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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.

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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.

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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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African american studies: theses and dissertations.

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Bibliography of theses and dissertations on African American topics completed at Berkeley.

• African American Theses and Dissertations 1907-2001. This bibliography lists 600 theses and dissertations on African American topics completed at the University of California, Berkeley. The earliest thesis, by Emmet Gerald Alexander, State Education of the Negro in the South, was completed in 1907 in the Department of Education, while the most recent date from the calendar year 2001. The African experience in the Americas is the connecting thread which links these works completed in thirty three disciplines over the past eight decades. This experience is construed in its widest sense; included therefore are studies of Blacks in the Caribbean and in Central and Latin America as well as in North America. Theses not indubitably on this subject as revealed by their titles have been examined; we have retained only titles either entirely or substantially devoted to this subject. The collection is on microfilm in News/Micro Microfilm 2030.E. The originals have been moved to NRLF.

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If the dissertation is not available in the database, check UC Library Search . Dissertations completed at other UC campuses prior to 1996 or outside the UC system must be obtained through Interlibrary Loan .

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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.

Expert Consulting for Civil Rights Research Topics

When delving into civil rights research topics, harness the expertise of a dedicated dissertation consultant . Our team of experienced consultants specializes in civil rights and offers personalized guidance throughout your research journey. From selecting a focused topic to refining research questions and analyzing data, our dissertation consultants provide invaluable support to enhance the quality of your work. Contact us today!

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The Past & Future of American Civil Rights

Douglas S. Massey, a Fellow of the American Academy since 1995, is Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His recent publications include  Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System  (2007),  Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities  (with Charles Camille, Mary Fischer, and Margarita Mooney, 2009), and  Brokered Boundaries: Creating Immigrant Identity in Anti-Immigrant Times  (with Magaly Sánchez R., 2010).

The history of civil rights in the United States has always been one of two steps forward and one step back. Significant progress toward racial equality has been made and then partially reversed, only to be advanced again at a later date. Race is too deeply embedded in the cognitive and institutional structure of American society to disappear entirely. (In speaking of race, I refer to attributes and meanings that are socially attached to inherited characteristics such as skin color.) Race has been a principal organizing frame in American society since its inception during the colonial era. Although race as a social category in the United States is unlikely to vanish anytime soon, its meaning will change. Indeed, the meaning of race has changed dramatically since the 1960s. In this essay, I review the history of racial formation in the United States to place the current moment in historical perspective. I then outline a new agenda for civil rights in the age of Obama.

When the first “20 and odd Negroes” disembarked in Jamestown in August 1619, race did not yet exist as a coherent social category. The informal practices, formal rules, and substantive meanings accruing to persons of European and African origin had not yet been invented. The earliest evidence of racial formation in the United States is from a series of court decisions handed down in colonial Virginia’s legal system. These rulings established the basic tenets of U.S. race relations that would prevail for centuries: that blacks were inherently inferior to whites; that blacks were less than fully human and could be treated as property; and that black inferiority was divinely sanctioned and to be publicly enforced.[fn]A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of the American Legal Process (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).[/fn]

These precepts were well established in colonial jurisprudence by the 1660s, but the growing number of slaves, the expanding mixed-race population, and the rise of a small community of free blacks created complexities in race relations that could no longer be handled through piecemeal court decisions. As a result, state assemblies stepped forward to legislate race. Leading the way in 1662, the Virginia House of Burgesses enacted a measure that required the children of a white father and black mother to be defined according to the status of the mother, thus making racial bondage hereditary as a matter of public law. In 1667, the Virginia House declared that baptism did not alter a slave’s condition of servitude, and in 1669, it held that the killing of a black slave by a white owner did not constitute murder but a lawful disposition of property.

Over time, as racial laws proliferated, legislators felt a need to systematize them. In 1705, the Virginia House of Burgesses consolidated race-related legislation into a coherent body of law known as the Slave Codes. In addition to reaffirming the basic precepts of black inferiority that were already well established in colonial law, the codes explicitly banned interracial marriage, prohibited African Americans from holding public office, and legally defined as black anyone with a black grandparent. These laws served as legislative models and were widely copied in other states.

Upon American independence, race became a preoccupying issue for the founding fathers. The U.S. Constitution was carefully crafted to permit the existence of slavery in a nation otherwise dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal.” Following what the late Federal Appeals Court Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., called “the principle of non-disclosure,” Southern delegates voted repeatedly to strike words such as Negro , African , slave , and slavery from the text, preferring cryptic references to “other persons” and “persons bound to service” when constraining the rights of African Americans. The framers sought to make it virtually impossible to eliminate slavery constitutionally; they did so by granting disproportionate power to a minority of states through innovations such as an appointed Senate, the Electoral College, the three-fifths apportionment clause, and the requirement of supermajorities within Congress and the states to amend the Constitution.

Despite these constitutional protections, the legitimacy of the South’s “peculiar institution” was never fully accepted. Over time, an abolitionist movement gained strength and sought ways to undermine the slave system. In defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, for example, Northern legislatures passed a series of “personal liberty acts” that offered freedom to escaped slaves who reached Northern soil. Abolitionists then mobilized to prevent the spread of slavery to other states and achieved partial success with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state but prohibited slavery in future states located above Missouri’s southern border. This compromise led to an uneasy peace between North and South until new territorial acquisitions upset the delicate balance in the late 1840s.

In 1846, a treaty with England settled the location of the U.S.-Canada border and officially relinquished the territories of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas to the United States. The Mexican-American War ended in 1848 with a treaty that ceded to the United States the present states of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California along with parts of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Southerners quickly realized that if all these territories were admitted as states under the terms of the Missouri Compromise, free states would eventually outnumber slave states and come dangerously close to the supermajorities needed to amend the Constitution and end slavery. In response, Southerners sought ways to consolidate the legal foundations of slavery within the nation.

The South struck back in 1850, when it forced through Congress a new Fugitive Slave Act that challenged the liberty of free blacks in the North. Congress acted again in 1854, passing (despite strenuous Northern objections) the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which rescinded the Missouri Compromise and allowed settlers in territories applying for statehood to vote on whether they would be admitted as slave or free states. Any remaining doubt about the legality of slavery under the Constitution was ended by the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, which not only affirmed slavery but articulated an explicit doctrine of black inferiority. Specifically, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that African Americans were not citizens under the Constitution but “a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them.”[fn]Ibid.[/fn]

The Dred Scott case and the Kansas-Nebraska Act made it clear that slavery would not end in the United States unless free states could achieve the supermajorities needed to amend the Constitution. Abolitionists thus focused political attention on preventing slavery’s spread to states beyond those where it already existed, and this principle became a plank in the platform of the newly formed Republican Party in 1860. When Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in the same year, South Carolina led ten Southern states into secession to ignite civil war. In keeping with the founding fathers’ designs, slavery was ended not through standard constitutional procedures, but through an armed, bloody struggle.

Although the war ostensibly erupted over the issue of “states rights,” the true cause was made explicit by the Confederate Constitution, which rejected the principle of “non-disclosure” and made repeated, unambiguous references to slavery in the text. The very first article stated that the Confederate Congress would be apportioned “by adding to the whole number of free persons . . . three-fifths of all slaves .” It went on to state, “[N]o . . . law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” Likewise, Article IV held that “the institution of negro slavery , as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress.”[fn]Marshall L. DeRosa, The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An Inquiry into American Constitutionalism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991); emphasis added.[/fn]

Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens affirmed the centrality of slavery to the Southern cause in a speech he delivered in Savannah, Georgia, on March 21, 1861. In his remarks, Stephens stated, “[T]he new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution–African slavery as it exists amongst us–the proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”[fn]Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private (Chicago: National Publishing Co., 1866).[/fn]

Although Northerners may have entered the Civil War to preserve the Union and limit the spread of slavery, as the conflict and bloodshed wore on, the struggle took on a higher purpose: namely, freedom.[fn]James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).[/fn] On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln invoked his authority as Commander in Chief to emancipate slaves in the states under rebellion; two years later, with Union troops still dying in battle, Congress approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, thereby abolishing slavery in all states. The amendment was quickly ratified in the North and, once the Southern states were defeated and occupied, in the former Confederacy as well. The lone exception was Mississippi, which refused to ratify the amendment until 1995.

Once it took effect on December 18, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment ushered in a remarkable period of civil rights progress known as Reconstruction.[fn]Information on Reconstruction is largely from Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution , 1863–1877 (New York: Peter Smith, 2001).[/fn] Not only was slavery abolished, but with assistance from the federal government, African Americans advanced rapidly on multiple fronts: building schools, founding churches, creating self-help organizations, acquiring land, becoming literate, organizing politically, and achieving election to local, state, and federal offices. Forward movement on civil rights reached an apogee during the first Grant administration of 1869 to 1873. First, the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law to all persons regardless of race. Next, the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment confirmed the right of all adult males to vote regardless of race or former condition of servitude. To enforce the new constitutional provisions, Congress passed its first Civil Rights Acts, one in 1866 and a second in 1875. Finally, under the supervision of military governors and occupying Union troops, Southern states were compelled to rewrite their constitutions to end slavery and ensure black suffrage.

Progress on civil rights faltered in the second Grant administration, however, and came to a definitive halt in 1876, when Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican presidential candidate, agreed to restore home rule to the South in return for its acquiescence to his assuming office in a disputed election. True to his word, President Hayes withdrew federal troops from the South in 1877, and in 1878, Congress prohibited the military from supervising Southern elections. With its “redemption” thus achieved, the South set about creating new institutions of racial hierarchy to replace those associated with chattel slavery.

Southern lawmakers organized a new system of peonage to replace the slave system in the economic sphere and instituted strict racial separation in the social sphere, thus yielding a new arrangement of racial subordination that came to be known as Jim Crow. In 1890, Mississippi became the first Southern state to replace its Reconstruction-era constitution with a new charter designed to limit black suffrage. Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman put it bluntly: “[T]here is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter. Mississippi’s constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose but to eliminate the nigger from politics; not the ignorant–but the nigger. Let the world know it just as it is.”[fn]Information on Jim Crow is from Jerrold M. Packard, American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), quote at 69.[/fn]

With white political control reestablished, Southerners in Congress quickly accumulated seniority and gained effective control of appointments to the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, which systematically began to undo Reconstruction-era reforms. In the Civil Rights Cases of 1883 , the Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional and that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to states, not to individuals or private groups. In 1896, the Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision explicitly endorsed the new system of racial separation by adopting the fiction that segregation rendered the races “separate but equal.” Finally, in 1898, the Court ruled in Williams v. Mississippi that the latter’s new state constitution did not violate the Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendments, blithely ignoring Governor Vardaman’s remarks to the contrary.

By 1900, Jim Crow was institutionalized throughout the South, creating a system of racial subordination that was “slavery by another name” and, in some ways, “worse than slavery,” given the high levels of violence that accompanied it.[fn]Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008); David M. Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York: Free Press, 1996).[/fn] Reconstruction was ultimately defeated not by political actions, but by a guerrilla war and terrorist campaign that drove federal officials from the South.[fn]Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006); Stephen Budiansky, The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox (New York: Viking, 2008).[/fn] African Americans bore the brunt of the violence before and after this “redemption” as lynching–the extrajudicial execution of African Americans by white vigilantes–became normalized in the South. Although the frequency with which lynchings occurred declined over time, the practice never disappeared; it remained a basic instrument of social control well into the twentieth century, rising during periods of economic and political uncertainty and falling during periods of calm and stability.[fn]Stewart E. Tolnoy and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995).[/fn]

Ironically, many of the discriminatory practices mandated under Jim Crow in the South originated in the North, where African Americans were neither perceived nor treated as equals despite Northerners’ rejection of slavery as an institution.[fn]1 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).[/fn] Indeed, African Americans were routinely excluded from white society and relegated to the bottom of the Northern occupational hierarchy.[fn]Information on discrimination and segregation in the North is from Stanley Lieberson, A Piece of the Pie: Blacks and White Immigrants Since 1880 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York: Random House, 2008).[/fn] Moreover, as black populations increased during the Great Migration of the early twentieth-century, levels of discrimination and repression in Northern cities steadily grew. By 1920, institutionalized discrimination was endemic within Northern markets for housing, labor, services, products, and credit. Particularly in the residential sphere, a strict color line emerged, generating extremely high levels of school and neighborhood segregation.

During the 1930s, the federal government began to intervene more forcefully in the U.S. political economy and increasingly invoked public policies to perpetuate black social and spatial isolation. Specifically, the social programs of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal were deliberately racialized to accommodate de jure segregation in the South and de facto segregation in the North.[fn]On the racialization of the New Deal, see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005).[/fn] The political reality was that no law could pass Congress without Southern support, and although Southerners favored the New Deal’s populist economic programs, they did so only to the extent that the programs did not challenge the racial status quo. Therefore, at the insistence of Southern representatives in Congress, African Americans were systematically excluded from the various social protections and economic benefits of the New Deal. Traditionally black occupations were not covered by the Social Security Act; labor legislation was written to allow segregated unions; states were delegated authority to exclude African Americans from receiving veterans benefits; and bureaucratic rules were written to prohibit black families and black neighborhoods from receiving Federal Housing Association and Veterans Administration loans.

