essay on civil rights movement and its effects

Essay on Civil Rights Movement And Its Effects

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100 Words Essay on Civil Rights Movement And Its Effects

Introduction to the civil rights movement.

The Civil Rights Movement was a fight for equal rights for Black people in America. It happened mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to end unfair treatment based on skin color.

Important events included the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. These actions showed many people joining together to demand change. They wanted laws that treated everyone the same.

Changes in Laws

The movement led to new laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made it illegal to treat people differently because of their race.

Lasting Impact

The movement inspired other groups to fight for their rights. It also helped create a more fair society. Even today, people remember the movement and continue to work for equality for everyone.

250 Words Essay on Civil Rights Movement And Its Effects

What was the civil rights movement.

The Civil Rights Movement was a fight for equal rights for Black people in the United States. It took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Black Americans were treated unfairly and did not have the same opportunities as white Americans. They could not eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, or even use the same bathrooms.

Important People and Events

Many brave people stood up for equality. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the leaders. He believed in peaceful protests. Rosa Parks was another key figure. When she refused to give up her bus seat to a white person, it sparked a big bus boycott. This event showed that when people work together, they can make a difference.

Changes Because of the Movement

The Civil Rights Movement led to big changes. Laws were passed to make sure everyone had the same rights, no matter their skin color. The most famous laws were the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These laws helped stop a lot of the unfair treatment.

Effects on Today’s Society

Today, because of the Civil Rights Movement, people from different races have more chances to live, work, and learn together. The fight for equality also inspired other groups, like women and people with disabilities, to seek their rights. Yet, even now, people are still working to make sure everyone is treated fairly. The Civil Rights Movement taught us that when people come together for a good cause, they can change the world.

500 Words Essay on Civil Rights Movement And Its Effects

The Civil Rights Movement was a fight for equal rights for African Americans in the United States. It took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Before this movement, black people did not have the same rights as white people. They could not go to the same schools, eat in the same restaurants, or even use the same bathrooms. The movement aimed to change these unfair rules.

Important Leaders

Many brave people led the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most famous leaders. He gave speeches and led peaceful protests. Rosa Parks is another important figure. She refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person, which was a big moment for the movement. These leaders and many others helped black people fight for their rights.

Major Events

There were many big events during the Civil Rights Movement. One was the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, where black people stopped using buses to fight against unfair seating rules. Another was the March on Washington in 1963, where thousands of people gathered to ask for equal rights. At this march, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Laws and Changes

The Civil Rights Movement led to important changes in laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of these changes. This law made it illegal to treat people differently because of their race in places like schools and jobs. Another law was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made it easier for black people to vote. These laws helped make America more fair for everyone.

Effects on Society

The movement had a big effect on American society. It helped many black people get better jobs, education, and housing. It also made people think differently about race. More people started to understand that it was wrong to treat others unfairly because of the color of their skin. This change in thinking helped to make America a place where all people could have a chance to succeed.

Even today, the Civil Rights Movement is important. It reminds us that fighting for what is right can lead to change. It also shows us the power of working together peacefully. The movement has inspired other groups to fight for their rights too, like women and people with disabilities. The Civil Rights Movement proved that when people stand up for fairness, they can make the world a better place.

In summary, the Civil Rights Movement was a time when African Americans fought for equal rights. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and events like the March on Washington helped to change unfair laws. The movement has had a lasting effect on American society, making it more just for all. It is a powerful example of how people can come together to make positive changes in the world.

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 22, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

The civil rights movement was a struggle for social justice that took place mainly during the 1950s and 1960s for Black Americans to gain equal rights under the law in the United States. The Civil War officially abolished slavery , but it didn’t end discrimination against Black people—they continued to endure the devastating effects of racism, especially in the South. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans, along with many other Americans, mobilized and began an unprecedented fight for equality that spanned two decades.

Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction , Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they’d once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they’d made during Reconstruction, “ Jim Crow ” laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn’t vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be “separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II , most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren’t given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with—to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn’t find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement.” Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr ., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks’ courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system . The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional. 

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education . In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine , arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth’s lunch counter where they’d first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael , who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power.”

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 “ Freedom Riders ”—seven Black and six white activists–mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C. , embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother’s Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy ) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders—and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.—by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a “whites-only” facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington . It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph , Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King’s speech in which he continually stated, “I have a dream…”

King’s “ I Have a Dream” speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 —legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination —into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as “ Bloody Sunday .” Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions. 

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King’s assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation. Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library. Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives. Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey. Little Rock School Desegregation (1957).  The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford . Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford . Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks. Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org. The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center. The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

Introduction to the civil rights movement.

• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE

Black Power

• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the period from 1946 to 1968.
• Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court, to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
• The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met with the fierce opposition of white supremacists .

The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights and the supreme court, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, what do you think.

• See Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• See C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
• See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• See Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Stephen Tuck,  Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• See Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
• See Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
• See Michael Eric Dyson, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
• See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
• See Tavis Smiley, ed., The Covenant with Black America: Ten Years Later (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2016).

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Introductory Essay: Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans during the civil rights movement?

• I can explain the importance of local and federal actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
• I can compare the goals and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X and Black Nationalism, and Black Power.
• I can explain challenges African Americans continued to face despite victories for equality and justice during the civil rights movement.

Essential Vocabulary

Continuing the heroic struggle for equality: the civil rights movement.

The struggle to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence a reality for Black Americans reached a climax after World War II. The activists of the civil rights movement directly confronted segregation and demanded equal civil rights at the local level with physical and moral courage and perseverance. They simultaneously pursued a national strategy of systematically filing lawsuits in federal courts, lobbying Congress, and pressuring presidents to change the laws. The civil rights movement encountered significant resistance, however, and suffered violence in the quest for equality.

During the middle of the twentieth century, several Black writers grappled with the central contradictions between the nation’s ideals and its realities, and the place of Black Americans in their country. Richard Wright explored a raw confrontation with racism in Native Son (1940), while Ralph Ellison led readers through a search for identity beyond a racialized category in his novel Invisible Man (1952), as part of the Black quest for identity. The novel also offered hope in the power of the sacred principles of the Founding documents. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun , first performed in 1959, about the dreams deferred for Black Americans and questions about assimilation. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin described Blacks’ estrangement from U.S. society and themselves while caught in a racial nightmare of injustice in The Fire Next Time (1963) and other works.

World War II wrought great changes in U.S. society. Black soldiers fought for a “double V for victory,” hoping to triumph over fascism abroad and racism at home. Many received a hostile reception, such as Medgar Evers who was blocked from voting at gunpoint by five armed whites. Blacks continued the Great Migration to southern and northern cities for wartime industrial work. After the war, in 1947, Jackie Robinson endured racial taunts on the field and segregation off it as he broke the color barrier in professional baseball and began a Hall of Fame career. The following year, President Harry Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and banning discrimination in the civil service. Meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall and his legal team at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meticulously prepared legal challenges to discrimination, continuing a decades-long effort.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits against segregated schools in different states that were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal.” Brown II followed a year after, as the court ordered that the integration of schools should be pursued “with all deliberate speed.” Throughout the South, angry whites responded with a campaign of “massive resistance” and refused to comply with the order, while many parents sent their children to all-white private schools. Middle-class whites who opposed integration joined local chapters of citizens’ councils and used propaganda, economic pressure, and even violence to achieve their ends.

A wave of violence and intimidation followed. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was lynched after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. Though an all-white jury quickly acquitted the two men accused of killing him, Till’s murder was reported nationally and raised awareness of the injustices taking place in Mississippi.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (who was a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Her willingness to confront segregation led to a direct-action movement for equality. The local Women’s Political Council organized the city’s Black residents into a boycott of the bus system, which was then led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. Black churches and ministers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, provided a source of strength. Despite arrests, armed mobs, and church bombings, the boycott lasted until a federal court desegregated the city buses. In the wake of the boycott, the leading ministers formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , which became a key civil rights organization.

