essay on american civil rights movement

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 14, 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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Abolitionism to Jim Crow

• Du Bois to Brown
• Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act
• From Black power to the assassination of Martin Luther King
• Into the 21st century
• Black Lives Matter and Shelby County v. Holder

When did the American civil rights movement start?

• What did Martin Luther King, Jr., do?
• What is Martin Luther King, Jr., known for?
• Who did Martin Luther King, Jr., influence and in what ways?
• What was Martin Luther King’s family life like?

American civil rights movement

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• Table Of Contents

The American civil rights movement started in the mid-1950s. A major catalyst in the push for civil rights was in December 1955, when NAACP activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man.

Who were some key figures of the American civil rights movement?

Martin Luther King, Jr. , was an important leader of the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks , who refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white customer, was also important. John Lewis , a civil rights leader and politician, helped plan the March on Washington .

What did the American civil rights movement accomplish?

The American civil rights movement broke the entrenched system of racial segregation in the South and achieved crucial equal-rights legislation.

What were some major events during the American civil rights movement?

The Montgomery bus boycott , sparked by activist Rosa Parks , was an important catalyst for the civil rights movement. Other important protests and demonstrations included the Greensboro sit-in and the Freedom Rides .

What are some examples of civil rights?

Examples of civil rights include the right to vote, the right to a fair trial, the right to government services, the right to a public education, and the right to use public facilities.

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American civil rights movement , mass protest movement against racial segregation and discrimination in the southern United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. This movement had its roots in the centuries-long efforts of enslaved Africans and their descendants to resist racial oppression and abolish the institution of slavery . Although enslaved people were emancipated as a result of the American Civil War and were then granted basic civil rights through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution , struggles to secure federal protection of these rights continued during the next century. Through nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s broke the pattern of public facilities’ being segregated by “race” in the South and achieved the most important breakthrough in equal-rights legislation for African Americans since the Reconstruction period (1865–77). Although the passage in 1964 and 1965 of major civil rights legislation was victorious for the movement, by then militant Black activists had begun to see their struggle as a freedom or liberation movement not just seeking civil rights reforms but instead confronting the enduring economic, political, and cultural consequences of past racial oppression.

(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Britannica essay on “Monuments of Hope.”)

American history has been marked by persistent and determined efforts to expand the scope and inclusiveness of civil rights. Although equal rights for all were affirmed in the founding documents of the United States, many of the new country’s inhabitants were denied essential rights. Enslaved Africans and indentured servants did not have the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that British colonists asserted to justify their Declaration of Independence . Nor were they included among the “People of the United States” who established the Constitution in order to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Instead, the Constitution protected slavery by allowing the importation of enslaved persons until 1808 and providing for the return of enslaved people who had escaped to other states.

As the United States expanded its boundaries, Native American peoples resisted conquest and absorption. Individual states, which determined most of the rights of American citizens , generally limited voting rights to white property-owning males, and other rights—such as the right to own land or serve on juries—were often denied on the basis of racial or gender distinctions. A small proportion of Black Americans lived outside the slave system, but those so-called “free Blacks” endured racial discrimination and enforced segregation . Although some enslaved persons violently rebelled against their enslavement ( see slave rebellions ), African Americans and other subordinated groups mainly used nonviolent means—protests, legal challenges, pleas and petitions addressed to government officials, as well as sustained and massive civil rights movements—to achieve gradual improvements in their status.

During the first half of the 19th century, movements to extend voting rights to non-property-owning white male labourers resulted in the elimination of most property qualifications for voting, but this expansion of suffrage was accompanied by brutal suppression of American Indians and increasing restrictions on free Blacks. Owners of enslaved people in the South reacted to the 1831 Nat Turner slave revolt in Virginia by passing laws to discourage antislavery activism and prevent the teaching of enslaved people to read and write. Despite this repression, a growing number of Black Americans freed themselves from slavery by escaping or negotiating agreements to purchase their freedom through wage labour. By the 1830s, free Black communities in the Northern states had become sufficiently large and organized to hold regular national conventions, where Black leaders gathered to discuss alternative strategies of racial advancement. In 1833 a small minority of whites joined with Black antislavery activists to form the American Anti-Slavery Society under the leadership of William Lloyd Garrison .

Frederick Douglass became the most famous of the formerly enslaved persons who joined the abolition movement . His autobiography—one of many slave narratives —and his stirring orations heightened public awareness of the horrors of slavery. Although Black leaders became increasingly militant in their attacks against slavery and other forms of racial oppression, their efforts to secure equal rights received a major setback in 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected African American citizenship claims. The Dred Scott decision stated that the country’s founders had viewed Blacks as so inferior that they had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” This ruling—by declaring unconstitutional the Missouri Compromise (1820), through which Congress had limited the expansion of slavery into western territories—ironically strengthened the antislavery movement, because it angered many whites who did not hold enslaved people. The inability of the country’s political leaders to resolve that dispute fueled the successful presidential campaign of Abraham Lincoln , the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party . Lincoln’s victory in turn prompted the Southern slave states to secede and form the Confederate States of America in 1860–61.

Although Lincoln did not initially seek to abolish slavery, his determination to punish the rebellious states and his increasing reliance on Black soldiers in the Union army prompted him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) to deprive the Confederacy of its enslaved property . After the American Civil War ended, Republican leaders cemented the Union victory by gaining the ratification of constitutional amendments to abolish slavery ( Thirteenth Amendment ) and to protect the legal equality of formerly enslaved persons ( Fourteenth Amendment ) and the voting rights of male ex-slaves ( Fifteenth Amendment ). Despite those constitutional guarantees of rights, almost a century of civil rights agitation and litigation would be required to bring about consistent federal enforcement of those rights in the former Confederate states. Moreover, after federal military forces were removed from the South at the end of Reconstruction , white leaders in the region enacted new laws to strengthen the “ Jim Crow ” system of racial segregation and discrimination. In its Plessy v. Ferguson decision (1896), the Supreme Court ruled that “ separate but equal ” facilities for African Americans did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment , ignoring evidence that the facilities for Blacks were inferior to those intended for whites.

The Southern system of white supremacy was accompanied by the expansion of European and American imperial control over nonwhite people in Africa and Asia as well as in island countries of the Pacific and Caribbean regions. Like African Americans, most nonwhite people throughout the world were colonized or economically exploited and denied basic rights, such as the right to vote . With few exceptions, women of all races everywhere were also denied suffrage rights ( see woman suffrage ).

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The Civil Rights Movement

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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.

Kenneth R. Janken
Professor, Department of African and Afro-American Studies and
Director of Experiential Education, Office of Undergraduate Curricula
University of North Carolina
National Humanities Center Fellow
©National Humanities Center

When most Americans think of the Civil Rights Movement, they have in mind a span of time beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision in , which outlawed segregated education, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott and culminated in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The movement encompassed both ad hoc local groups and established organizations like the

The drama of the mid-twentieth century emerged on a foundation of earlier struggles. Two are particularly notable: the NAACP’s campaign against lynching, and the NAACP’s legal campaign against segregated education, which culminated in the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision.

The NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s combined widespread publicity about the causes and costs of lynching, a successful drive to defeat Supreme Court nominee John J. Parker for his white supremacist and anti-union views and then defeat senators who voted for confirmation, and a skillful effort to lobby Congress and the Roosevelt administration to pass a federal anti-lynching law. Southern senators filibustered, but they could not prevent the formation of a national consensus against lynching; by 1938 the number of lynchings declined steeply. Other organizations, such as the left-wing National Negro Congress, fought lynching, too, but the NAACP emerged from the campaign as the most influential civil rights organization in national politics and maintained that position through the mid-1950s.

Houston was unabashed: lawyers were either social engineers or they were parasites. He desired equal access to education, but he also was concerned with the type of society blacks were trying to integrate. He was among those who surveyed American society and saw racial inequality and the ruling powers that promoted racism to divide black workers from white workers. Because he believed that racial violence in Depression-era America was so pervasive as to make mass direct action untenable, he emphasized the redress of grievances through the courts.

The designers of the Brown strategy developed a potent combination of gradualism in legal matters and advocacy of far-reaching change in other political arenas. Through the 1930s and much of the 1940s, the NAACP initiated suits that dismantled aspects of the edifice of segregated education, each building on the precedent of the previous one. Not until the late 1940s did the NAACP believe it politically feasible to challenge directly the constitutionality of “separate but equal” education itself. Concurrently, civil rights organizations backed efforts to radically alter the balance of power between employers and workers in the United States. They paid special attention to forming an alliance with organized labor, whose history of racial exclusion angered blacks. In the 1930s, the National Negro Congress brought blacks into the newly formed United Steel Workers, and the union paid attention to the particular demands of African Americans. The NAACP assisted the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest black labor organization of its day. In the 1940s, the United Auto Workers, with NAACP encouragement, made overtures to black workers. The NAACP’s successful fight against the Democratic white primary in the South was more than a bid for inclusion; it was a stiff challenge to what was in fact a regional one-party dictatorship. Recognizing the interdependence of domestic and foreign affairs, the NAACP’s program in the 1920s and 1930s promoted solidarity with Haitians who were trying to end the American military occupation and with colonized blacks elsewhere in the Caribbean and in Africa. African Americans’ support for WWII and the battle against the Master Race ideology abroad was matched by equal determination to eradicate it in America, too. In the post-war years blacks supported the decolonization of Africa and Asia.

The Cold War and McCarthyism put a hold on such expansive conceptions of civil/human rights. Critics of our domestic and foreign policies who exceeded narrowly defined boundaries were labeled un-American and thus sequestered from Americans’ consciousness. In a supreme irony, the Supreme Court rendered the Brown decision and then the government suppressed the very critique of American society that animated many of Brown ’s architects.

White southern resistance to Brown was formidable and the slow pace of change stimulated impatience especially among younger African Americans as the 1960s began. They concluded that they could not wait for change—they had to make it. And the Montgomery Bus Boycott , which lasted the entire year of 1956, had demonstrated that mass direct action could indeed work. The four college students from Greensboro who sat at the Woolworth lunch counter set off a decade of activity and organizing that would kill Jim Crow.

Elimination of segregation in public accommodations and the removal of “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs was no mean feat. Yet from the very first sit-in, Ella Baker , the grassroots leader whose activism dated from the 1930s and who was advisor to the students who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pointed out that the struggle was “concerned with something much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke.” Far more was at stake for these activists than changing the hearts of whites. When the sit-ins swept Atlanta in 1960, protesters’ demands included jobs, health care, reform of the police and criminal justice system, education, and the vote. (See: “An Appeal for Human Rights.” ) Demonstrations in Birmingham in 1963 under the leadership of Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was affiliated with the SCLC, demanded not only an end to segregation in downtown stores but also jobs for African Americans in those businesses and municipal government. The 1963 March on Washington, most often remembered as the event at which Dr. King proclaimed his dream, was a demonstration for “Jobs and Justice.”

Movement activists from SNCC and CORE asked sharp questions about the exclusive nature of American democracy and advocated solutions to the disfranchisement and violation of the human rights of African Americans, including Dr. King’s nonviolent populism, Robert Williams’ “armed self-reliance,” and Malcolm X’s incisive critiques of worldwide white supremacy, among others. (See: Dr. King, “Where Do We Go from Here?” ; Robert F. Williams, “Negroes with Guns” ; and Malcolm X, “Not just an American problem, but a world problem.” ) What they proposed was breathtakingly radical, especially in light of today’s political discourse and the simplistic ways it prefers to remember the freedom struggle. King called for a guaranteed annual income, redistribution of the national wealth to meet human needs, and an end to a war to colonize the Vietnamese. Malcolm X proposed to internationalize the black American freedom struggle and to link it with liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Thus the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was not concerned exclusively with interracial cooperation or segregation and discrimination as a character issue. Rather, as in earlier decades, the prize was a redefinition of American society and a redistribution of social and economic power.

