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122 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

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The Civil Rights Movement is a pivotal period in American history that brought about significant social and political changes. It is a topic that has captivated scholars, researchers, and students alike, as its impact on society continues to reverberate today. If you are tasked with writing an essay on the Civil Rights Movement and are struggling to find the perfect topic, look no further. In this article, we have compiled 122 essay topic ideas and examples that will help you explore different aspects of this influential movement.

• The role of grassroots organizations in the Civil Rights Movement.
• Examining the impact of Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on the bus.
• The significance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the Civil Rights Movement.
• Analyzing the leadership styles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
• The nonviolent philosophy of the Civil Rights Movement and its effectiveness.
• The influence of the Harlem Renaissance on the Civil Rights Movement.
• Investigating the role of women in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on American society.
• The role of media coverage in shaping public opinion during the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Brown v. Board of Education decision on school desegregation.
• The Freedom Rides and their contribution to the Civil Rights Movement.
• Comparing and contrasting the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement.
• The role of music in inspiring and mobilizing the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of the Black Panther Party on the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement's impact on other social justice movements.
• The experiences of African American soldiers in World War II and their influence on the Civil Rights Movement.
• Examining the role of white allies in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the feminist movement.
• The role of the Supreme Court in advancing civil rights.
• The Civil Rights Movement's impact on voting rights and political participation.
• The role of churches and religious leaders in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
• Investigating the role of non-African American activists in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The role of education in promoting civil rights and equality.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the criminal justice system.
• The Civil Rights Movement's influence on the disability rights movement.
• The role of student activists in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on immigration policies.
• The role of grassroots journalism in documenting the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of international events on the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement's impact on affirmative action policies.
• Examining the role of the National Urban League in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on housing segregation.
• The role of boycotts in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement's influence on the labor movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on Native American rights.
• The role of local activists in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the fight against poverty.
• Examining the role of children and youth in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on public transportation policies.
• The role of the Black Church in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of international figures, such as Nelson Mandela, on the Civil Rights Movement.
• Examining the role of African American athletes in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African Americans in the media.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging stereotypes and promoting cultural pride.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the decolonization movement in Africa.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the desegregation of public spaces.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging discriminatory employment practices.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of Black Studies programs in universities.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in promoting multiculturalism and diversity.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African American history in textbooks.
• The role of community organizing in the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of ethnic studies programs.
• Examining the role of women in the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the fight against police brutality.
• The role of literature and poetry in capturing the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of Black-owned businesses.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in the fight against environmental racism.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African Americans in politics.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging discriminatory housing practices.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of multicultural education.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in promoting interracial relationships.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of African American arts and culture.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging discriminatory healthcare practices.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of African American studies programs.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in promoting restorative justice practices.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African Americans in the military.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging discriminatory lending practices.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of Black feminist theory.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in promoting inclusive immigration policies.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African Americans in Hollywood.
• The role of the Civil Rights Movement in challenging discriminatory healthcare access.
• The influence of the Civil Rights Movement on the development of African American museums and cultural institutions.
• Examining the role of the Civil Rights Movement in promoting LGBTQ+ rights.
• The impact of the Civil Rights Movement on the representation of African Americans in sports.

These essay topic ideas provide a wide range of avenues for exploration within the Civil Rights Movement. Whether you are interested in the experiences of specific individuals, the impact on various social issues, or the movement's influence on other movements, you are sure to find a topic that suits your interests. Remember to conduct thorough research, cite reliable sources, and present a well-structured argument in your essay to effectively delve into the complexities of the Civil Rights Movement.

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48 Research Topics on Civil Rights Movement

Researching the civil rights movement is a fun process if you identify a perfect topic and if you have a strong foundational knowledge about the subject.

We will provide some of the best and most exciting topics you can borrow.

The civil rights movement in the United States, which was officially started in 1964 under the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, has resulted in enormous progress for African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and women. But nevertheless, much remains to be done, and real equality for all Americans remains a pipe dream for many. 

This article will list some great topics for research on the civil rights movement.

If you need assistance with your civil rights movement paper. Here at Academeter.com, we have capable writers who specialize in custom history research papers and essays.

After than brief message, let’s continue to the main purpose of this article.

Civil Rights Movements in the 1950s

By early 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling that prohibited segregation in public educational institutions. As a result, the civil rights movement in the United States was born.

The Black Nationalist Movement took up the mantle left by the Civil Rights Movement and carried it forward. When compared to the Civil Rights Movement, which sought to reform the aspects of American society that contributed to social injustice, the Black Nationalist Movement sought to address the specific problems faced by African-Americans who were forced to live in slum conditions in major urban areas throughout the country.

The Black Panthers picked up where the Civil Rights Movement, the SCLC, and the SNCC left off by raising awareness of the situation of African-Americans living in ghettos, as well as the levels of injustice that still persisted at the time of their founding. Malcolm X was the most well-known leader of this movement, but several others were also influential. For example, in contrast to the Civil Rights Movement, where most of the violence was started by whites, the Black Nationalist Movement was characterized by armed blacks eager to achieve justice by any means necessary.

Civil Rights Research Paper Topics

• How did Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. influence the Civil Rights Movement?
• What were the most effective strategies employed by leaders of the Civil Rights Movement?
• How the murder of Emmett Till marked a new Beginning in civil rights movement.
• The significance of Freedom Struggle at the Library of Congress.
• How did the Youth Influence Civil Rights Movement?
• What was the place of women in the Civil Rights Movement?
• Was it more effective for civil rights groups to protest violently or nonviolently during the Civil Rights Movement?
• What impact did violence have on the Civil Rights Movement?
• The significance of integration to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement?
• Understanding the leadership styles used by Civil Rights leaders.
• Were civil rights movements led by big name leaders or common people?
• Exploring the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest achievements and failures?
• How influential was Rosa Parks’s role in the Civil Rights Movement?
• What led to White people discriminating against African Americans?
• Significance of theatre during the Civil Rights Movement period.
• How can the 1950s be regarded as a major accomplishment for the civil rights movement?
• The Progressive Reform Stages in the Civil Rights Movement
• America’s Civil Rights Movement’s Unforeseen and Paradoxical Outcome
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• Why did the Civil Rights Movement emphasize the struggle for Aid?
• Exploring the Long-Term Consequences of the Civil Rights Movement
• Assessing Violent and Nonviolent Protest Techniques Adopted by African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement
• The America’s Supreme Court and its Role in the Civil Rights Movement
• The America’s Supreme Court and its Role in the Civil Rights Movement Did civil rights Movements Lead to Substantial Economic Empowerment of Black Populations
• The Role of Women in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement in the United States and Its Influence on African American Communities Today.
• The Southern Jewish-Black Relationship and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Role of Students in the Civil Rights Movement
• An Examination of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Role of Martin Luther King Jr.
• Comparing political freedoms of African Americans before and After Civil Rights Movement.
• White Opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Influence of Rock ‘n’ Roll
• African Americans and Religion and How Spirituality influenced the Civil Rights Groups.
• Discussing the Historical Accuracy of Ava DuVernay’s Portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma, a Drama Film.
• The Drug War and the Civil Rights Movement
• What role did the African-American Middle Class play in the Civil rights era?
• Experience with the police during the Civil Rights Movement.
• What achievements did peaceful protests make during the Civil Rights Movement’s Peaceful Protest Achievements?
• An examination of the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War.
• Exploring the history of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Connection Between Activism and the Federal Government
• To what extent did grass-roots activism play a role in the growth of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s?
• The Importance of Researching the Civil Rights Movement.
• A History of the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements in the United States.
• The Niagara Movement’s Origins and Impact on the American Civil Rights Movement.
• The Grassroots Organizers’ Role and Importance in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Impact of Society on the World of Doubt and the Civil Rights Movement
• How the Civil Rights Movement shaped Public Policy today.
• Comparing America’s North and South in the Civil Rights Movement
• Democracy in the United States and the contributions of the Civil Rights Movement

How to Write a Civil Rights Movement Research Paper/Essay

The following 8 steps to follow to when writing your research paper or essay about the Civil Rights Movement.

It is necessary for students to complete a civil rights movement essay because it allows them to reflect on historical events that have shaped present American culture. Learn some important recommendations that will assist you in earning an A on your paper about the civil rights struggle by reading this article.

Step 1: Guidelines from Your Professor for Relevance

First and foremost, thoroughly read the directions. Examine all of the materials provided by your tutor, including the grading rubric, sample papers, and essay questions about the civil rights struggle in America. Knowing exactly what is required of you makes it much easier to proceed with the task and earn a high grade on it in the long run.

Step 2: Explore Examples from Previous Research

Look through examples of previous publications on the subject. If you are unsure of what to write about in specific, you might look at the essays written by other students to get some inspiration. While reviewing civil rights movement essay samples, make notes on the content, the sources utilized, and any other pertinent issues that come to mind. This may provide you with some suggestions for what to include in your report and how to improve it to ensure that it meets the requirements of the assignment.

