Terminology
The following terminology is employed throughout the OER. Each keyword is defined as it relates to the content featured on this site, often providing more contemporary definitions for historical terms, ideas, and concepts.
Legal Concepts
Jim Crow Laws
Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the U.S. South that enforced the segregation of African Americans between 1877-1965. These laws were upheld by the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Jim Crow refers to a commonly-used minstrel character from the 19th century depicting African Americans in racist tropes.
Reproductive Rights
Reproductive rights are fundamental human rights to make decisions about one’s reproductive and sexual health, free from discrimination and restriction. Such rights include access to contraception, abortion, and sex education.
State Sanctioned Violence
State sanctioned violence refers to acts of force, harm, intimidation, or oppression by a government or government officials. Examples of state sanctioned violence include law enforcement or military violence, settler colonialism, immigration laws, mass incarceration, and forced sterilization.
Subjects
Native Americans
Native Americans are the peoples indigenous to the land and territories that would become the United States. European and American colonization decimated the population through genocide, warfare, enslavement, disease, and removal. The rights and privileges afforded to Native Americans have varied over the course of U.S. history as the legal status of sovereign tribal nations has evolved. This term includes Afro-Indigenous or Black Natives and their descendants, Black people who were enslaved by the Five Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Choctaw).
Incarcerated People
Incarcerated people refers to individuals who have been detained and/or interned in prisons, institutions, or camps, such as Japanese Americans, migrants, and Native Americans who have been forcibly removed from their land.
Territorial Citizens
Territorial citizens refers to citizens of the five permanently inhabited United States territories: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. It also includes former territory, the Philippines. Prior to receiving citizenship from Congress, territorial citizens were referred to as U.S. nationals.
Temporal Coverage
Territorial Expansion
1803-1917. This time period covers the acquisition of the Louisiana Territory through the purchase of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the last major acquisition of U.S. territory until after World War II. This period dealt with issues of colonization of Native land and tensions between American settlers and Native people. The westward expansion of slavery led to conflict between regions of the U.S., culminating in the Civil War. Westward territorial expansion continued following the war, including land outside of the continental United States.
Long Civil Rights Movement
1896–1968. This period traces the movement for equality and the end of Jim Crow segregation, from the Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson to the assassination of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Civil rights successes include women's suffrage, the end of the Exclusion Era, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the first uses of affirmative action.
Cold War Era
1947-1991. This period involved issues related to the restriction of civil liberties as a result of national security fears. The perceived threat of Communism lead to blacklisting, further segregationism, and persecution of the LGBTQ+ community.
Spatial Coverage
Borderlands
The political-social-cultural boundaries of the U.S. and its surrounding countries.
United States
The land and territory that would become the United States of America.
Puerto Rico
The Caribbean island, Commonwealth, and unincorporated territory of the United States. Between 1898 and 1931, the name of the territory was spelled Porto Rico.
Document Type
Act of Congress
Acts of Congress are statutes enacted by the U.S. Congress. They are published in the U.S. Statutes at Large.
Court Case
A court case is a legal dispute that is brought before a court. In this instance, the term refers to the unpublished case papers filed by the clerk of the court.
Executive Order
An executive order is a directive from the President of the United States that has the force of law.
Document Category
Primary Source
Primary sources are original materials that provide firsthand accounts or direct evidence of a historical event or topic.
Secondary Source
Secondary sources offer interpretation and analysis of primary sources.