Rosa Parks is shown here in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. The Montgomery bus boycott was an important victory in the civil rights movement.

In 1957, nine Black families decided to send their children to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent their entry, and one student, Elizabeth Eckford, faced an angry crowd of whites alone and barely escaped. President Eisenhower was compelled to respond and sent in 1,200 paratroops from the 101st Airborne to protect the Black students. They continued to be harassed, but most finished the school year and integrated the school.

That year, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that created a civil rights division in the Justice Department and provided minimal protections for the right to vote. The bill had been watered down because of an expected filibuster by southern senators, who had recently signed the Southern Manifesto, a document pledging their resistance to Supreme Court decisions such as Brown .

In 1960, four Black college students were refused lunch service at a local Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they spontaneously staged a “sit-in” the following day. Their resistance to the indignities of segregation was copied by thousands of others of young Blacks across the South, launching another wave of direct, nonviolent confrontation with segregation. Ella Baker invited several participants to a Raleigh conference where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and issued a Statement of Purpose. The group represented a more youthful and daring effort that later broke with King and his strategy of nonviolence.

In contrast, Malcolm X became a leading spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) who represented Black separatism as an alternative to integration, which he deemed an unworthy goal. He advocated revolutionary violence as a means of Black self-defense and rejected nonviolence. He later changed his views, breaking with the NOI and embracing a Black nationalism that had more common ground with King’s nonviolent views. Malcolm X had reached out to establish ties with other Black activists before being gunned down by assassins who were members of the NOI later in 1965.

In 1961, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rode segregated buses in order to integrate interstate travel. These Black and white Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, where mobs beat them with bats and pipes in bus stations and firebombed their buses. A cautious Kennedy administration reluctantly intervened to protect the Freedom Riders with federal marshals, who were also victimized by violent white mobs.

Malcolm X was a charismatic speaker and gifted organizer. He argued that Black pride, identity, and independence were more important than integration with whites.

King was moved to act. He confronted segregation with the hope of exposing injustice and brutality against nonviolent protestors and arousing the conscience of the nation to achieve a just rule of law. The first planned civil rights campaign was initiated by SNCC and taken over mid-campaign by King and SCLC. It failed because Albany, Georgia’s Police Chief Laurie Pritchett studied King’s tactics and responded to the demonstrations with restraint. In 1963, King shifted the movement to Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed his officers to attack civil rights protestors with fire hoses and police dogs. Authorities arrested thousands, including many young people who joined the marches. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after his own arrest and provided the moral justification for the movement to break unjust laws. National and international audiences were shocked by the violent images shown in newspapers and on the television news. President Kennedy addressed the nation and asked, “whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . [If a Black person]cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” The president then submitted a civil rights bill to Congress.

In late August 1963, more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in solidarity for equal rights. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He stated, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pushed his agenda through Congress. In the early summer of 1964, a 3-month filibuster by southern senators was finally defeated, and both houses passed the historical civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, banning segregation in public accommodations.

Activists in the civil rights movement then focused on campaigns for the right to vote. During the summer of 1964, several civil rights organizations combined their efforts during the “ Freedom Summer ” to register Blacks to vote with the help of young white college students. They endured terror and intimidation as dozens of churches and homes were burned and workers were killed, including an incident in which Black advocate James Chaney and two white students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi.

In August 1963, peaceful protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to draw attention to the inequalities and indignities African Americans suffered 100 years after emancipation. Leaders of the march are shown in the image on the bottom, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the center.

That summer, Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as civil rights delegates to replace the rival white delegation opposed to civil rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer was a veteran of attempts to register other Blacks to vote and endured severe beatings for her efforts. A proposed compromise of giving two seats to the MFDP satisfied neither those delegates nor the white delegation, which walked out. Cracks were opening up in the Democratic electoral coalition over civil rights, especially in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer testified about the violence she and others endured when trying to register to vote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the realities of continued violence against Blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC joined forces to register voters in Selma and draw attention to the fight for Black suffrage. On March 7, marchers planned to walk peacefully from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. However, mounted state troopers and police blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then rampaged through the marchers, indiscriminately beating them. SNCC leader John Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and 5 women were clubbed unconscious. Seventy people were hospitalized for injuries during “Bloody Sunday.” The scenes again shocked television viewers and newspaper readers.

The images of state troopers, local police, and local people brutally attacking peaceful protestors on “Bloody Sunday” shocked people across the country and world. Two weeks later, protestors of all ages and races continued the protest. By the time they reached the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, their ranks had swelled to about 25,000 people.

Two days later, King led a symbolic march to the bridge but then turned around. Many younger and more militant activists were alienated and felt that King had sold out to white authorities. The tension revealed the widening division between older civil rights advocates and those younger, more radical supporters who were frustrated at the slow pace of change and the routine violence inflicted upon peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, starting on March 21, with the help of a federal judge who refused Governor George Wallace’s request to ban the march, Blacks triumphantly walked to Montgomery. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act protecting the rights to register and vote after a Senate filibuster ended and the bill passed Congress.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act did not alter the fact that most Black Americans still suffered racism, were denied equal economic opportunities, and lived in segregated neighborhoods. While King and other leaders did seek to raise their issues among northerners, frustrations often boiled over into urban riots during the mid-1960s. Police brutality and other racial incidents often triggered days of violence in which hundreds were injured or killed. There were mass arrests and widespread property damage from arson and looting in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. A presidential National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report, which analyzed the causes of urban unrest, noting the impact of racism on the inequalities and injustices suffered by Black Americans.

Frustration among young Black Americans led to the rise of a more militant strain of advocacy. In 1966, activist James Meredith was on a solo march in Mississippi to raise awareness about Black voter registration when he was shot and wounded. Though Meredith recovered, this event typified the violence that led some young Black Americans to espouse a more military strain of advocacy. On June 16, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and members of the Black Panther Party continued Meredith’s march while he recovered from his wounds, chanting, “We want Black Power .” Black Power leaders and members of the Black Panther Party offered a different vision for equality and justice. They advocated self-reliance and self-empowerment, a celebration of Black culture, and armed self-defense. They used aggressive rhetoric to project a more radical strategy for racial progress, including sympathy for revolutionary socialism and rejection of capitalism. While its legacy is debated, the Black Power movement raised many important questions about the place of Black Americans in the United States, beyond the civil rights movement.

After World War II, Black Americans confronted the iniquities and indignities of segregation to end almost a century of Jim Crow. Undeterred, they turned the public’s eyes to the injustice they faced and called on the country to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and to continue the fight against inequality and discrimination.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What factors helped to create the modern civil rights movement?
• How was the quest for civil rights a combination of federal and local actions?
• What were the goals and methods of different activists and groups of the civil rights movement? Complete the table below to reference throughout your analysis of the primary source documents.

Home — Essay Samples — History — History of the United States — Civil Rights Movement

Essays on Civil Rights Movement

Hook examples for civil rights movement essays, anecdotal hook.

Imagine standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. This moment in history epitomized the Civil Rights Movement's power and importance.

Question Hook

What does it mean to fight for civil rights? Explore the complex history, key figures, and lasting impact of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Quotation Hook

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. How did civil rights activists like King refuse to stay silent and ignite change?

Statistical or Factual Hook

Did you know that in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin? Dive into the facts and milestones of the Civil Rights Movement.

Definition Hook

What defines a civil rights movement? Explore the principles, goals, and strategies that distinguish civil rights movements from other social justice movements.

Rhetorical Question Hook

Was the Civil Rights Movement solely about racial equality, or did it pave the way for broader social change and justice? Examine the movement's multifaceted impact.

Historical Hook

Travel back in time to the mid-20th century and uncover the roots of the Civil Rights Movement, from the Jim Crow era to the landmark Supreme Court decisions.

Contrast Hook

Contrast the injustices and systemic racism faced by African Americans prior to the Civil Rights Movement with the progress made through protests, legislation, and activism.