Step 3: Gather High-Quality Sources

Gather high-quality material to use as a basis for your essay. Scholarly publications and books are the most reliable sources. However, there are several reputable websites and news stories that provide unbiased information on the civil rights movements and other social movements. In addition, if the rules do not prohibit you from including a wide range of resources, you might include a large number of them, which would make your essay more detailed.

Step 4: Do not Ignore Background Information

Provide some background information on the civil rights movement. The twentieth century was important in the history of the United States because it saw a number of significant political and social events, notably World War II and the ensuing Cold War. Some incidents may have no relevance to the history of the civil rights movement, but their inclusion in the narrative will help readers better grasp the historical environment in which the movement occurred.

Step 5: Expand the Scope of Your Paper

Take a look at the larger history of discrimination in American culture as a whole. The most common civil rights movement essay themes center on discrimination as their central theme. The black community benefited from the movement since it helped to reduce discrimination and improve their social standing among other things. Women, Native Americans, and members of the LGBT community were among the many groups who endured prejudice throughout American history, as were other minorities and women. Are there any parallels between the ways in which these two groups campaigned for equal rights?

Step 6: Include Historical Context of Civil Rights Groups

Consider the historical context of the civil rights movement. With nearly 400 years of history of racial discrimination and oppression in America, there is a great deal of background to the civil rights struggle today. It is possible to discuss slavery and segregation regulations in this section, as well as how African-American communities responded to the conflict. For example, you may think about the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on Black identity, or you could think about other examples or cultural movements that have their roots in the African-American community.

Step: 7: Add Personal Reflection at the End

Tip number seven is to include a personal reflection if it is appropriate. In your essay, you might discuss what the civil rights movement means to you personally as well as how it has influenced the lives of your family. Additionally, you might look into racial prejudice in contemporary society to demonstrate that some concerns have yet to be resolved.

Step 8: Let a Logical Framework Guide Your Paper

Make sure your essay has a logical framework. Make certain that each paragraph fulfills its intended function. The opening to a civil rights movement essay should identify the movement and state your major argument in plain language. It should be followed by numerous main body paragraphs, each of which should explore a different idea that is related to the core argument. As a final point, address all of the points you’ve raised and illustrate how they relate to your thesis statement.

You will be able to produce an amazing paper on the civil rights struggle if you follow these few suggestions. Check out the rest of our website for more essay titles, themes, and writing tips!

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

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

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

Jim Crow Laws

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

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

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

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

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

World War II and Civil Rights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Rock Nine

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

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

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

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

Civil Rights Act of 1957

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

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

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

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

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

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

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

Freedom Riders

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

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

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

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

March on Washington

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

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

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

Civil Rights Act of 1964

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

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

Bloody Sunday

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

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

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

Voting Rights Act of 1965

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

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

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

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

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

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

Fair Housing Act of 1968

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

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

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

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Members of the “Washington Freedom Riders Committee,” en route to Washington, D.C., hang signs from bus windows to protest segregation, New York, 1961. Copyprint. New York World-Telegram and Sun Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Digital ID # cph 3c25958

The Relocation of Japanese-Americans, 1942-1946. Crowd behind barbed wire fence at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in California, wave to friends on train departing for various relocation centers located throughout the United States, 1942. Photograph by Julian F. Fowlkes. Copyprint. U.S. Signal Corps, Wartime Civil Control Administration, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (3) Digital ID# cph 3b07599

One of the thousands of marchers who participated in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in Washington, DC.  Source:  National Archives, Records of the U.S. Information Agency; Link: http://www.digitalvaults.org/record/1482.html?print=1

President Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 while Dr. King and others look on. Photo from the Congress on Racial Equality's website: http://www.core-online.org/History/voting_rights.htm

Brown v. Board of Education, 1954. George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit, following Supreme Court decision ending segregation. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (9) Reproduction # LC-USZ62-111236 (b&w film copy neg.)

Community and human rights activist, Harvey Milk, was the first openly gay person elected to public office in 1977.

A telephone switchboard during World War II.  Source: National Archives, Records of the Women’s Bureau; Link:  http://www.digitalvaults.org/record/2786.html?print=1

Father James Groppi with protestors, at Wisconsin State Capital during welfare protests.  Wisconsin Historical Society, Father Groppi and Protestors, 4934. Viewed online at http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:4294963828-4294955414&dsRecordDetails=R:IM4934

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A New Civil Rights Movement, a New Journal

Freedomways , the African American journal of politics and culture chronicled the civil rights and Black freedom movements starting in the early 1960s. Read it on JSTOR.

Freedomways , the African American journal of politics and culture that for nearly a quarter century chronicled the civil rights and Black freedom movements beginning in the early 1960s, started in 1961, a year that was a kind of transitional one for the civil rights movement. The sit-ins that had begun in early 1960, and the continuing demonstrations and emerging fervor, had made national headlines, but the movement hadn’t yet achieved the national stature that it would a couple of years later. Nevertheless, the civil rights movement was still a significant, if not yet overwhelming, news media story. The 1961 Freedom Rides, in which Black and white movement volunteers tested a recent Supreme Court decision outlawing segregation on interstate bus travel by sitting together on trips through the South, brought headlines, photographs and television news footage of racist mobs, burning buses and bloodied civil rights activists.

In addition to this, the Cold War still raged. John F. Kennedy had been elected on a platform of liberal policies at home and anti-Communist assertiveness abroad. The war in Vietnam was a set of kindling getting ready to blaze. Domestic McCarthy-era persecutions of American Communists and those who associated with them had not yet abated. Several political prisoners remained incarcerated. Anti-Communist trials of political activists were continuing. The Communist Party itself would be indicted under the McCarran Act, which demanded that the Party plead guilty to being the government’s almost cartoonish caricature of the organization and register itself and its members under those terms or face draconian fines and prison sentences. Yet despite all this, the winds of change were in the air. One example involved one of the country’s most prominent political prisoners, the Black American Communist activist Henry Winston , who had been convicted under the Smith Act a decade earlier. He had been blinded in prison due to medical neglect, and an international campaign was mounted demanding his release. In July, 1961, President Kennedy would commute Winston’s eight-year prison sentence. Winston would go on to lead the Communist Party, USA as its chair for two decades.

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At the same time, a new generation of nationally prominent Black artists, not content to portray themselves as apolitical figures, embraced the new freedom movement. Some of these artists would become associated with Freedomways over the years. Among them were Lorraine Hansberry, whose A Raisin in the Sun was the first prominent Broadway drama written by a Black writer; actors Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee , and Harry Belafonte; visual artists like Margaret G. Burroughs, Charles White, Jacob Lawrence , Elton Fax, Romare Beaden, Elizabeth Catlett Mora; pioneering cartoonists Brumsic Brandon, Jr. , and Ollie Harrington; musicians like drummer and modern jazz pioneer Max Roach, as well as trumpeter Bill Dixon, saxophonist Archie Shepp, and their cohorts in what was called the jazz avant garde; and a host of new writers, led by novelists James Baldwin , Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, John Oliver Killens, and Julian Mayfield, and including a host of poets (Alice Walker published some of her earliest poems and stories in the journal), essayists, and political analysts. My own contributions to the journal came late in its run, with a couple of book reviews, and, in 1984, with an article on jazz .

The foregoing history was the setting in which a small group of African American left wing activists, headed by the then-legendary and notorious W.E.B. Du Bois, founded yet another Greenwich Village-based little magazine. Freedomways was unusual even in the world of little magazines of the era, where what may have looked unusual to mainstream society was actually, in the diverse intellectual world of the Village in the late 1950s and early 1960s, quite commonplace. But what distinguished this magazine were qualities that came not only from its editorial personnel and outlook, but from its history as well.

Key Figures

Within the context of the domestic Cold War, the African American community was one of the few places where the organized left still enjoyed a reservoir of good will as well as personalities that commanded widespread respect. Among the top Communists tried and jailed by the federal government at the end of the 1940s was New York City Councilman Benjamin J. Davis, one of the most important Black elected officials in the country. Du Bois, who was arguably the most highly educated American of his generation, had spent more than half a century pursuing a career that splendidly blended activism and scholarship. He was a guiding figure in the effort to create the philosophical and political framework for the civil rights movement. Yet the federal government had indicted and tried him on charges of being an unregistered agent of a foreign power for the “crime” of heading an effort that collected 2.5 million signatures to ban the atom bomb. Du Bois was acquitted. Others, such as Trinidad-born Claudia Jones, who had been one of the leaders of the country’s youth movement during World War II and became a prominent Communist leader, were deported. Still others, like Paul Robeson, had his passport revoked and was hounded and harassed by Federal authorities throughout the 1950s.

