress of grievances, free speech, free press, and the right to an education.
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Define Racial profiling
The law enforcement practice of taking race into account when identifying possible suspects of crimes.
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Define Social equality
Equality and fair treatment of all groups within the various institutions in society, both public and private, that serve the public at large, including in stores, theaters, restaurants, hotels, and public transportation facilities among many other operations open to the public.
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Define Strict scrutiny
A legal standard set in Brown v. Board of Education for cases related to racial discrimination that tends to invalidate almost all state laws that segregate racial groups.
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DefineTitle IX
The section of the Federal Educational Amendments Law of 1972 that prohibits the exclusion of women from an educational program or activity receiving financial assistance from the federal government. Courts have interpreted those provisions to force colleges and universities to provide as many athletic teams for women as they do for men.
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Define Twenty-fourth Amendment
A 1964 constitutional amendment which banned poll taxes in federal elections.
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Define Voting Rights Act of 1965
The federal law which invalidated literacy tests and property requirements and required select states and cities to apply for permission to the Justice Department to change their voting laws. As a consequence, millions of African Americans were effectively re-enfranchised in the South.
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