Narrative Hook

Meet Rosa Parks, a seamstress who refused to give up her bus seat, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Follow her courageous journey and the ripple effect it had on the Civil Rights Movement.

Controversial Statement Hook

Prepare to explore the controversies within the Civil Rights Movement, such as differing strategies among activists and debates over nonviolence versus militancy.

A Great and Mighty Walk Analysis

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Letter from Birmingham Jail - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Civil Rights Movement and The Struggles of African Americans During Those Times

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How The Civil Rights Movement Helped African Americans Achieve Their Rights

Martin luther king jr: influential figure in the civil rights movement, how martin luther king jr, rosa parks and malcolm x organized the civil rights movement, the role of the media in ushering the civil rights movement, development of racial tendencies in the united states, the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, a deeper look at the civil rights movement in america, generation of the civil rights movement, black lives matter in the civil rights movement, the civil rights movement about african american people, the civil rights movement and african american discriminations, a report on the events that helped martin luther king jr.'s prominence in america to push the civil rights movement, the civil rights movement about national indentify, the influence of jazz musicians on the civil rights movement, rosa parks and the civil rights movement, the contribution of local grass-roots activists to the civil rights movement, rosa parks: the lady of the civil rights, brown vs board of education, the way rosa parks leadership style changed the history, rosa parks: how one bold decision made a world leader.

United States

Racism, segregation, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, socioeconomic inequality

W.E.B. Du Bois, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry MacNeal Turner, John Oliver Killens

Civil rights movement was a struggle of African Americans and their like-minded allies for social justice in United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. The purpose was to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States.

“Jim Crow” laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century with a purpose to separate Black people from white people. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people or go to the same schools. Although, Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states, Black people still experienced discrimination.

Forms of protest and civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the most successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) that lasted for 381 days in Alabama; mass marches, such as the Children's Crusade in Birmingham in 1963 and Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and Nashville sit-ins (1960) in Tennessee.

The Great March on Washington was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

On July 2, 1964, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. The act "remains one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history".

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally and Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room’s balcony on April 4, 1968.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. It prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin.

The 20th-century civil rights movement produced an enduring transformation of the legal status of African Americans and other victims of discrimination.

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116 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics & Examples

Trying to write a successful civil rights movement essay? Questions about the subject may flood your brain, but we can help!

📃 8 Tips for Writing a Civil Rights Movement Essay

🏆 best civil rights movement topic ideas & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting civil rights movement topics to write about, 📌 good civil rights research topics, 👍 interesting civil rights essay topics, ❓ civil rights movement essay questions.

As a student, you can explore anything from civil disobedience to the work of Martin Luther King Jr in your paper. And we are here to help! Our experts have gathered civil rights movement essay topics for different assignments. In the article below, see research and paper ideas along with tips on writing. Besides, check civil rights essay examples via the links.

A civil rights movement essay is an essential assignment because it helps students to reflect on historical events that molded the contemporary American society. Read this post to find some useful tips that will help you score an A on your paper on the civil rights movement.

Tip 1: Read the instructions carefully. Check all of the documents provided by your tutor, including the grading rubric, example papers, and civil rights movement essay questions. When you know what is expected of you, it will be much easier to proceed with the assignment and achieve a high mark on it.

Tip 2: Browse sample papers on the topic. If you are not sure of what to write about in particular, you can see what other students included in their essays. While reading civil rights movement essay examples, take notes about the content, sources used, and other relevant points. This might give you some ideas on what to include in your paper and how to enhance it to meet the requirements.

Tip 3: Collect high-quality material to support your essay. The best sources are scholarly articles and books. However, there are also some credible websites and news articles that offer unbiased information on the civil rights movements. If the instructions don’t prevent you from using these, you could include a wide array of resources, thus making your essay more detailed.

Tip 4: Offer some context on the civil rights movement. The 20th century was instrumental to the history of America because there were many political and social events, including World War II and the subsequent Cold War. While some events may not relate to the history of the civil rights movement, they are important for the readers to understand the context in which the movement took place.

Tip 5: Consider the broader history of discrimination in the American society. Discrimination is the key focus of most civil rights movement essay topics. For the black population, the movement was instrumental in reducing prejudice and improving social position. However, there were many other populations that faced discrimination throughout the American history, such as women, Native Americans, and people from the LGBT community. Can you see any similarities in how these groups fought for equal rights?

Tip 6: Reflect on the sources of the civil rights movement. The story of racial discrimination and oppression in America spanned for over 400 years, so there is a lot of history behind the civil rights movement. Here, you could talk about slavery and segregation policies, as well as how the black communities responded to the struggle. For instance, you could consider the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on the Black identity or about other examples or cultural movements that originated in the black community.

Tip 7: If relevant, include a personal reflection. You can write about what the civil rights movement means for you and how it impacted the life of your family. You can also explore racial discrimination in contemporary society to show that some issues still remain unsolved.

Tip 8: Maintain a good essay structure. Ensure that every paragraph serves its purpose. A civil rights movement essay introduction should define the movement and state your main argument clearly. Follow it with several main body paragraphs, each one exploring a certain idea that relates to the key argument. In conclusion, address all the points you’ve made and demonstrate how they relate to your thesis.

With these few tips, you will be able to write an excellent paper on the civil rights movement. Check the rest of our website for essay titles, topics, and more writing advice!

• Impact of Civil Rights Movement The freedom to vote for all Americans became central in the civil rights movements, and one of its successes was the legislation that culminated in the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Civil Rights-Black Power Movement Barack Obama was aware of the violence and oppression of black people in the United States. It shows self determination of the black people in struggles for civil rights- black power.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Leader of the Civil Rights Movement The psychology of a leader is the psychology of a winner. One such example is one of the early leaders of the civil rights movement, American investigative journalist Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, who, thanks to her […]
• Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War The Vietnam War caused unintended consequences for the civil rights movements of the 1960s as it awakened the African-Americans’ consciousness on the racism and despotism that they experienced in the United States.
• The Civil Rights Movement in the United States In the United States, the 1960s was characterized by the rise of Civil Rights Movements, the aim of which was to suppress and end discrimination and racial segregation against African Americans.
• Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement Based on 36 personal interviews and multiple published and archived sources, the author demonstrates that black women in the South have played a prominent role in the struggle for their rights.
• African-American Women and the Civil Rights Movement The key factors that left the Black women unrecognized or led to recognition of just a few of them as leaders are class, race and gender biases.
• The Contributions of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks to the Civil Rights Movement Among these were Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks who used literary works to voice out their displeasure on the discrimination against blacks as well as portray a humanitarian point of view on the plight of […]
• Plan: Civil Rights Movement in United States The following assessment plan has details on the objectives of the assessment plan, the types of assessment plans, and the adaptation of the lesson plan to fit special groups of students.
• The Civil Rights Movement: Historical Interpretation Rosa Parks was one of the pivotal figures in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a critical event in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement’s Goals and Achievements Despite the considerable oppression of non-white groups of the population and the fear accompanying it, the Movement continued to fight and achieved success in its goals, affecting the country even in the modern period.
• The Civil Rights Movement: I Have a Dream The civil rights movement has changed many aspects of the nation, such as housing, the economy, and jobs. The movement changed the outlook, the power structure, and the very core of the nation.
• Music and the Civil Rights Movement It was famous in the 1960s and 1970s and continues to live now.”We Shall Overcome”, like many other freedom songs, reflects the goals and methods of the early protestors.
• “The Souls of Black Folk” and the Civil Rights Movement At the beginning of the 20th century, multiple decades had passed since the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
• Law History From Jim Crow to Civil Rights Movement It was not until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.that the problems of law enforcement in the South was truly recognized and reforms started designed to reduce the influence of political agendas on the […]
• Civil Rights Movement: Fights for Freedom The Civil Rights Movement introduced the concept of black and white unification in the face of inequality. Music-related to justice and equality became the soundtrack of the social and cultural revolution taking place during the […]
• Civil Rights Movement and Political Parties One of the examples of the effects of social unrest on political institutions in American history is the Civil Rights Movement, and it defined the general courses of the main parties as well as the […]
• Civil Rights Movement Distorted Image The study of the role and image of historical characters in CRM is incorrect and distorted. Rosa Parks is considered the person who informally initiated the movement due to the refusal to give up a […]
• Protest Music and the US Anti-Lynching and Civil Rights Movement In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement continually challenged the government to fulfill the promise of equality and justice.
• Civil Rights Movement in the USA Brief History From the Time Before the Civil War This was part of a planned act of civil disobedience in which Plessy was to be arrested, charged and tried, and the court case would then be used to challenge the law.
• Newspaper Coverage of Japan-America Internment in WW2 and the Civil Rights Movement The media covered this because this movement persuaded whites to join them in their mass protests and they were killed in the event.
• “Black Power” in the Civil Rights Movement They wanted to reform the system to ensure a more democratic and actively participating society in the decision-making process of governance for the country.
• Civil Rights Movement in “Freedom Riders” Documentary As a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of freedom movements, Nelson’s movie is a story of segregation and racism, abhorrence, courage, and the general brutality of the depicted events.
• The Civil Rights Movement: Martin King and Malcolm X’s Views King also stressed that the major concepts he adopted were taken from the “Sermon on the Mount and the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance”.
• President Johnson in the Civil Rights Movement The problem of gay and lesbian rights appeared to be rather challenging and disruptive to the society. They include hippies and other social layers that were not eager to change things while others were trying […]
• Medgar Wiley Evers in the Civil Rights Movement Following the rejection of his application to study at the University of Mississippi, NAACP hired him as a field secretary to Jackson that was to the Deep South in recognition of his effort and contribution […]
• Civil Rights Movement by E. Durkheim and K. Marx The theories will also be used to predict the future of racism in the United States. The level of segregation experienced in the country led to new interferences and constraints.
• Civil Rights Movement: Purposes and Effects The civil rights movement was a popular lobby group created to advocate for equality in the United States for both blacks and whites. To a large extent, the civil rights movement completely transformed the lives […]
• Coalition Politics After the Civil Rights Movement Such coalitions also forced the American government to address the challenges affecting different cities. New policies and laws emerged in order to promote the rights of many American citizens.
• Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill The book describes the tension and struggles that existed between the African Americans and the members of the white citizens’ council, Ku Klux Klan.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King noticed the negative trend and he took his stand to make people see the devastating effects of the war.
• Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson: the Civil Rights Movement The social historians have managed to cogently present the politics that surrounded the civil rights movement. The movement also managed to gain the support of the aims of government, the executive, legislature, and even the […]
• The Civil Rights Movement in the USA The movement’s main aim was to end the racial segregation and fight for the voting power of the black people in America.
• The Civil Rights Movement Although the positive role of the Civil Rights Movement for changing the role of the African Americans in the American society is visible, this topic is also essential to be discussed because the movement for […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Oppressing the Black Population In response, the black citizen resorted to fighting for his rights; thus, the rise of the civil rights movement. In conclusion, these key events helped to reinforce the African American struggle for equal right rights, […]
• Music of the Civil Wars, Civil Rights & Freedom Movements of Europe, Africa, North & South America During the 20th Century The aim of Giovinezza was to reinforce the position of Mussolini as the leader of the Fascist Movement and of Italy.
• Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement This is the why she gets my nomination for recognition in the “Museum of Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”.
• Dr. King’s Role in United States Civil Rights Movement His popularity started after he led other activists in boycotting the services of the Montgomery Bus Service in the year 1955 after an incident of open discrimination of a black woman in the bus. Martin […]
• The Civil Rights Act as a Milestone Element of American Legislation Although the Civil Rights Act has undergone several amendments, the Civil Right Act amendment of 1964 was the main amendment that addressed the above types of discrimination.
• Harold Washington With Civil Rights Movement Hence, this study examines the main achievements of Harold Washington in the fields of employment, racism, equality in provision of social amenities, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the creation of the ethics commission in […]
• American Africans Action in the Struggle for Equality Community leaders in various segmentations of the society had showed resistance to the white supremacy and domination against the African Americans which had been abounded in some states.’Everyday’s Use’ written at the peak of the […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Ending Racial Discrimination and Segregation in America Finally, the paper will look at both the positive and negative achievements of the civil rights movements including an assessment of how the rights movement continues to influence the socio-economic and political aspects of the […]
• Civil Rights Movement Major Events in 1954-1968 This research paper seeks to highlight the historical events that took place in 1954-1968 in the United States which were instigated by the Civil Rights Movement in the hope of securing the civil and basic […]
• The African American Civil Rights Movement During the 1960s notable achievements were made including the passage of a Civil rights Act in 1964 that outlawed any form of discrimination towards people of a different “race, color or national origin in employment […]
• Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement is an era that was dedicated for equal treatments and rights to the activism of the African American in the US.
• Theatre in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement
• To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement
• The Stages of the Progressive Reform in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Contradicting Outcome of the Civil Rights Movement in America
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Fight for Aid from the Civil Rights Movement
• The Long Term Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
• Violent and Non-violent Methods of Protests Embraced by African American in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Role of The Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s
• Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• U.S. Democracy and the Civil Rights Movement
• The History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United Stats and Its Impact on African Americans
• The Relationship of Southern Jews to Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Importance of Students During the Civil Rights Movement
• A Look at Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Role of Martin Luther
• White Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement
• The Impact of Rock ‘n’ Roll on the Civil Rights Movement
• African Americans and Religion During the Civil Rights Movement
• The Historical Accuracy of the Portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma, a Drama Film by Ava DuVernay
• The War on Drugs and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Middle Class
• The Role of Police During the Civil Rights Movement
• The Achievements of Peaceful Protest During the Civil Rights Movement
• Analyzing the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War
• The True Face of The Civil Rights Movement
• The History of the Civil Rights Movement, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• Successes and Failures of Civil Rights Movement
• The Historiography of Womens Role and Visibility in The Civil Rights Movement
• The Relationship Between Activism and Federal Government During the Civil Rights Movement
• To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s
• The Value of Studying the Civil Rights Movement
• A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement in the United States
• The Foundation of the Niagara Movement and Its Influence on the Civil Rights Movement in America
• The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Role and Importance of the Grassroot Organizers on the Civil Rights Movement
• The Effect of Society on the World of Doubt and the Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
• The Importance and Impact of the Civil Rights Movement to the Public Policy
• The New York Times and The Civil Rights Movement
• Understanding the Civil Rights Movement: America Vs. Australia
• The Laws in the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement
• How Effective Was the Early Civil Rights Movement in Advancing Black Civil Rights in 1880-1990?
• What Role Did Jews Play in the American Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s?
• Did Minority Rights Campaigners Copy the Tactics of the Black American Civil Rights Movement?
• What is the NAACP’s Impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the US?
• How Did Gandhi Influence the Civil Rights Movement?
• To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Far Was the Effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Limited by Internal Divisions?
• How the Cold War Promoted the Civil Rights Movement in America, and How It Promoted Change?
• How Far Was Martin Luther King Responsible for the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Was Civil Disobedience Used in the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Change America?
• How Successful Had the Civil Rights Movement Been by the Late 1960s?
• Did Black Power Groups Cause Harm to the Civil Rights Movement in America?
• To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s?
• How Did Kennedy and His Administration Effect the Civil Rights Movement?
• Did the Black Power Movement Help or Hinder the Civil Rights Movement?
• How the Civil Rights Movement Influenced the Women?
• What Are the Results of the Effort of the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did Martin Luther King Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
• Are the Problems Faced by the Feminist and Sexual Emancipation Movements Similar to Those Faced by Civil Rights Movement, or Are There Major Differences?
• Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful?
• Has America Really Changed Since the Civil Rights Movement?
• Why Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful by 1965?
• How Did Religion Influence Martin Luther King, Jr as He Led the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Significant Was Martin Luther King Jr. to the Black Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did Martin Luther Kings Jr Death Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Important Was Martin Luther King to the Civil Rights Movement?
• Does the Civil Rights Movement Have an Effect on the Way Minorities Are Treated by Authorities?
• Was the Civil Rights Movement a Success or Failure?
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS

Related Papers

The Civil Rights movement: the fight for legal and cultural equality

David Ramati

This thesis argues that the second stage in the Civil Rights movement started during The Great Depression and continued until the election of President Obama. The first African American elected as President of the United States and also the confirmation of Eric Holder as the first African American to serve as Attorney General, was the culmination of a second and final stage in the journey of African Americans to obtain both legal and cultural emancipation. This thesis also argues that the second stage parallels the first stage when viewed from a historical perspective and repeats the question raised after the Civil War of “Who Freed the Slaves.” This thesis argues that just as the slaves freed themselves by a combination of top down and bottom up pressure, so did the Civil Rights movement use the same combination to attain the twin goals of legal and cultural equality.

Iasir Journals

Sylviane Diouf ed. Africana Age

Davarian Baldwin

Ambakisye-Okang Dukuzumurenyi

The goal of this study is to determine the applicability of pluralist, elitist, plural-elitist, Marxist class analysis and protest theory for explaining African-American political participation from 1940 to 2000. The significance of this study lay in the need to associate African-American politics with a major theoretical model. For theory has a great effect on the society at large, as it can influence public policy and the perceptions that policy makers have of target populations. A sociohistorical qualitative analysis was conducted by analyzing African-American political participation from the perspective of the tenets of each of the five competing models. A time series analysis was conducted to determine the impact of violent and nonviolent protests, the percentage of Democrats in congress, the percentage of African- Americans in the total voter population, the percentage of former Asian and African colonies gaining independence, the percentage of African-American in congress and the African-American poverty rate on the enactment of civil and social rights legislation from 1940 to 2000. The qualitative findings showed that pluralist theory had the greatest explanatory power when confined to the nature of state and group interaction, and the efficacy of democracy, while the other theories had some limited utility. In the areas of economics Marxist theory was of limited utility, whereas the other theories lacked significant explanatory power. Protest theory was at its strongest when explaining social change and social movements with regards to African-American political participation during the time period under investigation. None of the theories provided and adequate explanation of race relations or succinctly delineated the contours of the African-American historical political participation. The time series analysis found nonviolent protest, violent protest and Asian and African decolonization to have the greatest impact on the enactment of civil and social rights policies and showed that the control of congress for the majority of the period by the democratic party was not statistically nor substantively significant in accounting for the development of civil and social rights policies.

Industrial Relations

Robert McKersie

Juan R Perea

Very informative and historically-relevant discussion topics culled from four American Civil Rights Movement course assignments.

Journal of Business and Psychology

Paul Hanges

The Journal of Southern History

Clayborne Carson

Poverty & Race

The history of African and African American struggles for liberation interacting is as multiple and organic as its various manifestations—Negritude, Black Consciousness Movement, Black Arts Movement, to name a few. What [all of] these manifestations had in common was their desire to strengthen and unify all those of African descent. This desire was bolstered by institutional and individual attempts to solve what they saw as the problem of the 20th Century—"the problem of the color line,” in the iconic phrase of W.E.B. Du Bois. These movements' central aims were to secure civil and political rights for Africans and their descendants throughout the world. Their struggle was against colonialism and the activities of imperialist powers in Africa, the Caribbean and elsewhere. [Since written, my thought has evolved tremendously. What these movements sought, more explicitly its radical expressions, were, human rights. See all work post 2010] https://prrac.org/exploring-the-parallels-between-the-u-s-civil-rights-movement-and-the-african-liberation-movement/

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The Civil Rights Movement

Doug McAdam is The Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University and the former Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is the author or co-author of 15 books and some 75 articles in the area of political sociology, with a special emphasis on race in the U.S., American politics, and the study of social movements and “contentious politics.” Among his best known works are Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 , a new edition of which was published in 1999 (University of Chicago Press), Freedom Summer (1988, Oxford University Press), which was awarded the 1990 C. Wright Mills Award as well as being a finalist for the American Sociological Association’s best book prize for 1991, and Dynamics of Contention (2001, Cambridge University Press) with Sid Tarrow and Charles Tilly. He is also the co-author of two new books, A Theory of Fields (with Neil Fligstein for Oxford University Press) and Divided America: Racial Politics and Social Movements in the Post-war Era , both from Oxford University Press. He was elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

• Published: 07 March 2016
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This chapter offers a critical survey of extant scholarship on the civil rights movement. It highlights topics, organizations, and specific figures and campaigns that have been extensively studied, while also calling attention to other aspects of, or persons or groups in, the movement that have received much less scholarly attention. The piece ends with an extended section on what the author terms “silences, holes, and biases” in the literature on this most important of American social movements. More specifically the author calls for a temporal and geographic broadening of research on the African American freedom struggle, more attention to black activism within a host of institutions (e.g. schools, workplaces, cultural institutions), and increased research on the dynamics of white resistance to collective political action by African Americans.

It is commonplace to begin any encyclopedia or handbook entry with a definition or delimitation of the topic to be covered. This normative convention is even more important, however, when the topic is something as amorphous as the “civil rights movement.” How are we to understand this unruly term? Does it apply only to the period normally covered by popular narrative accounts of the civil rights era, say from the onset of Montgomery in 1955 through the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968? Or are we to take it as a stand-in for the more inclusive term, “African-American Freedom Struggle?” I prefer the latter concept, believing that the struggle for racial justice by, and on behalf of, African Americans has been a more or less continuous feature of the American (colonial and national) experience for some 400 years. And that singling out narrower periods for attention blinds us to critical continuities backward and forward in time. That said, with a limited number of pages to work with, I will opt for only a slight variant on the narrative convention. Here the “civil rights movement” will be temporally confined to the twenty-year period, 1955–75. While this is perhaps a bit longer than most popular histories normally allow, extending the period well into the 1970s is essential if one wants to call attention to two critically important but still understudied topics: black power/cultural nationalism on the one hand and the movement as it began its “long march” through America’s institutions.

Even confining ourselves to the period, 1955–75, the literature on the civil rights movement is massive. But as with most literatures, it is also wildly uneven in its treatment of specific topics. In the first section, I will focus attention on those for which there is reasonable coverage, turning in the second section to the arguably more important and interesting matter of holes, silences, and biases in the literature.

What We Know

In surveying the topics that have received the most attention, I want to differentiate work on the movement as a whole from research that has focused on particular figures, organizations, or locations in the struggle. I begin with the former.

The Overall Movement

At the broadest level, there are a number of historical narratives of the movement that seek to capture the overall arch and sweep of the modern civil rights struggle. None has received as much attention—some critical, mostly praiseworthy—as Taylor Branch’s magisterial three-volume history of the movement (1988, 1998, 2006), but others have trodden some of the same ground ( Brooks 1974 ; Woodward 1966 ; Bloom 1987 ; Marable 1991 ; Wofford 1992 ; Frederickson 2000 ). The broad origins of the movement have also come in for a fair amount of attention. The earliest work on the topic generally explored the domestic roots of the struggle. So, in my own account of the movement’s origins ( McAdam 1982 ), I stressed the critical importance of the following factors:

the decline of the cotton economy starting in the 1920s, which gradually undermined the economic underpinnings of Jim Crow;

the “great migration” set in motion by the decline of King Cotton and the resulting dramatic increase in the national importance of the “black vote;” and

the simultaneous rural to urban migration of blacks in the South between 1920–50 that greatly strengthened the three institutions—black church, black colleges, and local NAACP chapters—that would serve as the critical infrastructure within which the movement developed.

