higher history obstacles to civil rights essay

After the 1960s the civil rights movement confronted new issues and forged new alliances. The new stage of struggle also saw more active coalition-building with other groups affected by discrimination and inequality. Blacks and Jews had worked together in the early postwar decades to secure anti-discrimination measures. After 1968, Blacks and Latinos and Asian Americans sometimes joined together in campaigns for substantive equal treatment and better life chances. Campuses saw “Third World Coalitions” surge in the 1970s over shared demands for ethnic studies programs and affirmative action or open admissions, for example. Mainstream civil rights groups and feminist groups supported one another’s lawsuits to end discriminatory employment and open institutions to all. Black and Puerto Rican activists built coalitions with white feminists to end the practice of sterilization abuse, which targeted women of color, and to seek a broad range of reproductive rights, including quality child care and maternal and child health care. Poor black women in the welfare rights movement, for their part, sometimes found stronger allies among liberal white women and progressive Catholics than among mainstream male-led civil rights groups fearful of being associated with unmarried mothers seeking better public assistance.

Even with the legislative victories of the 1960s, many obstacles to equality remained, especially in employment and housing. Still, efforts to promote equity and inclusion throughout American society faced daunting road blocks, and it was clear as early as the mid-1960s that they would not be removed easily. Two and a half centuries of slavery and another hundred years of pervasive discrimination had left deep imprints on all American institutions. Every industry that employed African Americans had developed its own variant of entrenched occupational segregation. The housing markets of every major metropolitan area bore the marks of decades of restrictive covenants and real estate red-lining, and of postwar white flight to homogenous suburbs. School systems, honoring those dividing lines and funded by unequal property taxes, systematically underserved black children. In the North as well as the South, they left black youth ill-prepared for an emerging labor market that demanded ever-higher levels of education to achieve economic security. Rather, as the mechanization of southern cotton picking and demise of sharecropping led millions of migrants to head to the cities of the North and West from the 1940s through the 1960s, hopes of good jobs met the reality of vast structural unemployment due to automation and later de-industrialization, and declining urban tax bases due to suburbanization.

Economic equality lagged behind social and political equality, especially in the nation's cities. All these influences conspired, by the late twentieth century, to produce unprecedented levels of concentrated poverty in the nation’s inner cities, poverty from which escape was well-nigh impossible for most residents. The cumulative result caught the notice of growing numbers of social scientists by centuries end, who documented a vast “wealth gap” between blacks and whites. Afflicting higher earners along with the poor, it came from having been systematically cut off over generations from being able to buy homes in neighborhoods where home values appreciated. That “asset poverty,” as it came to be called, made “ self-help ,” strong as that tradition was in black history, a steep and slippery climb. Combined with harsh drug laws passed after the 1970s, all these forms of structural inequality contributed to After the 1960s a rising movement mounted a political challenge to efforts aimed at expanding equality. surging black incarceration rates that put the United States on par with some of the most repressive nations of the world in the proportion of its citizenry that lived behind bars.

The cultural impact of the civil rights movement was not fully realized until after the 1960s. The quest for self-determination and communal development that followed the legislative victories of the mid-1960s sparked tremendous cultural and intellectual creativity. The Black Arts movement produced a renaissance in literature, theater, art, music and dance. Black history became one of the most dynamic fields of U.S. history, led by scholars such as John Hope Franklin (1915-2009). Self-fashioning changed as natural “Afro” hair styles came into vogue, along with African-derived dress styles such as the dashiki and Kente cloth. In countless cities around the country, community organizers set to work, often with initial funding from Great Society programs, to alleviate poverty, fight hopelessness, and generate the power and resources for community development.

Seen in the light of all this activity, the 2008 presidential election, which surprised so many in both the U.S. and the wider world, becomes more explicable. The ongoing, if usually unheralded, activism after the mid-1960s altered American institutions and culture profoundly, even if the outcomes fell far short of the egalitarian visions those who worked so hard to produce change. Their efforts to open and transform workplaces, schools, politics, and communities had, bit by bit, opened a pathway for Barack Obama to reach the pinnacle of power, even as it was his own prodigious talent that carried him up that path to the Oval Office. His candidacy stirred deep wells of black pride and aspiration and elicited unprecedented turnout from millions of hitherto discouraged first-time voters. At the same time, tens of millions of white Americans were by then yearning for the “change” and “hope” that candidate Obama promised. They, too, worried about their and their children’s prospects in the new low-wage service-based economy, struggled to get decent health care, and sought better relations between the U.S. and the wider world. The inauguration seemed a time of widely shared national elation. Yet, when the new President set to work to bring the promised change in the form of policies such as national health care reform, he met determined resistance from the conservative movement, which now dominated the Republican Party. Indeed, by 2010, the nation faced stormy clashes as the two streams of post-1968 civil rights history met in Washington: an accomplished and enduring civil rights struggle, now joined to a wider reinvigorated liberalism, and a potent conservative power base determined to fight any equalization of the nation’s racial practices and economic policies.

