Portal:Civil rights movement

The civil rights movement portal

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

The civil rights movement was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country, which most commonly affected African Americans. The movement had origins in the Reconstruction era in the late 19th century, and modern roots in the 1940s and in Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent movement in India. After years of nonviolent protests and civil disobedience campaigns, the civil rights movement achieved many of its legislative goals in the 1960s, during which it secured new protections in federal law for the civil rights of all Americans, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

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

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

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Selma is a 2014 historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches which were initiated and directed by James Bevel and led by Martin Luther King Jr., Hosea Williams, and John Lewis. The film stars actors David Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson, Tim Roth as George Wallace, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, Common as James Bevel, with Giovanni Ribisi as Lee C. White, Alessandro Nivola as John Doar, Cuba Gooding Jr. as Fred Gray and Oprah Winfrey as Annie Lee Cooper.

Selma premiered at the American Film Institute Festival on November 11, 2014, began a limited US release on December 25, 2014, and expanded into wide theatrical release on January 9, 2015, two months before the 50th anniversary of the march. The film was re-released on March 20, 2015, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the historical march.

The film was nominated for Best Picture and won Best Original Song at the 87th Academy Awards. It also received four Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director and Best Actor, and won for Best Original Song. (Full article...)

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

Image 1Actor Ossie Davis (from March on Washington)
Image 2Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Deputy Sheriff D.H. Lackey after her arrest for boycotting public transportation (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 350th Anniversary of the Civil Rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (from March on Washington)
Image 4Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 5Women marching for equal rights, integrated schools and decent housing (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 6Montgomery Improvement Association poster announcing desegrated seating on buses (New York Public Library) (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 7Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition "381 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott" at the Washington State History Museum (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 8John Lewis speaking in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on the 50th anniversary, August 28, 2013 (from March on Washington)
Image 9Kathleen Cleaver delivering a speech, 1971 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 10One of the many churches involved in aiding members of the sit-movement (from Sit-in movement)
Image 11Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867 (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 12Rosa 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 13March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom program (from March on Washington)
Image 14Joan Baez and Bob Dylan performing at the March on Washington (from March on Washington)
Image 15Leaders arrived late and linked arms in front of marchers on Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington)
Image 16Juvenile African-American convicts working in the fields in a chain gang, photo taken c. 1903 (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 17Leaders gather for a portrait (from March on Washington)
Image 18Kennedy meets with march leaders. Left to Right – Willard Wirtz, Matthew Ahmann, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, Rabbi Joachin Prinz, Eugene Carson Blake, A. Philip Randolph, President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Walter Reuther, Whitney Young, Floyd McKissick, Roy Wilkins (not in order) (from March on Washington)
Image 19"A Man Was Lynched Yesterday" flag, hanging at the Library of Congress (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 20Leaders of the March on Washington speak to the news media after meeting with President Kennedy at the White House. (from March on Washington)
Image 21Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston (from March on Washington)
Image 22Image of workers guarding an entrance to the Fischer Body Plant in Flint, Michigan (1937) (from Sit-in movement)
Image 23First 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 24Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia. (from Civil rights movement (1865–1896))
Image 25Leaders of the march in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln: (sitting L-R) Whitney Young, Cleveland Robinson, A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr., and Roy Wilkins; (standing L-R) Mathew Ahmann, Joachim Prinz, John Lewis, Eugene Carson Blake, Floyd McKissick, and Walter Reuther (from March on Washington)
Image 26Close up of some leaders of the March on Washington walking along Constitution Avenue. (from March on Washington)
Image 27Vocalists Peter, Paul, and Mary (from March on Washington)
Image 28A diagram showing where Rosa Parks sat in the unreserved section at the time of her arrest (from Montgomery bus boycott)
Image 29Poster from Office of War Information. Domestic Operations Branch. News Bureau, 1943. (from Civil rights movement (1896–1954))
Image 30African American women participate in Civil Rights protest in Tallahassee, Florida, 1963 (from African-American women in the civil rights movement)
Image 31Charlton Heston, James Baldwin, Marlon Brando, and Harry Belafonte (from March on Washington)
Image 32Executive 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 33A plaque commemorating a sit-in that took place in February 1960 in Chattanooga, Tennessee (from Sit-in movement)
Image 34Fannie 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 35Martin Luther King Jr. waving his hand to the crowd after delivering his "I Have a Dream" speech (from March on Washington)

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John Warren Davis (February 11, 1888 – July 12, 1980) was an American educator, college administrator, and civil rights leader. He was the fifth and longest-serving president of West Virginia State University in Institute, West Virginia, a position he held from 1919 to 1953. Born in Milledgeville, Georgia, Davis relocated to Atlanta in 1903 to attend high school at Atlanta Baptist College (later known as Morehouse College). He worked his way through high school and college at Morehouse and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1911. At Morehouse, Davis formed associations with John Hope, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Samuel Archer, Benjamin Griffith Brawley, Booker T. Washington, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He completed graduate studies in chemistry and physics at the University of Chicago from 1911 to 1913 and served on the faculty of Morehouse as the registrar and as a professor in chemistry and physics. While in Atlanta, Davis helped to found one of the city's first chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Davis served as the executive secretary of the Twelfth Street YMCA in Washington, D.C., from 1917 to 1919 when he was elected as the president of West Virginia Collegiate Institute. Under his leadership the school, (later renamed West Virginia State College), became one of the leading historically black colleges and universities and land-grant universities in the United States, in both academics and athletics. Through Davis' efforts, West Virginia Collegiate Institute became the first African American college to be accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA) in 1927. Under his leadership, the college became home to the West Virginia Schools for the Colored Deaf and Blind and to West Virginia's Extension Service for African Americans. Davis also secured a Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) and Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) unit for the college during World War II. Through his efforts and educational statesmanship, Davis laid the groundwork for West Virginia State's transition into an integrated institution, and white students began enrolling in large numbers toward the end of his presidency. (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?