Robeson had founded a newspaper, Freedom , which gathered many African American left wing writers. It would only last a few years, but the group of writers that supported it would go on to become part of the nucleus for Freedomways . Founded as “A Quarterly Review of the Negro Freedom Movement” (it would later drop “Negro” from its subtitle, indicating that the Black freedom movement could no longer be thought of as a strictly parochial affair), the new journal’s earliest editors included not only Du Bois; Shirley Graham, an experienced, world traveling novelist, biographer, playwright, and journalist, served as the journal’s first editor. She was married to Du Bois. Early editorial board members also included John Henrik Clarke, the prominent academic historian W. Alphaeus Hunton, who was a leader in the movement for solidarity with the newly assertive, and increasingly victorious, anti-colonial movements in Africa (Hunton would spend his final years in Africa, in Gambia, Ghana, and Zambia, where he died in 1970), and Augusta Strong, a linguist, journalist, and educator who had been active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) of the 1930s and 1940s, a group that historians credit as having trained many of those who would go on to play significant roles in the 1960s movements.

At the journal’s helm was Esther Cooper Jackson, another veteran writer and activist, who had been a leader of the SNYC and received some prominence during the 1950s as the wife of Smith Act defendant James E. Jackson, a prominent Black Communist who spent several years a fugitive after refusing to surrender to authorities to serve his term as a political prisoner. From the very first issue of Freedomways , Cooper Jackson was its managing editor — in effect the editor in chief — and would continue in that role during the journal’s entire 25 year run. She was its main organizer, and it was she who, most important of all, maintained the journal’s high standards of literary integrity, its array of prominent contributors from all wings of the freedom movement, and its enduring relevance.

Her primary collaborator on the journal in this effort was Jean Carey Bond, an essayist, fiction writer, member of the Harlem Writers Guild, and the niece of Benjamin J. Davis, who joined the journal in 1962 as a book reviewer. She continued to write reviews and essays, and she eventually shared editorial duties with Jackson, first as a contributing editor before becoming associate editor. Margaret G. Burroughs, who served for many years as the journal’s first art editor, was a prominent Chicago artist and a founder of the institution that is now the Du Sable Museum of African American History. John Devine, a labor activist from Philadelphia, would succeed Burroughs as art editor in 1963, and would serve as the only white member of the magazine’s editorial board. He remained with the magazine for the rest of its run. Burroughs would also continue with Freedomways as a contributing editor. Most of the people named so far in this essay would contribute to the magazine at one point or another as editors and writers, and the magazine would produce special issues on Robeson , Du Bois , and Hansberry , and on topics ranging from Harlem, Africa, Mississippi, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, to education and the Black image in the media.

It would be easy to conclude from this history that Freedomways was just another staid and dogmatic periodical, pontificating already digested truths about current affairs while relying on the certainties of a dubious ideology to make sense of and simplify the challenges of a complex reality. (This is a conclusion one can draw from what remains the most significant myth-making critique of the journal yet published, Harold Cruse’s anticommunist attack in his widely-read The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual [1967], an assault best answered by browsing the journal itself.) Such a description would miss the reality of Freedomways by a wide mark. For one thing, the magazine maintained its formal independence from political ideologies and organizations throughout its existence; and while it is true that many Communist and other left wing contributors helped solidify its political identity as a magazine of the left, what also distinguished this periodical was that it was a true tribune and mirror of the actual freedom movement that was changing the country’s social reality.

A Voice of the Movement, a Voice for the Movement

Part of the journal’s strength came from the fact that the voices one found in Freedomways were the voices of the movement itself. The first issue contained, among other things, a stunning nine-page historical essay by Du Bois, tracing the story of “The United States and the Negro” from 1861 to 1961; a report from Conakry by Alphaeus Hunton on the newly independent Guinea; John Henrik Clarke’s report on his trip to Cuba (the same trip that Le Roi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, famously chronicled in his “Cuba Libre” essay of the same year); a speech to the United Nations by Kwame Nkrumah, the president of Ghana; and a militant, pro-integrationist artistic manifesto by Elizabeth Catlett, praising the founding the National Conference of Negro Artists (which still exists as the National Conference of Artists), and denouncing the forced segregation imposed on Black artists, as well as on all African Americans at the time. The second issue contained an essay by one of the Freedom Riders who survived the attack in Alabama that left his bus a burned out hulk. Joanne Grant was already a well-known left wing journalist (she was the associate editor of the National Guardian, the country’s biggest-circulating radical weekly newspaper, and would go on to publish important work in African American studies) when she contributed first-hand reporting on Southern activism to an early issue. A 1962 letter from Julian Bond (credited to “Horace Julian Bond”), then a staff member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), offers readers one of the first histories of that pivotal organization. Bond, who died in 2015, also contributed an essay on nonviolence to the Spring, 1963 issue.

One singular contribution of Freedomways to the growth in public awareness of African American history and culture was the “Recent Books” feature that appeared in the back pages of every issue. This was an annotated bibliography compiled and written by associate editor Ernest Kaiser, a Black writer and essayist who was also one of the best-known librarians of the day. He spent forty years as librarian, archivist, and research associate at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. His bibliographies constituted a kind graduate-level bibliography in Black Studies, long before such studies became standard university fare.

Part of the radicalism of Freedomways was its insistence on being a journal that was edited and managed by Black writers and literary figures that also welcomed the contributions of white writers. The poet Walter Lowenfels was the only significant modernist American poet to be convicted under the Smith Act; he contributed poems and essays to early issues. Anne Braden, a well-known white activist based in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote on “The White Southerner in the Integration Struggle” for the Winter, 1963 issue. NAACP researcher Herbert Hill contributed a pair of analytical articles to early volumes of the journal.

Activists that wanted help explaining why it was that the South seemed so ripe for the emergence of a historic movement for social change in the late 1950s and early 1960s could look to the theoretical writings in Freedomways by one of their own. J.H. O’Dell had been a union activist in Louisiana and staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, with duties ranging from fund raising to voter registration. He had been a Communist until the McCarthy-era repressions impacted the CPUSA organization and membership in the South, limiting the organization’s public presence in the region. The intervention by the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy, into the movement’s internal affairs illustrated how the government’s hounding of political radicals was brought to bear on the movement itself. Kennedy demanded that King fire O’Dell and other left wingers, or face open, official hostility. King complied. Nevertheless, O’Dell kept his ties to the movement while becoming more involved with Freedomways, and his first article for the magazine, “The Negro People in the Southern Economy,” appearing in the Fall, 1963 issue, was a landmark study of its kind.

“The Negro People and the Southern Economy” summed up both the conditions under which Black people lived in the region, charted how those conditions had changed in the nearly two decades since the end of the Second World War, and helped clarify some of the issues that catalyzed the civil rights movement. O’Dell firmly located the movement not only in the world of ethical and moral concerns, but in economic ones as well, focusing on jobs, occupational access, income, and unemployment. The movement, he concluded, was “crossing the threshold of its present, and entering a new period in its historical development.” It should be remembered that this article was written in the weeks after the 1963 March on Washington. This “ new period ,” O’Dell said, “ is increasingly marked by the struggle for economic well-being and greater political power, the two basic conditions necessary for the full enjoyment of ‘equal rights ’” (italics in original). Following “The Negro People and the Southern Economy,” All told, writes Ian Rocksborough Smith, in an invaluable 2003 study of the journal’s history, “O’Dell would have a tremendous impact on the magazine, penning over sixty percent of the staff editorials, writing twenty key strategy pieces over the twenty-five years of the magazine’s existence, and playing a central role in soliciting materials from activists for publication.” Freedomways would continue to chronicle, reflect, and advocate for these concerns, and for others as well. It came out early, for instance, against the war in Vietnam in 1965 (starting with an editorial written by O’Dell), published a two-issue special on the Middle East in 1983, and championed the presidential runs of Rev. Jesse Jackson, for whom O’Dell would serve as a principal advisor.

This essay has charted the early history of Freedomways , but the breadth, scope, and impact of the journal can hardly be successfully recounted in this short space. Let this short account serve, then, as an introduction, and as an invitation to read the entire run of this extraordinary publication . When read as a whole, this journal, founded by a small group of left wing intellectuals who were trying to find their way beyond the repression of the McCarthy era and contribute to the burgeoning movement of Black people for civil and human rights, offers an unprecedented and intimate view into the most important social movement of our time. By the end of its run, Freedomways had become something close to a journal of record of the mid-to-late 20th Century African American freedom movement.

READ THE FULL RUN OF FREEDOMWAYS ON JSTOR

Editor’s note: This essay first appeared as a Reveal Digital blog post in August of 2018.

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Top List of the Best Civil Rights Research Topics

While students have many civil rights research topics from which to choose what to write about, not every idea suits every learner. Consequently, some students struggle to choose the topics to write about when educators assign them this task. The purpose of a civil rights research assignment is to help a learner reflect on different historical events and how they’ve molded modern society.

Over the years, the world has had many civil rights movements. Consequently, students have many civil rights movements essay topics to consider when assigned this task. If having difficulties selecting the topic for your paper or essay, this guide will simplify the task for you.

How to Pick Civil Rights Research Topic

To select the right topic to write a civil rights research paper or essay about, follow these practical tips.