Guiding Student Discussion

The post-1968 civil rights story is one of the most important—and therefore sometimes the most difficult—discussions to have with students. It involves core values and lived experience about which many adults, let alone teenagers, are not especially reflective. White students can get defensive, while black students sometimes assume they know more than they actually do about how we got to where we are. Abstract assertion on the instructor’s part (like what I’ve just done, due to space limitations) is least likely to work well in conveying the issues. Fortunately, there are excellent materials easily available for experiential learning, the kind most likely to succeed and leave a lasting imprint. There are powerful primary sources , for example, with which to bring these themes to life and enable students to engage in activities such as role play debates that build empathy and circumvent defensiveness. Films also work well. Try, for example, segments of the Eyes on the Prize II series; or At the River I Stand , about the Memphis strike; An Unlikely Friendship , about class, schooling, and community power; or Chisholm ‘72: Unbought and Unbossed , about Shirley Chisholm’s race for the presidency.

Help students see that racism is not simply a matter of individual behavior or belief. The biggest challenge is to get beyond the notion that racism is simply an individual attitudinal or ethical failing. This notion is promoted by popular culture and official ideology alike, and a big barrier to understanding. Students cannot make sense of the post-1968 history if they remain stuck in this conceptual rut. So the trick is to find ways to get them thinking in social-structural and situational terms, without losing sight of human agency. Encountering a dramatic fight over northern segregation can help, such as Dr. King’s experience in Cicero, Illinois , or exploring the housing sub plot of Lorraine Hansberry’s widely assigned Raisin in the Sun . The core conceptual task is to understand the difference between formal legal equality and substantive equal treatment. You can make a start on this by exposing the fiction that the racial divide of the North resulted from innocent de facto , as opposed to de jure , segregation. In fact, northern segregation was also created and sustained by Help students understand that racial inequality in both the North and the South was deliberately instigated and maintained. intentional policy, if in a less in-your-face manner than its southern sibling, as you can show with exercises to help students understand practices such as real estate steering , bank red-lining of black communities, school boundary gerrymandering, and white flight from racially changing neighborhoods. Once students grasp the intentional agency that produced racial inequality, they can better appreciate why the civil rights movement saw race-conscious remedies as vital, among them metropolitan busing and taxation plans, affirmative action in employment and education, and scatter-site public housing.

The achievements of the civil rights movement allowed differences among African Americans to be more freely expressed. As students reckon with the structural determinants of racial inequality, they will be better equipped to recognize the diversity among African Americans that has been such a driving feature of post-1968 history. Differences derived from class position, gender, color , political orientation and more always existed, but the civil rights victories of the 1960s freed them to be expressed more openly than ever before. Since then, we’ve seen many kinds of public clashes: black radicals arguing against black liberals; black mayors opposing strikes of city workers; black feminists challenging male domination in movement organizations; black conservatives challenging black civil rights figures; black female employees charging black male supervisors with sexual harassment; and black lesbians and gays confronting black ministers who promote homophobia.

Help students understand that the "black community" is as diverse and complex as the "white community." All students need to appreciate such intra-group differences to make sense of their world. When they speak of blacks or whites in unitary terms (as presumably all sharing the experiences and views), challenge them with contrary cases from the more complex reality until it becomes second nature to specify who exactly they are talking about when they venture generalizations. At the same time, exercises that help to explain why it is that race remains the prime determinant in how Americans vote will help students balance diversity and change with how much “race [still] matters,” in the apt phrase of Princeton philosopher Cornell West .

Scholars Debate

Because of the relative recency of these events, the books that first set the terms of debate were heavily influenced by media representations. Scholars took their cues from press coverage and from their own political inclinations, while few of the early cohort were African Americans themselves because blacks were still so poorly represented in research institutions. Accounts in this mode by Allen Matusow and Todd Gitlin established the conventional wisdom still found in most textbooks. They tell a tale of decline after the mid-1960s with Black Power—sometimes rendered as an “identity politics” break from “universalism”—featured as the culprit. It seems almost willful in its alleged destruction of a purported liberal coalition.

