Read complete books and articles on: Civil Rights Movement

Civil Rights - rights that a nation's inhabitants enjoy by law. The term is broader than "political rights," which refer only to rights devolving from the franchise and are held usually only by a citizen, and unlike "natural rights," civil rights have a legal as well as a philosophical basis. In the United States civil rights are usually thought of in terms of the specific rights guaranteed in the Constitution: freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, and the rights to due process of law and to equal protection under the law.

Civil Rights in the United States

Since the Civil War, much of the concern over civil rights in the United States has focused on efforts to extend these rights fully to African Americans. The first legislative attempts to assure African Americans an equal political and legal status were the Civil Rights Acts of 1866, 1870, 1871, and 1875. Those acts bestowed upon African Americans such freedoms as the right to sue and be sued, to give evidence, and to hold real and personal property. The 1866 act was of dubious constitutionality and was reenacted in 1870 only after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fourth Civil Rights Act attempted to guarantee to the African Americans those social rights that were still withheld. It penalized innkeepers, proprietors of public establishments, and owners of public conveyances for discriminating against African Americans in accommodations, but was invalidated by the Supreme Court in 1883 on the ground that these were not properly civil rights and hence not a field for federal legislation.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1875 there was no more federal legislation in this field until the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, although several states passed their own civil-rights laws. The 20th-century struggle to expand civil rights for African Americans has involved the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Urban League, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and others. The civil-rights movement, led especially by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the late 1950s and 60s, and the executive leadership provided by President Lyndon B. Johnson, encouraged the passage of the most comprehensive civil-rights legislation to date, the Civil Rights Act of 1964; it prohibited discrimination for reason of color, race, religion, or national origin in places of public accommodation covered by interstate commerce, i.e., restaurants, hotels, motels, and theaters. Besides dealing with the desegregation of public schools, the act, in Title VII, forbade discrimination in employment. Title VII also prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex.

In 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, which placed federal observers at polls to ensure equal voting rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1968 dealt with housing and real estate discrimination. In addition to congressional action on civil rights, there has been action by other branches of the government. The most notable of these were the Supreme Court decisions in 1954 and 1955 declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and the court's rulings in 1955 banning segregation in publicly financed parks, playgrounds, and golf courses.

In the 1960s women began to organize around the issue of their civil rights (see feminism). The federal Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963, and by the early 1970s over 40 states had passed equal pay laws. In 1972 the Senate passed an Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) intended to prohibit all discrimination based on sex, but after failing to win ratification in a sufficient number of states, the ERA was abandoned. Since the 1970s a number of gay-rights groups have worked, mainly on the local and state levels, for legislation that prevents discrimination in housing and employment (see gay-rights movement). In a further extension of civil-rights protection, the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) barred discrimination against disabled persons in employment and provided for improved access to public facilities.

Bibliography

See W. E. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment (1988); R. Berger, The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights (1989); L. W. Levy, Civil Rights (1989); T. Branch, Pillar of Fire (1997); F. M. Wirt, "We Ain't What We Was" (1997); A. Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000 (2001); D. McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (2001); C. Polsgrove, Divided Minds: Intellectuals and the Civil Rights Movement (2001); C. Carter et al., ed., Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941–1973 (2 vol., 2003); J. Rosenberg and Z. Karabell, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice: The Civil Rights Tapes (2003).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Civil Rights Movement

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

The Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by Peter B. Levy. 226 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Designed for secondary school and college student research, The Civil Rights Movement is a one-stop guide that includes clear analysis and ready reference components. Combining narrative description, analytical essays, chronology, biographical profiles, and the text of key primary documents, this...
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Designed for secondary school and college student research, The Civil Rights Movement is a one-stop guide that includes clear analysis and ready reference components. Combining narrative description, analytical essays, chronology, biographical profiles, and the text of key primary documents, this work fills a gap in the existing literature. Drawing on the most recent research, Levy, author of the acclaimed Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement, provides an outstanding introduction to the Civil Rights movement, its development, issues, and leaders. Six essays analyze the crucial aspects of the movement, including a concluding essay that assesses its legacy. Ready reference features include: a chronology of events; lengthy biographical profiles of 20 key civil rights activists; the text of 15 seminal documents valuable for student research; a glossary of selected terms; and an annotated bibliography of recommended further reading and audiovisual materials.
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2.

Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by Robert Weisbrot. 350 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
3.

Let Freedom Ring: A Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by Peter B. Levy. 276 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This book traces the story of the civil rights movement through the written and spoken words of those who participated in it. It includes both classic texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and lesser-known gems, such as Robert Moses'...
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This book traces the story of the civil rights movement through the written and spoken words of those who participated in it. It includes both classic texts, such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and lesser-known gems, such as Robert Moses' "Letter from a Mississippi Jail Cell" and James Lawson's address to SNCC's 1960 founding meeting. "This is a documentary collection that has been needed for a long time. The burgeoning interest in the civil rights movement argues for such a work, and the need to have the experience of the movement in the participants' own words demands it. Words counted during the civil rights movement, and Levy's collection . . . is the best and most accessible." Randall M. Miller Professor of History Director of American Studies Saint Joseph's University
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4.

Daybreak of Freedom: The Montgomery Bus Boycott » Read Now
by Stewart Burns. 362 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...But King did not make the movement, as civil rights leader Ella Baker pointed...single-handedly steered the civil rights movement from turning violent. Acting...and the...
5.

But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle » Read Now
by Glenn T. Eskew. 438 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...8 pbk.: alk. paper 1. Civil rights movements-- Alabama--Birmingham--History...History-- 20th century. 3. Civil rights movements--United States--History...the History of the...
6.

Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1936-1961 » Read Now
by Mark V. Tushnet. 406 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could...
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From the 1930s to the early 1960s civil rights law was made primarily through constitutional litigation. Before Rosa Parks could ignite a Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had to strike down the Alabama law which made segregated bus service required by law; before Martin Luther King could march on Selma to register voters, the Supreme Court had to find unconstitutional the Southern Democratic Party's exclusion of African-Americans; and before the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court had to strike down the laws allowing for the segregation of public graduate schools, colleges, high schools, and grade schools. Making Civil Rights Law provides a chronological narrative history of the legal struggle, led by Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, that preceded the political battles for civil rights. Drawing on interviews with Thurgood Marshall and other NAACP lawyers, as well as new information about the private deliberations of the Supreme Court, Tushnet tells the dramatic story of how the NAACP Legal Defense Fund led the Court to use the Constitution as an instrument of liberty and justice for all African-Americans. He also offers new insights into how the justices argued among themselves about the historic changes they were to make in American society. Making Civil Rights Law provides an overall picture of the forces involved in civil rights litigation, bringing clarity to the legal reasoning that animated this "Constitutional revolution", and showing how the slow development of doctrine and precedent reflected the overall legal strategy of Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP.
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7.