For most of the twentieth century, African Americans remained second-class citizens in both the North and South. In the wake of World War II, however, America’s self-proclaimed status as “leader of the free world” made the blatant oppression of African Americans difficult to sustain not only morally but also politically. In addition, black veterans, having served in the war to defend freedom against Fascism, returned home determined to exercise the civil rights they had long been denied. The civil rights era began in earnest in 1948, when President Harry Truman ordered the desegregation of the U.S. armed forces, and Democrats for the first time included a civil rights plank in their party platform, spurring a third-party revolt by Southern “Dixiecrats” led by Strom Thurmond of South Carolina.

In 1948, the Supreme Court also began a long retreat from legal segregation, declaring in Shelley v. Kraemer that racially restrictive covenants, routinely used throughout the real estate industry, were unenforceable and contrary to public law. In 1954, the Court finally dealt the constitutional foundations of Jim Crow a lethal blow when it overturned Plessy , declaring in its landmark Brown decision that separate was not and could never be equal, thus rendering the racial segregation of schools unconstitutional.

These court decisions, as bold as they were, nonetheless failed to bring about meaningful change in race relations in the face of implacable white opposition. Therefore, the main thrust of the civil rights movement shifted from the legal to the political arena. In 1957, Congress passed the first Civil Rights Act since Reconstruction. Ostensibly a voting rights bill to advance black suffrage in the South, its effect was largely symbolic in that it allowed Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to demonstrate his mastery of the Senate by breaking a Southern filibuster led by Strom Thurmond.[fn]Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson , vol. 3 (New York: Jonathan Cape, 2003).[/fn] After Democrats captured the White House in 1960, President John F. Kennedy, facing a rising tide of civil rights agitation and Southern violence, decided to submit a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress in June 1963.

Kennedy’s assassination in November of that year opened the door for President Lyndon Johnson to use the young president’s martyrdom and his own formidable legislative skills to push the civil rights bill through Congress, once again breaking a filibuster by Strom Thurmond. The 1964 Civil Rights Act turned the tide against Jim Crow by banning discrimination in public accommodations, services, and labor markets and putting new muscle behind school desegregation. The Voting Rights Act followed a year later, empowering the federal government to supervise elections in the South in areas where blacks were underrepresented. Although President Johnson also sought to ban discrimination in the real estate industry, this legislation stalled until the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., once again oiled the legislative machinery with a martyr’s blood, leading to the passage of the Fair Housing Act in April 1968.

President Johnson was committed to more than ending legal segregation in the South, however. He also endeavored to break de facto segregation in the North and to move rapidly toward economic parity between the races. As he stated on June 4, 1965, in his widely quoted commencement address at Howard University:

Freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, “you are free to compete with all the others,” and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity.[fn]“President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Commencement Address at Howard University: ‘To Fulfill These Rights,’ June 4, 1965,” Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, http://www.lbjlib .utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650604.asp (accessed January 28, 2010).[/fn]

To further the goal of equal opportunity, President Johnson launched his signature War on Poverty.[fn]Jill Quadagno, The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).[/fn] In 1964, he pushed through Congress the Economic Opportunity Act, which created a new Office of Economic Opportunity that made antipoverty grants to local organizations known as Community Action Agencies. In order to circumvent state and local authorities that had systematically excluded the poor and minority groups since the 1930s, the new agencies were obliged to move forward with the “maximum feasible participation” of these constituencies. In 1965, Johnson prevailed on Congress to create the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which channeled federal funds to distressed cities. In that same year, he succeeded in amending the Social Security Act to create two new health insurance programs: Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. Additional money was made available for the War on Poverty through the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 and the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1967.

The remarkable string of congressional victories Johnson achieved between 1963 and 1969 represents the greatest period of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction and the most important period of social legislation since the New Deal. Together, they brought about a remarkable burst of progress for African Americans. In the decade from 1959 to 1969, the black poverty rate dropped from 55 percent to 32 percent; black incomes rose 65 percent in real terms; the share of young African Americans completing high school rose from 39 percent to 56 percent; the ratio of white-to-black income dropped from 1.93 (where it had hovered for years) to 1.63 (still the lowest level ever reached); and the number of black elected officials jumped from under 300 to over 1,400.[fn]Joseph A. Califano, “What Was Really Great About the Great Society,” Washington Monthly 13 (10) (1999): 13–20; U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Income Statistics,” 2010, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/index.html.[/fn]

Unfortunately, however rapid this progress may have been in historical terms, it was not fast enough to keep up with the revolution of rising black expectations. Young African Americans, in particular, perceived good schools, decent jobs, union membership, college education, and professional occupations to be largely out of reach, and as the lag between expectations and opportunities gave rise to frustration, urban rioting swept over American cities during the late 1960s. Urban racial violence created a new political dynamic in which policymakers, business elites, educational administrators, and civic leaders sought some means–any means–to accelerate the economic progress and integration of African Americans.[fn]Information on post-civil rights policies is from John D. Skrentny, The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Terry H. Anderson, The Pursuit of Fairness: A History of Affirmative Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Charles T. Clotfelter, After Brown: The Rise and Retreat of School Desegregation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004).[/fn]

In public education, the means chosen to advance integration was busing. Given the realities of de facto segregation in housing, the only realistic way to desegregate schools quickly in the North was to bus children between catchment areas. In employment and education, the tool of choice became affirmative action. Up to that point, blue-collar jobs had been distributed to people largely through segregated neighborhood- and kin-based social networks, and the only practical way to promote greater black inclusion was to force employers to recruit more widely. Likewise, because selective colleges and professional schools recruited heavily through legacy admissions and well-established institutional pipelines, the only realistic way to desegregate higher education was to require admissions officials to expand their applicant pools.

Lyndon Johnson’s dreams of a “Great Society” died in Vietnam, of course, but the momentum of the War on Poverty continued into the next administration. Despite Richard Nixon’s stated goal of limiting civil rights enforcement and curtailing social spending, real efforts to turn back the Great Society were put off until his second administration. Indeed, shortly after his landslide victory in 1972, Nixon shut down the Office of Economic Opportunity, turned federal employment programs over to the states, introduced legislation to forbid busing students to other school districts, and deliberately slowed down civil rights enforcement.[fn]Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008).[/fn] The backward movement would no doubt have continued had Richard Nixon not been forced from office by the Watergate scandal.

With the Republican Party temporarily derailed by Nixon’s implosion, the civil rights movement got a second wind and rallied in 1974 to pass the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (to prohibit discrimination in mortgage lending), followed in 1975 by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (forcing banks to publish data on the race of mortgage applicants), and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (outlawing the practice of neighborhood “redlining”). All told, in the two decades from 1957 to 1977, Congress passed seven major civil rights bills that eliminated the legal foundations for de jure segregation in the South and outlawed de facto discrimination and separation in the North. It was a remarkable period of civil rights progress that historian Manning Marable has called the “Second Reconstruction.”[fn]Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction and Beyond in Black America , 1945 –2006 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007).[/fn]

Given the history of America’s first Reconstruction, it is hardly surprising that its second incarnation sparked a similar counterreaction and backward movement with respect to civil rights. Resistance to the dismantling of de jure and de facto segregation is not only predicted historically, it is to be expected psychologically.[fn]Subsequent discussion of psychological mechanisms draws on a variety of sources, including Charles Stangor, Laure Lynch, Changming Duan, and Beth Glass, “Categorization of Individuals on the Basis of Multiple Social Features,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62 (1992): 207–218; Richard H. Thaler, “Psychology and Savings Policies,” American Economic Review 84 (1994): 186–192; Robyn M. Dawes, “Behavioral Decision Making and Judgment,” in The Handbook of Social Psychology , ed. Daniel T. Gilbert, Susan T. Fiske, and Gardner Lindzey (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 497–598; Susan T. Fiske, Social Beings: A Core Motives Approach to Social Psychology (New York: Wiley, 2003); John Bargh, Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes (London: Psychology Press, 2006); George Lakoff, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain (New York: Viking, 2008).[/fn] Loss aversion is a well-established principle of human cognition. People find it painful to give up resources and benefits they already possess; indeed, they will fight much harder to avoid losses than to achieve gains. Unless public resources were somehow expanded after 1964 to accommodate black gains without white losses–a political gambit that Johnson’s Great Society failed to realize because of the Vietnam War– white opposition to the second reconstruction was almost inevitable.

Loss aversion is only one of several psychological reasons to expect resistance to racial change, however. Human cognition is also characterized by considerable inertia, as established mental categories tend to resist modification. The mind works through pattern recognition and inductive generalization rather than deductive logic; it is wired to construct social categories that assign attributes and characteristics to people. Information that is inconsistent with existing categories of thought tends to be ignored or reshaped to fit preconceptions. Given that the social conceptualizations of race had evolved over hundreds of years and were deeply rooted in the American psyche, changes in racial thinking would come more slowly than changes in outward behavior.

Social categories are especially resistant to change because they are imbued with emotion. Labels such as “white” or “black” do not exist simply as neutral mental constructs; rather, they are associated with distinct emotional valences that contribute to prejudice–a predetermined orientation for or against certain social groups. All people, whether they think of themselves as prejudiced or not, hold in their heads schemas that classify people according to age, gender, race, and ethnicity. These categories invariably include unconscious components whose expression is more or less automatic. Such “implicit prejudices” may be overcome rationally when their existence is made apparent and there is a will to change. But absent such deliberate cognitive work, prejudices tend to be expressed spontaneously and unconsciously, a phenomenon that psychologist John Bargh calls “automaticity.”

Together, the human traits of loss aversion, cognitive inertia, and automaticity offered fertile psychological grounds for a white political backlash, and in the late 1960s, Richard Nixon led the way with his “Southern strategy.” He began by cultivating Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond, who had switched parties in 1964 to become a Republican after his efforts to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957 failed. In secret negotiations, Nixon promised to retard civil rights enforcement as president if Thurmond would campaign on Nixon’s behalf.[fn]Perlstein, Nixonland .[/fn] With Thurmond’s support, Nixon carried four former Confederate states–the first time a Republican had done so since Reconstruction. In subsequent years, most Southern Democrats would either be defeated or follow Strom Thurmond into the Republican Party. By the 1980s, the “solid South” had become a Republican rather than a Democratic monolith, with Southerners increasingly leading the party.

Blue-collar workers and middle-class whites in the North also abandoned the Democratic Party over its commitment to civil rights.[fn]J. Anthony Lukas, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families (New York: Knopf, 1985); Jonathan Rieder, Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); Thomas B. Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).[/fn] To a greater extent than party leaders cared to admit, working-class whites defined themselves in opposition to African Americans and measured their status in terms of the distance between themselves and black schools, neighborhoods, and people. Busing students across district lines was thus experienced as an attack on white working-class identity. Affirmative action in the labor market added insult to injury by forcing employers to hire African Americans into jobs that in the past would have been passed to whites through family and peer networks. Middle-class whites came to see affirmative action in education as “reverse racism,” unfairly taking scarce college admission slots away from “deserving” white students and giving them to “unqualified” black students.

In response to these racial “impositions” by liberal Democratic elites, angry working- and middle-class whites took to the courts. Parents in suburban Detroit filed suit to stop the busing of children across district lines to achieve integration, and in its 1974 Milliken decision, the Supreme Court agreed that such a remedy was constitutional only if there was direct evidence that district boundaries had been drawn to promote segregation, a condition that rarely held. Since school segregation after 1960 increasingly occurred between rather than within districts, this decision effectively eliminated busing as a tool for integration in the United States.

A few years later, a white applicant to the University of California, Davis, sued admissions officials when his application to the UC Davis medical school was rejected twice. He argued that because of affirmative action, less-qualified African Americans were unconstitutionally being admitted to medical school in his stead. In its 1978 Bakke decision, the Supreme Court agreed and prohibited the use of racial quotas in college admissions. Although it allowed race to be taken into account as one factor in admissions decisions, the Court later gave this policy an expiration date in its Grutter v. Bollinger verdict, which stated that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time.”[fn] Grutter v. Bollinger , 539 U.S. 306 (2003) 288 F.3d 732.[/fn]

With the Milliken and Bakke rulings in place, the racial counterreaction shifted from the judicial to the electoral arena. Political realignment reached its full expression during the 1980s. Republicans occupied the White House for all but eight years from 1980 to 2008 and wielded effective control over Congress during much of that time, especially between 1994 and 2006. By 2002, Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi was crowing to constituents, “I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948], we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”[fn]Thomas B. Edsall and Brian Faler, “Lott Remarks on Thurmond Echoes 1980 Words,” The Washington Post , December 11, 2002, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/ A37288-2002Dec10[/fn] Thurmond’s campaign, of course, was based on the premise that “all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches.”[fn]Adam Clymer, “Strom Thurmond, Foe of Integration, Dies at 100,” The New York Times , June 27, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/27/obituaries/27STROM .html?pagewanted=all.[/fn]

From 1980 through 2008, Republican administrations paid no more than lip service to antidiscrimination enforcement and filled the civil rights divisions of the Justice Department and HUD with either incompetent hacks or conservative ideologues openly hostile to black civil rights. In Republican hands, Congress de-funded not just the Great Society but much of the New Deal, slashing budgets for public assistance, urban development, public housing, and unemployment insurance, and ultimately ending welfare as a social entitlement.[fn]Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); Douglas S. Massey, Categorically Unequal: The American Stratification System (New York: Russell Sage, 2007).[/fn] Perhaps the most important development in the counterrevolution was the rise of a new race-making institution in the United States: a racialized criminal justice system that put record numbers of African Americans behind bars.[fn]Information on the criminal justice complex and its racialization is from Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Markus D. Dubber, “Policing Possession: The War on Crime and the End of Criminal Law,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 91 (2001): 829–996; Michelle Alexander,  The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). Statistics are from Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).[/fn]

The origins of the new “criminal justice complex” lay in President Nixon’s 1970 State of the Union address, in which he declared a War on Crime, which evolved seamlessly into President Reagan’s War on Drugs. To prosecute these “wars” (both sardonic allusions to Johnson’s War on Poverty), former state-level crimes were federalized and mandatory minimum sentences and strict sentencing guidelines were imposed. Particularly severe penalties were enacted for nonviolent drug offenses, most notably for the use and sale of crack cocaine–a cheap form of the drug common in poor black communities. Criminal possession of a controlled substance became the principal legal instrument used by white authorities to regulate the behavior of poor African Americans, despite the fact that rates of drug use are much lower in the black community compared to the white.