Over the last two decades especially, a rich literature has emerged that has undermined this interpretation among most scholars of this history, if not in the general public. First, the declension story misses the vast extent of ongoing activism after the late 1960s. It thus understates the great advances that came from black nationalism , among them the explosion of black history and African American studies. But above all, the declension story misreads the sources and dynamics of radicalization because it all but ignores the ways in which New Deal policies and labor movement practices, which benefitted many blacks along with most whites, also entrenched racial inequality in America in ways that snowballed over the decades after the 1930s. Both historians and social scientists have together revealed what has come to be called America’s “two-track welfare state”: a bifurcated structure that from the outset disproportionately benefitted white men and disadvantaged most people of color and women of all backgrounds. Ostensibly neutral policies such as wage and hour laws and Social Security thus excluded agricultural workers and domestic servants, while Federal Housing Administration mortgage insurance was unavailable in predominantly black or transitional neighborhoods. So-called “identity politics,” then, have their roots in these structures: prompted by the inequities they created, such organizing has aimed to promote, ultimately, a genuinely inclusive universalism.

One school of interpretation that synthesizes well these varied discoveries of recent scholarship is “the long civil rights movement” framework, summarized by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall in a presidential address under that title to the Organization of American Historians. As the phrase suggests, this framework draws attention to the deep earlier roots of the struggles of the 1960s in the civil rights unionism and expansive black activism of the New Deal era and World War II, as it also carries the story up to the present, well beyond the mid-1960s closure of conventional wisdom. The long movement literature draws attention to how racial inequality was built into the workings of the U.S. labor market and social policy, and highlights enduring conservative resistance to social democracy and racial inclusion alike. Two historians, Sundiata Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, have criticized the long civil rights movement framework, arguing that it understates rupture over time, the distinctiveness of the South, and the clashes among different streams of black politics. Yet at the time of this writing, growing numbers of scholars seem to be embracing and refining the long civil rights movement approach, because they find in it a strong conceptual handle for the complex story of an evolving and internally varied movement that stretches back at least until the late 1930s and far beyond the 1960s. Indeed, that framework, better than any other, explains both the election of Barack Obama and the tough challenges he faced in governing a starkly polarized nation that had yet to take to heart Dr. King’s admonition that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”

Nancy MacLean was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2008-09. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently Peter B. Ritzma Professor of History and African American Studies at Northwestern University. MacLean is the author of Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (1994); Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (2006); The American Women’s Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents (2008); and, with Donald T. Critchlow, Debating the Conservative Movement: 1945 to the Present (2009).

Illustration credits

To cite this essay: MacLean, Nancy. “The Civil Rights Movement: 1968—2008.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. DATE YOU ACCESSED ESSAY. <https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm2008.htm>

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Course: US history   >   Unit 8

Introduction to the civil rights movement.

• African American veterans and the Civil Rights Movement
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka
• Emmett Till
• The Montgomery Bus Boycott
• "Massive Resistance" and the Little Rock Nine
• The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
• The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• SNCC and CORE

Black Power

• The Civil Rights Movement
• The Civil Rights Movement is an umbrella term for the many varieties of activism that sought to secure full political, social, and economic rights for African Americans in the period from 1946 to 1968.
• Civil rights activism involved a diversity of approaches, from bringing lawsuits in court, to lobbying the federal government, to mass direct action, to black power.
• The efforts of civil rights activists resulted in many substantial victories, but also met with the fierce opposition of white supremacists .

The emergence of the Civil Rights Movement

Civil rights and the supreme court, nonviolent protest and civil disobedience, the unfinished business of the civil rights movement, what do you think.

• See Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• See C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford University Press, 1955).
• See Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
• See Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Stephen Tuck,  Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
• See Michael J. Klarman, Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
• See Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ‘Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
• See Michael Eric Dyson, The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).
• See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010).
• See Tavis Smiley, ed., The Covenant with Black America: Ten Years Later (Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc., 2016).

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Teaching Innovations

Teaching the History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement

Peter B. Levy | Oct 1, 1991

A generation of students born after the civil rights revolution is now at the doorsteps of America's colleges and universities. While most of them have only a peripheral knowledge or understanding of the momentous events of the 1950s and 1960s, they have shown considerable interest in learning more about the era. But how well prepared are we as professionals to meet this challenge? Are history departments offering courses on the civil rights movement and integrating relevant material into their traditional curriculum? Are there certain pitfalls and opportunities that we should be aware of? What teaching strategies and books have our colleagues found fruitful for use in undergraduate and graduate courses? What analytical questions should we be raising and what debates we should be encouraging?

