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Coup d’état
A coup d'état is the sudden, illegal, and often violent seizure of power from a government by a small group of people, typically the military or other political elites.
De facto segregation
Racial separation that exists in practice through social customs, housing patterns, and economic inequality rather than through explicit laws (de jure segregation).
Desegregation
The process of ending the separation of racial groups in public institutions such as schools, transport, and facilities, often enforced through court orders or legislation.
Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
A wartime order issued by President Lincoln that declared enslaved people in areas still in rebellion against the United States to be free, using war powers rather than a peacetime law, which shifted the war’s moral purpose.
Jim Crow Laws
State and local laws enacted in the U.S. South after Reconstruction that enforced racial segregation and disenfranchised African Americans until the mid-20th century.
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, founded in 1909, which used legal challenges, lobbying, and public campaigns to fight racial discrimination and secure civil rights for African Americans.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) was a Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation by ruling that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional, legally entrenching Jim Crow laws and limiting US democracy.
Propaganda
Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view. States use propaganda through media, education, and public events to shape public opinion.
Reconstruction
Government-led rebuilding of society and economy after a major crisis.
Segregation
The enforced separation of groups, often by race, in public and private life.
Separate but equal
A legal doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) holding that racial segregation was constitutional as long as the separate facilities provided to each race were equal in quality.