In the wake of the twin wars on crime and drugs, legal infractions were more likely to result in arrests; arrests were more likely to result in imprisonment; imprisonment was likely to involve a long sentence; and long sentences were less likely to be shortened by parole. Between 1970 and 2003, the number of people in state and federal penitentiaries rose from around 200,000 to 1.4 million; thus, the United States achieved the highest incarceration rate in the world. As in all societies, the vast majority of crimes in the United States are committed by poor, young, socially unattached males. The new punishment regime was destined to have a disproportionate effect on members of any group fitting that profile.

By imposing harsher penalties on crimes committed by socially marginal groups, such as young black males, Congress effectively racialized the criminal justice system. Whereas only 0.7 percent of all Americans were imprisoned in 2000, the figure was 2.1 percent for working-age adult males; and whereas among that group, the share behind bars was 1 percent for whites, it was 7.9 percent for blacks. Among young black men of working age, the incarceration rate was 11.5 percent; but among those without a college degree it was 17 percent, and among those without a high school degree, the share rose to one-third. The cumulative risk of incarceration by age 35 was 21 percent for young black men; and for those who were high school dropouts, it was 59 percent. By 2000, black males were more likely to be under criminal justice supervision than to be in college, the military, a marriage, or a labor union.

The election of the nation’s first African American president in 2008 suggests that the momentum of the white racial backlash has shifted. Not only did Barack Obama win the presidency; he carried three states of the former Confederacy. In the wake of the civil rights movement and the Great Society, white racial attitudes changed despite resistance and opposition. Prior to the 1960s, a clear majority of white Americans favored racial segregation as a matter of principle: according to nationwide polls, two-thirds thought that blacks and whites should attend separate schools; 55 percent said that whites should have the first chance at any job; 54 percent favored segregation in transportation; 60 percent said that whites have a right to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods, and 63 percent said they would not vote for a black candidate. By the 1980s, these figures had dropped, respectively, to 4 percent, 3 percent, 12 percent, 13 percent, and 5 percent–a remarkable historical shift by any standard.[fn]Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).[/fn]

Principled racism has not disappeared, of course, and is currently enjoying a partial resurgence, as indicated by portrayals of President Obama as a foreign-born Muslim terrorist hell-bent on executing elderly white people. Nonetheless, overt racism is progressively aging out of existence. Social change is only partly about changing the minds of living people; it also follows from a powerful demographic process known as cohort replacement. Older people socialized before the civil rights era may be less tolerant, but every year more of them die and are replaced by young people raised in an era when civil rights was the rule and open racism was not tolerated. In addition, owing to immigration and intermarriage, younger Americans are more likely to be minorities themselves and thus naturally sympathetic to civil rights. According to exit polls, two-thirds of persons aged 18 to 29 voted for Obama, compared with just 52 percent of those aged 30 to 44, 50 percent of those 45 to 64, and a minority of only 45 percent among those 65 and older.[fn]“Election Center 2008,” CNN, http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008 (accessed January 19, 2010).[/fn]

Although overt racism may be on the decline, this outward shift does not mean that racial stereotypes and racial sentiments are necessarily disappearing.[fn]1 Information on current stereotypes and their effect on behavior comes from Paul M. Sniderman and Edward G. Carmines, Reaching Beyond Race (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997); Lawrence D. Bobo, “Racial Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the 20th Century,” in America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences , Volume I, ed. Neil Smelser, William Julius Wilson, and Faith Mitchell (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2001); Camille Z. Charles, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles (New York: Russell Sage, 2006).[/fn] Indeed, a significant share of white Americans continue to hold negative stereotypes about African Americans. According to one national survey, nearly a quarter of white adults hold universally negative views about blacks. Among whites interviewed in Los Angeles, 46 percent viewed blacks as less intelligent, and nearly three-quarters said blacks preferred to live off welfare. Such expressions of explicit negative stereotypes are strongly associated with discriminatory actions in a variety of domains.

Despite the persistence of antiblack stereotypes, for most white Americans, racial stereotyping has shifted to become a more variegated, subtle, and contingent process.[fn]The ensuing discussion of stereotype content draws heavily on the work of Susan Fiske and colleagues: Susan T. Fiske, Hilary B. Bergsieker, Ann Marie Russell, and Lyle Williams, “Images of Black Americans: Then, ‘Then,’ and Now, ‘Obama’,” Du Bois Review 6 (2009): 1–19; Susan T. Fiske, Amy J.C. Cuddy, and Peter Glick, “Universal Dimensions of Social Cognition: Warmth and Competence,” TRENDS in Cognitive Science 11 (2007): 77 –83; Susan T. Fiske, Amy J.C. Cuddy, Peter Glick, and Jun Xu, “A Model of (Often Mixed) Stereotype Content: Competence and Warmth Respectively Follow from Perceived Status and Competition,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82 (2002): 878–902; Hilary B. Bergsieker, Lisa M. Leslie, and Susan T. Fiske, “Stereotyping by Omission: Changes in Stereotypes Expressed across 75 Years,” poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Tampa, Florida, February 2009.[/fn] Stereotyping occurs within a two-dimensional space of social cognition defined by the attributes of warmth and competence. We judge other people by whether they are trustworthy, approachable, and likeable (warm), and whether they are capable, effective, and worthy of respect (competent). People perceived as both warm and competent comprise societal reference groups, such as middle-class whites, and they tend to be esteemed and respected in society. In contrast, those perceived as low in warmth and high in competence constitute envied out-groups, such as the rich and certain middleman minorities. Those deemed high on warmth but low on competence define pitied out-groups, such as the elderly and disabled. Those seen as neither warm nor competent are generally members of despised outgroups, such as drug addicts and the homeless.

White racial stereotyping historically placed African Americans in the despised quadrant of low competence and low warmth: lazy, stupid, unmotivated people such as welfare queens, shiftless workers, and petty criminals. Other black stereotypes involve low competence and high warmth (minstrels, mammies, Uncle Toms) and high competence and low warmth (sexual predators, violent criminals). What historically has been missing in American social cognition has been the placement of African Americans within the zone of high competence and high warmth. This situation seems to have changed in recent years, however, and black professionals are now esteemed and respected in the social cognition of white Americans.

Although the emergence of positive black stereotypes is clearly progress, it nonetheless entails a subtle process of stereotyping by omission. In public discussions, whites tend to accentuate positive traits about African Americans while omitting stereotypically negative traits; yet this omission implies the unspoken existence of these traits. The tendency to stereotype through omission is strongest among persons holding egalitarian attitudes–presumably those who least want to appear “racist” in discussing African Americans. Whites also routinely engage in stereo-subtyping, placing the smaller number of educated, middle-class, and professional blacks into the esteemed category of high warmth and high competence but relegating the much larger number of poor African Americans to the despised category of low warmth and low competence. Such negative stereotyping, however, is mitigated by habituation: that is, exposure to African Americans through the media and daily life brings familiarity and leads whites to evaluate blacks in terms of individual traits rather than gross stereotypes. Obama garnered white support not only because he is a black professional, but also because in the course of the campaign he became familiar and unthreatening.

People perceive the social world not only in terms of explicit, conscious stereotypes but also, as noted above, in terms of implicit biases that are expressed automatically and unconsciously. Although explicitly held stereotypes have long been known to affect behavior, research suggests that implicit prejudices appear to have greater power in predicting discriminatory conduct.[fn]See Russell H. Fazio and Michael A. Olson, “Implicit Measures in Social Cognition Research: Their Meaning and Use,” Annual Review of Psychology 54 (2003): 297–327; Linda R. Tropp and Thomas F. Pettigrew, “Differential Relationships Between Intergroup Contact and Affective and Cognitive Dimensions of Prejudice,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 3 (2005): 1145–1158; Cara A. Talaska, Susan T. Fiske, and Shelly Chaiken, “Legitimating Racial Discrimination: A Meta-Analysis of Racial Attitude-Behavior Literature Shows that Emotions, Not Beliefs, Best Predict Discrimination,” Social Justice Research 21 (3) (2008): 263–296.[/fn] By virtue of growing up and living in a society that is filled with negative historical and contemporary images of blacks, virtually all Americans come to harbor implicit biases that unconsciously affect judgments and decisions in the social realm.

The prevalence of implicit, unconscious, automatic biases helps explain the nature of contemporary discrimination. Just as overtly racist attitudes are consciously rejected by most white Americans, open discrimination against African Americans has largely disappeared from private markets and public spheres. One no longer encounters “whites only” signs or placards stating that “Blacks need not apply,” and African Americans are not told, “Sorry, but we do not sell to your kind.” Not only are such actions illegal, but the expression of racist sentiments is no longer publicly acceptable.

Although racial discrimination is no longer practiced openly, however, evidence suggests that it has not disappeared but has gone underground to be expressed in surreptitious and subtle ways that often are not directly observable.[fn]For a review of recent work on the measurement, incidence, and intensity of discrimination see Rebecca M. Blank, Marilyn Dabady, and Constance F. Citro, eds., Measuring Racial Discrimination (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2004).[/fn] Racial discrimination today is detected through a methodology known as the audit study, in which trained black and white testers are sent into markets to seek out proffered goods and services. How testers are received in various markets is recorded over a number of trials and compared by race to discern systematic differences in treatment. Numerous audit studies have documented the persistence of antiblack discrimination in markets for real estate, credit, jobs, goods, and services. Although discrimination may not be as intense or as open as it once was, it still exists.

To date there have been two major waves of forward movement on civil rights in the United States. The first occurred during the Civil War and Reconstruction, when slavery was abolished and African Americans achieved, for a brief time, significant political representation, something approaching equal treatment under the law, and substantial economic gains. The second wave of civil rights progress occurred during America’s “Second Reconstruction,” when landmark Supreme Court decisions in the 1950s and legislation passed in the 1960s and 1970s eliminated the basis for legal segregation in the South, outlawed discrimination in the North, and sought to deracialize public policies throughout the nation. At the same time, social spending and affirmative action programs launched as part of Johnson’s War on Poverty brought significant economic progress for African Americans. As with the first Reconstruction, however, these forward steps sparked a white counterreaction that substantially blunted black progress after 1980.

Although progress toward racial equality may have stalled during the 1980s, the election of the nation’s first black president in 2008 suggests that we may have turned a corner. Overt racism still exists, of course, but it is rapidly fading; and while we cannot ignore the capacity of a dying racial order to wreak havoc and violence as it disintegrates, principled racism, open discrimination, and systematic exclusion are no longer the barriers to black social and economic progress they once were. We are now entering a new, third wave of civil rights in the United States. In this new age, the tools used to advance racial equality in the past are no longer appropriate and may even be counterproductive. New tools must be invented and applied if we are to move forward.

American race relations today are quite different from those that prevailed in the mid-twentieth century, when racist attitudes were freely expressed and challenges to white supremacy met by violent resistance. Under these circumstances, social change required direct, forceful actions such as sit-ins, demonstrations, boycotts, marches, rallies, prosecutions, and punishment. Today, however, open racism is no longer tolerated, racial discrimination is subtle, and although changes to the racial status quo are opposed politically, race-neutral language has replaced violently racist rhetoric. Scholars have conveyed the contradictory nature of contemporary race relations using a variety of labels: symbolic racism, modern racism, laissez-faire racism, colorblind racism, and aversive racism.[fn]Donald R. Kinder and David O. Sears, “Prejudice and Politics: Symbolic Racism Versus Threats to the Good Life,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 40 (1981): 414–431; John B. McConahay, “Modern Racism and Modern Discrimination: The Effects of Race, Racial Attitudes, and Context on Simulated Hiring Decisions,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 9 (1983): 551–558; Lawrence D. Bobo, James R. Kluegel, and Ryan A. Smith, “Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology,” in Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuities and Change , ed. Steven J. Tuch and Jack A. Martin (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), 15–43; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner, “Aversive Racism,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 36 (2004): 1–51.[/fn] Whatever the label used, actions such as marching, demonstrating, prosecuting, and punishing will be of little use in expanding civil rights beyond this point.

Consider the realm of attitudes, for example. Although some whites no doubt remain “closet racists” who hold antiblack views and oppose actions to advance racial equality without admitting it publicly, most Americans consciously reject racism and sincerely seek a “race-blind” society, even though they may continue to harbor implicit racial prejudices. In the domain of behavior, notwithstanding a small population of racists who continue to openly discriminate against blacks, many do not wish to discriminate; they only do so under certain conditions because of unconscious biases. Finally, in the policy arena, although some white policy-makers may consciously despise African Americans and work to devise policies intended to harm them, many others support such discriminatory policies without consciously wishing to harm blacks or without ever fully understanding their racially disproportionate effects.

