Memorize the American Civil Rights Movement: 80 Flashcards From Brown v. Board to Black Lives Matter
Study the American Civil Rights Movement with 80 flashcards: court cases, Jim Crow laws, the 1964-1968 Civil Rights Acts, SNCC, SCLC, Malcolm X, Black Power and more.
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Two Civil Rights Acts, three Selma marches, four organizations with confusing acronyms, a timeline packed with court cases: the Civil Rights Movement is easy to admire and hard to memorize. The Flip It deck American Civil Rights Movement & Modern Era (deck code VM9641, 80 flashcards) turns that chaos into a single question-and-answer set, from Plessy v. Ferguson to Black Lives Matter.
Study this deck: American Civil Rights Movement & Modern Era
1 / 10When was the Civil Rights Movement?
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
What the 80 cards actually cover
A sample, straight from the deck:
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| What was Plessy v. Ferguson? | 1896 Supreme Court case establishing the 'separate but equal' doctrine |
| What was Brown v. Board of Education? | 1954 decision declaring school segregation unconstitutional, overturning Plessy |
| What was the Montgomery Bus Boycott? | 1955-1956 boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama, lasting 381 days |
| What was the Greensboro sit-in? | February 1, 1960 protest at a Woolworth's lunch counter by four Black college students |
| What was Bloody Sunday? | March 7, 1965 attack on voting rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma |
| Who was Stokely Carmichael? | SNCC leader who popularized the term 'Black Power' in 1966 |
| What were poll taxes? | Fees required to vote, banned by the 24th Amendment (1964) |
| What was the Kerner Commission? | 1968 commission concluding America was 'moving toward two societies, one black, one white' |
| What was the Bakke decision? | 1978 case that upheld affirmative action but banned racial quotas |
By the end you will be able to recall: Jim Crow laws, segregation, massive resistance, white flight, redlining, busing, the grandfather clause, literacy tests, nonviolent resistance, the NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party and its Ten-Point Program, Freedom Rides, Freedom Summer, the Albany Movement, the Birmingham Campaign, the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the March on Washington, the Chicago Freedom Movement, the Poor People's Campaign, the Watts and 1992 LA riots, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Fair Housing Act, the Philadelphia Plan, plus the people: Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, Emmett Till, the Little Rock Nine, Elizabeth Eckford, Ruby Bridges, James Meredith, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, John Lewis, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Bull Connor, George Wallace, Shirley Chisholm and Rodney King.
Two memory traps in this deck, and how to beat them
Trap 1: the three 1960s laws. Students constantly swap them. Anchor each to its target: 1964 = public accommodations and employment (discrimination by race, color, religion, sex, national origin); 1965 = the ballot (bans literacy tests, adds federal oversight); 1968 = housing (the Civil Rights Act of 1968 is the Fair Housing Act, and the deck has a card for each name). Say it as a chain: jobs, votes, homes.
Trap 2: the organizations. Sort them by who ran them and how old they are: NAACP (1909, lawyers, won Brown v. Board), SCLC (1957, ministers, King), SNCC (1960, students, sit-ins and Freedom Rides), Black Panthers (1966, armed self-defense and community programs).
A study plan built on the deck's structure
The cards run roughly chronologically, so study them in three blocks rather than in one pass:
- 1896-1957, the legal fight: Plessy, Brown, Thurgood Marshall, Emmett Till, Montgomery, Little Rock. Focus on court cases and years.
- 1960-1965, direct action: sit-ins, Freedom Rides, Birmingham, Letter from Birmingham Jail, the March on Washington, Freedom Summer, Selma. Focus on places and the organization behind each campaign.
- 1965-today, Black Power and the modern era: Malcolm X, Watts, Black Panthers, King's assassination and the 1968 riots, affirmative action, Bakke, Rodney King, Black Lives Matter.
Re-run block 1 before block 3: the Kerner Commission and redlining cards only make sense once segregation and white flight are solid.
Get the deck
Sign in at flip-it.app, search the library for VM9641 or American Civil Rights Movement & Modern Era, and let spaced repetition schedule the 80 cards for you. The cards you miss (usually the acronyms and the 1968 items) come back sooner.
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