This essay seeks to provide at least partial answers to these questions and others. It is based on two sources: a survey of over 150 colleges and universities and a panel discussion I chaired on "Teaching the History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement," held at the 1989 Organization of American Historians' meeting in St. Louis. Participants included Cheryl Greenberg, Trinity College; Martha Prescod Norman, University of Michigan and Wayne State University; and David J. Garrow, City University of New York.

In the fall of 1988 I sent questionnaires to the history departments of 165 educational institutions nationwide, ranging from small four-year private liberal arts colleges to large public universities. To my delight, 97 of them responded, which is a fairly high rate of return. Approximately one-third of the departments polled offer a course on the history of the civil rights movement, or a similar class such as modern race relations, at least on an irregular basis. Other departments, especially sociology, political science, and Afro-American (or black) studies, also offer courses on the civil rights movement. Regionally, southern schools (37 percent) are the most likely to offer such a course, western colleges (6 percent) the least likely, with midwestern (30 percent) and eastern colleges (27 percent) somewhere in between. Neither the size of the school nor its type—public, private, four-year or more—is a significant determinant. (A number of black colleges offer a course on the civil rights movement, but not all of those which were surveyed do so.)

The civil rights movement receives considerable attention in several other history courses that are offered on a regular basis, namely the U.S. history survey, Afro-American history, and recent America courses. In the latter two, my study revealed that teachers spend at least as much time, if not more, on the modern civil rights movement as they do on other major historical themes. On average, in one-semester courses on recent America, teachers spend 3.7 class hours on the civil rights movement, about the same amount of time they spend on the Vietnam War. In comparison, teachers spend less then 2 class hours on McCarthyism. On average, in the second half of a two-semester Afro-American history course, teachers spend 6.5 class hours on the civil rights movement, more than three times as much as they spend on the Harlem Renaissance and 50 percent more than on Reconstruction.

In a two-semester U.S. history survey course, teachers spend approximately 2.4 class hours on the civil rights movement, slightly more than they spend on Reconstruction and slightly less than they spend on the New Deal and the Progressive Era. The civil rights movement does not receive nearly as much treatment in U.S. history textbooks. Based on an examination of ten leading textbooks, the civil rights movement received on average eight pages of treatment, while Reconstruction, the Progressive Era, and the New Deal each received its own chapter, running at least twenty pages and in some cases well over thirty. Nor can the quality of the discussion of the civil rights movement be considered on a par with the discussion of these other themes in the texts, as it tends towards a journalistic account of the "big" events of the era, rather than a more mature discussion based on a body of historical literature (though one is now available).

Clearly there is considerable interest among faculty and students in the civil rights movement. As one history department chair wrote: "The movement was a critical period of social change in U.S. history and as such should receive attention. The current state of race relations in the United States requires that students be familiar with past efforts at social change, their achievements, and their weaknesses in order to understand current conditions in the United States." However, as we are only at the dawn of teaching this subject, there are many pedagogical and analytical issues that need exploration.

At the OAH meeting, Professor Cheryl Greenberg provided a succinct examination of some key concerns that teachers can expect to confront in a course on race relations or, more specifically, on the civil rights movement. She noted that the "typical" Trinity College student whom she teaches is white, middle- and upper-middle class, and has had limited contact with blacks and/or the problems of the urban ghetto. Although these students are well-meaning, they tend to deny the prevalence of racism in present-day American society, acknowledging instead the existence of individual prejudice (which of course they do not believe they share), but not institutionalized and systemic racism. To a large degree, this position grows out of their myopic or presentist view of history, which fails to digest or account for the long-term development of racial inequality in America, and, in its place, sees the present divorced from the past. As a result, Greenberg's white students have difficulty understanding affirmative action, busing, and the like, as anything but racism in reverse. They detest—verbally—Jim Crow, as it existed in the past, but have great difficulty in seeing its connection to contemporary responses to the system that either de jure or de facto segregation spawned.

It follows from this, Greenberg asserted, that she and other teachers of students with similar backgrounds must overcome the hurdle of developing their students' sense of racism if they are to gain a mature understanding of the modern civil rights movement. Professor Greenberg went on to describe some of the methods she uses to achieve this task. Most notably she challenges students' assumptions, prodding them to see that race and ethnicity are not the same and that the myth of the melting pot does not and has not applied to Afro-Americans. Moreover, Greenberg contends in the classroom that racism is not based on ignorance or irrational personal feelings, but rather has developed historically as a means for maintaining an unequal social and political system.

