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.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,347 U.S. 483 (1954),was a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional,even if the segregated schools are otherwise equal in quality. The decision partially overruled the Court's 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson,which had held that racial segregation laws did not violate the U.S. Constitution as long as the facilities for each race were equal in quality,a doctrine that had come to be known as "separate but equal". The Court's unanimous decision in Brown,and its related cases,paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement,and a model for many future impact litigation cases.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III is an American politician and attorney who served as the 84th United States attorney general from 2017 to 2018. A member of the Republican Party,he previously served as United States senator from Alabama from 1997 to 2017 before resigning that position to serve as attorney general in the administration of President Donald Trump.
Charles Hamilton Houston was an American lawyer. He was the dean of Howard University Law School and NAACP first special counsel. A graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School,Houston played a significant role in dismantling Jim Crow laws,especially attacking segregation in schools and racial housing covenants. He earned the title "The Man Who Killed Jim Crow".
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,Inc. is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
The civil rights movement (1896–1954) was a long,primarily nonviolent action to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans. The era has had a lasting impact on American society –in its tactics,the increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights,and in its exposure of the prevalence and cost of racism.
The National Action Network (NAN) is a not-for-profit,civil rights organization founded by the Reverend Al Sharpton in New York City,New York,in early 1991. In a 2016 profile,Vanity Fair called Sharpton "arguably the country's most influential civil rights leader".
Francys Johnson is an American civil rights attorney,pastor and educator. He is in private practice as an attorney in Statesboro,Georgia. He has lectured on constitutional and criminal law,civil rights and race and politics at Savannah State University and Georgia Southern University.
Benjamin Franklin Chavis Jr. is an African-American activist,author,journalist,and the current president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association. He serves as national co-chair for the political organization No Labels.
Benjamin Todd Jealous is an American civil rights leader,environmentalist and executive director of the Sierra Club. He served as the president and chief executive officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 2008 to 2013. When he was selected to head the NAACP at age 35,he became the organization's youngest-ever national leader. The Washington Post in 2013 described him as "one of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders."
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation,"Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. Such laws remained in force until 1965. Formal and informal segregation policies were present in other areas of the United States as well,even as several states outside the South had banned discrimination in public accommodations and voting. Southern laws were enacted by white-dominated state legislatures to disenfranchise and remove political and economic gains made by African Americans during the Reconstruction era. Such continuing racial segregation was also supported by the successful Lily-White Movement.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States,formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois,Mary White Ovington,Moorfield Storey,and Ida B. Wells. Over the years,leaders of the organization have included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.
Carol Elaine Anderson is an American academic. She is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African American Studies at Emory University. Her research focuses on public policy with regard to race,justice,and equality.
Moral Mondays are protests that originated in North Carolina,United States and emerged elsewhere in the United States. Led by religious progressives,the leaders of the protesters sought to restore "morality" in the public sphere. Protests began in response to several actions by the government of North Carolina which was elected into office in 2013 and are characterized by civil disobedience—specifically entering the state legislature building to be peacefully arrested. The movement protests many wide-ranging issues under the blanket claim of unfair treatment,discrimination,and adverse effects of government legislation on the citizens of North Carolina. The protests in North Carolina launched a grassroots social justice movement that,in 2014,spread to Georgia and South Carolina,and then to other U.S. states such as Illinois and New Mexico.
William J. Barber II is an American Protestant minister,social activist,professor in the Practice of Public Theology and Public Policy and founding director of the Center for Public Theology &Public Policy at Yale Divinity School. He is the president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign:A National Call for a Moral Revival. He also serves as a member of the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and is the chair of its legislative political action committee. From 2006 to 2017,Barber served as president of the NAACP's North Carolina state chapter,the largest in the Southern United States and the second-largest in the United States. He pastored Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro,North Carolina,from 1993 to 2023.
The Ferguson unrest was a series of protests and riots which began in Ferguson,Missouri on August 10,2014,the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by FPD officer Darren Wilson. The unrest sparked a vigorous debate in the United States about the relationship between law enforcement officers and Black Americans,the militarization of police,and the use-of-force law in Missouri and nationwide. Continuing activism expanded the issues by including modern-day debtors prisons,for-profit policing,and school segregation.
This is a timeline of the civil rights movement in the United States,a nonviolent mid-20th century freedom movement to gain legal equality and the enforcement of constitutional rights for people of color. The goals of the movement included securing equal protection under the law,ending legally institutionalized racial discrimination,and gaining equal access to public facilities,education reform,fair housing,and the ability to vote.
Nekima Valdez Levy Armstrong is an American lawyer and social justice activist. She was president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP from 2015 to 2016. She has led a variety of organizations that focus on issues of racial equality and disparity in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.
William Ferguson "Fergie" Reid is a Virginia physician,politician and civil rights activist. In 1968,Reid became the first African-American elected to the Virginia Assembly since the days of Reconstruction. He won re-election twice to the Virginia House of Delegates,representing Richmond and part of surrounding Henrico County.
The Ferguson effect is an increase in violent crime rates in a community caused by reduced proactive policing due to the community's distrust and hostility towards police. The Ferguson effect was first proposed after police saw an increase in violence following the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson,Missouri. The term was coined by Doyle Sam Dotson III,the chief of the St. Louis police,to account for an increased murder rate in some U.S. cities following the Ferguson unrest. Whether the Ferguson effect really exists is subject of discussions with many published studies reporting contradicting findings concerning whether there is a change in crime rates,number of 911 calls,homicides,and proactive policing. Furthermore,the effect and influence of the portrayal of police brutality in the media is also contested.