In sum, we have reached a point in American society where race is expressed subtly rather than overtly and where racial disadvantage is perpetuated in the shadows rather than in the open. Such a world requires a more judicious and refined politics of civil rights because the overt injustices that called for protest, boycott, and prosecution in the 1950s and 1960s have largely vanished. Since racial biases are now for the most part implicit, and mechanisms of racial stratification not readily observable, the primary goals in a new civil rights movement should be to render implicit biases explicit and to make transparent the obscured mechanisms of racial discrimination. In doing so, the intent should not be to root out and shame the hidden racists among us or to denounce the racist intent behind public policies. Rather, the goal should be to identify the unconscious biases and unintended consequences and bring them to explicit attention for remedial action. Even if some of the biases are conscious and the consequences intended, direct attacks will no longer work.

If we make the implicit biases that most people hold explicit in a nonthreatening way, and if we expose their dissonance with stated principles, we can overcome them.[fn]Laurie A. Rudman, Richard D. Ashmore, and Melvin L. Gray, “‘Unlearning’ Automatic Biases: The Malleability of Implicit Prejudice and Stereotypes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001): 856–868.[/fn] Humiliating or shaming people for harboring implicit biases and unconscious prejudices in a society where it is difficult not to acquire them, through the media and other sources, is inevitably counterproductive and more likely to produce resistance than change. Likewise, casting racist aspersions on supporters of policies with racially disparate impacts will not influence the behavior of actual racists, but it may hurt and offend those who are not and thereby cause them to dig in their heels and defend a policy line they might otherwise have been persuaded to abandon. The goal should be to change policies and structure, not punish people. The focus of civil rights action in the next wave should be elucidation and persuasion rather than confrontation and attack.

In translating these principles into concrete policy actions, there are two domains in which social science research has clearly demonstrated the existence of disproportionate impacts and implicit biases: the criminal justice system and U.S. markets. The racially disproportionate effect of the shift from rehabilitation to punishment in criminal justice is well documented, as are the huge costs this disproportion imposes on both African Americans and U.S. society in general. To combat discrimination, the contemporary civil rights movement must make criminal justice reform a central goal, demanding a repeal of legal gimmicks such as three-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentencing, and harsher penalties for crack than for powdered cocaine.

The persistence of significant racial discrimination in key U.S. markets is also well documented. Audit studies not only provide a means of measuring discrimination, they also offer a relatively cheap, easy, and legally valid way of enforcing anti-discrimination law. Up to this point, however, studies have been used only sporadically for civil rights enforcement, usually by underfunded nongovernmental organizations and civil rights groups in specific local areas. Court-ordered settlements have brought some justice to individual plaintiffs, but they have been too few and far between to mitigate discrimination in American markets.

A new civil rights movement should therefore demand the creation of federal programs to monitor levels of discrimination in key U.S. markets and take remedial action on a routine basis. If a society uses markets to allocate production, distribute goods and services, generate wealth, and produce income, then it is incumbent upon government to ensure that all citizens are able to compete freely in all markets. Lack of equal access to markets translates directly into a lack of equal access to material well-being and ultimately into socioeconomic inequality. Unfortunately, to secure passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1968, 1974, and 1977 and circumvent a filibuster, most of the enforcement mechanisms included in the original legislation were stripped away. As a consequence, the federal government was largely disempowered from playing an active role either in uncovering discrimination in key markets or instigating actions to sanction those engaging in discrimination.

The existing body of civil rights law must be updated to establish within the U.S. Departments of Treasury, Labor, Commerce, and Housing and Urban Development permanent offices authorized to conduct regular audits in markets for jobs, goods, services, credit, and housing based on representative samples of market providers. On the theory that at least some of the discrimination identified by audits stems from implicit bias rather than conscious discrimination, producers caught discriminating would not be singled out for prosecution and public shaming; instead, they simply would be issued a ticket they could dismiss by paying a fine. Those wishing to contest the ticket would have the right to challenge the audit evidence in court, but authorities would seek strong sanctions only in cases where a systematic pattern and practice of discrimination was uncovered across multiple audits. Annual publication of audit results for the nation and key regional markets would raise awareness and educate the public about the realities of discrimination; at the same time, it would provide information to federal authorities about where to target future audits and enforcement efforts.

Finally, a revitalized civil rights movement must return to and build on Lyndon Johnson’s observation, “[I]t is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.” Here again, social science research offers a clear basis for policy action by increasing our national investment in early childhood education. It is now well established that key cognitive and noncognitive skills essential for later learning are produced early in childhood, well before the beginning of formal schooling. As economists James Heckman and Dimitriy Masterov have argued, “[S]chooling comes too late in the life cycle of the child to be the main locus of remediation for the disadvantaged. . . . [R]edirecting funds toward the early years is a sound investment in the productivity and safety of American society, and also removes a powerful source of inequality.”[fn]James J. Heckman and Dimitriy V. Masterov, “The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children,” Review of Agricultural Economics 29 (2007): 446–493.[/fn] Although increasing funding for preschool education may not seem like a civil rights policy, African Americans would be clear beneficiaries, and the evidence suggests it would significantly mitigate a major source of racial inequality in the United States.

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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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Home > CAS > History > Doctoral

Doctoral Dissertations

Submissions from 2024 2024.

The Destruction of Louisiana Wetlands: An Environmental History, 1900-2000 , Gloria H. Adams

The Perpetual Progression in the Schleswig-Holstein Duchy: History, Politics, and Religion, 1460-1864 , Christian Anthony Ahlers

Just What They Have Been Looking For: The Significance, Importance, and Journey of the Negro Motorist Green Book in the State of South Carolina and the City of Columbia in the Twentieth Century , Justice Iyana Briscoe

Herschel V. Johnson: The States Rights Unionist , William Coleman Brown

The Official POW’s Rights Beginning in the Civil War Forward: Co-Authored by Francis Lieber , Delynn Antoinette Burrell

We Are Better for Having Survived: Tejanas in World War II , Ashleigh Champagne

African, American, and Southern: The Survivors of the Clotilda and the Wanderer , Kirsten Chaney

Conventional Commanders in an Unconventional War: The U.S. Army in Vietnam 1965-1973 , Patrick Richard Eaton

Catalysts for Change: The Sacralizing Impulse of the Second Great Awakening and Its Transformative Impact on American Higher Education , Blake S. Hart

The Australian Woolen Industry; British Investment in Colonial Australia: Unraveling the Threads of Economic Development 1788-1850 , Marie Cecilia Hedrick

We Clear the Way: United States Army Combat Engineers in the Second World War's Southwest Pacific Theater, 1942-1945 , Marc C. Jeter

From Covenants to Classrooms: Uncovering the Impact of Racial Segregation on Education in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Duluth , Alexis C. Jones

The Impact of WWII and Changes Brought by the War on a Small Kentucky Community , Barry A. Kennedy

Antislavery White Supremacists and the Mistreatment of African Americans in Indiana, 1787-1870 , Mark A. King

Vietnam WACs: An Exploration of Women’s Military Service During the Sociopolitical Upheaval of the Vietnam War Era , Carmen M. Latvis

"More Nobility of Soul": Honor at the United States Naval Academy, 1845-1875 , Samuel J. Limneos

Fear, Racism, Agriculture: The Drive for Japanese Internment , Brandon James March

The Shaffer Thesis Arthur Harvey Shaffer: American Founding History and History Education , C. C. Mathis

Diverting the Mob Mentality: The Real Dam History of Las Vegas , Stephen J. Mislan

The Lone Star on Relief: The Story of the Texas Federal Writers' Project, 1935-1943 , Michael William Mitchell

The Protestant Vatican: Black Churches Involvement in The Nashville Civil Rights Movement 1865-1972 , Samuel Dingkee Momodu

Print Culture in New York: The Essence of the Benevolent Empire from 1816 to 1837 , Merritt Morgan

Harbingers of A New Age: Irish and Scots Irish Indian Fighters on the Colonial American Frontier , Christina A. Neely

America’s Favorite Fighting Frenchman: Marquis de Lafayette in American Pop Culture , Joshua Neiderhiser

Uniform Intelligence: The United States Military Liaison Mission and the Cold War 1947-1990 , Frank Christopher Ofner

Cold War Merchants and the Commercialization of Space , Sandra Jeneane Piseno

Charles Lummis: Spanish Knight-Errant , Benjamin J. Prior

The Iconography of Phrygia and the Phrygian Ethnonym as the Hypothetical Cognate of “Free” , Ava Anne Quattlebaum

"That They May Become Efficient Agents, Under God.": Antebellum Scientific Medical Education at the University of Michigan as Preparation for the Civil War , Jesse A. Roberts

Malama Aina in Hawaii: Unraveling the Legacy of the Post-World War II Land Sovereignty Movement , Rachel Lynn Sample

Our Enemy, the State: Liberty versus Power on the American Home Front during the First World War , Michael Schearer

There and Back Again: Oklahoma’s Metanarrative as a Southern State , Kenneth P. Schell

A Position of Strength: The Reagan Military Buildup and the Conventional Forces , Kevin D. Smith

Where Duty Called Them: Comparing the Lives and Civil War Service of Generals Jerome Bonaparte Robertson and his son, Felix Huston Robertson , Jerod Thomas

The Case of Slavery in Colonial Georgia: The Failure of the Trustee Period and Georgia’s Peculiar Approach to Revolution, 1732-1782 , Charles Thornton

For the Defense of Themselves and the State: Pennsylvania's Contribution to the Second Amendment and Firearms Ownership , Harris R. Zeiler

Submissions from 2023 2023

Undivided Loyalty and Unwavering Leadership: The Life and Times of David Wooster (1710-1777) , Jason Edwin Anderson

Compelling Libya: Operation El Dorado Canyon as Coercive Diplomacy and Counterterrorism , Ronald Tracy Boyd

Historical Understanding in the U.S. Constitution , Kristopher W. Chesterman

Cochran's Coup: The Legacy of Jacqueline Cochran Through Her Service with the Women's Airforce Service Pilots , Elisabeth B. Chivers

With Sand in Their Pockets: Lessons of the American Expeditionary Force’s Mobilization for the First World War , Kasey James Comstock

The Importance of the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War , Todd Alan Conn

Before Facebook and Twitter: The Online Computing Revolution of the 1980s , David Scott Cooper

Bedford Springs Resort: A Political and Social Annex of Antebellum America: 1840-1860 , Sara Grace Davis-Leonard

The Road to Armageddon: American Culture and Politics during the Late Cold War, 1970-1991 , David Lee Denham III

A Brief History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints with Emphasis on the Charismatic Roots of the Race-Based Priesthood Denial , Wayne A. Denton

The Reasons for the Success of Colonial Pennsylvania Farmers , Mark V. Durfee

Building the Hill City: Internal Improvements and Political Economy in Lynchburg, Virginia, 1791-1829 , Mark Ryan Feld

The Emergence of Radical Christianity: The Mystical Dunkers, its Antecedence, Hermetical Founding, Germanic Diaspora, and its Apogee on the Frontier of Colonial America , Daniel Jason Geyer

Lying-in Transition: The Modernization and Professionalization of Childbirth in Rural Alabama 1870-1910 , Jennifer Megan Gmuca

Rangers and Rebels: The Americanization of War in the Colonial South , Garrett DeWayne Hall

The Political Evolution of Howell Cobb on the Road to Secession in Antebellum Georgia History , Kathryn M. Haney

They Tore Down the King’s Colours: How the Colonial Legal System Emboldened Resistance , Cynthia D. Hatch

French Military Tactics in the American Civil War: An Analysis of the Influence of Antoine Henri Jomini’s Principles in Two Selected Battles and a Campaign , Michele M. Hawes

Tsenacommacah’s Role in the Survival of Jamestown , Brandon J. Hewitt

The Growth of Human Capital and the Progressive Education Movement in Houston, Texas: A History of Houston Independent School District, 1876–1970 , Wesley Patrick Jackson

The History of Systemic Racism in the Texas Rangers , John E. Jordan Jr.