In addition to overcoming the inadequate understanding of racism on the part of her white students, Greenberg noted that she has encountered a pattern of difficulties faced by many of her black students. She focused on two particular types of behavior. Some black students "clam up" in class because of their embarrassment over not knowing more about "their" history. Rather than taking part in class discussions, they withdraw, feeling that other students expect them to have a nearly innate knowledge of the subject matter, which for various reasons they do not. There are also black students, who out of frustration with the lack of knowledge and level of discussion on the part of other students, find it difficult to participate constructively. They tend to give up rather than press their points and hence do not contribute information and learning they gained prior to the class.

Professor Martha Prescod Norman did not deal directly with the pedagogical concerns raised by Greenberg; rather, she concentrated on the conceptionalization of the civil rights movement itself. Norman, a veteran of the movement, noted that, unlike Greenberg, she has taught primarily at predominantly black urban colleges (Wayne State and the University of Toledo). Many of her students have been older men and women who had direct experiences with or memories of the civil rights movement and know the problems that beset the African-American community firsthand. Hence, the main challenge she faces and believes we all face, is "making it real," that is, reviving a sense of what it was like to have been in the midst of a vital movement for social change.

To emphasize this point, Norman began her presentation in an unorthodox manner (for an OAH conference) by singing, "Can You Hear the Freedom Bells Tolling," a civil rights tune. The song effectively drove home her main theme, that the civil rights movement is something that is only faintly heard in much of the present scholarship on the subject; that its feeling, aura, and sense of brother- and sisterhood, indeed its very meaning have been lost. The struggle has disappeared, and in its place one finds discussions of "great men" and select civil rights organizations. In order to teach the history of the movement properly, Norman contended, she has found it necessary to move beyond the standard treatments, to lend a sense of what it was like to be a participant in a great social movement in which she found tremendous personal and political fulfillment.

Norman offered several particular analytical criticisms of existing canons on the civil rights movement, especially the tendency to discuss the movement in too linear a form, as one big pressure group aimed primarily at achieving reform legislation. Such a view, Norman argued, makes the movement too respectable, leaves out many actors, and divests them of their activism. Related to this, most discussions of the movement do not comment on the long history of struggle for freedom and dignity within the African-American community from which the modern civil rights movement sprung. The civil rights movement drew on the strength of a culture steeped in struggle. Furthermore, she said, scholars need to highlight those goals of the black community that went beyond integration and civil rights.

Among works on the movement that Norman singled out for criticism was Eyes on the Prize . In her mind, this TV documentary exhibits some of the aforementioned problems. One could easily leave Eyes on the Prize with the impression that it was the civil rights leadership and organization which set southern communities in motion and determined the course of their activism. The degree to which these communities' actions determined the course and nature of the movement and, at the same time, set the organizations in action is not so clear. Norman added that the series makes it difficult to see how ordinary people, oppressed people, people not usually included in mainstream political equations balanced and weighed historical options and opportunities and, as a result, came to play pivotal and determinative roles in altering the terms under which they lived their lives. Not highlighting these aspects of the civil rights movement drains it of a significant portion of its militancy and radicalism. For example, Norman, who had been an activist in Selma, Alabama, finds the episode on Selma false to her memory of the dynamics of the struggle there. Professor John Bracey of the University of Massachusetts extended Norman's critique. Like Norman, Bracey, also a civil rights participant, found the movement as seen in the documentary stripped of much of its militancy and meaning. For example, he asked the panel: Where were Malcolm X and Robert Williams in Eyes on the Prize ? They were not unknown in the deep South, and their sentiment was shared by many.

Members of the audience and panelist David Garrow defended Eyes , with Garrow stating that the second part of the film series would air in 1990 and that Malcolm X would play a prominent role in it. He also noted that the filmmakers were limited by the visual material that was available, and in part this accounted for the lack of attention to Robert Williams. Bracey and several others countered that Eyes on the Prize replicated the problems that Norman emphasized. By placing Malcolm after the Selma episode, the series perpetuated the conceptualization of the civil rights movement as a linear pressure group that sought integration. Some in the audience seemed to agree that the producers of the series should have included Malcolm X and black nationalism earlier on, however they disagreed with the statement that the film divested the movement of its militancy and sense of struggle. On the contrary, several participants suggested that the visual images presented in the series left quite an impression on students as well as on instructors who had lived through the period but had forgotten how violent it was.

Most of Professor Garrow's comments examined ways to structure a civil rights course. Due to the general lack of familiarity with the civil rights movement among most undergraduates, Garrow has found it fruitful to present his courses chronologically. However, the lack of a good single volume narrative hampers such an approach. Garrow noted several books, however, with which he has had favorable experiences: Howell Raines' My Soul Is Rested , Clayborne Carson's In Struggle , his own Bearing the Cross , and the companion academic reader to Eyes on the Prize of the same title. Garrow stated, in contrast to Norman, that he had a very good experience with the "Eyes on the Prize" film series, emphasizing that he did not find the program a watered-down version of the movement.

Garrow then turned to ways to structure a graduate (or perhaps senior undergraduate-level) course. He challenged teachers to consider adopting an analytical or thematic rather than a chronological approach. He suggested a number of themes worthy of investigation, which in turn allow one to overcome some of the limitations mentioned in Norman: 1) the centrality of local activism, with Robert Norell's Reaping the Whirlwind as an effective source; 2) gender, with The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Woman Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson as a good reading along with Sara Evans' Personal Politics ; 3) age; 4) class; 5) tension between local and national organizations; 6) competition between national organizations; 7) the importance of the media; 8) the interaction between the federal government and the movement; 9) the dynamics among local movements and opposition from the white community; and 10) resource mobilization theory. Garrow added that to date historians have been weak in producing adequate theoretical works on the movement. They can, however, draw on a growing body of literature produced by sociologists and political scientists, and he named works by Aldon Morris, Craig Jenkins, Doug McAdam, Adolph Reed, William J. Wilson, and Herbert Haines as examples of such. These studies, Garrow stated, allow one to discuss the importance of the indigenous strength of the local black community and to get away from the emphasis on national organizations and a national conceptualization of the movement. Garrow also stressed that by examining the links between the civil rights movement and other movements, teachers and students can move beyond 1968, a problem that many have noted in the existing literature.

Both my survey and the panel discussion revealed the vitality and dynamism of this new field of history. More universities offer a course on the civil rights movement than expected; attendance at the panel discussion was much better than normal (especially for a lunch-time session). In a short period of time historians have identified key pedagogical and analytical concerns that undoubtedly deserve and will receive greater attention in the future. This said, we need to guard against an overly optimistic assessment of the teaching of the history of the civil rights movement. We cannot let this crucial period in United States history pass like the latest fad or allow the teaching of it to be ghettoized, offered at only certain schools and to a limited audience of students. If as a profession we really seek to integrate race, class, and gender into the mainstream curriculum, this is a good place to start. More schools need to regularly offer courses on the civil rights movement (just as they do on the Civil War and the American Revolution). Our textbooks need to be rewritten so as to grant the movement treatment on par with the New Deal and Progressivism. And teachers need to continue to examine the movement in their survey and upper-division courses, fully aware of the criticisms of the existing literature and ready to grapple with the historical mindset of their students.

Professor Peter Levy teaches American history at York College of Pennsylvania, including courses on recent America and race relations.

Tags: Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Teaching Resources and Strategies

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Introductory Essay: The Struggle Continues: Stony the Road (1898–1941)

To what extent did Founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century?

• I can explain the challenges and opportunities African Americans faced as a result of the Great Migration.
• I can compare the views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois on how best to achieve equality for African Americans.
• I can explain how lynching and other forms of racial violence continued to threaten African Americans.
• I can identify and explain the ways in which African Americans took action to confront restraints upon their rights and dignity.
• I can explain why African Americans’ service during two world wars created conditions to challenge segregation and racism within the United States after the end of World War II.

Essential Vocabulary

The struggle continues: stony the road (1898-1941).

The first half of the twentieth century witnessed significant change for all Americans as the United States entered an increasingly industrialized and urban age. Blacks specifically seized opportunities for social mobility, industrial jobs, higher education, military service, artistic achievement, and activism in the new society. The signs of hope and progress they saw were mitigated by the ever-present cloud of segregation and discrimination.

Still, many Black Americans participated in the new opportunities afforded by a changing nation. Millions left southern farms and sought jobs and social mobility by moving to southern cities, northern cities, and the West during the Great Migration . Those who left the perpetual indebtedness of sharecropping , in which they had rented land from white landowners in exchange for a portion of the crop, sometimes moved West to farm. But more often they migrated to cities, where they found limited employment opportunities in low-paying service sector work, such as jobs for janitors or maids. They also faced housing discrimination and were forced to reside in segregated Black neighborhoods. However, Black churches and civic organizations were often a foundation of mutual support and strength, and many Black Americans improved their lives.

