Martin Luther King Jr. And The Civil Rights Movement Quiz

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka – the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case - declared racially segregated public schools unconstitutional. The decision overturned Jim Crow laws in the South that sanctioned segregation. The decision stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Segregation, it ruled, is a violation the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling opened the door to racial integration and helped spur the Civil Rights Movement.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a civil rights activist, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly thereafter, Dr. King helped organize and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for over a year and ended in a ruling by a U.S. District Court that prohibited forced racial segregation on the city’s buses.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a civil rights activist, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly thereafter, Dr. King helped organize and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for over a year and ended in a ruling by a U.S. District Court that prohibited forced racial segregation on the city’s buses.

The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in Oakland in 1966 as a revolutionary militant Black power organization with the mission of protecting Black communities in America from police brutality and injustice. The organization’s tactics were a departure from the strategy of non-violent resistance promoted by Dr. King and the coalition of civil rights organizations he worked with.

Dr. King was profoundly inspired by Gandhi’s political strategy of direct action and non-violent resistance. He was greatly encouraged by the strategy's success in overthrowing white colonial rule in India.

A Democrat, George Wallace served three terms as governor of Alabama. He staunchly opposed desegregation and the goals of the Civil Rights Movement. In his 1963 inauguration speech, Wallace famously said: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."



Wallace took high-profile stands against efforts to desegregate schools in Alabama and oversaw the use of state-sanctioned force against protesters. In one notorious speech he said: “The President wants us to surrender this state to Martin Luther King and his group of pro-Communists who have instituted these demonstrations."



Wallace ran for president, unsuccessfully, in every election from 1964 to 1976. 

 

Dr. King helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The SCLC played a pivotal role in the Civil Rights Movement by coordinating and supporting large nonviolent protests in opposition to racial segregation in the South.

On Dec. 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a civil rights activist, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Shortly thereafter, Dr. King helped organize and lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted for over a year and ended in a ruling by a U.S. District Court that prohibited forced racial segregation on the city’s buses.

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made this inflammatory allegation during a news conference on Nov. 18, 1964. Hoover was openly hostile and vehemently distrustful of King. For years, he directed the FBI investigators to obsessively pursue the civil rights leader in a largely unsuccessful effort to uncover evidence of Communist Party involvement or personal transgressions.

Also known as the Mississippi Summer Project, the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign was an effort to register Black voters in Mississippi, where voter disenfranchisement was pervasive. The campaign, organized by the Council of Federated Organizations, also set up dozens of Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses and community centers in small towns throughout Mississippi to aid and support Black communities.