Guiding Student Discussion

Students discussing the Civil Rights Movement will often direct their attention to individuals’ motives. For example, they will question whether President Kennedy sincerely believed in racial equality when he supported civil rights or only did so out of political expediency. Or they may ask how whites could be so cruel as to attack peaceful and dignified demonstrators. They may also express awe at Martin Luther King’s forbearance and calls for integration while showing discomfort with Black Power’s separatism and proclamations of self-defense. But a focus on the character and moral fiber of leading individuals overlooks the movement’s attempts to change the ways in which political, social, and economic power are exercised. Leading productive discussions that consider broader issues will likely have to involve debunking some conventional wisdom about the Civil Rights Movement. Guiding students to discuss the extent to which nonviolence and racial integration were considered within the movement to be hallowed goals can lead them to greater insights.

Nonviolence and passive resistance were prominent tactics of protesters and organizations. (See: SNCC Statement of Purpose and Jo Ann Gibson Robinson’s memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It. ) But they were not the only ones, and the number of protesters who were ideologically committed to them was relatively small. Although the name of one of the important civil rights organizations was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, its members soon concluded that advocating nonviolence as a principle was irrelevant to most African Americans they were trying to reach. Movement participants in Mississippi, for example, did not decide beforehand to engage in violence, but self-defense was simply considered common sense. If some SNCC members in Mississippi were convinced pacifists in the face of escalating violence, they nevertheless enjoyed the protection of local people who shared their goals but were not yet ready to beat their swords into ploughshares.

Armed self-defense had been an essential component of the black freedom struggle, and it was not confined to the fringe. Returning soldiers fought back against white mobs during the Red Summer of 1919. In 1946, World War Two veterans likewise protected black communities in places like Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a bloody race riot. Their self-defense undoubtedly brought national attention to the oppressive conditions of African Americans; the NAACP’s nationwide campaign prompted President Truman to appoint a civil rights commission that produced To Secure These Rights , a landmark report that called for the elimination of segregation. Army veteran Robert F. Williams, who was a proponent of what he called “armed self-reliance,” headed a thriving branch of the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina, in the early 1950s. The poet Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” dramatically captures the spirit of self-defense and violence.

Often, deciding whether violence is “good” or “bad,” necessary or ill-conceived depends on one’s perspective and which point of view runs through history books. Students should be encouraged to consider why activists may have considered violence a necessary part of their work and what role it played in their overall programs. Are violence and nonviolence necessarily antithetical, or can they be complementary? For example the Black Panther Party may be best remembered by images of members clad in leather and carrying rifles, but they also challenged widespread police brutality, advocated reform of the criminal justice system, and established community survival programs, including medical clinics, schools, and their signature breakfast program. One question that can lead to an extended discussion is to ask students what the difference is between people who rioted in the 1960s and advocated violence and the participants in the Boston Tea Party at the outset of the American Revolution. Both groups wanted out from oppression, both saw that violence could be efficacious, and both were excoriated by the rulers of their day. Teachers and students can then explore reasons why those Boston hooligans are celebrated in American history and whether the same standards should be applied to those who used arms in the 1960s.

An important goal of the Civil Rights Movement was the elimination of segregation. But if students, who are now a generation or more removed from Jim Crow, are asked to define segregation, they are likely to point out examples of individual racial separation such as blacks and whites eating at different cafeteria tables and the existence of black and white houses of worship. Like most of our political leaders and public opinion, they place King’s injunction to judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin exclusively in the context of personal relationships and interactions. Yet segregation was a social, political, and economic system that placed African Americans in an inferior position, disfranchised them, and was enforced by custom, law, and official and vigilante violence.

The discussion of segregation should be expanded beyond expressions of personal preferences. One way to do this is to distinguish between black and white students hanging out in different parts of a school and a law mandating racially separate schools, or between black and white students eating separately and a laws or customs excluding African Americans from restaurants and other public facilities. Put another way, the civil rights movement was not fought merely to ensure that students of different backgrounds could become acquainted with each other. The goal of an integrated and multicultural America is not achieved simply by proximity. Schools, the economy, and other social institutions needed to be reformed to meet the needs for all. This was the larger and widely understood meaning of the goal of ending Jim Crow, and it is argued forcefully by James Farmer in “Integration or Desegregation.”

A guided discussion should point out that many of the approaches to ending segregation did not embrace integration or assimilation, and students should become aware of the appeal of separatism. W. E. B. Du Bois believed in what is today called multiculturalism. But by the mid-1930s he concluded that the Great Depression, virulent racism, and the unreliability of white progressive reformers who had previously expressed sympathy for civil rights rendered an integrated America a distant dream. In an important article, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” Du Bois argued for the strengthening of black pride and the fortification of separate black schools and other important institutions. Black communities across the country were in severe distress; it was counterproductive, he argued, to sacrifice black schoolchildren at the altar of integration and to get them into previously all-white schools, where they would be shunned and worse. It was far better to invest in strengthening black-controlled education to meet black communities’ needs. If, in the future, integration became a possibility, African Americans would be positioned to enter that new arrangement on equal terms. Du Bois’ argument found echoes in the 1960s writing of Stokely Carmichael ( “Toward Black Liberation” ) and Malcolm X ( “The Ballot or the Bullet” ).

Scholars Debate

Any brief discussion of historical literature on the Civil Rights Movement is bound to be incomplete. The books offered—a biography, a study of the black freedom struggle in Memphis, a brief study of the Brown decision, and a debate over the unfolding of the movement—were selected for their accessibility variety, and usefulness to teaching, as well as the soundness of their scholarship.

Walter White: Mr. NAACP , by Kenneth Robert Janken, is a biography of one of the most well known civil rights figure of the first half of the twentieth century. White made a name for himself as the NAACP’s risk-taking investigator of lynchings, riots, and other racial violence in the years after World War I. He was a formidable persuader and was influential in the halls of power, counting Eleanor Roosevelt, senators, representatives, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, union leaders, Hollywood moguls, and diplomats among his circle of friends. His style of work depended upon rallying enlightened elites, and he favored a placing effort into developing a civil rights bureaucracy over local and mass-oriented organizations. Walter White was an expert in the practice of “brokerage politics”: During decades when the majority of African Americans were legally disfranchised, White led the organization that gave them an effective voice, representing them and interpreting their demands and desires (as he understood them) to those in power. Two examples of this were highlighted in the first part of this essay: the anti-lynching crusade, and the lobbying of President Truman, which resulted in To Secure These Rights . A third example is his essential role in producing Marian Anderson’s iconic 1939 Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which drew the avid support of President Roosevelt and members of his administration, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. His style of leadership was, before the emergence of direct mass action in the years after White’s death in 1955, the dominant one in the Civil Rights Movement.

There are many excellent books that study the development of the Civil Rights Movement in one locality or state. An excellent addition to the collection of local studies is Battling the Plantation Mentality , by Laurie B. Green, which focuses on Memphis and the surrounding rural areas of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi between the late 1930s and 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated there. Like the best of the local studies, this book presents an expanded definition of civil rights that encompasses not only desegregation of public facilities and the attainment of legal rights but also economic and political equality. Central to this were efforts by African Americans to define themselves and shake off the cultural impositions and mores of Jim Crow. During WWII, unionized black men went on strike in the defense industry to upgrade their job classifications. Part of their grievances revolved around wages and working conditions, but black workers took issue, too, with employers’ and the government’s reasoning that only low status jobs were open to blacks because they were less intelligent and capable. In 1955, six black female employees at a white-owned restaurant objected to the owner’s new method of attracting customers as degrading and redolent of the plantation: placing one of them outside dressed as a mammy doll to ring a dinner bell. When the workers tried to walk off the job, the owner had them arrested, which gave rise to local protest. In 1960, black Memphis activists helped support black sharecroppers in surrounding counties who were evicted from their homes when they initiated voter registration drives. The 1968 sanitation workers strike mushroomed into a mass community protest both because of wage issues and the strikers’ determination to break the perception of their being dependent, epitomized in their slogan “I Am a Man.” This book also shows that not everyone was able to cast off the plantation mentality, as black workers and energetic students at LeMoyne College confronted established black leaders whose positions and status depended on white elites’ sufferance.

Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents , edited by Waldo E. Martin, Jr., contains an insightful 40-page essay that places both the NAACP’s legal strategy and 1954 Brown decision in multiple contexts, including alternate approaches to incorporating African American citizens into the American nation, and the impact of World War II and the Cold War on the road to Brown . The accompanying documents affirm the longstanding black freedom struggle, including demands for integrated schools in Boston in 1849, continuing with protests against the separate but equal ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896, and important items from the NAACP’s cases leading up to Brown . The documents are prefaced by detailed head notes and provocative discussion questions.

Debating the Civil Rights Movement , by Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, is likewise focused on instruction and discussion. This essay has largely focused on the development of the Civil Rights Movement from the standpoint of African American resistance to segregation and the formation organizations to fight for racial, economic, social, and political equality. One area it does not explore is how the federal government helped to shape the movement. Steven Lawson traces the federal response to African Americans’ demands for civil rights and concludes that it was legislation, judicial decisions, and executive actions between 1945 and 1968 that was most responsible for the nation’s advance toward racial equality. Charles Payne vigorously disagrees, focusing instead on the protracted grassroots organizing as the motive force for whatever incomplete change occurred during those years. Each essay runs about forty pages, followed by smart selections of documents that support their cases.

Kenneth R. Janken is Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and Director of Experiential Education, Office of Undergraduate Curricula at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP and Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual . He was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2000-01.

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To cite this essay: Janken, Kenneth R. “The Civil Rights Movement: 1919-1960s.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. DATE YOU ACCESSED ESSAY. <https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm>

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In many respects, the civil rights movement was a great success. Successive, targeted campaigns of non-violent direct action chipped away at the racist power structures that proliferated across the southern United States. Newsworthy protests captured media attention and elicited sympathy across the nation. Though Martin Luther King Jr.’s charismatic leadership was important, we should not forget that the civil rights cause depended on a mass movement. As the former SNCC member Diane Nash recalled, it was a ‘people’s movement’, fuelled by grass-roots activism (Nash, 1985). Recognising a change in the public mood, Lyndon Johnson swiftly addressed many of the racial inequalities highlighted by the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to meaningful change in the lives of many Black Americans, dismantling systems of segregation and black disenfranchisement.

In other respects, the civil rights movement was less revolutionary. It did not fundamentally restructure American society, nor did it end racial discrimination. In the economic sphere, in particular, there was still much work to be done. Across the nation, and especially in northern cities, stark racial inequalities were commonplace, especially in terms of access to jobs and housing. As civil rights activists became frustrated by their lack of progress in these areas, the movement began to splinter towards the end of the 1960s, with many Black activists embracing violent methods. Over the subsequent decades, racial inequalities have persisted, and in recent years police brutality against Black Americans, in particular, has become an urgent issue. As the protests triggered by the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 have demonstrated, many of the battles of the 1960s are still being fought.

Though King and other members of the civil rights movement failed to achieve their broader goals, there can be no doubting their radical ambitions. As Wornie Reed, who worked on the Poor People’s Campaign, explains in this interview, King was undoubtedly a ‘radical’ activist, even if the civil rights movement itself never resulted in a far-reaching social revolution.

Transcript: Video 4: Wornie Reed

This free course is an adapted extract from the Open University course A113 Revolutions [ Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. ( Hide tip ) ] . It is one of four OpenLearn courses exploring the notion of the Sixties as a ‘revolutionary’ period. Learn more about these OpenLearn courses here .

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!

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June 15, 2024

published by phi beta kappa

Print or web publication, the civil rights movement: what good was it.

Read Alice Walker’s first published essay, which won first place in our 1967 essay contest

In 1967, Alice Walker—then a 23-year-old unknown—won $300 and first place in our national essay contest. The piece led to a writing fellowship at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, and offers a rare glimpse at the early writing of one of America’s literary icons.

Someone said recently to an old black lady from Mississippi, whose legs had been badly mangled by local police who arrested her for “disturbing the peace,” that the civil rights movement was dead, and asked, since it was dead, what she thought about it. The old lady replied, hobbling out of his presence on her cane, that the civil rights movement was like herself, “if it’s dead, it shore ain’t ready to lay down!”

This old lady is a legendary freedom fighter in her small town in the Delta. She has been severely mistreated for insisting on her rights as an American citizen. She has been beaten for singing movement songs, placed in solitary confinement in prisons for talking about freedom, and placed on bread and water for praying aloud to God for her jailers’ deliverance. For such a woman the civil rights movement will never be over as long as her skin is black. It also will never be over for twenty million others with the same “affliction,” for whom the movement can never “lay down,” no matter how it is killed by the press and made dead and buried by the white American public. As long as one black American survives, the struggle for equality with other Americans must also survive. This is a debt we owe to those blameless hostages we leave to the future, our children.

Still, white liberals and deserting civil rights sponsors are quick to justify their disaffection from the movement by claiming that it is all over. “And since it is over,” they will ask, “would someone kindly tell me what has been gained by it?” They then list statistics supposedly showing how much more advanced segregation is now than ten years ago—in schools, housing, jobs. They point to a gain in conservative politicians during the last few years. They speak of ghetto riots and of the recent survey that shows that most policemen are admittedly too anti-Negro to do their jobs in ghetto areas fairly and effectively. They speak of every area that has been touched by the civil rights movement as somehow or other going to pieces.

They rarely talk, however, about human attitudes among Negroes that have undergone terrific changes just during the past seven to ten years (not to mention all those years when there was a movement and only the Negroes knew about it). They seldom speak of changes in personal lives because of the influence of people in the movement. They see general failure and few, if any, individual gains.

They do not understand what it is that keeps the movement from “laying down” and Negroes from reverting to their former silent second-class status. They have apparently never stopped to wonder why it is always the white man—on his radio and in his newspaper and on his television—who says that the movement is dead. If a Negro were audacious enough to make such a claim, his fellows might hanker to see him shot. The movement is dead to the white man because it no longer interests him. And it no longer interests him because he can afford to be uninterested: he does not have to live by it, with it, or for it, as Negroes must. He can take a rest from the news of beatings, killings and arrests that reach him from North and South—if his skin is white. Negroes cannot now and will never be able to take a rest from the injustices that plague them for they—not the white man—are the target.

Perhaps it is naïve to be thankful that the movement “saved” a large number of individuals and gave them something to live for, even if it did not provide them with everything they wanted. (Materially, it provided them with precious little that they wanted.) When a movement awakens people to the possibilities of life, it seems unfair to frustrate them by then denying what they had thought was offered. But what was offered? What was promised? What was it all about? What good did it do? Would it have been better, as some have suggested, to leave the Negro people as they were, unawakened, unallied with one another, unhopeful about what to expect for their children in some future world?

I do not think so. If knowledge of my condition is all the freedom I get from a “freedom movement,” it is better than unawareness, forgottenness and hopelessness, the existence that is like the existence of a beast. Man only truly lives by knowing, otherwise he simply performs, copying the daily habits of others, but conceiving nothing of his creative possibilities as a man, and accepting someone else’s superiority and his own misery.

When we are children, growing up in our parents’ care, we await the spark from the outside world. Sometimes our parents provide it—if we are lucky—sometimes it comes from another source far from home. We sit, paralyzed, surrounded by our anxiety and dread, hoping we will not have to grow up into the narrow world and ways we see about us. We are hungry for a life that turns us on; we yearn for a knowledge of living that will save us from our innocuous lives that resemble death. We look for signs in every strange event; we search for heroes in every unknown face.

It was just six years ago that I began to be alive. I had, of course, been living before—for I am now twenty-three—but I did not really know it. And I did not know it because nobody told me that I—a pensive, yearning, typical high-school senior, but Negro—existed in the minds of others as I existed in my own. Until that time my mind was locked apart from the outer contours and complexion of my body as if it and the body were strangers. The mind possessed both thought and spirit—I wanted to be an author or a scientist—which the color of the body denied. I had never seen myself and existed as a statistic exists, or as a phantom. In the white world I walked, less real to them than a shadow; and being young and well-hidden among the slums, among people who also did not exist—either in books or in films or in the government of their own lives—I waited to be called to life. And, by a miracle, I was called.

There was a commotion in our house that night in 1960. We had managed to buy our first television set. It was battered and overpriced, but my mother had gotten used to watching the afternoon soap operas at the house where she worked as maid, and nothing could satisfy her on days when she did not work but a continuation of her “stories.” So she pinched pennies and bought a set.

I remained listless throughout her “stories,” tales of pregnancy, abortion, hypocrisy, infidelity and alcoholism. All these men and women were white and lived in houses with servants, long staircases that they floated down, patios where liquor was served four times a day to “relax” them. But my mother, with her swollen feet eased out of her shoes, her heavy body relaxed in our only comfortable chair, watched each movement of the smartly coiffed women, heard each word, pounced upon each innuendo and inflection, and for the duration of these “stories” she saw herself as one of them. She placed herself in every scene she saw, with her braided hair turned blonde, her two hundred pounds compressed into a sleek size seven dress, her rough dark skin smooth and white. Her husband became dark and handsome, talented, witty, urbane, charming. And when she turned to look at my father sitting near her in his sweat shirt with his smelly feet raised on the bed to “air,” there was always a tragic look of surprise on her face. Then she would sigh and go out to the kitchen looking lost and unsure of herself. My mother, a truly great woman—who raised eight children of her own and half a dozen of the neighbors’ without a single complaint—was convinced that she did not exist compared to “them.” She subordinated her soul to theirs and became a faithful and timid supporter of the “Beautiful White People.” Once she asked me, in a moment of vicarious pride and despair, if I didn’t think that “they” were “jest naturally smarter, prettier, better.” My mother asked this; a woman who never got rid of any of her children, never cheated on my father, was never a hypocrite if she could help it, and never even tasted liquor. She could not even bring herself to blame “them” for making her believe what they wanted her to believe: that if she could not look like them, think like them, be sophisticated and corrupt-for-comfort’s-sake like them, she was a nobody. Black was not a color on my mother, it was a shield that made her invisible. The heart that beat out its life in the great shadow cast by the American white people never knew that it was really “good.”

Of course, the people who wrote the soap opera scripts always made the Negro maids in them steadfast, trusty and wise in a home-remedial sort of way; but my mother, a maid for nearly forty years, never once identified herself with the scarcely glimpsed black servant’s face beneath the ruffled cap. Like everyone else, in her daydreams at least, she thought she was free.

Six years ago, after half-heartedly watching my mother’s soap operas and wondering whether there wasn’t something more to be asked of life, the civil rights movement came into my life. Like a good omen for the future, the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was the first black face I saw on our new television screen. And, as in a fairy tale, my soul was stirred by the meaning for me of his mission—at the time he was being rather ignominiously dumped into a police van for having led a protest march in Alabama—and I fell in love with the sober and determined face of the movement. The singing of “We Shall Overcome”—that song betrayed by nonbelievers in it—rang for the first time in my ears. The influence that my mother’s soap operas might have had on me became impossible. The life of Dr. King, seeming bigger and more miraculous than the man himself, because of all he had done and suffered, offered a pattern of strength and sincerity I felt I could trust. He had suffered much because of his simple belief in nonviolence, love and brotherhood. Perhaps the majority of men could not be reached through these beliefs, but because Dr. King kept trying to reach them in spite of danger to himself and his family, I saw in him the hero for whom I had waited so long.

What Dr. King promised was not a ranch-style house and an acre of manicured lawn for every black man, but jail and finally freedom. He did not promise two cars for every family, but the courage one day for all families everywhere to walk without shame and unafraid on their own feet. He did not say that one day it will be us chasing perspective buyers out of our prosperous well-kept neighborhoods, or in other ways exhibiting our snobbery and ignorance as all other ethnic groups before us have done; what he said was that we had a right to live anywhere in this country we chose, and a right to a meaningful well-paying job to provide us with the upkeep of our homes. He did not say we had to become carbon copies of the white American middle-class; but he did say we had the right to become whatever we wanted to become.

Because of the movement, because of an awakened faith in the newness and imagination of the human spirit, because of “black and white together”—for the first time in our history in some human relationship on and off TV—because of the beatings, the arrests, the hell of battle during the past years, I have fought harder for my life and for a chance to be myself, to be something more than a shadow or a number, than I have ever done before in my life. Before there had seemed to be no real reason for struggling beyond the effort for daily bread. Now there was a chance at that other that Jesus meant when He said we could not live by bread alone.

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing. It has been like being born again, literally. Just “knowing” has meant everything to me. Knowing has pushed me out into the world, into college, into places, into people.

Part of what existence means to me is knowing the difference between what I am now and what I was then. It is being capable of looking after myself intellectually as well as financially. It is being able to tell when I am being wronged and by whom. It means being awake to protect myself and the ones I love. It means being a part of the world community, and being alert to which part it is that I have joined, and knowing how to change to another part if that part does not suit me. To know is to exist; to exist is to be involved, to move about, to see the world with my own eyes. This, at least, the movement has given me.

The hippies and other nihilists would have me believe that it is all the same whether the people in Mississippi have a movement behind them or not. Once they have their rights, they say, they will run all over themselves trying to be just like everybody else. They will be well-fed, complacent about things of the spirit, emotionless, and without that marvelous humanity and “soul” that the movement has seen them practice time and time again. What has the movement done, they ask, with the few people it has supposedly helped? Got them white-collar jobs, moved them into standardized ranch houses in white neighborhoods, given them intellectual accents to go with their nondescript gray flannel suits? “What are these people now?” they ask. And then they answer themselves, “Nothings!”

I would find this reasoning—which I have heard many, many times, from hippies and nonhippies alike—amusing, if I did not also consider it serious. For I think it is a delusion, a copout, an excuse to disassociate themselves from a world in which they feel too little has been changed or gained. The real question, however, it appears to me, is not whether poor people will adopt the middle-class mentality once they are well-fed, rather, it is whether they will ever be well-fed enough to be able to choose whatever mentality they think will suit them. The lack of a movement did not keep my mother from wishing herself bourgeois in her daydreams.

There is widespread starvation in Mississippi. In my own state of Georgia there are more hungry families than Lester Maddox would like to admit—or even see fed. I went to school with children who ate red dirt. The movement has prodded and pushed some liberal senators into pressuring the government for food so that the hungry may eat. Food stamps that were two dollars and out of the reach of many families not long ago have been reduced to fifty cents. The price is still out of the reach of some families, and the government, it seems to a lot of people, could spare enough free food to feed its own people. It angers people in the movement that it does not; they point to the billions in wheat we send free each year to countries abroad. Their government’s slowness while people are hungry, its unwillingness to believe that there are Americans starving, its stingy cutting of the price of food stamps, make many civil rights workers throw up their hands in disgust. But they do not give up. They do not withdraw into the world of psychedelia. They apply what pressure they can to make the government give away food to hungry people. They do not plan so far ahead in their disillusionment with society that they can see these starving families buying identical ranch-style houses and sending their snobbish children to Bryn Mawr and Yale. They take first things first and try to get them fed.

They do not consider it their business, in any case, to say what kind of life the people they help must lead. How one lives is, after all, one of the rights left to the individual—when and if he has opportunity to choose. It is not the prerogative of the middle-class to determine what is worthy of aspiration.

There is also every possibility that the middle-class people of tomorrow will turn out ever so much better than those of today. I even know some middle-class people of today who are not all bad. Often, thank God, what monkey sees, monkey avoids doing at all costs. So it may be, concerning what is deepest in him, with the Negro.

I think there are so few Negro hippies today because middle-class Negroes, although well-fed, are not careless. They are required by the treacherous world they live in to be clearly aware of whoever or whatever might be trying to do them in. They are middle-class in money and position, but they cannot afford to be middle-class in complacency. They distrust the hippie movement because they know that it can do nothing for Negroes as a group but “love” them, which is what all paternalists claim to do. And since the only way Negroes can survive (which they cannot do, unfortunately, on love alone) is with the support of the group, they are wisely wary and stay away.

A white writer tried recently to explain that the reason for the relatively few Negro hippies is that Negroes have built up a “super-cool” that cracks under LSD and makes them have a “bad trip.” What this writer doesn’t guess at is that Negroes are needing drugs less than ever these days for any kind of trip. While the hippies are “tripping,” Negroes are going after power, which is so much more important to their survival and their children’s survival than LSD and pot.

Everyone would be surprised if the Israelis ignored the Arabs and took up “tripping” and pot smoking. In this country we are the Israelis. Everybody who can do so would like to forget this, of course. But for us to forget it for a minute would be fatal. “We Shall Overcome” is just a song to most Americans, but we must do it. Or die.

What good was the civil rights movement? If it had just given this country Dr. King, a leader of conscience for once in our lifetime, it would have been enough. If it had just taken black eyes off white television stories, it would have been enough. If it had fed one starving child, it would have been enough.

If the civil rights movement is “dead,” and if it gave us nothing else, it gave us each other forever. It gave some of us bread, some of us shelter, some of us knowledge and pride, all of us comfort. It gave us our children, our husbands, our brothers, our fathers, as men reborn and with a purpose for living. It broke the pattern of black servitude in this country. It shattered the phony “promise” of white soap operas that sucked away so many pitiful lives. It gave us history and men far greater than Presidents. It gave us heroes, selfless men of courage and strength, for our little boys to follow. It gave us hope for tomorrow. It called us to life.

Because we live, it can never die.

Alice Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and activist. Her novel The Color Purple won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Voices of Resilience: Maya Angelou and The Civil Rights Movement

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The civil rights movement timeline, 1905-1975.

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Civil Rights in America: A Resource Guide

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The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of primary source materials related to civil rights, including photographs, documents, and webcasts. Provided below is a link to the home page for each relevant digital collection along with selected highlights.

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Written materials in the Library's digital collections include books, government documents, manuscripts, and sheet music. Examples of written materials related to civil rights are provided for most of the collections listed below.

African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection

"African American Perspectives" gives a panoramic and eclectic review of African American history and culture and is primarily comprised of two collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division: the African American Pamphlet Collection and the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection with a date range of 1822 through 1909. Most were written by African-American authors, though some were written by others on topics of particular importance in African-American history. Browse the collection by subject to locate more than thirty items pertaining to civil rights .

• View the African American Perspectives: Materials Selected from the Rare Book Collection

A selection of highlights from this collection includes:

• Equality before the law protected by national statute Summary: Speeches and debates by and involving Sumner in the Senate as he proposed to amend the 1866 Civil Rights Act to ensure equal rights to African Americans in the South. Sumner discusses race, the separate but equal doctrine, slavery, and citizenship in making his points with southern Senators.
• Rights of the coloured race to citizenship and representation; and the guilt and consequences of legislation against them: a discourse delivered in the Hall of Representatives of the United States, in Washington, D.C., May 29, 1864
• The Alfred Whital Stern Collection of Lincolniana

The collection contains more than 11,100 items. This online release presents more than 1,300 items with more than 4,000 images and a date range of 1824-1931. It includes the complete collection of Stern's contemporary newspapers, Lincoln's law papers, sheet music, broadsides, prints, cartoons, maps, drawings, letters, campaign tickets, and other ephemeral items. The books and pamphlets in this collection are scheduled for digitization at a later date. The collection contains more than ten items on pertaining to civil rights .

• Emancipation. And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves … shall be free!
• The freedman's lament: song and chorus words and music by M.B. Ladd; arranged for the piano forte by Mrs. E.A. Parkhurst

A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875

The collection consists of a linked set of published congressional records of the United States of America from the Continental Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875. Search this collection, using the phrase "civil rights," to locate items related to civil rights.

• View A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1875 Collection

Selected highlight from this collection:

• A Bill Extending the provisions of the civil rights bill for the enforcement of the fifteenth amendment of the Constitution

The Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress

The collection presents the papers of the nineteenth-century African-American abolitionist who escaped from slavery and then risked his own freedom by becoming an outspoken antislavery lecturer, writer, and publisher. Browse the collection by subject to locate more than 1,000 items pertaining to civil rights .

• View the Frederick Douglass Papers at the Library of Congress
• Oct. 22, speech before a civil rights mass meeting, Washington, D.C., manuscript and printed copy

Hannah Arendt Papers

The papers of author, educator, political philosopher, and public intellectual Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) constitute a large and diverse collection (25,000 items; 82,597 images) reflecting a complex career.

• View the Hannah Arendt Papers
• Essays and lectures; "Civil Rights," lecture, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga., 1964

Leonard Bernstein

The Leonard Bernstein Collection at the Library of Congress is as exceptional as its name would suggest. Bernstein, arguably the most prominent figure in American classical music of the second half of the twentieth century, made his impact as a conductor, as a composer of classical and theater music, and as an educator through books, conducting students at Tanglewood, and especially through various televised lecture series that helped define the potentials of that medium.

• View the Leonard Bernstein Collection
• Conspiracy of hatred [statement for the press (New York Daily News) re the FBI and the Black Panthers; related clippings and correspondence], 1980 Oct. 19
• [materials relating to the Black Panther fundraiser: Tom Wolfe article in New York, Radical chic: That party at Lenny's; LB's letter to the editor of the Jewish Ledger; Felicia's letter to the editor (NYT); related clippings and correspondence ...

Mary Church Terrell Papers

The papers of educator, lecturer, suffragist, and civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) consist of approximately 13,000 documents, comprising 25,323 images, all of which were digitized from 34 reels of previously produced microfilm. Spanning the years 1851 to 1962, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1886-1954, the collection contains diaries, correspondence, printed matter, clippings, and speeches and writings, primarily focusing on Terrell's career as an advocate of women's rights and equal treatment of African Americans.

• View the Mary Church Terrell Papers
• 1949, Feb. 11-12, Remarks Made at the Elks, Civil Rights Meeting
• Joint Committee for Civil Rights in D.C., Washington, D.C., financial records, 1937

Open Access Books

This is a growing collection of contemporary open access e-books. The books in this collection cover a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction. Most of the books in this collection were published in English, but there are some titles in other languages. All of the books in this collection were published under open access licenses and may be read online or downloaded as a PDF or as an EPUB.

• View the Open Access Books Collection
• Protest and democracy Subject heading: Civil rights movements--21st century

Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

The collection comprises 28,000 primary-source items dating from the seventeenth century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history. Rich in variety, the collection includes proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables, and menus.

• View the Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera Collection
• Civil rights bill and West Point academy. Letter from Gerrit Smith to Frederick Douglass. Peterboro, June 27th, 1874.

Rosa Parks Papers

The papers of Rosa Parks (1913-2005) span the years 1866-2006, with the bulk of the material dating from 1955 to 2000. The collection, which contains approximately 7,500 items in the Manuscript Division, as well as 2,500 photographs in the Prints and Photographs Division, documents many aspects of Parks's private life and public activism on behalf of civil rights for African Americans. The collection is a gift made to the Library in 2016 through the generosity of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. The Library received the materials in late 2014, formally opened them to researchers in the Library's reading rooms in February 2015, and now has digitized them for optimal access by the public.

• View the Rosa Parks Papers
• Accounts of her arrest and the subsequent boycott, as well as general reflections on race relations in the South, 1956-circa 1958, undated; Folder 2

Selected Datasets

Datasets are increasingly a key digital resource used in a wide range of fields. The Library of Congress selects, preserves, and provides enduring access to datasets with the goal of cultivating a broad collection that encompasses all the areas covered by Library of Congress Collection Policy Statements. For more information on priorities for collecting datasets, see the Supplementary Guidelines for Datasets. Additional datasets acquired by the Library for the permanent collection will be made available here on a regular basis.

• View the Selected Datasets Collection
• Transcription datasets from Rosa Parks Papers, Manuscript Division

Selected Digitized Books

This is a growing collection of selected books and other materials from the Library of Congress General Collections that can be made openly available. Most of the materials in this collection were published in the United States and are in English. The collection features thousands of works of fiction, including books intended for children, young adults, and other audiences. There are also some materials in foreign languages that were published in other countries. The materials in this collection can be read online or downloaded.

• View the Selected Digitized Books Collection
• Civil rights Subject heading: African Americans--Civil rights
• The Negro's right to jury representation Subject heading: African Americans--Civil rights
• Race rhymes Subject heading: Civil rights movements--Poetry
• Senator from Louisiana. Speech of Hon. George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, in the Senate of the United States, February 18, 1875, and remarks on the civil-rights bill, February 26, 1875

Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860

The collection contains just over a hundred pamphlets and books (published between 1772 and 1889) concerning the difficult and troubling experiences of African and African-American slaves in the American colonies and the United States.

• View the Slaves and the Courts, 1740 to 1860 Collection
• A legal review of the case of Dred Scott, as decided by the Supreme Court of the United States Subject heading: African Americans--Civil rights

United States Reports (Official opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court)

United States Reports is a series of bound case reporters that are the official reports of decisions for the United States Supreme Court. A citation to a United States Supreme Court decisions includes three elements that are needed to retrieve a case.

• View the United States Reports (Official opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court) Collection
• Brown v. Board of Education, 344 U.S. 141 (1952)
• Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
• Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U.S. 294 (1955)

The visual material collections at the Library of Congress contains thousands of images documenting the history of civil rights in America. Selected images pertaining to civil rights are provided for each collection listed below.

• Digital Collections: Photos, Prints, Drawings The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people. Find images using the terms civil rights, civil rights demonstration, civil rights movement, and civil rights workers.
• African American Activists of the 20th Century: Selected Pictures This resource guide includes images, primarily portraits, of Black American civil rights activists active in the twentieth century. All selected images are from the Prints & Photographs Division and have no known restrictions on publication.
• African American Civil Rights Events of the 20th Century: Selected Pictures This resource guide includes images of key activities and events in the movement for Black civil rights, 1950s-1970s. The selected images are from the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division and have no known restrictions on publication.

African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition

The Paris Exposition of 1900 (Exposition universelle internationale de 1900) devoted a building to matters of "social economy." The United States section of the building featured an exhibit that, according to W. E. B. Du Bois, attempted to show "(a) The history of the American Negro. (b) His present condition. (c) His education. (d) His literature."

• View the African American Photographs Assembled for 1900 Paris Exposition Collection
• [A series of statistical charts illustrating the condition of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America] Proportion of freemen and slaves among American Negroes Subject heading: African Americans--Civil rights--1860-1890
• [A series of statistical charts illustrating the condition of the descendants of former African slaves now in residence in the United States of America] The rise of the Negroes from slavery to freedom in one generation Subject heading: African Americans--Civil rights--1860-1890

By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s

This online presentation introduces a multi faceted man and some features of complex issues and events related to his life. The collection features a timeline that includes “ Breaking the Color Line: 1940-1946 ."

• View the By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s Collection

Cartoon Drawings

Offers more than 9,000 original drawings for editorial cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips spanning the late 1700s to the present, primarily from 1880 to 1980. The cartoons cover people and events throughout the world, but most of the images were intended for publication in American newspapers and magazines. Browse the collection by subject to locate more than ten cartoon drawings on civil rights for African Americans .

• View the Cartoon Drawings Collection

Cartoon Drawings: Herblock Collection

Herbert L. Block (1909-2001), known to the world as Herblock, was one of the most influential political commentators and editorial cartoonists in American history. His long chronicle of major social and political events began to appear in newspapers in 1929, and he continued to document domestic and international events for 72 years. The collection contains more than thirty cartoon drawings pertaining to civil rights for African Americans .