Understand your assignment instructions: Start by reading the instructions from your educator before selecting a topic for your paper. And this includes checking the grading rubric and essay questions. Read sample papers: To understand what the educator expects of you, read several sample papers on this subject. The internet has many sample essays and papers on civil rights movements. Thus, you won’t have a hard time finding a sample essay or paper to guide you. Pick an interesting topic: This section features a civil rights topics list with many ideas from which you can choose a title for your paper or essay. However, settle for a topic you find interesting. That way, you won’t struggle to research and write about a topic you find boring. Additionally, don’t choose a topic if you don’t know anything about it. Research your topic: Before settling on a topic, perform some preliminary research about it. That way, you’ll know whether you can find sufficient material or information to include in your essay. Don’t forget to list down relevant sources while conducting your preliminary research. Refine your topic: Perhaps, you’ve decided to write about a topic you’ve come across in this section. In that case, tweak the topic or refine it to suit your essay prompt or research question.

Easy Civil Rights Movement Topics

If looking for an easy topic to write about, this list has some of the best ideas for your paper.

• What is a civil rights movement?
• What causes the emergence of civil rights movements?
• Describe the civil movements of the twentieth century
• Explain the strategies that civil rights activists use to accomplish their goals
• What do civil rights movements agitate for?
• What has been the most significant achievement for civil rights movements?
• A brief history of civil rights movements in the US
• Describe the role of civil rights in the equality struggle
• The role of Martin Luther King on American civil rights movements
• How civil rights movements help society

Interesting Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics

Are you looking for interesting civil rights topics for research? If yes, this section has the best ideas that you can explore in your paper or essay.

• Civil rights and equality for gays
• Analyze the depiction of civil wrongs and civil rights in  To Kill a Mocking Bird  essay
• How civil rights movements helped the black people acquire their voting right
• Why black people were denied voting rights before their agitation by civil rights movements
• How civil rights movements encouraged the blacks to vote
• Describe the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act
• Were civil rights movements responsible for changing the American society and system?
• Describe the most common tactics that civil rights movements use to accomplish their goals
• Describe the connection between race and civil rights movements
• Are civil rights necessary in modern society?

Current Civil Rights Paper Topics

Perhaps, you want to write a research paper or essay on a current topic. If so, this section has the best ideas to consider for your academic paper.

• Civil rights and modern women
• Lessons today’s society can learn from twentieth-century civil rights movements
• How people perceive post-racial civil rights movements
• Why modern societies need civil rights movements
• Can civil rights help in the achievements of gay rights?
• Are modern civil rights movements effective?
• Compare today’s civil rights movements with those of the twentieth century
• How do you think modern civil rights movements should differ from those of the twentieth century?
• Explain how the media help civil rights movements in the achievement of their goals
• Describe the civil rights movement you consider relevant and effective today

These are some of the best civil rights topics today. If looking for a way to impress your educator and earn the top grade, consider writing about one of these ideas after extensive research.

American Civil Rights Research Topics

Do you want to write about civil rights movements in America? If so, consider these ideas for your academic paper.

• How effective were the American civil rights movements in the twentieth century?
• What were the impacts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X on civil rights movements?
• Which has been the most effective civil rights movement in America?
• Describe the role of women in the American civil rights movements
• Was non-violent or violent protest effective a tool for the American civil rights movements?
• Explain the impact of violence on the American civil rights movements
• Explain the importance of integration to the leaders of civil rights movements
• Describe the influence of the most impactful civil rights movement on the American society
• Describe the greatest failures and successes of the American civil rights movements
• Who were the key leaders of the American civil rights movements in the twentieth century?

LGBTQ Civil Rights Topics for Research

Do you want to explore LGBTQ civil rights movement research topics? If so, consider these ideas for your academic papers.

• Describe the effects of AIDS on the LGBTQ rights movements
• Explain the role of women in the LGBTQ civil rights movements
• Explain the extent to which LGBTQ civil rights movements have been successful
• Explain the influence of Bayard Rustin on civil rights and gay rights movements
• What are the pros and cons of LGBTQ civil rights movements?
• Explain the impacts of LGBTQ rights movements globally
• Did Stonewall Riots mark the beginning of LGBTQ rights movements?
• Explain the influence of Harvey Milk on LGBTQ civil rights movements
• Is the gay marriage controversy the new LGBTQ civil rights movement?
• Which is the most successful LGBTQ civil rights movement so far?

The Main Topics of Civil Rights for Research Papers

If looking for the main civil rights research paper topics, this category has brilliant ideas that you will find worth exploring. Pick a title for your paper in this section, research it extensively, and then compose a winning paper or essay.

• Analysis of the civil rights movements as depicted in the  Freedom Riders
• Compare Malcolm X and Martin Luther King’s views regarding civil rights movements
• Describe President Johnson’s role in civil rights movements
• What role did Medgar Willey Evers play in the civil rights movement?
• Describe the coalition politics that followed the civil rights movements
• Analysis of the Vietnam war and civil rights movements
• What are the effects and purposes of civil rights movements?
• Civil rights movements and African-American women
• Explain the contributions of Gwendolyn and Richard Wright books to civil rights movements
• Describe Black Power as a civil rights movement

Civil Rights Topics for Essays

Perhaps, you want to write several essays on civil rights movements. In that case, this list of civil rights topics has brilliant ideas for you.

• Describe the media’s role in the civil rights battle
• How the death of Martin Luther King Jr. affected human rights movements
• The battle for civil rights- Describe the history
• Dangerous and inappropriate ways people fought for civil rights
• Should all countries have the same civil rights?
• How the global trade affects civil rights
• How the civil rights acts led to the slaves’ freedom in 1975 and 1966
• Who were the pioneers of the civil rights movements?
• Describe the primary drivers of civil rights movements
• What role did African American women play in civil rights movements?

Interesting Civil Rights Debate Topics

Maybe you have an upcoming debate and you need topic ideas for your civil rights debate. If so, consider these ideas.

• Black lives matter- Racial discrimination persists in America
• America has not achieved social justice for all
• Civil rights activism is still necessary for America
• White supremacy is still prevalent globally
• Black power can end white supremacy
• Civil rights laws need improvements
• The world needs improvement in the critical race theory
• President Trump is a racist
• Civil rights movements would not have existed without Martin Luther King
• President Johnson did the most to strengthen civil rights movements in the US

These are some of the best civil rights paper topics for students in different study levels to explore. However, learners should take their time to research their chosen ideas to come up with papers that will impress educators to earn the top grades.

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111 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on civil rights movement, ✍️ civil rights movement essay topics for college, 👍 good civil rights movement research topics & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting civil rights movement research titles, 💡 simple civil rights movement essay ideas, ❓ research question about the civil rights movement.

