Black History Month Vocabulary

Abolitionist-a person who favors the abolition of a practice or institution like slavery.

Segregation-the enforced separation of different racial groups in a country, community, or establishment.

Lynching is an extrajudicial punishment by an informal group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob, often by hanging, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate a minority group.

Civil rights activist- a leader of the political movement dedicated to securing equal opportunity for members of minority groups.

Civil rights movement- 1960s Civil Rights Movement encompasses social movements in the United States whose goals were to end racial segregation and discrimination against black Americans and to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law.

Harlem Renaissance -the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars.

Black Power- a political slogan and a name for various associated ideologies aimed at achieving self-determination for people of African/Black descent. It is used by African Americans in the United States.

Slavery in the United States was the legal institution of chattel slavery that existed in the United States of America in the 18th and 19th centuries after it gained independence and before the end of the American Civil War.

The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century enslaved people of African descent in the United States in efforts to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause.