The American Civil Rights Movement

Covering the whole twentieth century, this work collects in a single, brief volume, documents reflecting key aspects of the Civil Rights Movement: the voices of social activists (and opponents), the legal struggle in the courts, and governmental responses to civil rights issues, arranged chronologically with an essential time-line of events. The American Civil Rights Movement: A documentary history collects in a single, brief volume, documents reflecting key aspects of the Civil Rights Movement: the voices of social activists (and opponents), the legal struggle in the courts, and governmental responses to civil rights issues – public statements, executive orders, legislation.The book is a deliberate attempt to address the shortcomings of capsule histories of the Movement, histories that neglect to describe the range of public and private institutions, organizations, and individuals that contributed to – and hindered – its accomplishments. The introductory essays, providing narrative or analytical background, combined with the range of documents presented, allows the book to serve as an excellent supplement to textbook treatments of modern U.S. history, African American history, and/or the Civil Rights Movement. The book includes over 100 documents – personal narratives, court decisions, news reports, letters, legislation – that provide the reader with insights into the philosophies, strategies, personalities of the Movement. The American Civil Rights Movement: A documentary history collects in a single, brief volume, documents reflecting key aspects of the Civil Rights Movement: the voices of social activists (and opponents), the legal struggle in the courts, and governmental responses to civil rights issues – public statements, executive orders, legislation.The book is a deliberate attempt to address the shortcomings of capsule histories of the Movement, histories that neglect to describe the range of public and private institutions, organizations, and individuals that contributed to – and hindered – its accomplishments. The introductory essays, providing narrative or analytical background, combined with the range of documents presented, allows the book to serve as an excellent supplement to textbook treatments of modern U.S. history, African American history, and/or the Civil Rights Movement. The book includes over 100 documents – personal narratives, court decisions, news reports, letters, legislation – that provide the reader with insights into the philosophies, strategies, personalities of the Movement.

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Kultur und Landeskunde, Note: 2, Universität Hamburg (Anglistik und Amerikanistik), Veranstaltung: American Civil Rights Movement, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In March 1958, a pacifistic group named "The Fellowship of Reconciliation" that had provided most of CORE's early leaders sent James Lawson to Nashville to lead a workshop in non-violence for African-American activists. A year later, as a divinity student at Nashville's Vanderbilt University, Lawson drew a small but morally charged number of young men and women from the black colleges to his regular training sessions in non-violent protest1. In the fall of 1959, this Nashville student group stages test sit-ins at segregated city restaurants and lunch counters. Staying just long enough to draw refusal of service, they failed either to change management policy or to draw others into the protest. Lawson had outrun the zeitgeist by a few months. With the Greensboro sit-ins of February 1960, though, the Nashville group acquired a prophetic luster. Soon Lawson was directing hundreds of students who volunteered in disciplined protests against segregation in downtown stores.