• View the Cartoon Drawings: Herblock Collection

Cartoon Prints, American

This assemblage of more than 800 prints made in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries encompasses several forms of political art. The collection contains eight cartoon prints on the subject civil rights .

• View the Cartoon Prints, American Collection

Detroit Publishing Company

Includes over 25,000 glass negatives and transparencies as well as about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States. Subjects strongly represented in the collection include city and town views, including streets and architecture; parks and gardens; recreation; and industrial and work scenes.

• View the Detroit Publishing Company Collection
• Emancipation Day, Richmond, Va.

Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

The photographs of the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944.

• View the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives Collection
• Drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn, Halifax, North Carolina
• Washington, D.C. Portrait of A. Philip Randolph, labor leader Summary: Photograph shows A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) who was an American labor unionist, civil rights activist, and socialist politician. In 1925, he organized and led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first predominantly African American labor union. In 1963, Randolph co-organized the March on Washington. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2021)

Fine Prints

This collection contains about 85,000 prints created as art works, ca. 1450-present (most dating between 1800 and the present). The collection contains eight prints pertaining to civil rights for African Americans .

• View the Fine Prints Collection

Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs

The William A. Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs provides almost 350 images showing African Americans and related military and social history. The Civil War era is the primary time period covered, with scattered examples through 1945. Most of the images are photographs, including 270 cartes de visite. Browse the collection by subject to locate nine items pertaining to civil rights .

• View the Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs

Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive

Photographs of landmark buildings and architectural renovation projects in Washington, D.C., and throughout the United States. The first 23 groups of photographs contain more than 2,500 images and date from 1980 to 2005, with many views in color as well as black-and-white

• View the Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive

A selection of subject headings from this collection includes:

• Civil Rights
• Civil Rights Memorials
• Civil Rights Movement
• Civil Rights Museums

Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey

This online presentation of the HABS/HAER/HALS collections includes digitized images of measured drawings, black-and-white photographs, color transparencies, photo captions, written history pages, and supplemental materials. Browse the collection by subject to locate more than twenty items pertaining to civil rights for African Americans .

• View the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey Collection
• Mary Church Terrell House, 326 T Street Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC
• Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, Ebenezer Baptist Church, 407 Auburn Avenue Northeast, Atlanta, Fulton County, GA

Look Magazine

The Look Magazine Photograph Collection is a vast photographic archive created to illustrate Look Magazine and related publications produced by companies founded by Gardner Cowles. The cataloged portion of the collection totals some four million published and unpublished images made by photographers working for Look, most dating 1952-1971. With its coverage of U.S. and international lifestyles, celebrities, and events, the collection offers insight into the magazine's photojournalistic documentation of aspects of society and culture--particularly American society and culture--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. The collection contains images on the subject of civil rights , civil rights demonstrations , and civil rights leaders .

• View the Look Magazine Collection

Panoramic Photographs

The collection contains approximately four thousand images featuring American cityscapes, landscapes, and group portraits. There are more than ten photographs in the collection on the subject of civil rights .

• View the Panoramic Photographs Collection

Posters: Yanker Poster Collection

The Yanker Poster Collection includes more than 3,000 political, propaganda, and social issue posters and handbills, dating 1927-1980. Most posters are from the United States, but over 55 other countries and the United Nations are also represented. The collection contains more than ten posters on the subject of African American Civil Rights .

• View the Posters: Yanker Poster Collection

The Library oversees one of the largest collections of motion pictures in the world. Acquired primarily through copyright deposit, exchange, gift and purchase, the collection spans the entire history of the cinema. The following moving image collections contain materials related to civil rights in America.

• Digital Collections: Film and Video The moving image collections at the Library of Congress include a wide variety of films ranging from historic silent films to webcasts of recent Library events and performances. Browse the collections below by subject using the terms civil rights, civil rights demonstration, civil rights movement, and civil rights workers.

Civil Rights History Project

On May 12, 2009, the U. S. Congress authorized a national initiative by passing The Civil Rights History Project Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-19). The law directed the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a national survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights movement to obtain justice, freedom and equality for African Americans and to record and make widely accessible new interviews with people who participated in the struggle. The project was initiated in 2010 with the survey and with interviews beginning in 2011.

This site guides researchers to collections in several Library divisions that specifically focus on the movement as well as the broader topic of African American history and culture. The Civil Rights History Project Collection (AFC 2010/039) contains more than 1200 items consisting of born-digital video files, digitized videocassettes, digital photographs and full-text transcripts for all interviews. The interviews are also accessible through the Library's YouTube site and the NMAAHC website.

• View the Civil Rights History Project Collection
• View the Civil Rights History Project Finding Aid
• The March on Washington For many Americans, the calls for racial equality and a more just society emanating from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, deeply affected their views of racial segregation and intolerance in the nation. Since the occasion of March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom 50 years ago, much has been written and discussed about the moment, its impact on society, politics and culture and particularly the profound effects of Martin Luther King's iconic speech on the hearts and minds of America and the world. Several interviewees from the Civil Rights History Project discuss their memories of this momentous event in American history.
• Music in the Civil Rights Movement African American spirituals, gospel, and folk music all played an important role in the Civil Rights Movement. Singers and musicians collaborated with ethnomusicologists and song collectors to disseminate songs to activists, both at large meetings and through publications. They sang these songs for multiple purposes: to motivate them through long marches, for psychological strength against harassment and brutality, and sometimes to simply pass the time when waiting for something to happen.
• School Segregation and Integration The massive effort to desegregate public schools across the United States was a major goal of the Civil Rights Movement. Since the 1930s, lawyers from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) had strategized to bring local lawsuits to court, arguing that separate was not equal and that every child, regardless of race, deserved a first-class education. These lawsuits were combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that outlawed segregation in schools in 1954. But the vast majority of segregated schools were not integrated until many years later. Many interviewees of the Civil Rights History Project recount a long, painful struggle that scarred many students, teachers, and parents.
• Voting Rights When Reconstruction ended in 1877, states across the South implemented new laws to restrict the voting rights of African Americans. These included onerous requirements of owning property, paying poll taxes, and passing literacy or civics exams. Many African Americans who attempted to vote were also threatened physically or feared losing their jobs. One of the major goals of the Civil Rights Movement was to register voters across the South in order for African Americans to gain political power. Most of the interviewees in the Civil Rights History Project were involved in voter registration drives, driving voters to the polls, teaching literacy classes for the purposes of voter registration, or encouraging local African Americans to run as candidates.

Event Videos

The Library of Congress hosts public events featuring authors, world leaders, entertainers, scholars and sports legends. We have been recording Library events for decades and are making those recordings available in this collection.

• View the Event Videos Collection
• 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act Summary: Rep. Donna Edwards visits the Library to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
• 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act Summary: A commemorative look at one of the most important pieces of legislation of the civil rights movement: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with Congresswoman Alma Adams.
• American Democracy & the Rule of Law: Why Every Vote Matters Summary: As part of Law Day 2014, Jeffrey Rosen discusses American democracy and the rule of law in commemoration of the impending 50th anniversaries of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• The Bayard Rustin Papers Summary: An examination of Bayard Rustin's involvement in the Civil Rights movement. Rustin (1912-1987) was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, pacifism and non-violence, and gay rights.
• The Bill of the Century: A Literary Discussion with Clay Risen Summary: Clay Risen discusses his book "The Bill of the Century: The Epic Struggle for the Civil Rights Act" (2014).
• Civil Rights Act Exhibition Opening Program Summary: The opening ceremony of the Library exhibition, "The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom," which explores the events that shaped the civil rights movement, as well as the far-reaching impact the act had on a changing society. The act is considered the most significant piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in voting, public accommodations, public facilities, public education, federally funded programs, and employment. Audiovisual stations throughout the exhibition present archival footage of the era, as well as contemporary interviews with civil rights leaders and activists reflecting on the civil rights era. Speakers included Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, Rep. Marcia Fudge, Rep. John Larson, Robert Forrester, Libby O'Connell, Rep. Gregg Harper and Rep. John Lewis.
• Congressman John Lewis: "March II" Summary: Congressman John Lewis discussed his life and work in the Civil Rights movement with 6th and 7th grade students from the School Without Walls at Francis Stevens in Washington, D.C. as part of a presentation about the second book in his graphic novel series co-written by Andrew Aydin, "March II". Lewis and Aydin described the genesis of this book series and Lewis gave a dramatic summary of the book and his life.
• A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington Summary: U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who was a young civil-rights leader in 1963, opened the photo exhibition "A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington" at the Library of Congress.
• Documenting the Freedom Struggle in Southwest Georgia Summary: Glen Pearcy and David Cline discuss Pearcy's documentary work with the Southwest Georgia Project, which documented local people at work and in their homes during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
• Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press Summary: James McGrath Morris discussed his new book "Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press." Payne was a journalist as a reporter for the Chicago Defender. In those pages, she continually urged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support desegregation. She continued throughout her career to report on the struggles of the civil rights era, and her work is credited with persuading many African Americans to take up the cause.
• Freedom Now: Jazz & the Civil Rights Movement Summary: Library of Congress jazz scholar Dan Morgenstern discusses the role of jazz music throughout the Civil Rights movement in the 20th century.
• Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years Summary: Patricia Sullivan discussed her book "Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from The Civil Rights Years" in a program sponsored by the Library's John W. Kluge Center. As a privileged white Southern woman, Durr (1903-1999) was an unlikely yet monumental champion of civil rights.
• Giants of Racial Justice: Malcolm X & Martin Luther King Jr. Summary: In an event celebrating African American History Month, Peniel E. Joseph ("The Sword and the Shield") and Tamara Payne ("The Dead Are Arising") will discuss their books on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. with NPR television critic Eric Deggans.
• James Meredith & the Ole Miss Riot Summary: In September 1962, James Meredith became the first African American admitted to the University of Mississippi. A milestone in the civil rights movement, his admission triggered a riot spurred by a mob of 3,000 whites from across the South and all-but- officially stoked by the state's segregationist authorities. The escalating conflict prompted President John F. Kennedy to send in 20,000 regular Army troops, in addition to federalized Mississippi National Guard soldiers, to restore law and order. "James Meredith and the Ole Miss Riot" is the memoir of one of the participants, a young Army second lieutenant named Henry T. Gallagher, born and raised in Minnesota.
• John Hope Franklin: Where Do We Go from Here? Summary: Distinguished historian John Hope Franklin, recipient of the 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity, discussed the history of the African-American experience and poses the question, "Where Do We Go from Here?" In a frank and honest discussion, he used his personal experiences to examine the successes and failures of race relations in America.
• Law Day 2013: The Movement in America for Civil and Human Rights Summary: Carrie Johnson moderated a panel discussion on the movement in America for civil and human rights and the impact it has had in promoting the ideal of equality under the law. This year's national Law Day theme, "Realizing the Dream: Equality for All" marked the 150th anniversary of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Speakers included Carrie Johnson, National Public Radio; Theodore M. Shaw, Columbia University School of Law; Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University; Risa L. Goluboff, University of Virginia; and Kirk Rascoe of the Library of Congress.
• Locality & Nation: Civil Rights & Voting Rights in the Deep South, 1963-1966 Summary: Thomas Jackson and Hasan Kwame Jeffries discuss the hard work of grass roots organizing of the civil rights movement that is often overlooked in histories. How well did national civil rights and voting legislation support their drive for authentic democracy and economic empowerment? Scholars uncover the lessons local organizers learned in the struggle against white violence and entrenched power in the Deep South.
• Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist Summary: Amina Hassan discussed her new book, "Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist." Loren Miller was one of the nation's most prominent civil-rights attorneys from the 1940s through the early 1960s. He successfully fought discrimination in housing and education. Alongside Thurgood Marshall, Miller argued two landmark civil-rights cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, leading to decisions that effectively abolished racially restrictive housing covenants. The two men played key roles in Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal segregation in public schools.
• A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights Summary: Judge Robert L. Carter, an intellectual architect for the civil rights movement and the man who argued the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case before the Supreme Court, discussed his recently published memoir, "A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights." "A Matter of Law" is the story of Carter's struggle for equal rights for all Americans.
• North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photography Beyond the South Summary: Iconic images of the civil rights movement were largely photographed in the South. In a new volume of extraordinary photographs, historian Mark Speltz focuses on compelling civil rights images from north of the Mason-Dixon line, in places such as Philadelphia, Cleveland and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
• Observance of the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Voter Rights Act Summary: A special program commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, specifically the Voter Rights Act of 1965 with Rep. Terri Sewell.
• Our Auntie Rosa: The Family of Rosa Parks Remembers Her Life & Lessons Summary: Sheila McCauley Keys discussed her memoir, "Our Auntie Rosa: The Family of Rosa Parks Remembers Her Life and Lessons," covering both the public and private lives of the Civil Rights icon.
• Reflections on Memory & History: Collecting New Oral Histories of the Civil Rights Movement Summary: A half-century on, what remains to be learned of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement? Plenty, it turns out. Last year historian Joe Mosnier, together with videographer John Bishop, journeyed to twenty states to interview fifty individuals who, most as teenagers or young adults, gave themselves over to the civil rights struggle. This testimony -- urgent and immediate, but also refracted by memory and time -- compels a fresh look at "the movement," confirming, upending, and reaching entirely beyond the considerations that define the received civil rights narrative. Mosnier shares video excerpts, discusses emerging insights in relation to civil rights historiography, and offers brief personal reflections on the complex emotions engendered by the oral history experience for both interviewee and interviewer.
• Remembering Our Father: The Story of M. Carl Holman Summary: The 2009 theme for African American History Month was Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas. This year's celebration coincides with the centenary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The Library holds more than 5 million records of the NAACP, which is the largest single collection ever acquired by the institution. Kinshasha Holman-Conwill, Kwasi Holman and Kwame Holman shared remembrances of their father's quest for black citizenship as an American civil rights leader and as the president of the National Urban Coalition.
• Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer Summary: Through the stories of such figures as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, author Kenneth W. Mack brings to life African-American legal practice across the nation during the civil rights movement. According to Mack, Marshall rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was -- as nearly as possible -- one of them. In addition to Marshall, Mack introduces readers to a little-known cast of other characters important to this narrative.
• Reverb Subject heading: Civil rights movements--Songs and music
• Rosa Parks Collection: Telling Her Story at the Library of Congress Summary: Highlights of the collection of Rosa Parks, a seminal figure of the Civil Rights Movement, on loan to the Library from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation for 10 years. The collection is now available online.
• Selma, the Voting Rights Act & Reel History Summary: Gary May finds himself among several scholars who think the film Selma is seriously flawed. He explores the significance and continuing importance of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, includes a critique of how the stories behind the Act are framed in the Hollywood lens and raises questions as to what such re-presentations mean for teaching and learning about history.
• Teaching the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Summary: Join the Library of Congress education and newspaper experts to learn about the digitized historic newspapers available through the Chronicling America program. Explore teaching strategies for using the materials with students.
• Teaching the Civil Rights Movement from the Bottom-Up 50 Years After the Voting Rights Act Summary: This presentation will highlight bottom-up movement history and the ways it introduces students to a wider range of tactics and to a history that begins before the big marches and extends after the passage of landmark legislation.
• This Little Light of Mine: The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer Summary: Michelle Martin interviews Robin Hamilton about her film "This Little Light of Mine: The Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer" (2015), a documentary short that explores the life of an impoverished sharecropper who became a powerhouse in the battle for the right to vote in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement.
• This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible Summary: Writer and journalist Charles Cobb discusses his new book, "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible."
• A Time to Act: John F. Kennedy's Big Speech Summary: Author Shana Corey honors the 54th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's historic civil rights speech with her book, "A Time To Act: John F. Kennedy's Big Speech."
• Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March Summary: Lynda Blackmon Lowery described her role as the youngest member of the Selma, Alabama Civil Rights March in 1965. Along with her co-authors, Susan Buckley and Elspeth Leacock, Lowery recounted her childhood during this period, and discussed the background of events that led to his landmark action. The authors showed illustrations and photographs from their book as well as primary sources, including original film footage, from the period.