The number of Black schools and colleges grew quickly after the Civil War. Black education achieved an impressive record of increasing Black literacy from around 20 percent in 1870 to almost 80 percent in 1920. These gains were realized despite southern state governments cuts to the already meager funding and white supremacists watching Black schools to ensure they did not promote Black equality.

Black Americans organized into groups to fight for equality and justice, laying the foundation of the Civil Rights. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was the most prominent organization that led the struggle for Black civil rights after its founding in 1909. Its mission included contesting racial prejudice and segregation with striving for civil rights and educational opportunities. W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell helped establish the NAACP. Du Bois served as the editor of its publication, The Crisis, and brought the struggles of Black Americans to light.

A new generation of Black intellectuals conducted a continuing and vibrant debate over the place of a Black person in the United States and the best path to racial equality. The most prominent debaters were Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois differed in their thoughts on how best to achieve equality for Blacks. Washington’s life was shaped by slavery, poverty, and the work ethic fostered at Hampton Institute. Du Bois was 12 years younger than Washington and was born and raised in the small community of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois praised Washington’s famous 1895 speech at the Cotton States Exposition, but later grew critical of Washington and his leadership.

Booker T. Washington graduated from Hampton Institute (today known as Hampton University) and was the first head of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, one of many Black colleges formed in the period. In his famous “Atlanta Exposition Address” (1895), Washington advocated vocational education, hard work, and moral virtues for Blacks as a means of proving themselves to whites and advancing socially and economically.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a critic of Washington’s stance, which he thought too accommodationist, or too willing to compromise with whites. Du Bois was Harvard educated, and in his most famous work, The Souls of Black Folk (1903), he maintained that Blacks should pursue a liberal arts education and fight for full political and civic equality. He argued that a “Talented Tenth” would provide the leadership and vision in achieving progress in racial equality. Although these Black intellectuals held radically different visions, they concurred on the goal of achieving greater Black equality.

Another figure of the time, Marcus Garvey, presented an alternate view supporting racial separation rather than integration. Garvey was an immigrant from Jamaica who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). He supported Black separatism and a pan-African movement advocating migration back to Africa. He employed more militant rhetoric and advocated armed self-defense.

Black artists, writers, and musicians expressed themselves creatively in different media to convey their Black pride and celebrate African and African American history. The most famous movement of Black culture in the first half of the twentieth century was the Harlem Renaissance . This was a flourishing of Black art among a remarkable concentration of artists in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the 1920s and that also included Black artists and culture around the nation and world. In 1925, Alain Locke helped launch the movement with the anthology “The New Negro,” which advanced Black self-expression and art. The rich array of artists included writer Zora Neale Hurston, poet Langston Hughes, and musicians Josephine Baker, Louis Armstong, and Duke Ellington. These artists and many others left an indelible mark not only upon Black culture but on American culture more generally.

A number of violent racial incidents marred race relations throughout this period. Black Americans were the victims of lynchings , and Congress did not pass an antilynching bill despite repeated calls for one. The Great Migration to urban cities fueled racial tensions and led to a number of race riots during and immediately after World War I in several cities across the country. In the infamous Tulsa Massacre of 1921, armed white mobs burned down several square blocks of Black neighborhoods, including a wealthier part of town called “Black Wall Street,” where successful, enterprising Blacks lived and worked. The white mobs fired their weapons at Blacks, killing dozens.

The racial violence after World War I was replicated during World War II, most notably in Detroit in 1943 as tensions over segregated neighborhoods stirred crowds of whites and Blacks to violence. Hundreds were injured, and President Roosevelt sent the army to quell the violence.

The wider political reform movements of the first half of the twentieth century did not offer Black Americans significant relief. Southern progressivism supported segregation as a means of achieving greater social order. Many labor unions excluded Black workers and thus forced them to rely upon mutual-aid societies. Moreover, the popularity of Social Darwinism , even among scientists and intellectuals, meant that belief in a racial hierarchy became widespread, relegating those of darker skin to the bottom. The federal government generally followed discriminatory hiring practices, most notably during the Wilson administration. Blacks also often received less government assistance. For example, during the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to the Great Depression, the administration deferred to racist local and state governments on the distribution of aid. Still, Blacks welcomed the federal relief they received during those difficult times, and many switched from the Republican Party, often called the party of Lincoln, to the Democratic Party.