• Women Role in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement: Effects and Consequences
• The Civil Rights Movement’s Success
• Social and Personal Responsibility of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Causes and Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
• 1960’s Civil Rights Movement
• Martin Luther King Jr.’s Impact on Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement’s Causes and Effects The civil rights movement had significant consequences for the USA which. Studying the causes of the appearance of this social phenomenon can give a more detailed insight into it.
• Praying for Sheetrock: Civil Rights Movement In the book “Praying for Sheetrock: A Work of Nonfiction” Melissa Fay Greene considers the problem of the Civil Rights Movement in the American South.
• Rosa Parks: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement Rosa Parks’s life and deeds are indeed rousing and offer a clarion call for free-thinking people all over the world to emulate her struggles and wins for social equality, justice.
• Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King, Jr. is the most well-known defender of black Americans’ civil rights; the movement he led has contributed significantly to the fight against racial segregation.
• The Civil Rights Movement History The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s considerably changed the nation by defending equality at the legislative and public levels.
• The Civil Rights Movement The movement for equal rights and opportunities for every citizen of the United States has led to positive results and outstanding successes.
• The Influence of the African American Civil Rights Movement on Other Groups The Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s began the struggle for freedom and equality, whose ideas remain relevant in today’s America.
• The American Civil Rights Movement in US History The need for the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s was contributed by the desire to end the Jim Crow segregation system in the Southern states.
• African American Civil Rights Movement The growth of the anti-racist and pacifist movements in the United States was reflected in the sentiments of African American fighters for Civil Rights.
• Researching of Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement aimed to eliminate racial discrimination and ensure that everyone has equal rights and opportunities regardless of skin color.
• Affirmative Action in Civil Rights Movement Affirmative action has been in the spotlight of the political, and in particular, liberal agenda, since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement in American History The Civil Rights Movement is important in discussing American history because it effectively changed the nation with its impacts on minorities.
• The Civil Rights Movement from 1955 to 1968 In the period from 1955 to 1968, the Civil Rights movement gained considerable momentum, ultimately resulting in the implementation of the Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act.
• The Civil Rights Movement: Impact on the African American Citizens By building the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans managed to change not only the legal standards but also the social perspective, gaining the recognition that they deserved.
• The Great Depression vs. The Civil Rights Movement The Great Depression had an impact compared to the Civil Rights Movement because it affected many people, and transformed the American culture more profoundly.
• Civil Rights Movement and Construction of US Racism Racism is associated with slurs, Islamophobia, police brutality, and Donald Trump. This list signals that racism today is a more insidious, politicized form of discrimination.
• Analysis of the Civil Rights Movement By the early 1970s, the fascination with extreme forms of black nationalism was gradually waning, the influence of adventurous slogans and tactics was falling.
• The Civil Rights Movement: Minorities vs. Police An opposition between minorities and police appears to be a problem that started during the Civil Rights Movement and continues to modern days.
• Achievement of Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s marked a new beginning in America’s history. Different minority groups came together in order to fight for equality.
• The Civil Rights Movement and Its Biggest Events The Civil Rights Movement was initiated to advance the clamor for social justice by ensuring equal entitlements for the black society under the U.S. statutes.
• Civil Rights Movement, Reconstruction, and the Gilded Age The Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-1960s became a struggle for social fairness. During the period of Reconstruction, Black Americans managed to receive political independence.
• The History of Civil Rights Movement One of the differences between the activities of Claudette Colvin and young BLM activists lies in distinctive political situations.
• Civil Rights Movement: Aims, Ideas, Impacts on Society The aim of the civil rights movement in the 1960s was to resist all forms of racial oppression as well as to abolish the legacy of slavery as an institution.
• The Civil Rights Movement Overview This paper focuses on the Civil Rights Movement, especially its origin and influence in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
• Civil Rights Movement and Actual State of Human Rights Ending racial discrimination and equalization of rights between the variety of ethnic groups found on the territory of the United States is a struggle with a long history.
• Civil Rights Movement Analysis This paper describes the Civil Rights Movement that started as a response to racial segregation in the U.S.A. The main ideologists were Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
• Martin Luther King Civil Rights Movement: Impact on Modern Society The Civil Rights movement has had a significant impact on the history of the USA and played a significant role in forming modern society.
• Women’s Demands: Seneca Falls in 1848 and Civil Rights Movement No matter the amount of difference between the demands of women at Seneca Falls in 1848 with the demands of women in the 1960s-70s, at the fundamental demand they were the same.
• US Social Scientists and Civil Rights Movement One of the most important event of 1960s US was the Civil Rights Movement. The movement gave equal rights to African-Americans in the US which included right to vote.
• Civil Rights Movement & Modern Afro-American Life This essay will provide a brief overview of the civil rights movement and discuss its impact on the contemporary life of African Americans.
• Law in the Civil Rights Movement: Articles Review The article by Glennon seeks to prove that the mere act of prolonged protests during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1957 did not prevail on its own volition.
• Early Civil Rights Movement and Its Goals The Civil Rights Movement encompasses the actions and strategies used by different groups in the United States between 1954 and 1968.
• News Media Shaping Civil Rights Movement History African American journalists sacrificed their resources to support the Civil Rights Movement. This paper explains how the news media shaped history throughout this movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement and Reconstruction This paper discusses Morris’ analysis of the Civil Rights Movement development and strategies. It also discusses what did reconstruction entail and why was it eventually abandoned.
• Martin Luther King in Civil Rights Movement One should focus on the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King was able to raise people’s awareness about the destructive impacts of racial discrimination.
• Pauli Murray’s Input to the Civil Rights Movement Pauli Murray’s name is not commonly mentioned alongside many historical figures immortalized in their fight for equality and civil rights for minorities and women.
• Civil Rights Movement: Violence and Community This paper explores the role of violence in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and the way the bottom-up approach offers a different view of the Black struggle.
• The Civil Rights Movement in USA Civil rights can be traced to during the United States of American Reconstruction period which happened between late 1860s and 1870s.
• Civil Rights Movement in America One of the common elements of the history of the United States in the early years was racial discrimination against foreigners.
• Civil Disobedience and the Civil Rights Movement
• Muhammad Ali and the Civil Rights Movement
• Human Trafficking and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement: The Right for Educational Equity
• Barack Obama Reflects on the Deracialized Post-Civil Rights Movement Just
• Hate Crime and the Civil Rights Movement
• Angela Davis and the Civil Rights Movement
• Affirmative Action Programs and the Civil Rights Movement
• The American Civil Rights Movement Between 1955 to 1968
• Philadelphia and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement
• The Role of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Abolitionist Movement and the Civil Rights Movement
• Racism and Prejudice During the Civil Rights Movement
• The History of The Civil Rights Movement in The United States of America
• Black Lives Matter in The Civil Rights Movement
• Discrimination and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement and Its Impact on Gender
• Gender Inequality During the Civil Rights Movement
• Montgomery Bus Boycotts: Role of Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• Personalities Behind the Civil Rights Movement
• Non-violence During the Civil Rights Movement Assignment
• Industrial Workers Movements and Civil Rights Movement
• Martin Luther King’s Impact on the Civil Rights Movement
• Civil Rights Movement and African American Women’s Role
• Progressing the Civil Rights Movement With Aristotle’s Artistic Appeals
• The Role of The Media in Ushering The Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement
• Analyzing the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War Assignment
• Photojournalism and the Civil Rights Movement
• African American Civil Rights Movement of 1955-1968
• Native Americans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Black Middle Class and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement
• The Contradicting Outcome of The Civil Rights Movement in America
• Civil Rights Movement and The Struggles of African Americans During Those Times
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Biblical Oppression
• Harriet Tubman and the American Civil Rights Movement
• Bernie Sanders and the Civil Rights Movement
• Relationship Between Civil Rights Movement & Feminist Agenda
• The Civil Rights Movement and African American Discriminations
• Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement
• How Has the Civil Rights Movement Changed the United States?
• What Role Did the Americans Play in the Civil Rights Movement From the 1950s to the 1960s?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Vietnam Campaigns Impact Society and Law Enforcement During the 1960s and 1970s?
• What Changed After the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Has the Meaning of Civil Rights in the United States Changed Over Time?
• Why Did the American Civil Rights Movement End?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Cause Social Change?
• What Was the Most Significant Achievement of the Civil Rights Movement?
• Was the Non-violent Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s Successful?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Develop After 1961?
• What Were the Similarities and Differences Between the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement?
• How Far Was Peaceful Protest Responsible for the Success of the Civil Rights Movement in the Years 1955-1964?
• Why Did the Civil Rights Movement Fall Apart?
• In What Ways and for What Reasons Did the Civil Rights Movement in the United States Make Significant Progress in the Period 1950 to 1964?
• How Important Was Martin Luther King to the Success of the Civil Rights Movement?
• What Made the Civil Rights Movement Successful?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Change American Culture?
• What Events Led to the Civil Rights Movement?
• Did the Civil Right Movement Change the World?
• Who Has the Biggest Impact on the Civil Rights Movement?
• Why Did the Civil Rights Movement in the United States Become Fragmented After 1966?
• Is the Civil Rights Movement Still Going On Today?
• What Were the Causes and Effects of the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Affect the World?
• What Was the Most Important Event During the Civil Rights Movement?

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Articles on Civil rights movement

Displaying 1 - 20 of 86 articles.

Maya Angelou’s newly uncovered writing from Egypt and Ghana reveals a more radical side to her career

Alex White , University of Cambridge

Beyoncé’s ‘Blackbiird’ breathes new life into a symbol that has inspired centuries of Black artists, musicians and storytellers

Katie Kapurch , Texas State University and Jon Marc Smith , Texas State University

Hope is not the same as optimism, a psychologist explains − just look at MLK’s example

Kendra Thomas , Hope College

Anti-immigrant pastors may be drawing attention – but faith leaders, including some evangelicals, are central to the movement to protect migrant rights

Brad Christerson , Biola University ; Alexia Salvatierra , Fuller Theological Seminary , and Robert Chao Romero , University of California, Los Angeles

Martin Luther King Jr.’s moral stance against the Vietnam War offers lessons on how to fight for peace in the Middle East

Hajar Yazdiha , USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Lessons for today from the overlooked stories of Black teachers during the segregated civil rights era

Marlee Bunch , University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

US has a long history of state lawmakers silencing elected Black officials and taking power from their constituents

Rodney Coates , Miami University

Emmett Till’s accuser, Carolyn Bryant Donham, has died – here’s how the 1955 murder case helped define civil rights history

Davis W. Houck , Florida State University

Saving broadcasting’s past for the future – archivists are working to capture not just tapes of TV and radio but the experience of tuning in together

Michael J. Socolow , University of Maine

Black students in Washington state played key role in the Civil Rights Movement, new book states

Marc Arsell Robinson , California State University, San Bernardino

The women who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and sustained a movement for social change

Vicki Crawford , Morehouse College

Fences: August Wilson’s play powerfully affirms the value and struggles of black life

Merle A. Williams , University of the Witwatersrand

Civil rights legislation sparked powerful backlash that’s still shaping American politics

Julian Maxwell Hayter , University of Richmond

A Black history primer on African Americans’ fight for equality – 5 essential reads

Howard Manly , The Conversation

Meet Bayard Rustin, often-forgotten civil rights activist, gay rights advocate, union organizer, pacifist and man of compassion for all in trouble

Jerald Podair , Lawrence University

‘The most dangerous Negro’: 3 essential reads on the FBI’s assessment of MLK’s radical views and allies

Voter intimidation in 2022 follows a long history of illegal, and racist, bullying

Atiba Ellis , Marquette University

Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott pull from segregationists’ playbook with their anti-immigration stunts

Greta de Jong , University of Nevada, Reno

The Cleveland Indians changed their team name – what’s holding back the Atlanta Braves?

Peter Dreier , Occidental College

Jackie Robinson was a radical – don’t listen to the sanitized version of history

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Professor of English, North Carolina State University

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HIST 3322/ 4333/ 5386: African American Civil Rights Movement

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This guide is intended to help you begin researching the history of the African American Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

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Other Books (A Sampling)

The following list represents only a small sampling of books in the Library about the Civil Rights movement. Search for more books about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement...

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African american studies, archival collections, civil rights digital library, civil rights history project, civil rights in mississippi, federal response.

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Media coverage of the Civil Rights Era

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Archives Unbound   

Digital collections of historical material on many topics. Includes manuscripts, printed books and periodicals, and government documents. Material comes from the U.S. National Archives, the U.K. National Archives, and many other libraries and archives.  Click on the titles below to read more about individual collections. 

The CRDL features a collection of unedited news film from the WSB (Atlanta) and WALB (Albany, Ga.) television archives held by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia Libraries .

The Civil Rights History Project.   Survey of Collections and Repositories

The Civil Rights History Project Act was created by an act of Congress in 2009, sponsored in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Carolyn McCarthy (NY) and co-sponsored by Representatives Sanford D. Bishop (GA), William Lacy Clay (MO), John Lewis (GA) and Mike Quigley (IL). The law directs the Library of Congress (LOC) and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) to conduct a survey of existing oral history collections with relevance to the Civil Rights Movement (CRM), and to record new interviews with people who participated in the Movement.   There are 1308 collections are available in the database.

Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive

“ Mississippi was a focal point in the struggle for civil rights in America, and Hattiesburg, home of The University of Southern Mississippi, had the largest and most successful Freedom Summer project in 1964. The civil rights materials collected at the University document a local history with truly national significance. The Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive includes a selection of digitized photographs, letters, diaries, and other documents. Oral history transcripts are also available, as well as finding aids for manuscript collections.”

Civil Rights Movement and the Federal Government: Records of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, School Desegregation in the South, 1965-1966 .

This collection brings together a large number of documents on the implementation of "freedom of choice" school desegregation plans in the South and bordering states.

Federal records pertaining to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) ,  compiled by Walter B. Hill, Jr. [and] Trichita M. Chestnut. 

"The database, which continues to grow, already includes 50 civil rights cases.   You'll find iconic campaigns like the Montgomery bus boycott and some that are less known, like the 1958-59 sit-ins in Kansas City, MO and the 1960 St. Paul's College student boycott of a segregated movie theater in Virginia. The database is sponsored by Swarthmore College with support from Tufts and Georgetown Universities."

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement, 1854-1985

Life Magazine

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Television News of the Civil Rights Era,1950-1970

The NAACP Papers collection consists of 6 modules. The NAACP Papers collections contains internal memos, legal briefings, and direct action summaries from national, legal, and branch offices throughout the country. It charts the NAACP's work and delivers a first-hand view into crucial issues. With a timeline that runs from 1909 to 1972, the NAACP Papers document the realities of segregation in the early 20th century to the triumphs of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and beyond.The Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century consists of four modules: two modules of Federal Government Records, and two modules of Organizational Records and Personal Papers, offering unique documentation and a variety of perspectives on the 20th century fight for freedom. Major collections in these modules include Civil Rights records from the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush presidencies; the Martin Luther King FBI File and FBI Files on locations of major civil rights demonstrations like Montgomery and Selma, Alabama or St. Augustine, Florida; and the records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

NAACP Papers: Board of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, and National Staff Files  

S earch this Module    Browse Collections

NAACP Papers: Branch Department, Branch Files, and Youth Department Files  

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NAACP Papers: Special Subjects   Search this Module    Browse Collections

NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces  

NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Legal Department Files   Search this Module    Browse Collections

NAACP Papers: The NAACP's Major Campaigns--Scottsboro, Anti-Lynching, Criminal Justice, Peonage, Labor,

and Segregation and Discrimination Complaints and Responses 

Printed guides to accompany microfilm sets are housed in Microform Services on A-floor in Firestone Library.

American Civil Liberties Union Archives, 1917-1950

MC001  Seeley G. Mudd Library           Finding Aid  

Consists of the records of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), documenting its activities in protecting individual rights under the leadership of Roger Baldwin. Its primary aims have been the defense of free speech and press, separation of church and state, free exercise of religion, due process of law, equal protection of the law, and privacy rights of all citizens. The collection contains primarily correspondence and clippings. Also included are the records of the ACLU’s predecessor organization, the National Civil Liberties Bureau (1917-1920) of the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) and some material documenting a 1912 Industrial Workers of the World free speech trial.

American Civil Liberties Union Archives, 1950-1995

MC001 Seeley G. Mudd Library           Finding Aid  

Documents the activities of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in protecting individual rights between 1950 and 1995. The collection contains correspondence, clippings, court documents, memoranda, printed matter, minutes, reports, briefs, legal files, exhibit materials, and audio-visual materials. Also included are materials from ACLU affiliate organizations, the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee and national office legal department records (1945-1960).

Civil Rights and Social Activism in the South, Series 1-3

ReCap Microfilm 12030            Printed guide (FilmB) E185.6.C585 2007          104 reels

Online guide  to Series 1, Parts 1-2            Online guide  to Series 2

Series 1, Civil rights and social activism in Alabama. Part 1, The John L. LeFlore papers, 1926-1976 (15 reels); Part 2: Records of the Non-Partisan Voters League, 1956-1987 (29 reels) -- Series 2, The Legal Battle for Civil Rights in Alabama. Part 1, Vernon Z. Crawford reords, 1958-1978 (6 reels); Part 2: Selctions from the Blacksher, Menefee & Stein records (37 reels) -- Series 3: James A. Dombrowski and the Southern Conference Educational Fund (17 reels).

Civil Rights During the Bush administration: subject file of the White House Office of Records Management, 1989-1993

ReCap Microfilm 12460           Guide  (FilmB) E185.615 .B87 2008     23 reels

"Microfilmed from the holdings of the George Bush Presidential Library, College Station, Texas." “The documents reproduced in this publication are records of the Bush Administration, 1989-1993, in the custody of the National Archives."

Civil rights during the Carter administration, 1977-1981

ReCap Microfilm 12451           G uide  (FilmB) E185.615 .C3518 2006 

Part I, Sections A-D  

Reproduces document files collected by the office of Louis E. Martin, special assistant to the president, whose primary focus was on civil rights issues and minority affairs. Documents include internal White House memoranda, correspondence between White House and federal agency officials, government reports, invitation lists for major events, correspondence from individuals and organizations, and newspaper articles and editorials.

Civil Rights During the Eisenhower Administration

ReCap Microfilm 12450           G uide  (FilmB) E185.61.C483 2006          14 reels

Part 1. White House central files.  Series A, School desegregation.

Civil Rights During the Kennedy Administration, 1961-1963

ReCap Microfilm 05859            Guide  (FilmB) JC599.U5 C59                     47 reels

A collection from the holdings of the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Part 1. The White House Central Files and Staff Files and the President’s office Files.  Part 2. The Papers of Burke Marshall, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights.

Civil Rights During the Johnson Administration, 1963-1969.

ReCap Microfilm 05445            G uide  (FilmB) JK1717.L38          69 reels

Part 1. White House Central Files.  Part 2. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Administrative History.  Part 3. Oral Histories.  Part 4. Records of the White House Conference on Civil Rights, 1965-1966.  Part 5. Records of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission).

Civil Rights During the Nixon Administration, 1969-1974 . 

ReCap Microfilm 09172             G uide  (FilmB) E185.615. C587          46 reels

Part 1. White House Central Files.

Detroit Urban League Papers, 1916-1950, at the University of Michigan

ReCap Microfilm 09607                      Printed guide (FilmB) F574.D49 N454          35 reels 

Fannie Lou Hamer  Papers, 1966-1978

ReCap Microfilm 11839                        Printed guide (Film B) E185.97.H35 A3 2005a          17 reels

Noted civil rights activist and co-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. 

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Race Relations

ReCap ReCap Microfilm 12390                      Printed guide: (FilmB) E806 .F6917 2008          18 reels

This is a collection of essential materials for the study of the early development of the Civil Rights Movement--concerned with the issues of lynching, segregation, race riots, and employment discrimination.

Papers of the Civil Rights Congress

ReCap Microfilm 11925                      Printed guide (FilmB) E185.61.C59 1988          125 reels

Part 1. Case Files.  Part 2. Files of William Patterson and the National Office.  Part 3. Publications. Part 4. Communist Party USA files.  Part 5. Citizens Emergency Defense Conference.

“The Civil Rights Congress (CRC) was established in 1946, and fought for the protection of the civil rights and liberties of African Americans and suspected communists primarily through litigation, political agitation, and the mobilization of public sentiment.  African American lawyer and Communist leader William Patterson served as executive secretary of the organization throughout its existence.”

Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, 1941-1967

ReCap Microfilm 04276            Printed guide (FilmB) Z1361.N39 M46 1980     49 reels

Founded in 1942 by a group of interracial pacifists, CORE was one of the most important national organizations of the African American freedom movement.

Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality: Addendum, 1944-1968

ReCap Microfilm 04562                      Printed Guide (FilmB) E185.61.P36

Papers of the NAACP

ReCap Microfilm 05354                       G uide  (FilmB) Z1361.N39 G84          1001+ reels

Organization records of America’s oldest and largest civil rights organization.

President Truman’s Commission on Civil Rights

ReCap Microfilm 05573                       G uide  (FilmB) E813.J84           10 reels

Records of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1954-1970

Microfilm 10096                  Printed guide (FilmB) E185.61.S687      61 reels

pt. 1. Records of the President’s office (21 reels) -- pt. 2. Records of the Executive Director and Treasurer (22 reels) -- pt. 3. Records of the Public Relations Dept. (10 reels) -- pt. 4. Records of the Program Dept. (29 reels).

Bayard Rustin Papers 

ReCap Microfilm 11662                Printed guide (Film B) E185.97.R93 B392    23 reels

Reproduces the papers of noted civil rights leader and political activist Bayard Rustin.  The originals are in the A. Philip Randolph Institute, New York N.Y., which were transferred from the Institute to the Library of Congress.

The Sixities: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives, 1960-1974  (Digital)

Contains letters, diaries, oral histories, posters, pamphlets, and audio and video materials documenting the key events, trends, and movements in 1960s America.

Southern Civil Rights Litigation Records for the 1960s

ReCap Microfilm 05448       Printed guide (FilmB) KF4756.A1 G84 or (SF) KF4756.A1 G84     170 reels

Contains the records of major civil rights cases from the archives of the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Lawyers Constitution Defense Committee, and individual attorneys.

William H. Hastie Papers.  Part 2. Civil Rights, Organizational, and Private Activities

ReCap Microfilm 11824                        Printed guide (FilmB) KF373.H38A25          42 reels

Attorney William Henry Hastie was the first African American appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit by President Truman in 1949.  Part 2 of the collection documents his activities as a civil rights lawyer, educator, and judge.  Part I, covering his opinions are available in the Federal Reporter in print, LexisNexis and Westlaw (online in both the academic and law school versions).

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The Civil Rights Movement Research Paper

The Civil Rights Movement in its modern form was characteristic for the development of the American society during the period of the 1950s-1980s. The movement was started as the reaction of the African Americans to the social segregation and discrimination.

The protests against segregation and discrimination were actively supported by the public, and President Kennedy initiated the discussion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to stop racial discrimination in the American society.

Although the positive role of the Civil Rights Movement for changing the role of the African Americans in the American society is visible, this topic is also essential to be discussed because the movement for the African Americans’ rights provoked the associated movements against the social and gender inequality.

Thus, many effects of the Civil Rights Movement are observed in the modern American society which develops resolving the challenging questions of racism and inequality. That is why, this research aims to answer an important question: What modern effects of the Civil Rights Movement related to the issues of racism, discrimination, and inequality can be noticed in the present-day American society?

To explain the effects of the Civil Rights Movement from the sociological perspectives, it is necessary to refer to the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist theories.

Many modern researchers focus on the functionalist perspective and agree that the Civil Rights Movement influenced the society positively, and these effects can be observed today because the society is transformed, the problems of racism and inequality are discussed openly; referring to the conflict perspective, it is possible to note that discrimination is illegal, and the principle of the social justice and gender equality are followed.

Following the functionalist perspective, it is essential to state that the society develops as the whole composed of connected parts which should interact according to the idea of social balance.

From this perspective, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s caused the development of many other social movements oriented to protecting women, sexual minorities, and workers’ rights, and these movements contributed to maintaining the necessary social equilibrium.

According to Isaac and Christiansen, ascendant social movements and modern protests can contribute to advancing the results of the Civil Rights Movement of the 20 th century because the principles of the social justice are re-thought and followed according to the tendencies of the new transformed society (Isaac & Christiansen, 2002, p. 724-725).

Referring to the principle of social interconnectedness, the authors conducted the quantitative research on the connection between the Civil Rights Movement and changes in the labor militancy, and they concluded that the Civil Rights Movement’s methods can also be successfully followed today (Isaac & Christiansen, 2002).

As a result, the Civil Rights Movement can be discussed as the functional element because it influenced the radical transformation of the American society leading to the social stability and to actual changes in the social positions of the African Americans.

It is important to note that today the issues of racial discrimination are observed rarely because the social vision of the problem changed as a result of the Civil Rights Movement, and these consequences are the manifest functions, according to the functionalist theory. The concept of racial discrimination is contrasting to the ideas of social openness, tolerance, and flexibility.

These ideas play an essential role in the modern American society, and they serve to support the notions of equality and justice. Thus, the manifest functions are in the improvement of the social status of the African Americans, their education and career opportunities and in the improvement of the women’s status, their employment opportunities, and changes in roles division.

The changed opinions of the modern Americans on the issues of gender, race, and ethnicity can be discussed as latent functions.

These ideas are reflected in the work of Michael Ezra, the professor of American multicultural studies, who state that the Civil Rights Movement is the radical shift in the development of the American society, and the functional consequences of this reform for the social visions can be observed during a long period of time (Ezra, 2009, p. 118-119).

In spite of the fact that Ezra pays much attention to the role of the Civil Rights Movement for the development of the idea of equality in relation to the African Americans, it is possible to agree with the author regarding the discussion of the movement’s positive effects on the current situation in the contemporary American society.

One of the main positive effects of the Civil Rights Movement related to the progress of the modern American society is the concentration of the public’s attention on the issues of gender inequality. According to the conflict perspective, the competition of the different groups is the fundament for the social development.

In his work, Caulfield states that the Civil Rights Movement contributed to drawing the public’s attention to the problem of the African Americans in general and African American women in particular (Caulfield, 2011, p. 25). Thus, the movement contributed to empowering women and to developing the idea of gender equality.

From this point, women organized the movement for their rights to oppose the principles of the patriarchal society because of their conflicting interests and associated gender inequality.

That is why, following the conflict perspective and Caulfield’s conclusions, it is possible to state that the positive effect of the women’s empowerment observed in the American society today is the consequence of the significant social conflict known as the Civil Rights Movement.

The American society in its new transformed variant demonstrates the example of how the Civil Rights Movement can lead to the prolonged positive effects, but these effects are the results of many protests, demonstrations, and manifestations which are symbols of the social conflict.

The conflict perspective can be applied to discussing the work by Olzak and Ryo. According to the authors, the effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement depends on the goal diversity and on the variety of the used techniques and methods and on the range of expected outcomes (Olzak & Ryo, 2007, p. 1580).

Goal and tactical diversity led to the significant positive outcomes of the movement, and these outcomes can be observed even today, but this diversity supports the idea that the interests of diverse groups were met during the Civil Rights Movement.

In this case, the social power belongs to the white Americans and males, when women, African Americans, and sexual minorities are the representatives of the lower classes which oppose to the current state.

However, the conflict resulted in the positive effects for such categories of the population as African Americans, women, and sexual minorities because their role in the American society was changed. Interactionism is focused on the role of people’s interactions for the social development.

Referring to the micro-sociological level, it is possible to note that the effects of the Civil Rights Movement are in the provision of the opportunity to live in the transformed society where the principles of the social justice and equality work while determining the people’s interactions in groups and communities because racial or gender discrimination and segregation can influence people individually.

Although Andrews discusses the issue of the social movement with references to the period of the 1960s-1970s, in his work, the author also supports the idea of significance of the Civil Rights Movement for the further progress of the society in relation to changing the principles of the people’s interactions (Andrews, 2001, p. 72).

In this case, it is also essential to state that the actual results of the Civil Rights Movement can be observed more clearly today because it is possible to conclude now whether African Americans and white Americans interact according to the ideals of equality and justice, and whether women and men have equal rights.

Although there is the range of quantitative and qualitative studies on the effects of the Civil Rights Movement on the American society, the authors of these studies choose to concentrate on the short-term or immediate effects of the movement on changes in the social position of the African Americans or women.

Moreover, referring to the existing literature on the topic, it is possible to note that it is rather difficult to answer this question in detail or with the focus on the numerical evidence, while following the functionalist, conflict, and interactionist perspectives.

The authors are inclined to refer to the statistics and studies’ factual findings, but the answer to the research question is still based on the results provided in the qualitative researches. From this point, it is possible to answer whether the effects of the Civil Rights Movement on the modern American society are positive or negative.

The researches reviewed in this paper provide the general answer to this question. The authors of the reviewed works are inclined to argue that the Civil Rights Movement influenced the American society positively, and these positive effects can be observed even today while referring to the analysis of the modern position of the women, African Americans, and sexual minorities in the American society.