The Library of Congress holds the nation's largest public collection of sound recordings (music and spoken word) and radio broadcasts, some 3 million recordings in all.

• Digital Collections: Recorded Sound Search the collections below to locate items pertaining to civil rights.

September 11, 2001, Documentary Project

The September 11, 2001 Documentary Project captures the reactions, eyewitness accounts, and diverse opinions of Americans and others in the months that followed the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93. Patriotism and unity mixed with sadness, anger, and insecurity are common themes expressed in this online presentation of almost 200 audio and video interviews, 45 graphic items, and 21 written narratives.

• View the September 11, 2001, Documentary Project
• Interview with Douglas Thompson, Logan, Utah, November 14, 2001 Summary: Douglas Thompson was at home preparing for work when he heard a radio report about the terrorist attacks. While watching television he saw the south tower struck. He discusses the loss of neighbors in the attack and his personal actions, including organizing a memorial. He supports the president and the War on Terror. He speaks about the Kennedy assassination, firemen, police officers, and how President Johnson successfully pushed the 1964 Civil Rights Act through Congress by evoking the memory of President Kennedy. He believes that Americans will need to adapt to a new reality as a result of the attacks.

Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip

This multiformat ethnographic field collection includes nearly 700 sound recordings, as well as field notes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting a three-month, 6,502-mile trip through the southern United States. The collection includes religious songs such as This Little Light o’ Mine .

• View the Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip Collection
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Collection Civil Rights History Project

Women in the civil rights movement.

Many women played important roles in the Civil Rights Movement, from leading local civil rights organizations to serving as lawyers on school segregation lawsuits. Their efforts to lead the movement were often overshadowed by men, who still get more attention and credit for its successes in popular historical narratives and commemorations.  Many women experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the movement and later turned towards the feminist movement in the 1970s.  The Civil Rights History Project interviews with participants in the struggle include both expressions of pride in women’s achievements and also candid assessments about the difficulties they faced within the movement.

Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and one of three women chosen to be a field director for the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project.  She discusses the difficulties she faced in this position and notes that gender equality was not a given, but had to be fought for:  “I often had to struggle around issues related to a woman being a project director.  We had to fight for the resources, you know.  We had to fight to get a good car because the guys would get first dibs on everything, and that wasn’t fair…it was a struggle to be taken seriously by the leadership, as well as by your male colleagues.” She continues, “One of the things that we often don’t talk about, but there was sexual harassment that often happened toward the women.  And so, that was one of the things that, you know, I took a stand on, that ‘This was not – we’re not going to get a consensus on this.  There is not going to be sexual harassment of any of the women on this project or any of the women in this community.  And you will be put out if you do it.’”

Lonnie King was an activist with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Atlanta. He remembers meeting other students from the Nashville movement when SNCC became a nationwide organization in 1960. He recalls his surprise that Diane Nash was not elected to be the representative from Nashville, and echoes Simmons’ criticisms about male privilege and domination: “Diane Nash, in my view, was the Nashville movement and by that I mean this:  Others were there, but they weren’t Diane Nash. Diane was articulate; she was a beautiful woman, very photogenic, very committed. And very intelligent and had a following. I never did understand how, except maybe for sexism, I never understood how [James] Bevel, Marion [Barry], and for that matter, John Lewis, kind of leapfrogged over her. I never understood that because she was in fact the leader in Nashville. It was Diane. The others were followers of her… I so never understood that to be honest with you. She’s an unsung... a real unsung hero of the movement in Nashville, in my opinion.”

Ekwueme Michael Thewell was a student at Howard University and a leader of the Nonviolent Action Group, an organization that eventually joined with SNCC. He reflects on the sacrifices that women college students at Howard made in joining the struggle, and remarks on the constraints they faced after doing so: “It is only in retrospect that I recognize the extraordinary price that our sisters paid for being as devoted to the struggle as they were. It meant that they weren’t into homecoming queen kind of activities. That they weren’t into the accepted behavior of a Howard lady. That they weren't into the trivia of fashion and dressing up. Though they were attractive women and they took care of themselves, but they weren’t the kind of trophy wives for the med school students and they weren’t—some of them might have been members of the Greek letter organizations, but most of them I suspect weren’t. So that they occupied a place outside the conventional social norms of the whole university student body. So did the men. But with men, I think, we can just say, ‘Kiss my black ass’ and go on about our business. It wasn’t so clear to me that a woman could do the same thing.”

Older interviewees emphasize the opportunities that were available to an earlier generation of women. Mildred Bond Roxborough , a long-time secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, discusses the importance of women leaders in local branches: “Well, actually when you think about women's contributions to the NAACP, without the women we wouldn't have an NAACP.  The person who was responsible for generating the organizing meeting was a woman.  Of course, ever since then we've had women in key roles--not in the majority, but in the very key roles which were responsible for the evolution of the NAACP.  I think in terms of people like Daisy Lampkin, who was a member of our national board from Pittsburgh; she traveled around the country garnering memberships and helping to organize branches.  That was back in the '30s and '40s before it became fashionable or popular for women to travel.  You have women who subsequently held positions in the NAACP nationally as program directors and as leaders of various divisions.” She goes on to discuss the contributions of many women to the success of the NAACP.

Doris Adelaide Derby , another SNCC activist, remembers that the challenge and urgency of the freedom struggle was a formative experience for young activist women, who had to learn resourcefulness on the job:   “I always did what I wanted to do.  I had my own inner drive.  And I found that when I came up with ideas and I was ready to work to see it through, and I think that happened with a lot of women in SNCC.  We needed all hands on deck, and so, when we found ourselves in situations, we had to rely on whoever was around.  And if somebody had XYZ skills, and somebody only had ABC, we had to come together. We used to joke about that, but in reality, the women, you know, were strong.  In the struggle, the women were strong.”

Ruby Nell Sales , who later overcame psychological traumas from the racial violence she witnessed in the movement, encourages us to look beyond the simplistic story of Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery. As she explains, Parks was a long-time activist who had sought justice for African American women who were frequently assaulted—both verbally and physically-- in their daily lives: “…When we look at Rosa Parks, people often think that she was – she did that because of her civil rights and wanting to sit down on the bus.  But she also did that – it was a rebellion of maids, a rebellion of working class women, who were tired of boarding the buses in Montgomery, the public space, and being assaulted and called out-of-there names and abused by white bus drivers. And that’s why that Movement could hold so long.  If it had just been merely a protest about riding the bus, it might have shattered.  But it went to the very heart of black womanhood, and black women played a major role in sustaining that movement.”

The Civil Rights History Project includes interviews with over 50 women who came from a wide range of backgrounds and were involved in the movement in a myriad of ways. Their stories deepen our understanding of the movement as a whole, and provide us with concrete examples of how vital they were to the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

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23 places to begin your exploration of America’s civil rights history

Travel this rich and vast Southern trail to discover formally and informally recognized civil rights sites—and a legacy of remarkable courage

Photo by Art Meripol

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 on July 2, 1964—60 years ago this summer. America’s paperwork finally matched its ideals: Discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin became illegal. None of this could have happened if Black Americans hadn’t pressed their case for enfranchisement, as they have done since the nation’s founding. On the South’s officially recognized Civil Rights Trail, towns across the region showcase curated stories of power and courage. Museums throughout offer engrossing narratives of a period marked by nonviolent, direct action as a tactic to confront and disrupt the status quo. Sites where establishment power violently clashed with newly empowered people living on the margins are preserved for understanding and engagement. Learn the names and backstories of those who marched, organized, and advocated in the service of this mission. On a rich and vast Southern trail, here are some formally and informally recognized places to explore this historic throughline that informs our present.

