• Jim Crow- a system of segregation that included separate schools, drinking fountains, beaches and public accommodations • Blacks could not vote in the South, marry whites or attend state colleges • Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., and Robert William helped start the southern Civil Rights Movement • The civil rights act of 1964 outlawed segregation in public places and discrimination in employment • Still racial prejudice came under attack • Not just blacks but also women, American Indians, Chicanos, Asian Americans, gays, the elderly and the disabled all faced discrimination and inequality • The holocaust of WWII and the role of the U.S as a world leader during cold war helped reshape thinking about the place of discrimination • JFK proclaimed “we can do better” • The thinking about civil rights was the most important reformist legacy of post-war era • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the first global concord in human history stating “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” • Supreme Court reversed decision of Plessy v. Ferguson in the Brown v. Board of Education that separate is not equal • Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to white man on the bus and got arrested • In response Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech on behalf of Parks, “This situation is not at all new. The problem has existed over endless years.”(MLK) • Henry Louis Gates Jr. remembers living in the segregated south and seeing the civil rights movement on tv • Older people