Racial discrimination and issues of inequality are discussed in the modern society openly, and many efforts are made to resolve these issues which were hushed up before the Civil Rights Movement’s development.

Thus, following the functionalist perspective, it is possible to state that the Civil Rights Movement’s effects on the modern American society are functional or mainly positive because the cases of racism are observed in the American community more rarely, the issue of segregation is not discussed today, and the public is active to double the efforts in relation to resolving the issues of racial and gender discrimination.

Furthermore, today, the public is active to promote the ideals of the social justice and equality, and women and African Americans have the opportunity to take the same positions as the white people or males. These changes can be explained with references to the conflict theory.

From these perspectives, the implications of the research are in stating the direct connection between the positive results of the Civil Rights Movement and current situation in the modern American society.

Nevertheless, the direction for the future research should be associated with finding the numerical data and evidence to support the idea that the observed positive transformation of the American society into more tolerant and democratic one is the result of the Civil Rights Movement.

Andrews, K. (2001). Social movements and policy implementation. American Sociological Review, 66 (1), 71-95.

Caulfield, B. (2011). Civil rights revisited: The growing African American pro-life movement. The Human Life Review, 37 (2), 25-29.

Ezra, M. (2009). Civil Rights Movement: People and perspectives . USA: ABC-CLIO.

Isaac, L., & Christiansen, L. (2002). How the Civil Rights Movement revitalized labor militancy. American Sociological Review, 67 (6), 722-746.

Olzak, S., & Ryo, E. (2007). Organizational diversity, vitality and outcomes in the Civil Rights Movement. Social Forces, 85 (4), 1561-1591.

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IvyPanda. (2019, September 13). The Civil Rights Movement. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-civil-rights-movement-research-paper/

"The Civil Rights Movement." IvyPanda , 13 Sept. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/the-civil-rights-movement-research-paper/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'The Civil Rights Movement'. 13 September.

IvyPanda . 2019. "The Civil Rights Movement." September 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-civil-rights-movement-research-paper/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Civil Rights Movement." September 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-civil-rights-movement-research-paper/.

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IvyPanda . "The Civil Rights Movement." September 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-civil-rights-movement-research-paper/.

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As Civil Rights Era Fades From Memory, Generation Gap Divides Black Voters

Many older Black voters see moral and political reasons to vote. Younger Black voters feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

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By Maya King

Reporting from Atlanta

For years, Loretta Green has voted at her Southwest Atlanta precinct wearing the same custom T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of her first voter registration card, dated to 1960. The front of it reads: “This is why I vote.”

Since gaining the legal right, Ms. Green, 88, has participated in every possible election. This November will be no different, she said, when she casts a ballot for President Biden and Democrats down the ticket.

But conversations with her younger relatives, who have told her they’re unsure of voting or considering staying home, illustrate some of the challenges Mr. Biden’s campaign faces in reassembling his winning 2020 coalition, particularly in key battleground states like Georgia. While Ms. Green and many older Black voters are set on voting and already have plans in place to do so, younger Black voters, polling and focus group data show, feel far less motivated to cast a ballot for Democrats or even at all.

“To me, voting is almost sacred. Look at what people went through. The struggles. The people that allowed themselves to be beaten,” Ms. Green said of the civil rights movement that ignited her determination to vote in every election. “I think there are some young Blacks who probably feel like it didn’t even happen.”

Black voters have long been Democrats’ most loyal constituency, and high turnout from this bloc is crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election. Any drop-off in support could imperil his chances of winning in November. And surveys have shown a striking generational divide within this bloc, driven by what many young people see as broken campaign promises and what party leaders have suggested is a difficulty in communicating Mr. Biden’s accomplishments to voters.

There is still time for Democrats to close this gap. But growing discontent from young voters, especially concerning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza — illustrated in an April New York Times/Siena College poll that shows just 4 percent of voters under 45 strongly approve of Mr. Biden’s handling of foreign policy — underlines the scale of the response that may be required of the president’s re-election campaign to bring young voters back into the fold.

The stark difference between how older and younger Black voters respond to Mr. Biden and Democrats further highlights how different the messages to these voters will have to be.

“It is a generational divide. They don’t know the people who fought and died for their rights,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster, whose polling has found a nearly 30-point gap in support for Democrats among Black voters 18 to 49 years old relative to Black voters over 50. The latter group, he said, “does know those people. They saw that fight. Some of them were in that fight.”

Young Black voters point to higher costs of living, crises abroad and the old ages of both major candidates — Mr. Biden, 81, is the oldest U.S. president, and former President Donald J. Trump is 77 — as reasons for their discontent. They also say that they feel their lives have not improved under Mr. Biden’s presidency and that they have seen little of his campaign promises to lower housing costs, relieve student loan debt and promote racial equity.

These gripes are not unique to young Black voters. In polls, focus groups and interviews, record numbers of Black Americans across ages and genders have expressed disenchantment with Democratic leaders. And the generation gap in support for Democrats is not unique to one race. While most young voters support Democrats and turned out en masse during the 2020 presidential and 2022 midterm elections, many have also said they are deeply dissatisfied with the party and see less reason to turn back out for them.

“I can understand,” said India Juarez, 46, a Southwest Atlanta resident and Democratic voter. “You’ve got two people who really should be retired, enjoying their golden lives.”

Still, for older Black voters, many of whom see Mr. Trump as a threat to their fundamental rights, stopping him and other Republicans from reclaiming power in November outshines their frustrations with Democrats. By an overwhelming majority, Black voters continue to support Democratic candidates and some encourage the younger people in their lives to do the same.

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, an influential Biden ally who led civil rights protests in college, said he had spent much of his time outside Washington on college campuses to encourage students to vote. But, he said, “it needs to be an informed vote.”

“I don’t want people going out there talking about, ‘There’s no difference between Trump and Biden.’ I’m going to show them what the differences are. I want them to see why you need to go out and vote,” he said. He lauded the older Black voters who encourage their younger relatives to register and cast a ballot.

Tari Turner, 52, a Black Democratic voter from Detroit, is one of them. She said she often encourages her son, Brice Ballard, 34, to vote in elections even when he is reluctant to.

“I make him vote. He votes,” she said. “I don’t play about him voting. I’ll go pick him up to vote.”

This November, she said she planned to vote and support Mr. Biden’s re-election — a fact she acknowledged tepidly. Mr. Ballard, however, said he would not vote this year, despite his mother’s urging.

“I just don’t feel a connection with either candidate,” he said, adding that he voted in the last presidential election. If he did vote in November, he said he would more likely support Mr. Trump because he felt he was economically better off under his presidency.

Mr. Ballard’s feelings align with another concern for the Biden campaign: a rightward shift among nonwhite voters that is particularly pronounced among young men of color. Mr. Trump and his campaign have recognized this and made some efforts to court Black voters in recent months. Still, many are rooted in stereotype and often offensive.

Mr. Biden’s campaign has aimed to encourage young Black voters to turn out through increased direct contact with them. Senior campaign officials for Mr. Biden underlined his campaign’s presence on college campuses, online and at music festivals and sporting events. They added that the campaign was hiring a director of campus engagement who will focus on mobilizing students at historically Black colleges and universities.

On the airwaves, the campaign is running several ads targeted to Black voters that emphasize the Biden administration’s work to lower health care costs and its large investments in historically Black colleges and universities. Democrats have also enlisted celebrities and local Black elected officials to serve as surrogates.

That hasn’t kept concerns from some Black community leaders at bay. The New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter mobilization group, has held more focus groups with voters and adjusted its talking points during canvassing operations to address disaffected younger voters and the policy issues that matter to them. That way, said Kendra Cotton, the group’s chief executive, organizers can explain to young voters how government can work — rather than admonish them for declining to participate in the political process.

“This narrative that people have that ‘oh, you should vote because so many people died for you to have that right,’ that is not resonating with this new generation at all,” Ms. Cotton said. “And I think us continuing to propagate that narrative, no matter how true and rooted in fact that may be, is off-putting.”

Davan’te Jennings, the Georgia Young Democrats’ Black caucus chair, said he had held a range of conversations with younger Black voters who are not enthusiastic about voting. Some, he said, have expressed interest in supporting Republicans this November.

“They’re like, ‘We’ve been on this Democratic side for so long, they tell us all these things and nothing happens,’” he said. “Let’s see what’s over here on the Republican side.’”

Ms. Green, who said she, too, had concerns about young voters’ involvement, said she planned to volunteer with Mr. Biden’s campaign operation in Georgia to encourage young Black voters to turn out and to talk to them about the importance of their vote — something she sees as both morally and politically significant.

“That’s why we have to tell them our story. They don’t understand it,” she said. “They haven’t seen it. And if we do not continue to talk to them, tell them the history, then they won’t know.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article misspelled the surname of Tari Turner’s son. He is Brice, not Bryce.

How we handle corrections

Maya King is a politics reporter covering the Southeast, based in Atlanta. She covers campaigns, elections and movements in the American South, as well as national trends relating to Black voters and young people. More about Maya King

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