Coping with Adversity and Trauma in War: The Perseverance of Alabamian Confederate Soldiers in the American Civil War , Charles Henry Lahmon

Thomas Jefferson: Slavery, Education, and the Public Mind , Brendan Lenahan

Jena and Auerstadt: Reorganization of the German Military from 1807-1945 , Blake Cole Lucy

The Mormon Battalion, Cooke’s Wagon Road, and the Making of the New West , Nicholas Paul Mihora

It’s Black and White: An Investigation into the Founding of Three Post-Civil War Black Colleges , Melvin Gamble Miller

“Go, Then, to the Front as Temperate Men:” The U.S. Army, Temperance Advocacy, and Lessons Learned to 1873 , Megan M.S. Nishikawa

The Veneration of Charlemagne in Divine Kingship: From Charlemagne to the Last Crusade , Lindsay Michelle Olson

Gridiron Reconstruction: The Struggle for the Soul of the Post-Civil War South as Embodied in the UGA vs Georgia Tech Rivalry , Wendi Jo Pollard

“Always Said to be of Indian Extraction”: Native/African American Freedom Suits in Virginia 1773-1853 , Cress Ann Posten

The Intellectual and Diplomatic Discourse of American Progressives and the late Ottomans, 1830–1930 , Brigitte Maricich Powell

Only a Matter of Time: The Battle of Cold Harbor 28 May-12 June 1864 , Nathan Lee Provost

Who Should I Trust? Dynamics within Hitler's Inner Circle , Sarah C. Randow

At Any and All Hazards: Manifest Destiny, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Balance of Power in North America , Keith Thomas Ressa

Thinking on a Higher Plane: The Evolution of a Strategic Mindset in the Navies of America and Great Britain at the Turn of the Twentieth Century , Bryan Keith Robbins

The Cajun Traiteurs , Shelby Kathleen Robert

The Relationship between Christianity and Slavery: An Examination of the Defense of Slavery within Christian Thought, Practices and Methodologies from 1619-1865 , Decorie Lee Smith

Clawhammer: Vincent A. Witcher and Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Southern Appalachia , Melanie Greer Storie

The Chiefs of Chota and the Charles Town Merchants: A Vital Alliance That Ensured the Growth and Success of South Carolina, 1692-1760 , Nicola Symonds

A Jus in Bello Comparison of Lee’s Gettysburg Campaign and Sheridan’s Valley Campaign , Jonathan Scott Thomas

The Impact of World War II on Hawaii , Darrel Raymond Van Hoose

American Military Cemeteries: Temples of Nationalism and Civic Religion , Kyler James Webb

Submissions from 2022 2022

James Monroe’s White House: The Genius of Politics and Place , Susan Glen Amos

Lost at Sea: The Nintendo GameCube’s Failure and the Transformation of an Industry 1996-2006 , Izsak Kayne Barnette

Becoming Men, Consequently: From “Contraband” to Men Through Naval Service in the American Civil War , Micah Paul Bellamy

American Policy Discourses on China: Two Centuries of National Imagination and Constructed Reality , Yan Chang Bennett

The Influence on American Post-Secondary Education by United States Military and Veteran Programs Resulting from Changing Technology, Reform-Minded Leaders, and Large Military Operations , Scot Douglas Cates

Conflict Surrounding the Red Castle: The Smithsonian Institution During the Civil War , Amber Turner Darby

Wildfire & Sacred Flame: Enthusiasm in American Revivalism 1734-1944 , Randy Lee Darnell

The Foundation of Freedom: Natural Rights and State Power in Revolutionary Massachusetts , Joshua Paul Dunkelberger

Accepting the Cost: German Baptist Brethren, Faith, and the American Civil War , Sheilah Rana Elwardani

The Consent of the Governed: Constitutionalism of the Levellers and its Influence on Anglo-American Political Discourse , Nathan B. Gilson

Arlington’s Freedmen’s Village: Becoming Untethered , Gavin Gerard Harrell

Something Remains: Union Monuments At Gettysburg 1863-1913 , Brendan Alexander Harris

Cold War Economic Ideology and US Aid to Taiwan, 1950-1965 , Wayne Robert Hugar

Reclaiming the Church: Puritan Structure, Political and Theological Distinctions in a Transatlantic Context, 1603-1689 , Kevan Dale Keane

Carlton J. H. Hayes: Historian, Professor, and America's Forgotten Ambassador , Adam Prescott Manuel

Fire and Fury: The German Tiger Battalions on the Eastern and Western Fronts, 1942-1945 , Daniel L. Moore

The Effects of the Union Blockade on the Confederacy during the United States' Civil War , Ronald C. Piccirilli

Conservatives at the Movies: Conservative Film Critics and Popular Culture , Alex Pinelli

Moravians Amongst the Cherokees: An Account of the Springplace Mission , Ethan T. Smith

James Madison: An Early American Entrepreneur , Christopher Sneeringer

A Shattered General: The Impact of Defeat on James Longstreet in East Tennessee, 1863-1864 , Logan E. Thomas

Fog of War; Cloud of Memory: The Fifty-Third Ohio Volunteer Infantry Shiloh's Story , Jared Daniel Williams

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African American Studies

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The boxes below bring together numerous websites that provide information about specific topics in African American Studies. 

Topics include:

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Library Collections (outside Fisher)

• African-American Odyssey Freely accessible and searchable collections of documents and ephemera related to African Americans in the United States from the 17th century to present. Created and maintained by the Library of Congress.
• Black American Feminisms A multi-disciplinary bibliography of Black American Feminist thought across many academic fields.
• Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture From the website: The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, one of The New York Public Library’s renowned research libraries, is a world-leading cultural institution devoted to the research, preservation, and exhibition of materials focused on African American, African Diaspora, and African experiences.

News and Media Organizations

• The 1619 Project From the website: The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. For full access to the New York Times, follow these instructions.
• Africans In America PBS overview of African American history includes excerpts from primary sources.

Collections Curated by Organizations

• African American Mosaic A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture.
• African Diaspora Music Project From the About page: To create a repository for the concert works (those intended for the concert stage; aka classical works) of composers of the African Diaspora. (The African Diaspora in this context is defined as those composers throughout the world descended from people of West and Central Africa).
• Black Past This site includes an online encyclopedia of hundreds of famous and lesser-known figures in African America, full-text primary documents and major speeches of black activists and leaders from the 18th Century to the present.
• Facing History and Ourselves By studying the historical development of race in US history, the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives. Excellent resources for teachers and student teachers.
• Tangled Roots This project produced by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition is a collection of primary documents from the 17th century to the present "about the shared history of African Americans and Irish Americans." Also see the Center's archive of more than 200 digitized items dealing with African American history.

Colleges and Universities

• Documenting Slave Voyages From the website: Led by Emory, a massive digital memorial shines new light on one of the most harrowing chapters of human history.
• The Geography of Slavery in Virginia "The Geography of Slavery in Virginia is a digital collection of advertisements for runaway and captured slaves and servants in 18th- and 19th-century Virginia newspapers."
• Making of America: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies From the website: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies, part of Cornell Universities Making of America collection
• North American Slave Narratives A collection of "approximately two hundred texts, including all known narratives of fugitive and former slaves published in broadsides, pamphlets, or book form in English up to 1920 and many of the biographies of fugitive and former slaves published in English before 1920."
• The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies From the website: Official records of the Union and Confederate armies, part of Cornell Universities Making of America collection

Library of Congress

• Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in America: A Visual Record Hundreds of images depicting slavery and the slave trade, includes maps, illustrations and photographs.
• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1938 A Library of Congress collection of more than 2,300 first person accounts of slavery plus 500 photographs. Some audio narratives are included as well.

State and Local Histories

• African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts This Massachusetts Historical Society exhibit features 117 documents including letters, warrants, bills of sale and antislavery material.
• Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts A Massachusetts Historical Society collection of 840 visual materials from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society that illustrate the role of Massachusetts in the national debate over slavery. Included are photographs, paintings, sculptures, engravings, artifacts, banners, and broadsides that were central to the debate and the formation of the antislavery movement.

Curated Collections

• Slavery Images From the website: A visual record of the African Slave Trade and slave life in the early African Diaspora.
• SlaveVoyages From the website: This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them.
• Valley of the Shadow A digital archive of primary sources that document the lives of people in Augusta County, Virginia, and Franklin County, Pennsylvania, during the era of the American Civil War. Here you may explore thousands of original documents that allow you to see what life was like during the Civil War for the men and women of Augusta and Franklin.

Museums and Digital Collections

• Civil Rights Digital Library From the website: The Civil Rights Digital Library Initiative represents one of the most ambitious and comprehensive efforts to date to deliver educational content on the Civil Rights Movement via the Web. more... less... Documents the struggle for racial equality in the 1950s and 1960s through a digital video archive of historical news film, extensive links to related digital collections, and secondary Web-based learning resources such as contextual stories, encyclopedia articles, lesson plans, and activities.
• The Civil Rights Movement History Channel website includes chronologies, film clips, photos.
• Freedom Now Collection of documents and photographs illustrating the history of the Mississippi Freedom Movement. The site is a collaborative project of Brown University and Tougaloo College.
• Historical Publications of the United States Civil Rights Commission U.S. Commission on Civil Rights - Historical Publications.
• Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia Museum at Ferris State University provides images of racist objects, images and cartoons along with essays.
• Who Speaks for the Negro? From the website: materials related to the book of the same name published by Robert Penn Warren in 1965. The original materials are held at the University of Kentucky and Yale University Libraries.

Oral Histories

• Oral Histories of the American South - Civil Rights Collection of oral histories from a number of Southern oral history programs.
• Oral History of the March on Washington Available from the Smithsonian Magazine, from the website: Americans who marched on Washington 50 years ago under a blazing sun recall the day they were part of a turning point in history.
• "Born in the Wake of Freedom:" John Mitchell, Jr., and the Richmond Planet The history of the oldest African American newspaper and it's most famous editor. An exhibit created by the Virginia Newspaper Project.
• The Frederick Douglass Papers The first release of this Library of Congress collection contains over 2000 items and "contains the writings of Douglass and such contemporaries in the abolitionist and early women's rights movements as Henry Ward Beecher, Ida B. Wells, Gerrit Smith, Horace Greeley, and others."
• Malcolm X: A Research Site This web page is designed to be a resource for scholarship in Black Studies and the political development of activists in the Black Liberation Movement.
• Martin Luther King Jr. Project Project sponsored by Stanford University and the MLK Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Includes a brief, selected documents, and a searchable database of transcriptions of MLK papers and secondary works.
• UCLA African Studies Center (Marcus Garvey UNIA Papers Project) Web site accompanying the publication of Garvey's papers, includes sample documents, narrative and some photographs.
• W.E.B. Dubois Papers at University of Massachusetts Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a biography, exhibits, photographs and selected books and articles by W.E.B. Du Bois.
• The Association for the Study of African American Life and History The mission of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) is to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community.
• Association of Black Women Historians From the website: The ABWH constitution outlines four organizational goals: to establish a network among the membership; to promote Black women in the profession; to disseminate information about opportunities in the field; and to make suggestions concerning research topics and repositories.
• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.
• National Association of African American Studies Information and support for research related to the African and African American, Hispanic, Latino(a) and Chicano(a), Native American and Asian experiences.
• National Council for Black Studies From the website: The National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) was established in 1975, when African American scholars came together to formalize the study of the African World experience, as well as expand and strengthen academic units and community programs devoted to this endeavor.
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• Last Updated: Jun 12, 2024 11:12 AM
• URL: https://libguides.sjf.edu/afam

Civil Rights in the United States

Civil rights movement, government materials related to the civil rights era, primary sources: general.

• Seminal Documents

(Also see Africana Studies Primary Sources )

• History Vault: Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle This link opens in a new window Manuscript and archival collections focusing on civil rights and the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century. Contains records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE.
• Black Life in America This link opens in a new window The experience and impact of African Americans, as recorded by the news media.
• The Black Panther (Newspaper) The newspaper of the Black Panther Party. Twenty issues of the Black Panther Party newspaper from between 1968-1973. The papers are posted on Libcom.org.
• Civil Rights (National Archives)
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Library of Congress) Exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the history that led up to it, and its immediate impact.
• Civil Rights Digital Library: Topics (Digital Library of Georgia) Select a topic to see archival collections and reference resources, many of which are available online.
• Civil Rights History Project (Library of Congress) Oral interviews and collections of people who participated in the Civil Rights movement.
• FBI Records: The Vault - Civil Rights FBI records included in the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) Library.
• Freedom Summer Collection (Wisconsin Historical Society) Manuscript collections documents the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964
• Hispanic Life in America This link opens in a new window The experience and impact of Hispanic Americans, as recorded by the news media.
• Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights Documents from this commission, which have been at the forefront of federal and state efforts for civil rights.
• Jim Crow and Segregation (Library of Congress) Set of primary sources that reflects popular views of and causes and affects of racial segregation.
• The Krueger-Scott Oral History Project The Krueger-Scott oral histories is the largest collection of oral history interviews conducted with African-American residents of Newark who came to the city during the Great Migration, as well as those whose local roots stretch back generations. The faculty, staff and graduate students at Rutgers University-Newark who have worked on the collection in collaboration with local cultural institutions are proud to have helped preserve, archive, and make public these remarkable oral narratives that describe an as yet unwritten history of 20th-century African-American life. (source: website)
• Land of (Unequal) Opportunity: Documenting the Civil Rights Struggle in Arkansas From the University of Arkansas
• The NAACP: A Century in the Fight for Freedom The story of America's oldest and largest civil rights organization, told through letters, photographs, maps, and more. Part of the Library of Congress Primary Source sets.
• National Archives Civil Rights Records
• National Museum of African American History & Culture: Collections (Smithsonian) The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the only national museum devoted exclusively to the documentation of African American life, history, and culture.
• Voices of Civil Rights (Library of Congress) Exhibition that includes personal accounts and oral hstories. A collaboration of AARP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Library of Congress.
• Seminal Documents of the Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights Data Collection

From the U.S. Department of Education

Illustrates that Civil Rights is not a historical phenomenon but an ongoing issue in the United States.

Library of Congress: Civil Rights Resource Guide

Links to over forty sites related to civil rights, library of congress: american memory, an important site from the library of congress. use the search box to find matches to terms such as civil rights, jim crow, martin luther king, etc., national museum of african american history and culture, a comprehensive smithsonian museum website.

In history and the humanities a primary source is a item produced from the time you are researching. Examples include a photograph, a letter, a newspaper article, and government documents.  Looking at actual sources from a specific time helps you get a firsthand account of what was happening then.

These resources will help you locate relevant primary sources. (See Primary Source Research for more guidance.)

Archives of searchable historical primary source materials. Note: This content has moved to the History Commons platform, but still contains the Accessible Archives collections subscribed to by Rowan University.

• African American Newspapers, Series 1 This link opens in a new window African American newspapers published in the U.S. from 1827-1998. more... less... Provides access to U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience.
• Archives Unbound This link opens in a new window Digital collection of historical documents from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. more... less... Collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
• Historic Documents This link opens in a new window Primary source documents from 1972 forward in U.S. government and politics.

