Second Reconstruction: Civil Rights Movement


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Major Developments of the Civil Rights Movement

1954 Brown Decision: What was the significance of the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court Decision? What particular problem did Brown address?   What happened at Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957?   Why might African Americans regard the Brown decision as a second Empancipation Proclamation?

Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement: What did Martin Luther King bring to the civil rights movement What did he base his campaign of nonviolent passive resistance to unjust laws on What happened in Montgomery in 1955?   in Birmingham in 1963?   in Washington in 1963?   in Selma Alabama in 1965?  Why is his "Letter from a Birmingham jail" important?   What was the basis of his opposition to the war in Vietnam?  Why did he turn his attention  to the problems of racism and discrimination in Northern cities?  What happened in Memphis in 1968?

• Student Phase of the Civil Rights Movement: What happened in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960?   Why was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] formed?  Why did SNCC concentrate on registering black voters in Mississippi and elsewhere in the South?  Why did SNCC became radicalized?
• CORE  Freedom Rides:  When was CORE formed?  Why did the organization attempt to test segregated bus facilities in the South--waiting rooms, restrooms  in 1961?  What happened when the bus carrying the freedom riders reached Alabama?  How did President Kennedy respond?   What  was CORE's role in exposing de facto segregation in the North?
• In what way did Malcolm X come to symbolize the anger of urban black youth?  Why did he become a Black Muslim?  Why did he break with the Black Muslims?
• What is the significance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act?  the 1965 Voting Rights Act?
• What is the status of race relations in America today?  on such issues as affirmative action?  busing for racial balance?  economic and class differences?
• By the 1960s both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had moved to end discrimination by providing equal economic and educational access to women and racial and ethnic minorities. This policy was known as Affirmative Action. Recently Affirmative Action has been under attack. Are we now at the pont where we no longer need Affirmative Action?

Sources of Civil Rights History

Sources for Civil Rights history are extensive.  Simply key in the title in any of the search engines such as Google or Yahoo.  For example, Yahoo's site lists links to Brown vs. Board of Education, Montgomery Bus Boycott among others.
 
 
*Montage from National Civil Rights Museum

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