In recent years, however, a number of scholars have argued for the critical importance of international factors—most importantly the onset of the Cold War—in helping to set the movement in motion ( Plummer 1996 ; Skrentny 1998 ; McAdam 1999 ; Dudziak 2000 ; Layton 2000 ). Without discounting the role of domestic factors, these scholars contend that it was the need to put America’s racial house in order to successfully compete with the Soviet Union for influence around the globe that effectively “re-nationalized” the issue of race in the United States and granted critical leverage to civil rights forces.

If the broad causal origins of the movement have received considerable attention, the localized beginnings of the mass movement in 1955 in Montgomery have generated even more scholarship. Much of this work is inseparable from the voluminous literature on Martin Luther King, Jr. himself. Obviously central to the events in Montgomery, King’s numerous biographers have been de facto chroniclers of the bus boycott as well ( Lewis 1978 ; Garrow 1986 ; Albert and Hoffman 1990 ; Fairclough 1995 ; Lischer 1995 ; Dyson 2000 ; Ling 2002 ; Burns 1997 ; Jackson 2007 ). King himself has contributed to this literature not only directly via his widely read 1958 book, Stride Toward Freedom , but indirectly through the third volume of his papers (“ Birth of a New Age ”) which covers the years of the Boycott ( Carson, Burns, and Carson 1997 ). Though “MLK studies” tends to dominate the literature on Montgomery, a handful of other works seek a broader understanding of events there. These include useful edited collections by David Garrow (1989) and Stewart Burns (1997) , as well as a number of stand-alone studies of the local movement in Montgomery ( Millner 1981 ; Robinson 1987 ).

Taking a broader perspective than Montgomery are a small number of studies that emphasize the more general community dynamics and organizational infrastructure that gave rise to the movement. Here the tendency has been to stress the central role of the black church in the birth of the movement ( Morris 1984 ; McAdam 1999 ). By contrast, the critical importance of black colleges and local NAACP chapters in the origins of the struggle has been somewhat neglected. An exception to this is Aldon Morris’s important 1984 book, which depicts all three institutions as constituting loosely integrated “movement communities” that birthed the struggle in a host of southern towns and cities. Beyond these institutions, Christopher Parker’s important 2009 book highlights the important role that returning black World War II veterans played in helping to birth the struggle.

Although the popular narrative history of the struggle tends to depict the movement as continuous after Montgomery, scholars know better. As resistance to the movement—and to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board —stiffened among segregationists in the Deep South in the mid- to late 1950s, civil rights activity languished. The definitive book on “white resistance” during this period has not been written, but there is a small literature devoted to the topic ( Silver 1963 ; Bartley 1969 ; McMillen 1971 , 1989 ).

In truth, on the eve of the new decade, the mass civil rights movement was largely moribund. The 1960 sit-in movement changed all that, restarting the broader movement, broadening the struggle by sparking sympathy demonstrations in the North, and revitalizing the established civil rights organizations. It also led to the founding of a new organization, the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which was to raise the bar in terms of strategic daring and creativity during the movement’s heyday. Given the decisive importance of the sit-ins to the broad arc of the civil rights struggle, it is surprising how little has been written on the movement. To my knowledge, the only full-length monograph devoted to the topic is Martin Oppenheimer’s dissertation (1963) , which was republished as a book in 1989.

The heyday of the movement took place between 1960–65, defined and fueled by a series of innovative campaigns. In chronological order, these include the sit-in movement (1960), the Freedom Rides (1961–62), the movement in Albany, Georgia (1962), Birmingham (1963), the Mississippi Summer Project (1964), and Selma (1965). As with the sit-in movement, however, the literature on these key campaigns has been thin and decidedly uneven. While the campaigns initiated by King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)—Albany, Birmingham, and Selma—have received a good bit of attention by his biographers, the non-King events remain understudied. Only Belfrage (1965) and McAdam (1988) have written on Freedom Summer, while the high drama of the Freedom Rides has been almost totally ignored by movement scholars. Indeed, the only real account of the campaign is to be found in the autobiography of James Farmer (1985) , who, as Director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), orchestrated the Rides.

If the literature on the heyday of the movement is uneven, it is positively sparse when it comes to the period following Selma. There is one exception to this rule. The literature on the “urban disorders” of the mid- to late 1960s is substantial, even if much of the work consists of narrow statistical studies designed to explain variation in the incidence of riot ( Fogelson 1971 ; Eisinger 1973 ; Button 1978 ). By contrast, scholarship on later events such as the Chicago open-housing marches (1966), the Poor People’s Campaign (1969), and the black power movement is hard to find. I will have more to say about this glaring “hole” in the literature in the final section of this essay.

Finally, while some of the broad histories of the movement have offered general assessments of the impact of the struggle on American life, systematic studies of the effects of the movement are relatively few in number. In a series of innovative publications, Kenneth Andrews (1997 , 2001 , 2004 ) has documented the enduring impact of the movement on public policy and electoral politics in Mississippi. James Button tried to do much the same thing, but for a much larger geographic area, in his 1989 book Blacks and Social Change: Impact of the Civil Rights Movement in Southern Communities. Writing in a more narrative vein, John Skrentny (2002) offers a compelling account of how the movement indirectly spawned a broader “minority rights revolution” in the 1970s, directed primarily in top-down fashion by state officials, rather than grassroots movement groups. Taking advantage of the new legal precedents and policy initiatives secured by civil rights forces, this broader revolution powerfully affected groups as diverse as women, Native Americans, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and those with disabilities. Finally, a number of more focused efforts take the measure of specific tactics or forms of movement activity. These include books on the use of the courts by civil rights forces ( Rosenberg 1991 ), the 1968 Olympic Protests ( Hartmann 2003 ), and the impact of the riots on city politics ( Button 1978 ).

Specific Figures, Organizations, or Locations

Having surveyed works that focus on the broader movement, I turn now to scholarship that applies more narrowly to specific figures in the movement, civil rights/black power organizations, or towns or cities that were sites of significant civil rights activity.

Of course, no figure has received as much attention as has King. Helping to frame and shape all other scholarship on MLK is the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers project, directed by Clayborne Carson at Stanford University. To date the project has brought out seven of a planned thirteen volumes of King’s papers, covering the years 1929 through 1962. These volumes have greatly deepened our understanding of King and, in doing so, stand in stark contrast to the somewhat two-dimensional figure celebrated in popular narrative accounts of the movement. The same can be said for the large and growing collection of books that often highlight particular aspects of his thought or periods in his life. To date we have been offered books that focus on King’s stress on economic justice ( Jackson 2007 ), the theological roots of his oratory ( Miller 1992 ; Lischer 1995 ), a King/Malcolm X comparison ( Cone 1992 ), and the FBI’s campaign against King ( Garrow 1981 ).

Without discounting King’s undeniable importance to the struggle, the relative absence of serious scholarship on other significant figures in the movement threatens to reinforce the unfortunate image among the general public that King was the movement. To date only a handful of other figures have been the subject of serious biographies. These include books on Bayard Rustin ( Levine 2000 ; D’Emilio 2003 ), Fannie Lou Hamer ( Mills 1993 ), Ella Baker ( Ransby 2003 ), Fred Shuttlesworth ( Manis 1999 ), A. Philip Randolph ( Pfeffer 1990 ), and Whitney Young ( Weiss 1989 ). In addition, Ralph Abernathy (1990) , Andrew Young (1996) , John Lewis (and Michael D’Orso 1998 ), Rosa Parks (1992) , Malcolm X ( Haley and Malcolm X 1964 ) and Cleveland Sellars (with Robert Terrell 1973 ) have penned memoirs about their life in the movement. Despite these works, the imbalance between scholarship on King and other prominent leaders is all too obvious. So too is the tendency to equate leadership in the movement with the kind of formal positions normally held by males. To counter this tendency, a small but important literature on the critical role of women in the movement has begun to develop ( Curry et al. 2000 ; Ling and Monteith 2004 ; Robnett 1997 ; Olson 2001 ).

