IB History Reasons for the Emergence of the African American Civil Rights Movement Key Definitions

A supporter of the abolition (ending) of slavery and the extension of equal rights to formerly enslaved people.

The deliberate, non-violent refusal to obey unjust laws or government demands, as a form of political protest. Gandhi's civil disobedience campaigns (1930-1934) involved mass law-breaking, including the Salt March, refusal to pay taxes, and boycotts of British goods and institutions.

To remove rights and privileges, such as the right to vote. In Rhodesia, the white government used property and wealth restrictions to disenfranchise the Black majority.

The granting of the right to vote. In the context of the suffrage movement, it refers to extending voting rights to women. In the Canadian Indigenous context, it had a different meaning: the process by which an Indigenous person gave up their legal status and rights as an Indigenous person in exchange for Canadian citizenship.

A political system where democratic rights and participation are limited to one dominant racial or ethnic group, while other groups are excluded or oppressed. The term was used by historian George Frederickson to describe systems like late-Victorian Britain, where parliamentary democracy coexisted with imperialism and the exclusion of women and colonised peoples.