Portal:Civil rights movement

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The civil rights movement portal

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

The civil rights movement was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which most commonly affected African Americans. The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, and modern roots in the 1940s. After years of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience campaigns, the civil rights movement achieved many of its legislative goals in the 1960s, during which it secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans.

Following the American Civil War (1861–1865), the three Reconstruction Amendments to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and granted citizenship to all African Americans, the majority of whom had recently been enslaved in the southern states. During Reconstruction, African-American men in the South voted and held political office, but after 1877 they were increasingly deprived of civil rights under racist Jim Crow laws (which for example banned interracial marriage, introduced literacy tests for voters, and segregated schools) and were subjected to violence from white supremacists during the nadir of American race relations. African Americans who moved to the North in order to improve their prospects in the Great Migration also faced barriers in employment and housing. Legal racial discrimination was upheld by the Supreme Court in its 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which established the doctrine of "separate but equal". The movement for civil rights, led by figures such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, achieved few gains until after World War II. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order abolishing discrimination in the armed forces.

In 1954, the Supreme Court struck down state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. A mass movement for civil rights, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and others, began a campaign of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience including the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–1956, "sit-ins" in Greensboro and Nashville in 1960, the Birmingham campaign in 1963, and a march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. Press coverage of events such as the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955 and the use of fire hoses and dogs against protesters in Birmingham increased public support for the civil rights movement. In 1963, about 250,000 people participated in the March on Washington, after which President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to pass civil rights legislation. Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, overcame the opposition of southern politicians to pass three major laws: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in public accommodations, employment, and federally assisted programs; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed discriminatory voting laws and authorized federal oversight of election law in areas with a history of voter suppression; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which banned housing discrimination. The Supreme Court made further pro–civil rights rulings in cases including Browder v. Gayle (1956) and Loving v. Virginia (1967), banning segregation in public transport and striking down laws against interracial marriage. (Full article...)

Selected article - show another

The club movement is an American women's social movement that started in the mid-19th century and spread throughout the United States. It established the idea that women had a moral duty and responsibility to transform public policy. While women's organizations had existed earlier, it was not until the Progressive era (1896–1917) that they came to be considered a movement. The first wave of the club movement during the progressive era was started by white, middle-class, Protestant women, and a second phase was led by African-American women.

These clubs, most of which had started out as social literary gatherings, eventually became a source of reform for various issues in the U.S. Both African-American and white women's clubs were involved with issues surrounding education, temperance, child labor, juvenile justice, legal reform, environmental protection, library creation and more. Women's clubs helped start many initiatives such as kindergartens and juvenile court systems. Later, women's clubs tackled issues like women's suffrage, lynching and family planning. The clubs allowed women, who had little political standing at the time, to gain greater influence in their communities. As women gained more rights, the need for clubs to exercise political and social influence became less important. Over time, participation in women's clubs has waned in the United States. However, many clubs still continue to operate and influence their communities. (Full article...)

List of selected articles

General images

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

Image 1Fannie Lou Hamer founded Freedom Farm Cooperative, an operation meant to alleviate Black sharecropper poverty in the South. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 2Montgomery Improvement Association poster announcing desegrated seating on buses (New York Public Library) (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 3Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 4Leaders of the march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: (sitting L-R) Whitney Young, Cleveland Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins; (standing L-R) Mathew Ahmann, Joachim Prinz, John Lewis, Eugene Carson Blake, Floyd McKissick, and Walter Reuther (from March on Washington)
Image 5March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program (from March on Washington)
Image 6Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia. (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 7Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 8Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 9Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performing at the March on Washington (from March on Washington)
Image 10Executive Committee of the National Negro Business League, c. 1910. NNBL founder Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) is seated, second from the left. (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 11Women marching for equal rights, integrated schools and decent housing (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 12Kathleen Cleaver delivering a speech, 1971 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 13Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested on February 22, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 14Kennedy meets with march leaders. Left to Right – Willard Wirtz, Matthew Ahmann, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rabbi Joachin Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins (not in order) (from March on Washington)
Image 15First Colored Senator and Representatives: Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC), 1872 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 16Leaders arrived late and linked arms in front of marchers on Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington)
Image 17Close up of some leaders of the March on Washington walking along Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington)
Image 18Additional image of Civil Rights protestors executing a sit-in at a Woolworth's in Durham, North Carolina on February 10th of 1960. (from Sit-in movement)
Image 19Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 20African American women participate in Civil Rights protest in Tallahassee, Florida, 1963 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 21Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte (from March on Washington)
Image 22Leaders gather for a portrait (from March on Washington)
Image 23"A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag, hanging at the Library of Congress (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 24John Lewis speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on the 50th anniversary, August 28, 2013 (from March on Washington)
Image 25Vocalists Peter, Paul, and Mary (from March on Washington)
Image 26Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston (from March on Washington)
Image 27Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech (from March on Washington)
Image 28Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 29A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 30Actor Ossie Davis (from March on Washington)
Image 31Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington)
Image 3250th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (from March on Washington)
Image 33Juvenile African-American convicts working in the fields in a chain gang, photo taken c. 1903 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))

edit

Related portals

edit

WikiProjects

Selected biography - show another

Young in 1964

Whitney Moore Young Jr. (July 31, 1921 – March 11, 1971) was an American civil rights leader. Trained as a social worker, he spent most of his career working to end employment discrimination in the United States and turning the National Urban League from a relatively passive civil rights organization into one that aggressively worked for equitable access to socioeconomic opportunity for the historically disenfranchised. Young was influential in the United States federal government's War on Poverty in the 1960s. (Full article...)

List of selected biographies

edit

Selected image - show another

Missing persons poster created by the FBI in 1964, signed by the Director J. Edgar Hoover. Shows the photographs of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner. All three were found to have been later murdered by local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office as well as the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department were involved in the incident.

More pictures...

edit

Did you know?

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