Photo via mississippibluestravelers.com

Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market Greenwood, Mississippi Off U.S. 49 at Money Road stand the ruins of Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market. In 1955, Emmett Till, a boy of 14, had a fateful encounter with shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, her husband and his half-brother, later lynched him, catalyzing the modern civil rights movement. Next to the decrepit edifice stands a pristine period gas station, giving passersby a sense of the time and timelessness. This officially recognized Civil Rights Trail site invites travelers to imagine racial oppression as lifestyle, quotidian moments marinated in fear, made epic by how we respond.

Photo by Langdon Clay

Tallahatchie County Courthouse Sumner, Mississippi Inside the Tallahatchie County Courthouse, folks can view the courtroom where 14-year-old Emmett Till’s murderers faced a panel of all-white male jurors. The half-brothers got off scot-free. Standing in this space on a dusty Mississippi Delta day, visitors may contemplate the choices made in this courtroom in full color. For deeper context, walk across the street to the Emmett Till Interpretive Center .

Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site Little Rock, Arkansas National Park Service rangers leading tours of Little Rock Central High School narrate the 1957 integration crisis when carefully selected Black students—known as the Little Rock Nine—battle-tested the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision. The site features a museum contextualizing a community in turmoil. Tourgoers stop by the preserved Magnolia Mobil Gas Station, a command center for journalists covering the crisis on national news. At the school, rangers describe throngs of angry white residents and Elizabeth Eckford, a 15-year-old Black girl, facing them down alone.

Lassis Inn Little Rock, Arkansas Enjoy the buffalo ribs, seasoned hush puppies, and fried green tomatoes at Lassis Inn historic restaurant, but remember the stories of civil rights greats like activist and journalist Daisy Bates, who ate and strategized here regularly in the years leading into the 1957 Little Rock integration crisis.

Mosaic Templars Cultural Center Little Rock, Arkansas Black life in the Arkansas capital is a complete story, filled with highs and lows, joy and pain. Located in the historic Ninth Street district, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center captures memories of Black residents worshiping together, finding community in segregated schools, and organizing efforts to equalize opportunities for Black residents. Fresh off a multimillion-dollar renovation, the center offers interactive exhibits, engaging murals, and dramatic sound showers.

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church Montgomery, Alabama   Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was thrust into the spotlight when, as pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he was selected to lead the 1955–56 Montgomery Bus Boycott. Before King became pastor in 1954, the Reverend Vernon Johns (uncle of Barbara Johns of the Farmville, Virginia, school walkout of 1951) urged this congregation to challenge the status quo. Tourgoers may enter the pulpit to see the upholstered seat King used during his tenure as pastor. Sunlight infuses the sanctuary’s stained-glass windows with a warm glow of purpose and possibility.

Photo via civilrightstrail.com

International Civil Rights Center and Museum Greensboro, North Carolina The International Civil Rights Center & Museum occupies the former F.W. Woolworth building, where four freshmen from the historically Black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (as it was then known) launched the 1960s student sit-in movement. On February 1, 1960, the Greensboro Four quietly sat down and stayed until closing time despite being refused service. That original lunch counter is on display, providing a sense of the time in its department-store context.

William Frantz Elementary School New Orleans, Louisiana The fact that Ruby Bridges still is alive and well reminds us that her quest to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in 1960 at age six was not that long ago. The building little Ruby braved is preserved just as it was when she became the school’s first Black student. In the courtyard stands a statue of Ruby, and a historic marker recounts the story of her courage. Of all the iconic imagery that emerged from the mid-century movement, Norman Rockwell’s painting “The Problem We All Live With” is among the most moving and a big part of why we know her story.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant New Orleans, Louisiana Established in 1939 during the Jim Crow era, Dooky Chase’s Restaurant began as a street-corner po’ boy and lottery-ticket stand. It evolved into a fine-dining destination known for Chef Leah Chase’s Creole cooking and became a symbol of Black refinement and excellence. Situated in the historic Tremé neighborhood, the restaurant served as a safe haven for outspoken discussions and strategizing during the civil rights movement. Today, Dooky Chase’s is among the 15 places recognized by the Louisiana Civil Rights Trail. A historical marker out front honors the Chase family’s contributions.

Freedom Rides Museum Montgomery, Alabama Freedom Riders were interracial activists who challenged the South’s refusal to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1960 interstate bus-desegregation decision. Traveling south from Washington, D.C., they were attacked by white mobs at stops along the way. See the faces of these activists in black-and-white mugshots inside Freedom Rides Museum—a Greyhound bus station preserved in its 1961 state. Learn about the violence they faced and how the Black community protected them. (By the way, it worked: The Interstate Commerce Commission began enforcing its desegregation ruling on November 1, 1961.)

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Birmingham, Alabama The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in the city’s Civil Rights District explores the inequality of Black life and reveals how systemic racism surfaced in every aspect of life during Jim Crow, from learning and working to worshipping and relaxing. A high point is touching the bars of the cell in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote Letter From Birmingham Jail .

Kelly Ingram Park Birmingham, Alabama What many people know about the civil rights movement comes from black-and-white imagery of police beating peaceful protesters or loosing attacking dogs on them. Some of us recall videos of water cannons powerful enough to blow the hair off young activists’ heads. These images were born here at Kelly Ingram Park, staging area for the 1963 Birmingham Campaign. Take a self-guided walking tour (or hire a local tour guide) to see sculptures and monuments that illustrate the risks these advocates took.

16th Street Baptist Church Birmingham, Alabama For a time, Birmingham was known as “Bombingham” because of segregationists’ use of explosives to enact violence on the Black community. A bomb was the go-to on the morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, when four girls perished while getting ready for a special program at 16th Street Baptist Church. Tours here reveal their story, the aftermath, and the contributions of this downtown church situated in the Birmingham Civil Rights District. Be sure to view the memorial marker for the girls and know their names: Addie Mae Collins, 14; Denise McNair, 11; Carole Robertson, 14; and Cynthia Wesley, 14.

Edmund Pettus Bridge Selma, Alabama Determined to complete a 54-mile trek from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights in 1965, activists tested the limits of nonviolent direct action at Edmund Pettus Bridge. On three occasions, marchers tried to cross the bridge, and one of those attempts is now known as Bloody Sunday. On March 7, 1965, peaceful walkers suffered attacks by law-enforcement officers wielding clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. The protesters finally crossed the bridge on their third attempt, when federal officers intervened. Commemorate the Selma to Montgomery March by pulling to the roadside on U.S. 80 next to the “Welcome to Historic Selma” sign to visit Civil Rights Memorial Park. The space features monuments to voting rights legends such as Amelia Boynton Robinson and Marie Foster.

Mothers of Gynecology Monument Montgomery, Alabama Montgomery, Alabama tour guide and artist Michelle Browder (read about her ideal civil rights journey on page XX) can’t help but scoff at a monument to Dr. J. Marion Sims in front of the Alabama State Capitol. Lauded as the father of gynecology, Sims built his 19th century body of work by torturing enslaved Black women. His statue now looms over a commemorative space dedicated to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March. Browder, who comes from an impressive civil rights lineage, counters the Sims narrative with the 15-foot Mothers of Gynecology Monument she designed and built. Find this tribute to Lucy, Betsey and Anarcha—Sims’s enslaved victims—at 17 Mildred Street, near the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel Memphis, Tennessee The deep and somber melody of Mahalia Jackson’s rendition of “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” draws museumgoers down a hallway to glass-encased Room 306 at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel. Covers on a bed in which the Rev. Ralph Abernathy slept are still downturned. The bed of his roommate—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—is untouched. The brotherhood and Black joy that filled this room and an earlier pillow fight are belied by what happened after: King’s assassination. The sniper’s nest, now curated in a museum annex, can be seen across the way.

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change (The King Center) Atlanta, Georgia Consider a visit here a pilgrimage of a lifetime. Nestled in the Sweet Auburn Historic District, the King Center uses exhibits and personal artifacts to contextualize the life of Dr. King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, who brought her own bona fides to the Black freedom movement. Outside, you’ll find the couple’s marble tomb situated in the middle of a blue reflecting pool. An eternal flame symbolizes Dr. King’s undying dream of justice, peace, and equality. And that sculpture of a muscular Black man holding a newborn up to the sky? This is the Behold Monument, which Mrs. King placed in tribute to her late husband.

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park Atlanta, Georgia Explore many points of entry into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life at several sites in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood, managed by the National Park Service. These include his Auburn Avenue Queen Anne–style birth home (currently under renovation); the original Ebenezer Baptist Church (readily identifiable by its iconic blue sign); and Fire Station No. 6. Stop at the Visitor Center for tour info, which is also where the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame begins.

Muhammad Ali Center Louisville, Kentucky The Muhammad Ali Center is a cultural space and museum that showcases Ali’s ascendance as a child born in the segregated South who learned the art of boxing to channel his anger over a stolen red bicycle. As the movement grew, so did Ali’s success, clinching the world heavyweight championship in 1964. A favorite exhibit recalls his Deer Lake training camp, where museumgoers can shadow box and hit a speed bag. Outside the ring, Ali’s heroic symbolism united leaders in the Black freedom struggle, and the Muslim convert’s antiwar beliefs mirrored the movement’s stance on the fallacy of war. A Life magazine on display situates the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March in Ali’s timeline. Letters, images, and films reveal how his community supported his talent in the Jim Crow era, connecting everything that was Ali to every opportunity the movement fought for.

Mississippi Civil Rights Museum Jackson, Mississippi The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum encapsulates Black Mississippians’ efforts to secure full enfranchisement. History springs to life in exhibits that include a lynching display featuring an exhaustive list of victims’ names. Film, sound, ephemera, and touchable, interactive displays throughout offer context to local organizing efforts and the backstories of courageous leaders such as Medgar Evers, the assassinated NAACP field secretary, and Fannie Lou Hamer, a voting rights leader from the Delta. The door to Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi, is showcased as a metaphorical doorway to the event that gave the movement momentum: the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till.

National Museum of African American Music Nashville, Tennessee The Nashville Movement sealed Music City’s place of honor on the Civil Rights Trail with its pivotal leadership in civil disobedience. The National Museum of African American Music reinforces this cultural power with a sonic and interactive journey through 400 years of Black music greatness. Make a beeline to the museum’s One Nation Under a Groove gallery to hear, feel, and see the intersection of the movement with musical history. Nashville, particularly in the historic Jefferson Street neighborhood and downtown, honors the city’s music contributions at local institutions and with markers placed throughout the city.

The Legacy Museum Montgomery, Alabama From slavery and Jim Crow to the civil rights movement and mass incarceration, the Legacy Museum fully excavates the African American experience through artifacts, anecdotes, hard data, and artistic expression. This self-guided space allows visitors to absorb the personal histories of people and communities affected by systemic injustice. One can’t help but consider the historical record against the modern-day manifestations of systemic inequality.

Courtesy Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce CVB

National Memorial for Peace and Justice Montgomery, Alabama Unforgettable corten-steel slabs–more than 800 of them–represent the 4,400-plus Black people killed in racial terror lynchings from 1877 to 1950. This six-acre setting is the nation’s first comprehensive lynching memorial and makes one thing clear: If you didn’t know, now you know.

Deborah D. Douglas is author of U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places and Events That Made the Movement , the first guide to the official civil rights trail in the South. She is a journalism professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School.

Illustration by Matthew Laznicka

Sybil Jordan Hampton, the only Black student in her class at Little Rock Central High School from 1959–1962 The ideal civil rights journey for Sybil Jordan Hampton is the one she’s not yet taken: a trip to Robert Russa Moton Museum in Farmville, Virginia. She has an abiding interest in and admiration for Barbara Johns Powell, the Robert Russa Moton High School student who organized Black students in the early 1950s to demand better educational facilities. Their grievances were rolled into the five cases that formed Brown v. Board of Education. “Farmville has similarities to Little Rock in that the schools were closed in an effort to thwart the Supreme Court decision to desegregate,” Hampton says.