Local and state governments also continued to suppress Black voter registration, especially in the South. The court deferred to the states to set voting qualifications in Giles v. Harris (1903), though in Nixon v. Herndon (1927) it did ban discrimination when it was egregiously and overtly aimed at restricting the Black vote in primaries. The court affirmed the Nixon ruling in Smith v. Allwright (1944), by banning the attempt in Texas to exclude Blacks by allowing primaries to be regulated by private associations like political parties that could discriminate.

Black men and women played a vital role in the war effort during both world wars. Pictured are a group of the Tuskegee Airmen at a U.S. base in February 1944 and women working at a welding plant on the home front in 1943.

Even though they did not enjoy the full rights of citizenship at home, Blacks served in the fight against autocracy during two world wars—350,000 soldiers in World War I and 1.2 million in World War II. Black soldiers in the armed forces mostly served in segregated units that were typically assigned menial support labor. However, many fought courageously, such as the Harlem Hellfighters in the 369th Regiment of the 93rd Division at the Meuse-Argonne offensive in 1918, and the bomber and fighter squadrons flown by the highly decorated Tuskegee Airmen. Other significant contributions to the war included the Redball Express, which brought desperately needed supplies and troops to Europe during the Battle of the Bulge. Black members of the armed services resisted racist acts in the armed forces during World War II. After fighting fascism abroad, they were more likely to make a stand against segregation and racism at home after the war.

By World War II, Black leaders such as A. Philip Randolph were directly confronting the Roosevelt administration and the larger society to protest discrimination in the armed services and defense industries. When Randolph threatened a 100,000-person march on Washington, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in hiring for federal agencies and contractors, and established the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to enforce the order. This success was a landmark in Black direct action in the struggle for freedom and equality.

The first half of the twentieth century was a period of segregation and second-class status for Black Americans. However, they took action to defy the restraints upon their rights and personal dignity. They formulated and debated paths to equality, expressed their creativity in dynamic and powerful ways, fought for a country that denied them equal opportunity, cooperated for mutual support, and took direct action to confront oppression and injustice. These generations of Black intellectuals, artists, soldiers, and activists demonstrated the moral courage that laid the foundation of the civil rights movement.

Reading Comprehension Questions

• What factors led to the Great Migration? How did the Great Migration change life for the many Black Americans who moved? How did it alter the Black experience in the United States?
• Compare and contrast the ideas of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. How would they critique each other’s ideas? On what did they agree?
• Why do you think Blacks served their country in the armed forces when they suffered discrimination and segregation within both the military and the larger society?

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Civil Rights Movement

By: History.com Editors

Updated: January 22, 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.

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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An evaluation of the reasons for the development of the Civil Rights campaign, after 1945

Economic Factors

End of Second World War saw a shift in the economic position of African Americans. Many moved to northern states for better job opportunities during the Great Migration , leading to larger African American populations demanding civil rights.

The prosperity seen in the post-War era, known as the Post-War Economic Boom , raised expectations among African Americans. They felt they deserved a share of the wealth and better living conditions.

Political Factors

The Cold War played an important role as the USA, claiming to be the leader of the ‘free world’, faced international scrutiny for its racial inequality, leading to pressure for change.

The foundation of the United Nations in 1945 and its Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 put further international pressure on the USA to increase its civil rights protections.

Social Factors

The Double V campaign during World War II, which called for both victory in the war and equality at home, highlighted the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom abroad while denying basic rights at home.

Increased exposure of African American soldiers to different social norms during the war was a major factor. On return, many refused to accept segregation and second-class citizenship, becoming the frontline in the battle for civil rights.

Legal Context

Supreme Court rulings such as Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 set legal precedent for the desegregation of schools, while other lawsuits aimed at segregating public facilities.

The constitutionality of segregation was increasingly being questioned, including segregation on buses which Rosa Parks famously protested against in 1955.

Actions of Prominent Figures and Groups

• Leadership from figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and organisations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) provided effective and visible advocacy for the cause.

Media Influence

• The proliferation of television and other media outlets helped bring attention to civil rights issues, including brutal enforcement of segregation, making it a key issue for the public, and impossible for politicians to ignore.

Remember each of these points is interconnected and had varying degrees of impact on the development of the Civil Rights campaign. Assess their individual significance while also understanding their cumulative effect.

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2017-18 UPDATED Higher History USA: Essay 5 Development of the Civil Rights Movement

Subject: History

Age range: 11 - 18

Resource type: Other

Last updated

22 February 2018

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