Civil Rights/Black Power Organizations

If popular narrative histories of movements/revolutions tend to anoint single figures as the guiding light of the struggle (think Mao, Lenin, Gandhi, Jesus, etc.), they also tend to downplay the role of organization in favor of these singular leaders. The civil rights movement is no exception in this regard. Besides the “first among equals” status assigned to King by movement historians, there are many times more books on figures in the movement than on civil rights/black power organizations. Only the Black Panthers ( Bloom and Martin 2012 ), CORE ( Meier and Rudwick 1973 ), and SNCC ( Zinn 1965 ; Carson 1981 ) have really come in for serious scholarly attention, though in fairness, Adam Fairclough’s 1987 book on King seeks to understand his actions within the context of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. To date, however, no serious single volumes have been written on The Urban League or more egregiously, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While included in this first section of the entry, the relative absence of serious scholarship on the major civil rights organizations must be counted as one of the most significant silences in the literature on the struggle.

The Movement in Specific Locales

If the lack of serious research on movement organizations is one of the major “holes” in the literature, the many studies of local civil rights struggles should be counted as one of the richest veins of scholarship on the movement. The specific locales singled out for scholarly attention include Greenwood, Mississippi ( Payne 1995 ), Greensboro, North Carolina ( Chafe 1980 ), Richmond, Virginia ( Randolph and Tate 2003 ), New Orleans ( Rogers 1993 ), Birmingham, Alabama ( Eskew 1997 ), Bogalusa, Louisiana ( Honigsberg 2000 ), Hyde County, North Carolina ( Cecelski 1994 ), and the whole of Mississippi ( Dittmer 1995 ). The significance of these studies transcends the richness of the scholarship and the “local color” afforded by the research. The great contribution here is the lie it makes of the notion that the movement was a national struggle directed by Martin Luther King. In a very real sense the movement was less a coordinated national struggle than a collection of local movements with their own leaders, signature tactics, and landmark events. Without discounting King’s symbolic significance and strategic importance as a master tactician, the research on these local struggles reminds us that the movement drew its power and ultimate leverage from people in motion in countless locales and not simply from iconic struggles in Birmingham, Selma, or the halls of Congress.

While celebrating the richness and significance of this scholarship, it is also important to acknowledge the severe imbalance between research on local civil rights struggles in the South and North. Another of the fictions is that the movement was essentially a southern phenomenon, with only a few failed or violent, late sixties episodes in the North. Not so; there were any number of local struggles in the North in the 1940s and 1950s that achieved gains before the celebrated onset of the national struggle. From this perspective, Thomas Sugrue’s groundbreaking book, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North , is an important and welcome addition to the literature. I will have more to say on this particular silence toward the end of the next section.

What We Don’t Know: Silences, Holes, and Biases

In surveying the work that has been done on the movement, we have already touched on some significant silences in the extant literature. So, for example, we just noted the relative lack of scholarship on local civil rights struggles in the North in the 1940s, 1950s, and beyond. Earlier we called attention to the scant research on women in the movement, the lack of scholarship on some of the major civil rights organizations (e.g., NAACP) and campaigns (e.g., the Freedom Rides), and the general inattention to the critical role played by black colleges in the movement’s heyday. Here we want to build on this beginning with a more systematic discussion of the silences, holes, and biases in the literature.

Much of what we do not know stems from the temporal and geographic limits built into the standard definition of the civil rights movement. By defining the movement as the sustained period of heightened racial tension in the United States between the onset of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and some convenient end point in the late 1960s (e.g., King’s death in 1968, the election of Richard Nixon that same year), scholars have been discouraged from exploring racial contention either before or after the period in question or in places or sites not normally associated with the mainstream movement. So many of the holes in the literature owe to these temporal and geographic conventions that I have chosen to organize the section around them.

Temporal Silences

As a graduate student working on my dissertation, I had the great privilege of interviewing the civil rights activist Ella Baker about the origins of the movement. Relatively clueless on the topic myself, I opened the interview by peppering her with questions about events and trends in the early 1950s. She was very patient with me, but after 15–20 minutes, she gently suggested that if I really wanted to understand the origins of the mass movement in the 1950s, I would have to learn a lot more about the 1930s. She went on to give me a compelling crash course in the significance of that decade for what was to come later, emphasizing, among other things:

the symbolic importance of figures such as Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Joe Louis in communicating a new, if limited, sense of racial openness in American public life;

the faint stirrings of hope and political possibility embodied in FDRs “New Deal” for all Americans;

the radical vision of racial justice nurtured in certain corners of the labor movement, from the integrated Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union to the Union of Sleeping Car Porters, to the American Communist Party itself; and

the patient, strategic brilliance of Thurgood Marshall and others in the NAACP in devising the legal assault on “separate but equal” that would eventuate in the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board .

In truth there is research on all of these topics and, more generally, on the significance of the 1930s to prospects for racial change in the United States, but the vast majority of this work is disconnected from scholarship on the civil rights movement, more narrowly conceived. A reconsideration of the importance of the period for the full flowering of civil rights advocacy in the 1950s and 1960s is therefore very much in order.

An even more egregious temporal bias concerns the general failure of scholars to come to grips with the evolution of the movement following King’s death and especially during the critically important decade of the 1970s, when various forms of black activism—cultural as much as political—thrived and vied for attention. The canonical account of the movement as something that took place between Montgomery and King’s death ignores this later period, reflecting a safer, simpler, and altogether more acceptably idealized view of the civil rights struggle. In this account, the essential movement was the southern civil rights struggle, whose goals, tactics, and leaders most Americans are now prepared to comfortably embrace. But this account only works if we can credibly discount the later black power/nationalist movement as a relatively insignificant and ephemeral phenomenon that lasted but a few years and left no enduring legacy. But in an America marked—despite the election of an African-American president—by sharp and often antagonistic black/white cleavages in political and social views, aesthetic preferences, and stereotypes of the other, I would argue that the latter claim is demonstrably false. Indeed, in my view, the experience of race in the United States from, say, 1970 to the present bears the imprint, not so much of the ethos and aesthetic of the integrationist civil rights struggle, as the black power and cultural nationalist movements of the late 1960s/1970s.

The ignorance of this important period does not owe to a total lack of scholarship on the black power/cultural nationalist phase of the struggle. Though not large, there is a body of high quality research on the period ( Van Deburg 1992 ; Kelley 1994 ; Woodard 1999 ; Martin 2005 ). It is just that this scholarship has not received anywhere near as much attention as the canonical account sketched above. But if we are to ever fashion a complete account of the post-World War II African-American freedom struggle and its link to the contemporary black experience, we will have to remedy this imbalance.

Biases of Space, Place, and Geography

The standard account of the civil rights movement is as narrow and misleading with respect to the where of the struggle as the when. This account, as noted earlier, holds that the movement was for all intents and purposes a regional phenomenon, unfolding almost entirely in the states of the former Confederacy. And indeed, most of the iconic campaigns associated with the movement did occur there. That said, the sites of significant racial contention in this country are far more varied than the conventional account suggests. I want to call attention to three such sites that have been all but invisible in scholarship, each of which is critically important, in my view, to a full understanding of the African-American freedom struggle.

Racial Contention Outside the South

In the first section of this chapter, I noted the scant scholarship on civil rights activity outside of the South and called attention to Thomas Sugrue’s welcome book on what he terms “the forgotten struggle for civil rights in the North.” In his review of Sugrue’s book, Alan Wolfe (2008) underscores the importance of recovering this “forgotten” chapter in the history of the movement. As he writes, “Mention the civil rights movement and Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis spring to mind. Rarely do we recall Boston, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. But there was a civil rights movement in the North … and it is impossible to understand race relations today without pondering what we can learn from it.” In truth, there are really two “forgotten” movements here. The first is the struggle for civil rights in the North between 1940–60. This spans the period from the landmark, but woefully understudied, “March on Washington Movement” in 1941 through the well-known, but also little researched, sympathy demonstrations that took place in northern cities in support of the southern lunch counter sit-ins in the spring of 1960. In between these two end dates, there were any number of forgotten local movements in countless northern locales protesting segregated schools, restrictive housing covenants, police practices, and segregated pools and beaches, among other discriminatory practices.

The second, only slightly less forgotten, northern movement is the one that developed after the major southern civil rights campaigns had occurred. This “movement” included the “urban disorders” of the late 1960s, but also King’s abortive 1966 open housing campaign in the Chicago suburbs (but see McKersie 2013 , the wrenching Ocean-Hill-Brownsville school controversy in Brooklyn in 1968, and CORE’s blockade of the Tri-Borough Bridge timed to snarl traffic and disrupt the opening of the 1964 New York World’s Fair). But more than any of these, at the time, well publicized events, the hallmark of this later movement was the rise and fall of countless local black groups vying for attention and influence in a fluid and dangerous time marked by riots, the decline of the traditional civil rights organizations, political assassinations, “law and order” repression, and the rhetorical excesses of proponents of black power and/or cultural nationalism. Relative to the heyday of the southern movement between 1960 and 1965, we know next to nothing about this later period of northern racial contention.

The Movement Within Institutions

Geography is only one of the ways we can characterize the locus of civil rights activism. Consequential episodes of racial contention have also occurred (and indeed, continue to occur) within a wide range of American institutions. For the most part, this “march through the institutions” took place after the mass movement phase of the struggle, as the major institutions of American society struggled with the specific implications of the “civil rights revolution” for them. That much is clear. Unfortunately, this institutional phase of the struggle has been the object of very little systematic scholarship. So, for example, while William Bowen and Derek Bok (1998) , have explored the long term effects—both societal and individual—that followed from the nearly forty-year commitment of elite colleges and universities to racial diversity in undergraduate admissions, there is precious little scholarship on the institutional debates and processes that led to the commitment in the first place. At the same time these universities were rethinking their admissions goals, they were also the sites of contentious curricular battles over the establishment of the first generation of Black or African American Studies programs. Systematic scholarship on the institutional struggles that spawned these programs is virtually non-existent.

Similarly, while Lauren Edelman (1992) has written insightfully about how employers have actively shaped the interpretation of civil rights law governing employment discrimination through the specific workplace practices they have put in place, to my knowledge, we have no good empirical accounts of this contested process at the firm level. The same could be said for the episodes of contention that have reduced discrimination in housing markets, professional sports, broadcasting, the military, and a host of other institutional realms.

The Movement in International Perspective

Finally, relative to the mountain of work that has been produced on the movement in the United States, we have only a trickle of scholarship that seeks to place the struggle in any kind of international context. There are two exceptions here. The first is the small, but growing body of work—already cited—that situates and partially accounts for the rise of the movement in relation to the Cold War. The second is the relatively modest, but rich body of comparative work that seeks to understand the American experience of race in relation to its formation and evolution in other countries such as Brazil ( Hanchard 1994 ; Marx 1998 ; Seidman 1994 ; Winant 1994 , 2001 ), South Africa ( Marx 1998 ; Seidman 1994 , 1999 ; Winant 2001 ), and Cuba ( Sawyer 2006 ).

In at least two other respects, however, the international perspective on the civil rights struggle is seriously underdeveloped. The first concerns the foreign influences on the ideas and strategic practices that informed the U.S. struggle. It is, of course, commonplace for scholars of the movement to note Martin Luther King’s debt to Gandhi and the important inspiration afforded civil rights activists here by anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Careful, systematic scholarship documenting these influences, however, is another matter. The only serious study of the fascinating and extensive history of contact between Indian pacifists and U.S. civil rights activists of which I am aware is Sudarshan Kapur’s 1992 book, Raising Up a Profit: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi . Similarly, Penny Von Eschen’s 1997 book, Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937 – 1957 , stands out as the exemplary exception to the general neglect of the important civil rights/Africa connection.

Nor have scholars done any better job chronicling the singular impact that the African-American freedom struggle has exerted on other liberation struggles around the globe. During its civil rights heyday, the movement embodied an altogether conventional liberal, nineteenth-century notion of citizenship as that which is conferred by a sovereign nation-state. Initially black activists were merely petitioning the U.S. state for expanded rights as American citizens. By the late 1960s and ’70s, however, there were many within the movement who now rejected the legitimacy of American sovereignty, insisting that blacks—on the basis of shared racial identity—constituted a nation unto themselves. To say that such non-state based nationalist claims have become an important political force over the past thirty years is to state the obvious. And yet, the role of black nationalists in fashioning a basic template for articulating such claims has rarely been explored by scholars.

Miscellaneous Holes

While, to me, the most consequential silences in the study of the civil rights movement owe to the temporal and spatial/geographic limitations of the canonical account of the civil rights movement, there are a few other “holes” in the literature worth noting. In closing, I will touch on two.

White Resistance

I remain surprised by how little we know about white resistance to the civil rights movement, both in the South and elsewhere in the country. Of the major white supremacist groups only the Ku Klux Klan has come in for much study. And even this work has focused more on the zenith of Klan influence in the mid-1920s than the organization’s activities during the civil rights era ( McVeigh 2009 ; Chalmers 1987 ). And other than Neil McMillen’s 1971 book on the topic, we know next to nothing about the White Citizen Councils that sprang up in the wake of Brown v. Board to defend the southern way of life from the threat of the “second reconstruction.”

More important perhaps than the organizational face of white resistance are the community dynamics that sustained it. What was the range of southern white opinion on matters of race? Why did white moderates remain so resolutely silent during the heyday of the struggle? And when did their voices begin to compete with and ultimately drown out the more extreme racist views of the white supremacists? Sadly, no one has yet tried to answer these difficult but centrally important questions.

The Politics of Race

The final lacuna in the literature is the surprising lack of scholarship on what might be termed the institutional politics of race during the period in question. By this I mean research on the political battles—within the two parties, the White House, and especially Congress—that shaped the system’s response to the movement and led to this or that policy outcome. To be sure, scholars like Taylor Branch and David Garrow touch on these fights, but in general the volume of work on this topic pales in comparison to research on the movement itself. It is almost as if we credit the mass movement directly with the celebrated policy victories of the period. That the movement pressured presidents and congresses to act is undeniable, but how and why they acted owes to influences, interests, and personalities far beyond the movement. Alas, the institutional mediation of the struggle by politicians and policy makers remains largely unexplored. Among the exceptions to this generalization would be the books by Thomas and Mary Edsall (1991) , McAdam and Kloos (2014) , and Skrentny (2002) .

For all the work that has been done on the movement, then, there are no shortages of holes to be filled, silences to be addressed, and biases to be overcome. Indeed, the sheer volume of work on the movement is as much a threat to understanding as an aid. By constructing the movement as the peak period of mass activism between 1955 and 1968, the great bulk of scholarship to date has obscured the broader temporal and geographic continuities touched on here. If I could sketch a program of “revisionist” scholarship on the movement to remedy this, I would orient that work to:

Scholarship that explores the temporal continuities reflected in Hall’s (2005 , 1235) conception of the “‘long civil rights movement’ that took root in the liberal and radical milieu of the late 1930s, was intimately tied to the ‘rise and fall of the New Deal Order,’ accelerated during World War II … and in the 1960s and 1970s inspired [political and cultural] movements that ‘defy any narrative of collapse.’”

A dramatic broadening of the geographic focus of research on the civil rights struggle, from much more work on localized racial contention in the North in the 1940s, 1950s, and beyond, to scholarship on the complex, reciprocal influences between the movement and activists elsewhere in the world.

Much more attention to how the struggle has been waged and continues to be waged in a host of institutional settings, including schools, firms, and political institutions.

And finally, a significant increase in research on the dynamics of white resistance to the civil rights movement.

Let the conversation continue.

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