Michelle Browder, artist and tour guide Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s wisdom was displayed on January 30, 1956, when segregationists bombed his home, the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church parsonage in Montgomery, Alabama. When King returned and found his wife, Coretta, and daughter, Yolanda, safe, he urged angry, armed neighbors to go home. This decision still resonates with Michelle Browder, who says her ideal civil rights journey includes this Centennial Hill house, now Dexter Parsonage Museum . King’s faith was made real in this moment: “He becomes a pacifist,” Browder says, crediting King’s calls for self-restraint with saving Black lives.

Nick Wallace, chef and Food Network Star At age 10, Nick Wallace became enthralled by Medgar Evers, the NAACP field director gunned down in his driveway on June 12, 1963. In Evers’s honor, Wallace learned to make the late activist’s favorite foods—oysters and pasta. After becoming a Chopped winner, Wallace opened Nissan Cafe by Nick Wallace at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum campus in Jackson, Mississippi. He recommends visitors also check out the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience (the Max) in Meridien. The museum celebrates the state’s artists and explores their cultural contributions, like blues and gospel music. So while Wallace engages Evers’s story daily while cooking, he complements the experience by reveling in the creativity, vision, and dignity of people the movement served at the Max.

Barbara Lau, founding executive director of the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice Barbara Lau, who is based in Durham, recently took a trip from New Orleans east through southern Mississippi, Montgomery, and Atlanta. The highlight was the Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. “The work they’re doing in Montgomery right now is—for me as a person who has participated in the creation of exhibits and worked at historic sites—creating some of the clearest, most well-designed experiences I have ever had.” Describing an “ingenious” mix of historical materials, videos, audio, and holograms with the work of creative artists, Lau says museumgoers can truly imagine the lives of people affected by America’s approach to race and inclusion.

This article appears in the Spring 2024 issue of  Southbound .

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American Civil Rights Movement

How it works

The 1950s was a decade characterized by the civil rights movement and its fight for inclusion within society. As the new decade started, segregation under the legal system was still considered constitutional. In 1954, segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court based on their ruling on the Brown v. Board of Education case. The Supreme Court’s decision was declared the law of the land, yet they had a lack of ability to enforce it. It was up to society whether federally mandated desegregation would be truly enforced.

Southern States strongly resisted it and attempted to overturn the ruling through a declaration known as the “Southern Manifesto”. The Southern regions strong segregationist views challenged the Supreme Court’s legitimacy. The Supreme Court’s power continued to be tested when Little Rock, Arkansas refused to allow African American students to attend a public school. President Eisenhower was required to step in and enforce the law in Arkansas in order to protect the Supreme Court’s decision and its legitimacy. The Supreme Court’s power was challenged by Southern efforts to overturn their decision on segregation, however, President Eisenhower reinforced the courts legitimacy by endorsing the court’s decision. The Brown v. Board of Education ruling and Eisenhower’s national address on Little Rock both supported the civil rights movement, while the “Southern Manifesto” was a strong counter to the movement.

One of the biggest legal assaults on the Jim Crow Laws came on May 17th, 1954 when the Supreme Court announced its decision regarding the Brown v. Board of Education case. The Brown v. Board of Education was a combination of a few cases that involved students being denied access to all white schools. The plaintiffs argued that this denied access to public schools violated the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court lead by Justice Earl Warren concluded that segregation in public schools violated the equal protection laws that are secured by the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice Warren read out, “We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “”separate but equal”” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. Not only was the desegregation of public schools found unconstitutional but the Plessy v. Ferguson case and the doctrine of “separate but equal” was overturned. The overturning of the legal order of the Jim Crow laws was a step towards a more equal race relationship in the South between whites and African Americans.

Chief Justice Earl Warren was a very important part of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Brown v. Board of Education case. In the past he had been pro Japanese Internment camps, however with this case he stood firmly that segregated schools were unconstitutional and that Plessy v. Ferguson was the wrong ruling. Throughout the Supreme Court’s history, the decisions made usually reflected a lack of desire to provide African Americans with full rights and equality. For example in the Plessy v. Ferguson case, the Supreme Court essentially allowed a form of slavery to continue through saying segregation was constitutional and they allowed the Jim Crow laws. The Brown v. Board of Education decision was one of the first times a court had decided in favor of African Americans rights and the court ruled unanimously on the case. This is all contributed to Chief Justice Earl Warren who was a large advocate for equality and fairness. As a result he strongly believed that segregation was one of the biggest problems of the time and needed to be ended because under constitutional everyone should be protected equally. For example, Warren overturned Plessy v. Ferguson in order to keep the Supreme Court’s legitimacy as a court that stands for equality and democracy. The Warren Court would come to be known as one of the most liberal courts in history. The legal order had been changed, but it was up to the Southern Governments to enforce the new social and racial arrangements.

Southern society refused to enforce the new federally mandated desegregation laws. In March 1956, almost every congressman in the South signed the “Southern Manifesto” in an attempt to reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling on Brown v. Board of Education. The manifesto was an attempt by Southern governments to put the legitimacy of the Supreme Court into question. It stated that the Supreme Court ruling was incorrect because no where in the Constitution was education mentioned. The manifesto stated, “The original Constitution does not mention education. Neither does the 14th Amendment nor any other amendment. The debates preceding the submission of the 14th Amendment clearly show that there was no intent that it should affect the system of education maintained by the States”. The Southern congressmen who drafted the manifesto clearly were extreme segregationists due to their strong disagreement with the Supreme Court’s ruling on Brown v. Board of Education. Yet the Southern congressmen critiqued the Supreme Court’s legitimacy on the grounds of legality rather than using their own personal moral views on the desegregation law. It is believed the Southern Congressmen crafted the manifesto using legal arguments and straying from racial reasoning in an attempt to appeal to the Northerners. Testing the court’s legitimacy on the basis of a well crafted legal argument would go over better with the rest of the country then using a racist argument. That is why the Southern congresses critiqued the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, on the grounds they did using the Constitution to oppose the court. While the “Southern Manifesto” challenged the Supreme Court’s legitimacy, it was state governments actions that questioned the courts lack of power to enforce.

Legally through the Supreme Court’s decision on Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of public schools was declared unconstitutional and illegal. Even with these laws, Southern states and their governments were not enforcing them. Southern resistance was inevitable and expected however it took until the Little Rock situation for President Eisenhower to take charge and enforce the new desegregation laws in Little Rock. In 1957, nine African American students were admitted and enrolled into Little Rock Central High School. When they attempted to enter the building, they were prevented from entering the school by the Arkansas National Guard. This was called on by the Governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus. The city called out President Eisenhower, saying this action by the governor violated the law and constitution and that the president was ignoring the situation. On September 24th, 1957 President Eisenhower publicly endorsed school desegregation by addressing the Little Rock situation. He also sent the United States National Guard to move the Arkansas National Guard from the school. In his address to the nation he confronts the issue of the Southern states not enforcing the Federal Courts and as the Executive power he is stepping in to enforce the laws. He stated, “Whenever normal agencies prove inadequate to the task and it becomes necessary for the Executive Branch of the Federal Government to use its powers and authority to uphold Federal Courts, the President’s responsibility is inescapable”. Eisenhower’s national address reinforced the legitimacy of the Supreme Court and its decision on school desegregation. It was only after President Eisenhower became involved on an extreme level that the laws were enforced.

The Southern states tested the legitimacy of the Supreme Court’s federally mandated desegregation when many of the states governments did not enforce desegregation. President Eisenhower was also a large problem regarding the legitimacy of the new law because he refused to endorse it and speak on the court’s decision. One reason he didn’t strictly federally endorse the law is he didn’t want a big federal government presence. He stated in his address that the running of schools such as enforcing desegregation and the mechanisms at which states keep order is in the hands of the state governments, not the federal government. He felt strongly that it was the state’s power to maintain order and enforce the federal laws. He did not want a large federal government presence having to enforce these laws, as it is not the federal government job to do this within every state. His strong opinion on federal government involvement in school desegregation could be part of his lack of stance regarding civil rights. He was never extremely public on his personal views regarding civil rights. In his address he states, “Our personal opinions about the decision have no bearing on the matter of enforcement”. Eisenhower was never a strong civil rights supporter however he knew as the executive power that personal opinions regarding the matter had to be put aside and he had to carry out his job as executive power. He had a job as President to enforce the laws the Supreme Court passed in order to preserve the courts and federal government’s legitimacy. The South attempted to defeat the Supreme Court’s rulings, however President Eisenhower used his power to extend the court’s power and enforce the laws.

The 1950s ushered in a decade of social change and reform. At the start of the decade segregation was legal and race relations were extremely unequal politically, legally, and socially. African Americans struggle for equality was at the forefront of the United States problems. The Supreme Court in 1954 ruled segregation unconstitutional through its ruling on Brown v. Board of Education. It was one of the first times the court had protected African Americans rights under the Constitution. The court’s decision was faced with extreme opposition in the South. The “Southern Manifesto” and the Little Rock Nine situation highlighted the South’s attempt to delegitimize the court’s decision and power. President Eisenhower’s address on the lack of segregation and his condemning of any state who didn’t listen to the Supreme Court’s ruling, gave power to the civil rights movement and African Americans rights. The Brown v. Board of Education ruling that declared segregation unconstitutional was a step towards equality for African Americans, however it was nowhere near really ending segregation. The struggle and fight for equality would continue on for many decades to come.

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Home / Essay Samples / History / History of The United States / Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Movement Essay Examples

Emmett till: the murder that changed america.

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Martin Luther King Jr.: a Legacy of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Martin Luther King Jr. is an iconic figure in American history, celebrated for his tireless efforts in advancing civil rights and social justice. His life and work continue to inspire and resonate with people around the world. This essay delves into the remarkable journey of...

Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Act of 1964

Considering the topic 'Civil Rights Movement and Civil Rights Act of 1964 Essay' we can say that the main aims of the Civil Rights movement in the classic ‘Montgomery to Memphis’ period of 1955-1968 were to establish laws and public institutions in an attempt to...

Causes and Effects of the Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement was a period committed to activism for equal rights and treatment of African-Americans in the United States. During this period, many people revitalized for social, lawful and political changes to deny separation and end isolation. Numerous significant occasions including victimization African-Americans...

Discussion About Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress”. The civil rights movement had many successes along with some failures as well. Successes included ending segregation and the important advance in equal rights legislation. Failures of the movement included a continued deep-rooted racism towards African...

The Success of the Civil Rights Movement: a Struggle for Equality

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a watershed moment in history, seeking to dismantle racial segregation, discrimination, and ensure equal rights for all citizens. This essay explores the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, examining its impact on legal reforms, social attitudes,...

Civil Unjust in United States in 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. quotes, “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.” This generation had civil unjust, no trust in the...

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In my essay, I will be writing about racism in the united states between the blacks and the white and how the blacks are treated unfairly compared to the whites. So, what exactly is racism about? In layman terms racism is the belief of one...

Gender Ineguality in the America

This assignment will compare the sociological perspectives between functionalism and feminism and contrast them. It shall be analysing their views on families. Although feminism began in 1792, when Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) wrote a book ‘a vindication of the rights of women’ stating that women were...

The African Americans in Custer Died for Your Sins

In Chapter 8 of Custer Died For Your Sins, Deloria sets the foundation of how African Americans and Natives were treated by the white man and effectively highlights the differences between both minority groups. The Civil Rights movement was a “huge” accomplishment for African Americans...

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About Civil Rights Movement

United States

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

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of discrimination in our society. The modern civil rights movement is working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society, such as gender inequality, discrimination of the disabled, ageism, police brutality, etc.

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