Portal:Civil rights movement

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

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

After the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African-American men voted and held political office, but as time went on Blacks were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under the racist Jim Crow laws, and African Americans were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by white supremacists in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights, such as the civil rights movement (1865–1896) and the civil rights movement (1896–1954). The movement was characterized by nonviolent mass protests and civil disobedience following highly publicized events such as the lynching of Emmett Till. These included boycotts such as the Montgomery bus boycott, "sit-ins" in Greensboro and Nashville, a series of protests during the Birmingham campaign, and a march from Selma to Montgomery.

At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, in 1954 the Supreme Court struck down the underpinnings of laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States as unconstitutional. The Warren Court made a series of landmark rulings against racist discrimination, including the separate but equal doctrine, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Loving v. Virginia (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage. The rulings played a crucial role in bringing an end to the segregationist Jim Crow laws prevalent in the Southern states. In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that authorized oversight and enforcement of civil rights laws. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly banned all discrimination based on race, including racial segregation in schools, businesses, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minority voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. (Full article...)

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Elizabeth Eckford attempts to enter Little Rock Central High on 4 September 1957. The girl shouting is Hazel Bryan.

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

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

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

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General images

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

Image 1Kennedy meets with march leaders. Left to Right – Willard Wirtz, Matthew Ahmann, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rabbi Joachin Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins (not in order) (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 2Leaders of the march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: (sitting L-R) Whitney Young, Cleveland Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins; (standing L-R) Mathew Ahmann, Joachim Prinz, John Lewis, Eugene Carson Blake, Floyd McKissick, and Walter Reuther (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 3Juvenile African-American convicts working in the fields in a chain gang, photo taken c. 1903 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 4Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 5John Lewis speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on the 50th anniversary, August 28, 2013 (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 6A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 7Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performing at the March on Washington (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 8Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 9First Colored Senator and Representatives: Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC), 1872 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 10Vocalists Peter, Paul, and Mary (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 11Leaders gather for a portrait (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 12Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 13Executive Committee of the National Negro Business League, c. 1910. NNBL founder Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) is seated, second from the left. (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 14Actor Ossie Davis (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 15Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia. (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 16Kathleen Cleaver delivering a speech, 1971 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 17Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 18Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after being arrested on February 22, 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 19Additional image of Civil Rights protestors executing a sit-in at a Woolworth's in Durham, North Carolina on February 10th of 1960. (from Sit-in movement)
Image 20March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 21African American women participate in Civil Rights protest in Tallahassee, Florida, 1963 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 22"A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag, hanging at the Library of Congress (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 23Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 24Close up of some leaders of the March on Washington walking along Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 25Fannie Lou Hamer founded Freedom Farm Cooperative, an operation meant to alleviate Black sharecropper poverty in the South. (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 26Leaders arrived late and linked arms in front of marchers on Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 27Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 28Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 29Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 3050th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (from March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom)
Image 31Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 32Women marching for equal rights, integrated schools and decent housing (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)

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Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or February 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He became the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century.

After escaping from slavery in Maryland in 1838, Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, during which he gained fame for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to claims by supporters of slavery that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography. (Full article...)

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

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Did you know?

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