The civil rights movement was a mass popular movement to secure for African Americans equal access to and opportunities for the basic privileges and rights of U.S. citizenship.
By Bill Abbott. Picture of the Day: January 15 Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr., eloquent African-American Baptist minister and leader of the civil rights movement from the mid-1950s, was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 15, 1929. Martin Luther King Jr’s Legacy. By the time of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the civil rights movement was evolving; in some ways, it seemed to be leaving him behind. New black-power activists did not accept his philosophy of nonviolence as a way to achieve their goals. By this time—after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968; the rise of black militancy; and discernible gains in black employment opportunities—the civil rights movement had begun losing momentum. Observers maintain that themovement has a mixed legacy. The civil rights movement centered on the American South. That was where the African American population was concentrated and where racial inequality in education, economic opportunity, and the political and legal processes was most blatant. Martin Luther King and other African-American Civil Rights Movement leaders in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Civil rights movements are a worldwide series of political movements for equality before the law, that peaked in the 1960s. In many situations they have been characterized by nonviolent protests, or have taken the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change through nonviolent forms of resistance. And no discussion of the Civil Rights movement, for kids, would be complete without a look at Martin Luther King, Jr., how he inspired and led millions, and how he gave his life trying to create a better one for so many others. Share. Single Issues.  The Civil Rights Movement of the United States began as a challenge to segregation, which was the legal separation of whites and blacks. Segregation began as a method to control blacks because slavery was no longer permitted or accepted in the United States.  Contrasting the methods of nonviolence that he envisioned for a civil rights movement, to the methods of violence used by the racist and terrorist Ku Klux Klan, King declared, in our protest there will be no cross burnings…. Many civil rights groups provided backing for this movement, including SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP. Throughout this period of nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement continued to suffer the effects of white violence. The civil rights movement was a mass popular movement to secure for African Americans equal access to and opportunities for the basic privileges and rights of U.S. citizenship. The civil rights movement centered on the American South. That was where the African American population was concentrated and where racial inequality in education, economic opportunity, and the political and legal processes was most blatant. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1955, the modern civil rights movement was effectively launched with the arrest of young seamstress Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama. Police arrested Parks because she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery city bus.  It also led to the formation in 1957 of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), in Atlanta, Ga. This was presided over by a local black minister, Martin Luther King, Jr. As SCLC head, King would later become a central leader in the larger civil rights movement. A major incident in 1960 led to the founding of another important organization and expanded the movement's participants to include college-age blacks. The civil rights movement centered on the American South. That was where the African American population was concentrated and where racial inequality in education, economic opportunity, and the political and legal processes was most blatant. The Birth of the Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955, rosa parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white man. News of Parks's arrest quickly spread through the African American community. Many civil rights groups provided backing for this movement, including SNCC, CORE, and the NAACP. Throughout this period of nonviolent protest, the civil rights movement continued to suffer the effects of white violence.
http://www.historynet.com/martin-luther-king-jr http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/civil-rights-movement-overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movements_for_civil_rights http://www.kidsdiscover.com/shop/issues/civil-rights-movement-for-kids/ http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/nhhs/project/2000/views/histcivilrights.htm http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Civil+Rights+movement http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/civil-rights-movement-overview http://www.sparknotes.com/history/american/civilrights/summary.html http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/civil-rights-movement-overview http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Civil+Rights+movement
description of civil rights movement