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality » Read Now
by Michael J. Klarman. 655 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision...
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Do Supreme Court decisions matter? In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that railroad segregation laws were permissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1954 the Court's decision in Brown v. the Board of Education held that the same constitutional provision invalidated statutes segregating public schools How great an impact did judicial rulings such as Plessy and Brown have? How much did such Court decisions influence the larger world of race relations? In From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, Michael J. Klarman examines the social and political impact of the Supreme Court's decisions involving race relations from Plessy, the Progressive Era, and the Interwar Period to World Wars I and II, Brown and the Civil Rights Movement. He explores the wide variety of consequences that Brown may have had--raising the salience of race issues, educating opinion, mobilizing supporters, energizing opponents of racial change. He concludes that Brown was ultimately more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. The decision created concrete occasions for violent confrontation--court ordered school desegregation and radicalized southern politics, leading to the election of politicians who calculated that violent suppression of civil rights demonstrations would win votes. It was such violence--vividly captured on television--that ultimately transformed northern opinion on race, leading to the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s. A fascinating investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, spells out in exhaustive detail the political and social context against which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of those decisions on the civil rights movement and beyond.
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8.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964: The Passage of the Law That Ended Racial Segregation » Read Now
by Robert D. Loevy, Hubert H. Humphrey, Joseph L. Rauh Jr., John G. Stewart. 382 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Tells the story (in the participants' own words) of how a determined southern filibuster was turned back in the U.S. Senate and the 1964 Civil Rights Act made into law.
This book details, in a series of first-person accounts, how Hubert Humphrey and other dedicated civil rights supporters fashioned...
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Tells the story (in the participants' own words) of how a determined southern filibuster was turned back in the U.S. Senate and the 1964 Civil Rights Act made into law.
This book details, in a series of first-person accounts, how Hubert Humphrey and other dedicated civil rights supporters fashioned the famous cloture vote that turned back the determined southern filibuster in the U.S. Senate and got the monumental Civil Rights Act bill passed into law. Authors include Humphrey, who was the Democratic whip in the Senate at the time; Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., a top Washington civil rights lobbyist; and John G. Stewart, Humphrey's top legislative aide. These accounts are essential for understanding the full meaning and effect of America's civil rights movement.
"Loevy's volume supplements the academic studies with contemporaneous, first-person accounts by participants in this historic legislative struggle. Senator Humphrey and Joe Rauh were major participants, and although not as well known, Professor Stewart was an important behind-the-scenes staffperson. The material therefore constitutes an important supplement to the documentary record on the civil rights era..". -- Robert C. Smith, San Francisco State University
"Loevy does a wonderful, almost incredible job of summarizing 200 years of civil rights in the Introduction, and the selections in the book shed new light on the 1964 civil rights legislative struggle". -- James W. Riddlesperger, Jr., Texas Christian University
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9.

Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle against Racism in America, 1909-1969 » Read Now
by Gilbert Jonas. 536 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
10.

Assessing the Role of the NAACP in the Civil Rights Movement, in The Historian » Read Now
by Denton L. Watson. 16 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
11.

Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom » Read Now
by Richard H. King. 276 pgs.

Collections: Philosophy, History, Entire Library

Focusing attention on the political ideas that were influential as well as those that were central to the civil rights movement, this pathbreaking book examines not only written texts but also oral history interviews to establish a rich tradition of freedom that emerged from the movement. He also...
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Focusing attention on the political ideas that were influential as well as those that were central to the civil rights movement, this pathbreaking book examines not only written texts but also oral history interviews to establish a rich tradition of freedom that emerged from the movement. He also makes clear that, though liberal notions of freedom involving the absence of restrictions and equal protections were crucial to movement goals, the movement was as much about individual and collective self-transformation and political participation as it was about removal of barriers to social and political equality. Along the way figures such as Martin Luther King and Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael and James Forman, and political thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Frantz Fanon are discussed and analyzed. Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom concludes that the civil rights movement helped revitalize the meaning of citizenship and the political importance of self-respect in the contemporary world with implications reaching beyond its original setting.
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12.

Essays on the American Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by John Dittmer, George C. Wright, W. Marvin Dulaney, Kathleen Underwood. 95 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...ii- Essays on The American Civil Rights Movement -iv- THE WALTER PRESCOTT WEBB...Essays on The American Civil Rights Movement BY JOHN DITTMER, GEORGE...1939- Essays on the...
13.

A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks, in Annual Review of Sociology » Read Now
by Aldon D. Morris. 22 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
14.

Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by James R. Ralph Jr. 340 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

After the triumphs of Montgomery and Selma, the crusade for civil rights rapidly gathered momentum--until stalling in the heartland of America, Chicago. A vivid account of how the Chicago Freedom Movement of 1965-67 attempted to combat northern segregation.
15.

Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement » Read Now
by Daniel Levine. 316 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
16.

Heeding the Call: Jewish Voices in America's Civil Rights Struggle » Read Now
by Norman H. Finkelstein. 212 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, History, Entire Library

...to protecting civil rights. The ADL simply...Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Members of that...as part of the civil rights laws of the 1950s...active in the civil rights...