Glossary

Senate Judiciary Committee

a standing committee (group) of 21 senators who oversee the Department of Justice, consider executive and judicial nominations, and review pending legislation.

Sensational

causing great public interest and excitement.

seriatim

A Latin word meaning consecutively. Justices giving their opinion one after the other.

Seventeenth Amendment

ratified in 1913; provided for the direct election of senators by the people of each state.

Sharecropping

a system of farming that operates on an agreement that a worker provides farm labor in exchange for food and housing. It developed in the South after the Civil War, when landowners, many of whom were former slaveholders, lacked the cash to pay wages to farm laborers, many of whom were formerly enslaved.

Sherman Antitrust Act

federal law that prohibits activities that restrict interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace. It was put in place to address monopolies.

Shirley Chisholm

the first African American woman in Congress (1968) and the first woman and African American to seek the nomination for president of the United States from one of the two major political parties (1972).

Sit-in

a protest method, first used by students in Greensboro, North Carolina, where African Americans would sit in a “whites-only” section of a public space.

Sit-ins

A protest method, first used by students in Greensboro, North Carolina, where African Americans would sit in a “whites-only” section of a public space.

Sixteenth Amendment

ratified in 1913; gave Congress the power to levy an income tax.