Portal:Civil rights movement

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

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

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

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

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Elizabeth Eckford attempts to enter Little Rock Central High on September 4, 1957; Hazel Bryan shouts behind her; photograph by Will Counts

The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering the racially segregated school by Orval Faubus, the Governor of Arkansas. They then attended after the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, on May 17, 1954. Tied to the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the decision declared all laws establishing segregated schools to be unconstitutional, and it called for the desegregation of all schools throughout the nation. After the decision, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) attempted to register black students in previously all-white schools in cities throughout the South. In Little Rock, Arkansas, the school board agreed to comply with the high court's ruling. Virgil Blossom, the Superintendent of Schools, submitted a plan of gradual integration to the school board on May 24, 1955, which the board unanimously approved. The plan would be implemented during the fall of the 1957 school year, which would begin in September 1957.

By 1957, the NAACP had registered nine black students to attend the previously all-white Little Rock Central High, selected on the criteria of excellent grades and attendance. Called the "Little Rock Nine", they were Ernest Green (b. 1941), Elizabeth Eckford (b. 1941), Jefferson Thomas (1942–2010), Terrence Roberts (b. 1941), Carlotta Walls LaNier (b. 1942), Minnijean Brown (b. 1941), Gloria Ray Karlmark (b. 1942), Thelma Mothershed (1940–2024), and Melba Pattillo Beals (b. 1941). Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Central High School. (Full article...)

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

Image 1Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 2Juvenile African-American convicts working in the fields in a chain gang, photo taken c. 1903 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 3Leaders arrived late and linked arms in front of marchers on Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 4Additional 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 5Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 6Leaders gather for a portrait (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 7Rosa 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 8Fannie 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 9Kathleen Cleaver delivering a speech, 1971 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 10Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 11A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 12Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 13March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
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 for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 15Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia. (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 16Women marching for equal rights, integrated schools and decent housing (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 17Montgomery Improvement Association poster announcing desegrated seating on buses (New York Public Library) (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 1850th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 19Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 20Leaders of the march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: (sitting L-R) Whitney Young, Cleveland Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins; (standing L-R) Mathew Ahmann, Joachim Prinz, John Lewis, Eugene Carson Blake, Floyd McKissick, and Walter Reuther (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 21Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 22John Lewis speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on the 50th anniversary, August 28, 2013 (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 23Executive 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 24First 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 25African American women participate in Civil Rights protest in Tallahassee, Florida, 1963 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 26Vocalists Peter, Paul, and Mary (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 27Actor Ossie Davis (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 28"A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag, hanging at the Library of Congress (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 29Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 30Close up of some leaders of the March on Washington walking along Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 31Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 32Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performing at the March on Washington (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 33Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)

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James Bradley (c. 1810 – after 1837) was an African slave in the United States who purchased his freedom and became an anti-slavery activist in Ohio.

Bradley was two or three years old when he was enslaved and transported to the United States, where he was purchased by a Mr. Bradley of Pendleton County, Kentucky; he subsequently moved with the Bradley family to the Arkansas Territory. While working days as a slave, Bradley began to work for himself through the night. In 1833, after eight years, he purchased his freedom and went to Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio. (Full article...)

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Dr. Martin Luther King giving his "I Have a Dream" speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., on 28 August 1963.

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Did you know?

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