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

New york public library digital collections.

Access to The New York Times (1851 - 2020).

Presents PDF pages of the newspaper, preserving the visual sense of the publication. This online format replaces the microfiche archival coverage.

• Wall Street Journal (ProQuest Historical Newspapers) This link opens in a new window Online access to back issues of the Wall Street Journal, 1889 - 1999. more... less... Newspaper coverage is from 1889 through 1996. For more recent issues of the Wall Street Journal, select the Wall Street Journal (current) link.
• << Previous: Articles
• Next: Seminal Documents >>
• Last Updated: Jul 15, 2024 3:05 PM
• URL: https://libguides.rowan.edu/civilrights

Afro American Studies

Senior honors theses, recent dissertations, spotlight on..., how to find dissertations.

• Afro Am 117: Survey of African American Literature I
• Afro Am 118: Survey of African American Literature II
• Afro Am 170/171: The Multicultural Experience in American Life and Culture
• AFRO AM 222 Black Church In America
• Afro Am 236: History of the Civil Rights Movement
• Afro Am 254 Introduction to African Studies
• Afro Am 290c/753: The Blues
• Afro Am 293B: THE AFRICAN DIASPORA AND THE WAR ON DRUGS (Afro American Studies 293B
• Afro Am 297A: Black Springfield Matters
• Afro Am 326: Black Women in U.S. History
• Afro Am 331: The Life and Writings of W.E.B. Du Bois
• Afro Am 491C: Cuba: A Social History
• AFROAM 494DI: The W.E.B. Du Bois Senior Seminar
• Afro Am 365: Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)
• Afro Am 605/History 797S: African Americans and the Movement to Abolish Slavery
• Afro Am 652/234: Literature of the Harlem Renaissance
• Afro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American Studies
• Afro Am 692G: African American Women's Narrative
• Afro Am 692U: Dynamics of Race and the Law
• Afro Am 701 & 702: Major Works in Afro American Studies
• English 891BB: African American Women Playwrights
• History 591FG: First Generation-Urbanism and Breaking Baseball's Color Barrier
• History 593K: African Americans in Antebellum New England
• History 594Z: Black Women’s Political Activism
• Black Women Suffragists
• Educ 218: Hip Hop Nation Language and Literacy Practices
• Journalism 395M: The African American Freedom Struggle and the Mass Media
• Librarian for Afro American Studies
• Database Searching / Research Log
• Reference sources
• How else are we going to do research when the library is closed?

are available in Special Collections and Archives, 25th floor. Arranged by year, by department or alphabetically by name. These cannot be checked out.

Recent dissertations in Afro American Studies at UMass Amherst

Dr. Stephanie Evans received her PhD from the UMass Amherst Department of Afro American Studies in 2003.

Her dissertation, Living legacies : Black women, educational philosophies, and community service, 1865-1965 , is available for checkout and online .

Doctoral Theses in Afro American Studies

Umass dissertations.

To identify individual doctoral dissertations , use the Library Catalog author, title, subject or keyword search. To browse all Afro American Studies dissertations, use the general subject heading: Theses -- Afro American Studies -- Doctoral The Library keeps physical copies of UMass doctoral theses , and provides online access to recently completed dissertations:

• UMass Amherst Afro-American Studies Dissertations Collection in ScholarWorks . Online PDF .
• On the 20th floor. All call numbers start with LD3234.M267, followed by the year of the thesis. These can be checked out.
• In the Five College Depository. Library use only.
• Older dissertations also available in Microforms. Library use only.

Dissertations from other Universities

Use the database Dissertations and Theses , which now provides full text of recent doctoral and some masters theses, mostly completed in colleges and universities of the United States and Canada. (In instances when full text is not available, try requesting through Inter-Library Loan .)

Two books by graduates of the Afro American Studies department were selected as Choice Outstanding Academic Titles for 2008. Both books began as dissertations in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies , University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

• << Previous: Journals
• Next: Course Guides >>
• Last Updated: Jul 8, 2024 6:23 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/afroam

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: May 14, 2024 | Original: October 27, 2009

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

Jim Crow Laws

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

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

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

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

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

World War II and Civil Rights

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little Rock Nine

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

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

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

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

Civil Rights Act of 1957

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

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

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

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

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

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

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

Freedom Riders

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

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

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

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

March on Washington

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

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

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

Civil Rights Act of 1964

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

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

Bloody Sunday

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

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

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

Voting Rights Act of 1965

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

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

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

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

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

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

Fair Housing Act of 1968

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

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

Six Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement

Though their stories are sometimes overlooked, these women were instrumental in the fight for equal rights for African‑Americans.

How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement

With a focus on racial pride and self‑determination, leaders of the Black Power movement argued that civil rights activism did not go far enough.

8 Key Laws That Advanced Civil Rights

Since the abolishment of slavery, the U.S. government has passed several laws to address discrimination and racism against African Americans.

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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Intro Essay: The Civil Rights Movement

To what extent did founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for african americans during the civil rights movement.

• I can explain the importance of local and federal actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
• I can compare the goals and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X and Black Nationalism, and Black Power.
• I can explain challenges African Americans continued to face despite victories for equality and justice during the civil rights movement.

Essential Vocabulary

Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

The struggle to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence a reality for Black Americans reached a climax after World War II. The activists of the civil rights movement directly confronted segregation and demanded equal civil rights at the local level with physical and moral courage and perseverance. They simultaneously pursued a national strategy of systematically filing lawsuits in federal courts, lobbying Congress, and pressuring presidents to change the laws. The civil rights movement encountered significant resistance, however, and suffered violence in the quest for equality.

During the middle of the twentieth century, several Black writers grappled with the central contradictions between the nation’s ideals and its realities, and the place of Black Americans in their country. Richard Wright explored a raw confrontation with racism in Native Son (1940), while Ralph Ellison led readers through a search for identity beyond a racialized category in his novel Invisible Man (1952), as part of the Black quest for identity. The novel also offered hope in the power of the sacred principles of the Founding documents. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun , first performed in 1959, about the dreams deferred for Black Americans and questions about assimilation. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin described Blacks’ estrangement from U.S. society and themselves while caught in a racial nightmare of injustice in The Fire Next Time (1963) and other works.

World War II wrought great changes in U.S. society. Black soldiers fought for a “double V for victory,” hoping to triumph over fascism abroad and racism at home. Many received a hostile reception, such as Medgar Evers who was blocked from voting at gunpoint by five armed whites. Blacks continued the Great Migration to southern and northern cities for wartime industrial work. After the war, in 1947, Jackie Robinson endured racial taunts on the field and segregation off it as he broke the color barrier in professional baseball and began a Hall of Fame career. The following year, President Harry Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and banning discrimination in the civil service. Meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall and his legal team at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meticulously prepared legal challenges to discrimination, continuing a decades-long effort.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits against segregated schools in different states that were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal.” Brown II followed a year after, as the court ordered that the integration of schools should be pursued “with all deliberate speed.” Throughout the South, angry whites responded with a campaign of “massive resistance” and refused to comply with the order, while many parents sent their children to all-white private schools. Middle-class whites who opposed integration joined local chapters of citizens’ councils and used propaganda, economic pressure, and even violence to achieve their ends.

A wave of violence and intimidation followed. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was lynched after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. Though an all-white jury quickly acquitted the two men accused of killing him, Till’s murder was reported nationally and raised awareness of the injustices taking place in Mississippi.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (who was a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Her willingness to confront segregation led to a direct-action movement for equality. The local Women’s Political Council organized the city’s Black residents into a boycott of the bus system, which was then led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. Black churches and ministers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, provided a source of strength. Despite arrests, armed mobs, and church bombings, the boycott lasted until a federal court desegregated the city buses. In the wake of the boycott, the leading ministers formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , which became a key civil rights organization.

Rosa Parks is shown here in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. The Montgomery bus boycott was an important victory in the civil rights movement.

In 1957, nine Black families decided to send their children to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent their entry, and one student, Elizabeth Eckford, faced an angry crowd of whites alone and barely escaped. President Eisenhower was compelled to respond and sent in 1,200 paratroops from the 101st Airborne to protect the Black students. They continued to be harassed, but most finished the school year and integrated the school.

That year, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that created a civil rights division in the Justice Department and provided minimal protections for the right to vote. The bill had been watered down because of an expected filibuster by southern senators, who had recently signed the Southern Manifesto, a document pledging their resistance to Supreme Court decisions such as Brown .

In 1960, four Black college students were refused lunch service at a local Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they spontaneously staged a “sit-in” the following day. Their resistance to the indignities of segregation was copied by thousands of others of young Blacks across the South, launching another wave of direct, nonviolent confrontation with segregation. Ella Baker invited several participants to a Raleigh conference where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and issued a Statement of Purpose. The group represented a more youthful and daring effort that later broke with King and his strategy of nonviolence.

In contrast, Malcolm X became a leading spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) who represented Black separatism as an alternative to integration, which he deemed an unworthy goal. He advocated revolutionary violence as a means of Black self-defense and rejected nonviolence. He later changed his views, breaking with the NOI and embracing a Black nationalism that had more common ground with King’s nonviolent views. Malcolm X had reached out to establish ties with other Black activists before being gunned down by assassins who were members of the NOI later in 1965.

In 1961, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rode segregated buses in order to integrate interstate travel. These Black and white Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, where mobs beat them with bats and pipes in bus stations and firebombed their buses. A cautious Kennedy administration reluctantly intervened to protect the Freedom Riders with federal marshals, who were also victimized by violent white mobs.

Malcolm X was a charismatic speaker and gifted organizer. He argued that Black pride, identity, and independence were more important than integration with whites.

King was moved to act. He confronted segregation with the hope of exposing injustice and brutality against nonviolent protestors and arousing the conscience of the nation to achieve a just rule of law. The first planned civil rights campaign was initiated by SNCC and taken over mid-campaign by King and SCLC. It failed because Albany, Georgia’s Police Chief Laurie Pritchett studied King’s tactics and responded to the demonstrations with restraint. In 1963, King shifted the movement to Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed his officers to attack civil rights protestors with fire hoses and police dogs. Authorities arrested thousands, including many young people who joined the marches. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after his own arrest and provided the moral justification for the movement to break unjust laws. National and international audiences were shocked by the violent images shown in newspapers and on the television news. President Kennedy addressed the nation and asked, “whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . [If a Black person]cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” The president then submitted a civil rights bill to Congress.

In late August 1963, more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in solidarity for equal rights. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He stated, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pushed his agenda through Congress. In the early summer of 1964, a 3-month filibuster by southern senators was finally defeated, and both houses passed the historical civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, banning segregation in public accommodations.

Activists in the civil rights movement then focused on campaigns for the right to vote. During the summer of 1964, several civil rights organizations combined their efforts during the “ Freedom Summer ” to register Blacks to vote with the help of young white college students. They endured terror and intimidation as dozens of churches and homes were burned and workers were killed, including an incident in which Black advocate James Chaney and two white students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi.

In August 1963, peaceful protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to draw attention to the inequalities and indignities African Americans suffered 100 years after emancipation. Leaders of the march are shown in the image on the bottom, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the center.

That summer, Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as civil rights delegates to replace the rival white delegation opposed to civil rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer was a veteran of attempts to register other Blacks to vote and endured severe beatings for her efforts. A proposed compromise of giving two seats to the MFDP satisfied neither those delegates nor the white delegation, which walked out. Cracks were opening up in the Democratic electoral coalition over civil rights, especially in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer testified about the violence she and others endured when trying to register to vote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the realities of continued violence against Blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC joined forces to register voters in Selma and draw attention to the fight for Black suffrage. On March 7, marchers planned to walk peacefully from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. However, mounted state troopers and police blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then rampaged through the marchers, indiscriminately beating them. SNCC leader John Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and 5 women were clubbed unconscious. Seventy people were hospitalized for injuries during “Bloody Sunday.” The scenes again shocked television viewers and newspaper readers.

The images of state troopers, local police, and local people brutally attacking peaceful protestors on “Bloody Sunday” shocked people across the country and world. Two weeks later, protestors of all ages and races continued the protest. By the time they reached the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, their ranks had swelled to about 25,000 people.

Two days later, King led a symbolic march to the bridge but then turned around. Many younger and more militant activists were alienated and felt that King had sold out to white authorities. The tension revealed the widening division between older civil rights advocates and those younger, more radical supporters who were frustrated at the slow pace of change and the routine violence inflicted upon peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, starting on March 21, with the help of a federal judge who refused Governor George Wallace’s request to ban the march, Blacks triumphantly walked to Montgomery. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act protecting the rights to register and vote after a Senate filibuster ended and the bill passed Congress.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act did not alter the fact that most Black Americans still suffered racism, were denied equal economic opportunities, and lived in segregated neighborhoods. While King and other leaders did seek to raise their issues among northerners, frustrations often boiled over into urban riots during the mid-1960s. Police brutality and other racial incidents often triggered days of violence in which hundreds were injured or killed. There were mass arrests and widespread property damage from arson and looting in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. A presidential National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report, which analyzed the causes of urban unrest, noting the impact of racism on the inequalities and injustices suffered by Black Americans.

