Civil rights movement
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
""Pirate Jenny", originating from the first act of The Threepenny Opera, has been famously covered by singer and activist Nina Simone on 1964's Nina Simone in Concert. She gave the song a grim civil rights undertone, with the ship 'the black freighter' symbolizing the coming black revolution."--Sholem Stein |
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The civil rights movement (also known as the African-American civil rights movement, American civil rights movement and other terms) was a decades long movement with the goal of securing legal rights for African Americans that other Americans already held. With roots starting in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, the movement resulted in the largest legislative impacts after the direct actions and grassroots protests organized from the mid-1950s until 1968. Encompassing strategies, various groups, and organized social movements to accomplish the goals of ending legalized racial segregation and discrimination in the United States, the movement, using major nonviolent campaigns, eventually secured new recognition in federal law and federal protection of all Americans.
After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution, sought to secure the rights of African Americans. While for a short time during the Reconstruction era, African Americans voted and held political office, they were soon deprived of civil rights, often under Jim Crow laws, and subjected to discrimination and sustained violence. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal rights. Between 1955 and 1968, acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans. The lynching of Emmett Till and the visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the African-American community nationwide. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and successful Nashville sit-ins in Tennessee; marches, such as the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade and 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities.
Moderates in the movement worked with Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation overturning discriminatory practices. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 expressly banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices; ended unequal application of voter registration requirements; and prohibited racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with a historic under-representation of minorities as voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. African Americans re-entered politics in the South, and across the country young people were inspired to take action.
From 1964 through 1970, a wave of inner-city riots in black communities undercut support from the white middle class, but increased support from private foundations. The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted from about 1965 to 1975, challenged the established black leadership for its cooperative attitude and its practice of nonviolence, and instead demanding that, in addition to the new laws gained through the nonviolent movement, political and economic self-sufficiency be built in the black community.
Many popular representations of the movement are centered on the charismatic leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the movement. However, some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to any one person, organization, or strategy.
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Documentary films
- Freedom on My Mind, 110 minutes, 1994, Producer/Directors: Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, 1994 Academy Award Nominee, Best Documentary Feature
- Eyes on the Prize (1987 and 1990), PBS television series; released again in 2006 and 2009.
- Dare Not Walk Alone, about the civil rights movement in St. Augustine, Florida. Nominated in 2009 for an NAACP Image Award.
- Crossing in St. Augustine (2010), produced by Andrew Young, who participated in the civil rights movement in St. Augustine in 1964. Information available from AndrewYoung.Org.
- Freedom Riders (2010), 120 min. PBS, American Experience.
Activist organizations
- National/regional civil rights organizations
- Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
- Deacons for Defense and Justice
- Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR)
- Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR)
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
- National Council of Negro Women (NCNW)
- Organization of Afro-American Unity
- Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
- Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
- Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
- Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC)
- National economic empowerment organizations
- Local civil rights organizations
- Albany Movement (Albany, GA)
- Council of Federated Organizations (Mississippi)
- Montgomery Improvement Association (Montgomery, AL)
- Regional Council of Negro Leadership (Mississippi)
- Women's Political Council (Montgomery, AL)
- Virginia Students Civil Rights Committee
Individual activists
- Ralph Abernathy
- Victoria Gray Adams
- Maya Angelou
- Ella Baker
- James Baldwin
- Marion Barry
- Daisy Bates
- Fay Bellamy Powell
- James Bevel
- Claude Black
- Unita Blackwell
- Julian Bond
- Amelia Boynton
- Anne Braden
- Carl Braden
- Mary Fair Burks
- Stokely Carmichael
- Septima Clark
- Albert Cleage
- Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
- Annie Lee Cooper
- Dorothy Cotton
- Claudette Colvin
- Jonathan Daniels
- Annie Devine
- Doris Derby
- Marian Wright Edelman
- Medgar Evers
- Myrlie Evers-Williams
- James L. Farmer, Jr.
- Karl Fleming
- Sarah Mae Flemming
- James Forman
- Frankie Muse Freeman
- Dick Gregory
- Prathia Hall
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- Lorraine Hansberry
- Lola Hendricks
- Aaron Henry
- Myles Horton
- T. R. M. Howard
- Winson Hudson
- Jesse Jackson
- Jimmie Lee Jackson
- Esau Jenkins
- Gloria Johnson-Powell
- Clyde Kennard
- Coretta Scott King
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Bernard Lafayette
- W. W. Law
- James Lawson
- John Lewis
- Viola Liuzzo
- Joseph Lowery
- Autherine Lucy
- Clara Luper
- Thurgood Marshall
- James Meredith
- Loren Miller
- Jack Minnis
- Anne Moody
- Harry T. Moore
- E. Frederic Morrow
- Robert Parris Moses
- Bill Moyer
- Diane Nash
- Denise Nicholas
- E. D. Nixon
- David Nolan
- James Orange
- Nan Grogan Orrock
- Rosa Parks
- Rutledge Pearson
- George Raymond Jr.
- James Reeb
- Gloria Richardson
- Amelia Boynton Robinson
- Jo Ann Robinson
- Ruby Doris Smith-Robinson
- Bayard Rustin
- Cleveland Sellers
- Charles Sherrod
- Fred Shuttlesworth
- Modjeska Monteith Simkins
- Rev. Charles Kenzie Steele
- Dempsey Travis
- C. T. Vivian
- Wyatt Tee Walker
- Hosea Williams
- Robert F. Williams
- Malcolm X
- Andrew Young
Related activists and artists
- Joan Baez
- Harry Belafonte
- Ralph Bunche
- Guy Carawan
- Robert Carter
- William Sloane Coffin
- Ossie Davis
- Ruby Dee
- James Dombrowski
- W. E. B. Du Bois
- Virginia Durr
- Bob Dylan
- John Hope Franklin
- Jack Greenberg
- Anna Arnold Hedgeman
- Dorothy Height
- Charlton Heston
- Mahalia Jackson
- Clarence Jordan
- Stetson Kennedy
- Arthur Kinoy
- William Kunstler
- Staughton Lynd
- Constance Baker Motley
- Nichelle Nichols
- Phil Ochs
- Odetta
- Sidney Poitier
- A. Philip Randolph
- Paul Robeson
- Jackie Robinson
- Pete Seeger
- Nina Simone
- Norman Thomas
- Roy Wilkins
- Whitney Young
- Howard Zinn
See also
- African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954)
- Timeline of the African American Civil Rights Movement
- List of civil rights leaders
- Executive Order 9981, ending segregated units in the United States military
- Photographers of the American civil rights movement
- "We Shall Overcome", unofficial movement anthem
- List of Kentucky women in the civil rights era
History preservation:
- Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project
- Read's Drug Store (Baltimore), site of a 1955 desegregation sit-in
Post-Civil Rights Movement: