Portal:Civil rights movement

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The 1963 March on Washington participants and leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial

The civil rights movement was a social movement and campaign in the United States from 1954 to 1968 that aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which was most commonly employed against African Americans. The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, and had modern roots in the 1940s. After years of direct actions and grassroots protests, the movement made its largest legislative and judicial gains during the 1960s. The movement's major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

After the American Civil War and subsequent abolition of slavery in the southern states in 1865, the three Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution had granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, the majority of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African-American men voted and held political office, but as time went on Blacks in the South were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under racist Jim Crow laws, and were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by White supremacists. African Americans who moved to the North to enhance their prospects in the Great Migration also faced barriers in employment and housing. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights, such as the civil rights movements of 1865–1896 and of 1896–1954. The movement was characterized by nonviolent mass protests and civil disobedience following highly publicized events such as the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. These included economic boycotts such as the Montgomery bus boycott, "sit-ins" in Greensboro and Nashville, a series of protests during the Birmingham campaign, and a march from Selma to Montgomery. The movement was led by Martin Luther King Jr., James Bevel, and others, and press coverage of police violence using fire hoses and dogs against students attempting to walk to City Hall to talk with the mayor during the Birmingham campaign increased its public support.

Discrimination was often supported by courts, including by the Supreme Court in its 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld the doctrine of separate but equal. At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, in 1954 the Supreme Court struck down the underpinnings of laws that allowed racial discrimination as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The Warren Court made further pro-civil rights rulings in cases such as Browder v. Gayle (1956) and Loving v. Virginia (1967), banning segregation in public schools and public transport, and striking down all state laws against interracial marriage. Following the March on Washington in 1963, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that authorized oversight and enforcement of civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned all discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, including in schools, employment, and public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities and authorized oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minority voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 forbade property owners from discriminating in the rental or sale of housing. (Full article...)

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President Kennedy delivering his speech while sitting at the Resolute desk in the Oval Office

The Report to the American People on Civil Rights was a speech on civil rights, delivered on radio and television by United States President John F. Kennedy from the Oval Office on June 11, 1963, in which he proposed legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Expressing civil rights as a moral issue, Kennedy moved past his previous appeals to legality and asserted that the pursuit of racial equality was a just cause. The address signified a shift in his administration's policy towards strong support of the civil rights movement and played a significant role in shaping his legacy as a proponent of civil rights.

Kennedy was initially cautious in his support of civil rights and desegregation in the United States. Concerned that dramatic actions would alienate legislators in the segregated southern United States, he limited his activities on the issue and confined his justifying rhetoric to legal arguments. As his term continued, African Americans became increasingly impatient with their lack of social progress and racial tensions escalated. The rising militancy of the civil rights movement troubled white Americans and the deteriorating situation reflected negatively on the United States abroad. Kennedy came to conclude that he had to offer stronger support for civil rights, including the enactment of new legislation that would ensure desegregation in the commercial sector.

On June 11, 1963, federal officials integrated the University of Alabama. Kennedy decided that it was an opportune moment to speak about civil rights, and instructed Ted Sorensen to draft a speech that he could deliver on television that evening. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his deputy, Burke Marshall, assisted Sorensen, who finished shortly before President Kennedy was due to begin speaking at 8:00 PM. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various civil rights movement-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested on February 22, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 2Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 3Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 4Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performing at the March on Washington (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 5Kennedy meets with march leaders. Left to Right – Willard Wirtz, Matthew Ahmann, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rabbi Joachin Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins (not in order) (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 6Fannie Lou Hamer founded Freedom Farm Cooperative, an operation meant to alleviate Black sharecropper poverty in the South. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 7First Colored Senator and Representatives: Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC), 1872 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 8Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 9Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 10Actor Ossie Davis (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 11Kathleen Cleaver delivering a speech, 1971 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 12Juvenile African-American convicts working in the fields in a chain gang, photo taken c. 1903 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 13A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 14Montgomery Improvement Association poster announcing desegrated seating on buses (New York Public Library) (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 1550th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 16Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 17Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 18Leaders of the march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: (sitting L-R) Whitney Young, Cleveland Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins; (standing L-R) Mathew Ahmann, Joachim Prinz, John Lewis, Eugene Carson Blake, Floyd McKissick, and Walter Reuther (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 19Vocalists Peter, Paul, and Mary (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 20"A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag, hanging at the Library of Congress (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 21Women marching for equal rights, integrated schools and decent housing (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 22Additional image of Civil Rights protestors executing a sit-in at a Woolworth's in Durham, North Carolina on February 10th of 1960. (from Sit-in movement)
Image 23Leaders arrived late and linked arms in front of marchers on Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 24John Lewis speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on the 50th anniversary, August 28, 2013 (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 25African American women participate in Civil Rights protest in Tallahassee, Florida, 1963 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 26March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 27Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia. (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 28Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 29Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 30Leaders gather for a portrait (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 31Executive Committee of the National Negro Business League, c. 1910. NNBL founder Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) is seated, second from the left. (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 32Close up of some leaders of the March on Washington walking along Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 33Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))

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Du Bois in 1907

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (/duːˈbɔɪs/ doo-BOYSS; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.

Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After completing graduate work at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and Harvard University, where he was its first African American to earn a doctorate, Du Bois rose to national prominence as a leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of black civil rights activists seeking equal rights. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta Compromise. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the talented tenth, a concept under the umbrella of racial uplift, and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership. (Full article...)

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During the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. — Leaders marching from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, (August 28, 1963).

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Did you know?

... that Sammy Younge Jr. was the first black college student to be murdered for participating in the civil rights movement?
... that civil rights activist Unita Blackwell was the first African-American woman to be elected mayor in the state of Mississippi?
... that civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer was brutally beaten at the orders of police in Mississippi, US for standing up against racial segregation?
... that after J. Charles Jones led an anti-segregation sit-in with hundreds of activists at a counter in a Woolworth in Charlotte, NC, the store closed its counter to prevent further integration?
... that in 1955, a white supremacist organization claimed the racial integration of schools in the United States was a plot devised in Moscow to "mongrelize" White Americans?