Frustration among young Black Americans led to the rise of a more militant strain of advocacy. In 1966, activist James Meredith was on a solo march in Mississippi to raise awareness about Black voter registration when he was shot and wounded. Though Meredith recovered, this event typified the violence that led some young Black Americans to espouse a more military strain of advocacy. On June 16, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and members of the Black Panther Party continued Meredith’s march while he recovered from his wounds, chanting, “We want Black Power .” Black Power leaders and members of the Black Panther Party offered a different vision for equality and justice. They advocated self-reliance and self-empowerment, a celebration of Black culture, and armed self-defense. They used aggressive rhetoric to project a more radical strategy for racial progress, including sympathy for revolutionary socialism and rejection of capitalism. While its legacy is debated, the Black Power movement raised many important questions about the place of Black Americans in the United States, beyond the civil rights movement.

After World War II, Black Americans confronted the iniquities and indignities of segregation to end almost a century of Jim Crow. Undeterred, they turned the public’s eyes to the injustice they faced and called on the country to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and to continue the fight against inequality and discrimination.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What factors helped to create the modern civil rights movement?
• How was the quest for civil rights a combination of federal and local actions?
• What were the goals and methods of different activists and groups of the civil rights movement? Complete the table below to reference throughout your analysis of the primary source documents.

Home — Essay Samples — History — History of the United States — Civil Rights Movement

Essays on Civil Rights Movement

Hook examples for civil rights movement essays, anecdotal hook.

Imagine standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. This moment in history epitomized the Civil Rights Movement's power and importance.

Question Hook

What does it mean to fight for civil rights? Explore the complex history, key figures, and lasting impact of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

Quotation Hook

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. How did civil rights activists like King refuse to stay silent and ignite change?

Statistical or Factual Hook

Did you know that in 1964, the Civil Rights Act was signed into law, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin? Dive into the facts and milestones of the Civil Rights Movement.

Definition Hook

What defines a civil rights movement? Explore the principles, goals, and strategies that distinguish civil rights movements from other social justice movements.

Rhetorical Question Hook

Was the Civil Rights Movement solely about racial equality, or did it pave the way for broader social change and justice? Examine the movement's multifaceted impact.

Historical Hook

Travel back in time to the mid-20th century and uncover the roots of the Civil Rights Movement, from the Jim Crow era to the landmark Supreme Court decisions.

Contrast Hook

Contrast the injustices and systemic racism faced by African Americans prior to the Civil Rights Movement with the progress made through protests, legislation, and activism.

Narrative Hook

Meet Rosa Parks, a seamstress who refused to give up her bus seat, sparking the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Follow her courageous journey and the ripple effect it had on the Civil Rights Movement.

Controversial Statement Hook

Prepare to explore the controversies within the Civil Rights Movement, such as differing strategies among activists and debates over nonviolence versus militancy.

Brown V. Board of Education: a Landmark in The Struggle for Equality

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Freedom Summer: a Pivotal Moment in The American Civil Rights Movement

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Civil Rights Movement and The Struggles of African Americans During Those Times

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How The Civil Rights Movement Helped African Americans Achieve Their Rights

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United States

Racism, segregation, disenfranchisement, Jim Crow laws, socioeconomic inequality

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

Civil rights movement was a struggle of African Americans and their like-minded allies for social justice in United States that came to national prominence during the mid-1950s. The purpose was to end legalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States.

“Jim Crow” laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century with a purpose to separate Black people from white people. Black people couldn’t use the same public facilities as white people or go to the same schools. Although, Jim Crow laws weren’t adopted in northern states, Black people still experienced discrimination.

Forms of protest and civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the most successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) that lasted for 381 days in Alabama; mass marches, such as the Children's Crusade in Birmingham in 1963 and Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and Nashville sit-ins (1960) in Tennessee.

The Great March on Washington was held in Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. The purpose was to advocate for the civil and economic rights of African Americans. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

On July 2, 1964, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and later sexual orientation and gender identity. The act "remains one of the most significant legislative achievements in American history".

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders. On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally and Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room’s balcony on April 4, 1968.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots. It prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, and national origin.

The 20th-century civil rights movement produced an enduring transformation of the legal status of African Americans and other victims of discrimination.

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116 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics & Examples

Trying to write a successful civil rights movement essay? Questions about the subject may flood your brain, but we can help!

📃 8 Tips for Writing a Civil Rights Movement Essay

🏆 best civil rights movement topic ideas & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting civil rights movement topics to write about, 📌 good civil rights research topics, 👍 interesting civil rights essay topics, ❓ civil rights movement essay questions.

As a student, you can explore anything from civil disobedience to the work of Martin Luther King Jr in your paper. And we are here to help! Our experts have gathered civil rights movement essay topics for different assignments. In the article below, see research and paper ideas along with tips on writing. Besides, check civil rights essay examples via the links.

A civil rights movement essay is an essential assignment because it helps students to reflect on historical events that molded the contemporary American society. Read this post to find some useful tips that will help you score an A on your paper on the civil rights movement.

Tip 1: Read the instructions carefully. Check all of the documents provided by your tutor, including the grading rubric, example papers, and civil rights movement essay questions. When you know what is expected of you, it will be much easier to proceed with the assignment and achieve a high mark on it.

Tip 2: Browse sample papers on the topic. If you are not sure of what to write about in particular, you can see what other students included in their essays. While reading civil rights movement essay examples, take notes about the content, sources used, and other relevant points. This might give you some ideas on what to include in your paper and how to enhance it to meet the requirements.

Tip 3: Collect high-quality material to support your essay. The best sources are scholarly articles and books. However, there are also some credible websites and news articles that offer unbiased information on the civil rights movements. If the instructions don’t prevent you from using these, you could include a wide array of resources, thus making your essay more detailed.

Tip 4: Offer some context on the civil rights movement. The 20th century was instrumental to the history of America because there were many political and social events, including World War II and the subsequent Cold War. While some events may not relate to the history of the civil rights movement, they are important for the readers to understand the context in which the movement took place.

Tip 5: Consider the broader history of discrimination in the American society. Discrimination is the key focus of most civil rights movement essay topics. For the black population, the movement was instrumental in reducing prejudice and improving social position. However, there were many other populations that faced discrimination throughout the American history, such as women, Native Americans, and people from the LGBT community. Can you see any similarities in how these groups fought for equal rights?

Tip 6: Reflect on the sources of the civil rights movement. The story of racial discrimination and oppression in America spanned for over 400 years, so there is a lot of history behind the civil rights movement. Here, you could talk about slavery and segregation policies, as well as how the black communities responded to the struggle. For instance, you could consider the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on the Black identity or about other examples or cultural movements that originated in the black community.

Tip 7: If relevant, include a personal reflection. You can write about what the civil rights movement means for you and how it impacted the life of your family. You can also explore racial discrimination in contemporary society to show that some issues still remain unsolved.

Tip 8: Maintain a good essay structure. Ensure that every paragraph serves its purpose. A civil rights movement essay introduction should define the movement and state your main argument clearly. Follow it with several main body paragraphs, each one exploring a certain idea that relates to the key argument. In conclusion, address all the points you’ve made and demonstrate how they relate to your thesis.

With these few tips, you will be able to write an excellent paper on the civil rights movement. Check the rest of our website for essay titles, topics, and more writing advice!

• Impact of Civil Rights Movement The freedom to vote for all Americans became central in the civil rights movements, and one of its successes was the legislation that culminated in the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
• Civil Rights-Black Power Movement Barack Obama was aware of the violence and oppression of black people in the United States. It shows self determination of the black people in struggles for civil rights- black power.
• Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Leader of the Civil Rights Movement The psychology of a leader is the psychology of a winner. One such example is one of the early leaders of the civil rights movement, American investigative journalist Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, who, thanks to her […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Martin King and Malcolm X’s Views King also stressed that the major concepts he adopted were taken from the “Sermon on the Mount and the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance”.
• Plan: Civil Rights Movement in United States The following assessment plan has details on the objectives of the assessment plan, the types of assessment plans, and the adaptation of the lesson plan to fit special groups of students.
• Civil Rights Movement Major Events in 1954-1968 This research paper seeks to highlight the historical events that took place in 1954-1968 in the United States which were instigated by the Civil Rights Movement in the hope of securing the civil and basic […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Historical Interpretation Rosa Parks was one of the pivotal figures in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a critical event in the Civil Rights Movement.
• The Civil Rights Movement’s Goals and Achievements Despite the considerable oppression of non-white groups of the population and the fear accompanying it, the Movement continued to fight and achieved success in its goals, affecting the country even in the modern period.
• The Civil Rights Movement: I Have a Dream The civil rights movement has changed many aspects of the nation, such as housing, the economy, and jobs. The movement changed the outlook, the power structure, and the very core of the nation.
• The Civil Rights Movement in the United States In the United States, the 1960s was characterized by the rise of Civil Rights Movements, the aim of which was to suppress and end discrimination and racial segregation against African Americans.
• Music and the Civil Rights Movement It was famous in the 1960s and 1970s and continues to live now.”We Shall Overcome”, like many other freedom songs, reflects the goals and methods of the early protestors.
• Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement Based on 36 personal interviews and multiple published and archived sources, the author demonstrates that black women in the South have played a prominent role in the struggle for their rights.
• “The Souls of Black Folk” and the Civil Rights Movement At the beginning of the 20th century, multiple decades had passed since the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
• Law History From Jim Crow to Civil Rights Movement It was not until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.that the problems of law enforcement in the South was truly recognized and reforms started designed to reduce the influence of political agendas on the […]
• Civil Rights Movement: Fights for Freedom The Civil Rights Movement introduced the concept of black and white unification in the face of inequality. Music-related to justice and equality became the soundtrack of the social and cultural revolution taking place during the […]
• Civil Rights Movement and Political Parties One of the examples of the effects of social unrest on political institutions in American history is the Civil Rights Movement, and it defined the general courses of the main parties as well as the […]
• Civil Rights Movement Distorted Image The study of the role and image of historical characters in CRM is incorrect and distorted. Rosa Parks is considered the person who informally initiated the movement due to the refusal to give up a […]
• Protest Music and the US Anti-Lynching and Civil Rights Movement In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement continually challenged the government to fulfill the promise of equality and justice.
• “Black Power” in the Civil Rights Movement They wanted to reform the system to ensure a more democratic and actively participating society in the decision-making process of governance for the country.
• Civil Rights Movement in “Freedom Riders” Documentary As a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of freedom movements, Nelson’s movie is a story of segregation and racism, abhorrence, courage, and the general brutality of the depicted events.
• Medgar Wiley Evers in the Civil Rights Movement Following the rejection of his application to study at the University of Mississippi, NAACP hired him as a field secretary to Jackson that was to the Deep South in recognition of his effort and contribution […]
• Civil Rights Movement by E. Durkheim and K. Marx The theories will also be used to predict the future of racism in the United States. The level of segregation experienced in the country led to new interferences and constraints.
• Civil Rights Movement: Purposes and Effects The civil rights movement was a popular lobby group created to advocate for equality in the United States for both blacks and whites. To a large extent, the civil rights movement completely transformed the lives […]
• Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War The Vietnam War caused unintended consequences for the civil rights movements of the 1960s as it awakened the African-Americans’ consciousness on the racism and despotism that they experienced in the United States.
• Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill The book describes the tension and struggles that existed between the African Americans and the members of the white citizens’ council, Ku Klux Klan.
• Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King noticed the negative trend and he took his stand to make people see the devastating effects of the war.
• Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson: the Civil Rights Movement The social historians have managed to cogently present the politics that surrounded the civil rights movement. The movement also managed to gain the support of the aims of government, the executive, legislature, and even the […]
• African-American Women and the Civil Rights Movement The key factors that left the Black women unrecognized or led to recognition of just a few of them as leaders are class, race and gender biases.
• The Civil Rights Movement in the USA The movement’s main aim was to end the racial segregation and fight for the voting power of the black people in America.
• The Civil Rights Movement 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 Contributions of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks to the Civil Rights Movement Among these were Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks who used literary works to voice out their displeasure on the discrimination against blacks as well as portray a humanitarian point of view on the plight of […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Oppressing the Black Population In response, the black citizen resorted to fighting for his rights; thus, the rise of the civil rights movement. In conclusion, these key events helped to reinforce the African American struggle for equal right rights, […]
• Music of the Civil Wars, Civil Rights & Freedom Movements of Europe, Africa, North & South America During the 20th Century The aim of Giovinezza was to reinforce the position of Mussolini as the leader of the Fascist Movement and of Italy.
• Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement This is the why she gets my nomination for recognition in the “Museum of Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”.
• Dr. King’s Role in United States Civil Rights Movement His popularity started after he led other activists in boycotting the services of the Montgomery Bus Service in the year 1955 after an incident of open discrimination of a black woman in the bus. Martin […]
• The Civil Rights Act as a Milestone Element of American Legislation Although the Civil Rights Act has undergone several amendments, the Civil Right Act amendment of 1964 was the main amendment that addressed the above types of discrimination.
• Harold Washington With Civil Rights Movement Hence, this study examines the main achievements of Harold Washington in the fields of employment, racism, equality in provision of social amenities, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the creation of the ethics commission in […]
• American Africans Action in the Struggle for Equality Community leaders in various segmentations of the society had showed resistance to the white supremacy and domination against the African Americans which had been abounded in some states.’Everyday’s Use’ written at the peak of the […]
• The Civil Rights Movement: Ending Racial Discrimination and Segregation in America Finally, the paper will look at both the positive and negative achievements of the civil rights movements including an assessment of how the rights movement continues to influence the socio-economic and political aspects of the […]
• The African American Civil Rights Movement During the 1960s notable achievements were made including the passage of a Civil rights Act in 1964 that outlawed any form of discrimination towards people of a different “race, color or national origin in employment […]
• Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement is an era that was dedicated for equal treatments and rights to the activism of the African American in the US.
• Theatre in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement
• To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement
• The Stages of the Progressive Reform in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Contradicting Outcome of the Civil Rights Movement in America
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Fight for Aid from the Civil Rights Movement
• The Long Term Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
• Violent and Non-violent Methods of Protests Embraced by African American in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Role of The Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s
• Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• U.S. Democracy and the Civil Rights Movement
• The History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United Stats and Its Impact on African Americans
• The Relationship of Southern Jews to Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Importance of Students During the Civil Rights Movement
• A Look at Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Role of Martin Luther
• White Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement
• The Impact of Rock ‘n’ Roll on the Civil Rights Movement
• African Americans and Religion During the Civil Rights Movement
• The Historical Accuracy of the Portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma, a Drama Film by Ava DuVernay
• The War on Drugs and the Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Middle Class
• The Role of Police During the Civil Rights Movement
• The Achievements of Peaceful Protest During the Civil Rights Movement
• Analyzing the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War
• The True Face of The Civil Rights Movement
• The History of the Civil Rights Movement, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
• Successes and Failures of Civil Rights Movement
• The Historiography of Womens Role and Visibility in The Civil Rights Movement
• The Relationship Between Activism and Federal Government During the Civil Rights Movement
• To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s
• The Value of Studying the Civil Rights Movement
• A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement in the United States
• The Foundation of the Niagara Movement and Its Influence on the Civil Rights Movement in America
• The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement
• The Role and Importance of the Grassroot Organizers on the Civil Rights Movement
• The Effect of Society on the World of Doubt and the Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
• The Importance and Impact of the Civil Rights Movement to the Public Policy
• The New York Times and The Civil Rights Movement
• Understanding the Civil Rights Movement: America Vs. Australia
• The Laws in the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement
• How Effective Was the Early Civil Rights Movement in Advancing Black Civil Rights in 1880-1990?
• What Role Did Jews Play in the American Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s?
• Did Minority Rights Campaigners Copy the Tactics of the Black American Civil Rights Movement?
• What is the NAACP’s Impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the US?
• How Did Gandhi Influence the Civil Rights Movement?
• To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Far Was the Effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Limited by Internal Divisions?
• How the Cold War Promoted the Civil Rights Movement in America, and How It Promoted Change?
• How Far Was Martin Luther King Responsible for the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Was Civil Disobedience Used in the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did the Civil Rights Movement Change America?
• How Successful Had the Civil Rights Movement Been by the Late 1960s?
• Did Black Power Groups Cause Harm to the Civil Rights Movement in America?
• To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s?
• How Did Kennedy and His Administration Effect the Civil Rights Movement?
• Did the Black Power Movement Help or Hinder the Civil Rights Movement?
• How the Civil Rights Movement Influenced the Women?
• What Are the Results of the Effort of the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did Martin Luther King Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
• Are the Problems Faced by the Feminist and Sexual Emancipation Movements Similar to Those Faced by Civil Rights Movement, or Are There Major Differences?
• Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful?
• Has America Really Changed Since the Civil Rights Movement?
• Why Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful by 1965?
• How Did Religion Influence Martin Luther King, Jr as He Led the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Significant Was Martin Luther King Jr. to the Black Civil Rights Movement?
• How Did Martin Luther Kings Jr Death Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
• How Important Was Martin Luther King to the Civil Rights Movement?
• Does the Civil Rights Movement Have an Effect on the Way Minorities Are Treated by Authorities?
• Was the Civil Rights Movement a Success or Failure?
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UT-Tyler Masters Theses in History dealing with Civil War era

These theses are available at the Robert R. Muntz Library: Owens, Jeffrey Alan. “The Civil War in Tensas Parish, Louisiana: A Community History.” 1990. F377.T45 O84 1990. Newsom, James Lynn. “Grand Phalanx of Intrepid Infantry: The Seventh Texas, 1861-1865.” 1993. E580.5 7th .N49 1993. Cowan, Terry. “The Stone Movement and “The Christians in the West” in Texas, 1824-1865.” 1994. BX7316 .C69 1994. McIntyre, Stephanie. “Ties that Bind: Railroads, Sectionalism, and the Civil War.” 2004. HE2751 .M35 2004. Roberson, Bea.  "Domestic Ambivalence:  Elite Southern Women and the Institution of Slavery."  2010. E441 .R63 2010.

The following theses are available online: Harvell, Elle.  " Cope, Cooperate, Combat:  Civilian Responses to Union Occupation in Saline County, Missouri, During the Civil War. "  2012. Hughes, Sharon.  " Isaac Merritt Singer:  A Womanizer who Liberated Women. "  2014.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Arab Americans – Civil rights'

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Al-Aulaqi, Nader. "Arab-Muslim views, images and stereotypes in United States." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2003. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/2275.

Moses, Quentin Jamil. "The effect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act on black Americans." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1991. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/587.

KLEOPFER, KIRSTIE L. "NORMAN ROCKWELL'S CIVIL RIGHTS PAINTINGS OF THE 1960s." University of Cincinnati / OhioLINK, 2007. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1179431918.

Colley, Zoe Ann. "Prisons and racial protest in the civil rights and black power eras." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.251842.

Walker, Jenny Louise. "Black violence and nonviolence in the civil rights and black power eras." Thesis, University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.311170.

Pascale, Meredith Grace. "Determining a legacy John F. Kennedy's civil rights record /." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2009.

Kennedy, Jarred Michael. "A Life Hindered by Restriction and Segregation." University of Toledo / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=toledo1305147327.

Chon-Smith, Chong. "Asian American and African American masculinities race, citizenship, and culture in post-civil rights /." Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2006. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p3215133.

Spratt, Margaret Ann. "When police dogs attacked : iconic news photographs and the construction of history, mythology, and political discourse /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/6189.

Jolly, Kenneth S. "It happened here too : the Black Liberation Movement in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964-1970 /." free to MU campus, to others for purchase, 2003. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/mo/fullcit?p3091934.

Odum-Hinmon, Maria E. "The cautious crusader : how the Atlanta Daily World covered the struggle for African American rights from 1945 to 1985 /." College Park, Md. : University of Maryland, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1903/2608.

Ostreim, Nicholas W. "Disability in America: A Minority Group for Everyone." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2010. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/52.

Abedi-Anim, MeCherri. "Bound by Blackness: African Migration, Black Identity, and Linked Fate in Post-Civil Rights America." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/22696.

Al-Jazy, Ibrahim Mashhour Hadithah. "Civil and political rights in the constitutions of the Arab states : a comparative analysis with special reference to Egypt." Thesis, SOAS, University of London, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.272208.

Rasmussen, Natalia King. "Friends of Freedom, Allies of Peace: African Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, and East Germany, 1949-1989." Thesis, Boston College, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:104045.

Marín, Christine. "LULAC and Veterans Organize for Civil Rights in Tempe and Phoenix, 1940-1947." University of Arizona, Mexican American Studies and Research Center, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/219196.

Jackson, Samuel R. "An unquenchable flame the spirit of protest and the sit-In movement in Chattanooga,Tennessee /." unrestricted, 2008. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07172008-130518/.

Taylor, Shockley Megan Newbury. ""We, too, are Americans": African American women, citizenship, and civil rights activism in Detroit and Richmond, 1940-1954." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2000. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/284135.

Nájera, Jennifer Rose. "Troublemakers, religiosos, or radicals? : everyday acts of racial integration in a South Texas community /." Thesis, Austin, Tex. : University of Texas Libraries, 2005. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/etd/d/2005/najeraj19172/najeraj19172.pdf#page=3.

Manor, Mike. "The home front : civil rights, American values, and public trust when America is at war /." Maxwell AFB, Ala. : School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 2008. https://www.afresearch.org/skins/rims/display.aspx?moduleid=be0e99f3-fc56-4ccb-8dfe-670c0822a153&mode=user&action=downloadpaper&objectid=cfa77bfd-34c7-403f-9f65-cbb4037fa454&rs=PublishedSearch.

Reader, Robert J. "A tale of two cities : the African American struggle for civil rights in Babbitt and Hawthorne, Nevada /." abstract and full text PDF (UNR users only), 2007. http://0-gateway.proquest.com.innopac.library.unr.edu/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:1451077.

Tisdale, John Rochelle 1958. "Medgar Evers (1925-1963) and the Mississippi Press." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278976/.

Greenidge, Kerri K. "Bulwark of the nation: northern black press, political radicalism, and civil rights 1859-1909." Thesis, Boston University, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/2144/12402.

Pietersen, Sheri-Ann. "An Eriksonian psychobiography of Martin Luther King Junior." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/d1021037.

Hartmann, Douglas Robert. "Golden ghettos : the cultural politics of race, sport, and civil rights in the United States, 1968 and beyond /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC IP addresses, 1997. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9808983.

Wiley, Lusharon. "An agent for change the story of Reverend H. K. Matthews /." [Pensacola, Fla.] : University of West Florida, 2007. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/WFE0000066.

Hosseinioun, Mishana. "The globalisation of universal human rights and the Middle East." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8f6bdf79-2512-4f32-840a-3565a096ae8d.

Waggener, Tamara Ann. "Gender, race, and political violence in US social movements : 1965-1975 /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.

Wells, Jennifer. "The Black Freedom Struggle and Civil Rights Labor Organizing in the Piedmont and Eastern North Carolina Tobacco Industry." Scholar Commons, 2013. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4790.

Upp, Barbara Annette Bellus. "Minoru Yasui: You Can See the Mountain From Here." Thesis, University of Oregon, 1997. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/22970.

Bell, Janet Dewart. "African American Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement: A Narrative Inquiry." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1432029763.

Vaught, Seneca. "NARROW CELLS AND LOST KEYS: THE IMPACT OF JAILS AND PRISONS ON BLACK PROTEST, 1940-1972." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1162336938.

Anderson, Susan Willoughby Hall Jacquelyn Dowd. "The past on trial : the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing, civil rights memory and the remaking of Birmingham /." Chapel Hill, N.C. : University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008. http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1989.

Potyondy, Patrick Ryan. "Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, the Columbus School District, and the Limits of Reform." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338335183.

Vipperman, Justin LeGrand. ""On This, We Shall Build": the Struggle for Civil Rights in Portland, Oregon 1945-1953." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3124.

McCoy, Austin C. "The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981." [Kent, Ohio] : Kent State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1239641963.

Alston, Harry L. Jr. "Urban League of Central Carolinas – Civil Rights Organizations in a New Era: An Action Research Study of One Organization’s Pursuit of New Strategies." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1306934753.

Bynum, Tommy L. ""Our Fight is for Right": The NAACP Youth Councils and College Chapters' Crusade for Civil Rights, 1936-1965." restricted, 2007. http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-08112007-150530/.

Toft, Roelsgaard Natascha. "“Let Our Voices Speak Loud and Clear”: Daisy Bates’s Leadership in Civil Rights and Black Press History." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1546938379618986.

Sadikovic, Dzeneta. "Rights Claims Through Music - A Study on Collective Identity and Social Movements." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-21909.

Levin, Amat. "From Cursed Africans to Blessed Americans : The Role of Religion in the Ideologies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, 1955-1968." Thesis, Södertörn University College, School of Gender, Culture and History, 2008. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-1675.

Up until the 19th century, religion was used as a way of legitimizing slavery in America. With the rise of the civil rights movement religion seems to have played a quite different role. This essay aims to explore the role of religion in the ideologies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The speeches, writings and actions of these two men have been analysed in hope that the result will contribute to the larger study of American civil rights history.

This essay proposes that both Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X infused their political message with religious ideas and that they leaned on religion for support and inspiration. By analysing the discourse headed by King and X it becomes clear that in direct contrast to how religion was used during slavery, religion was used as a way of legitimizing equality (and in some cases black superiority) between races during the civil rights movement.

Thompson, Mark Allen Dupont Jill. "Space race African American newspapers respond to Sputnik and Apollo 11 /." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2007. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-5115.

Capelle, Bailey A. "Contextualizing Chester Himes's Trajectory of Violence Within the Harlem Detective Cycle." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1430813651.

Hoey, Dylan. "Milwaukee's Black Middle Class and the Struggle for Recognition." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1450.

Nelson, Katherine EIleen. ""On the Murder of Rickey Johnson": the Portland Police Bureau, Deadly Force, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1940 - 1975." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4434.

Henry, Lucas Aaron. "Freedom Now!: Four Hard Bop and Avant-Garde Jazz Musicians' Musical Commentary on the Civil Rights Movement, 1958-1964." [Johnson City, Tenn. : East Tennessee State University], 2004. http://etd-submit.etsu.edu/etd/theses/available/etd-1110104-224112/unrestricted/HenryL121004f.pdf.

N'Diaye, Yawa Noelle. "That which cannot be shaken shall remain an assessment of environmental response and strategic and issue orientations among civil rights organizations (1980-2005) /." Morgantown, W. Va. : [West Virginia University Libraries], 2007. https://eidr.wvu.edu/etd/documentdata.eTD?documentid=5357.

Tommelleo, Andrew John. "Analysis of the Perspective, Perception, and Experience of African-American Teachers in a Tri-County Area of Pennsylvania as Related to the Historical Mandates of Brown v Board and the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Youngstown State University / OhioLINK, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ysu1369317484.

De, Villiers Shirley. "Religious nationalism and negotiation : Islamic identity and the resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflic." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007815.

Siff, Sarah Brady. "Evolution and Race in Mid-Twentieth-Century America." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1314282392.