James Patterson provides an overview of the movement, reminding us that the roots lay in the early twentieth century with the founding of the NAACP and the National Urban League and that efforts to secure equality continued through the 1940s and the postwar years. Patterson shows the variety of arenas in which the modern civil rights movement operated, from the courtrooms and legislative halls of the nation to the streets of Birmingham and the highways of Alabama and Mississippi. Free registration for students and teachers required to access resource.
African American Religious Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement
The modern Civil Rights Movement was the most important social protest movement of the twentieth century. People who were locked out of the formal political process due to racial barriers were able to mount numerous campaigns over three decades to eradicate racial injustice and in the process transform the nation. In its greatest accomplishment, the Civil Rights Movement successfully eliminated the American apartheid system popularly known as Jim Crow. Registration is required to view this resource. Free registration for students and teachers required to access resource.
Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change
Constitutional scholar Linda R. Monk’s “Why We the People? Citizens as Agents of Constitutional Change” introduces us to one of the most radical ideas embodied in the Constitution: that ultimate sovereignty lies with the citizens themselves. It was this principle, Monk reminds us, that prompted the demand, during the ratification debates, that a bill of rights be added to the Constitution. Free registration for students and teachers required to access resource.
Sisters of Suffrage: British and American Women Fight for the Vote
The dominant narrative of the entire women’s suffrage movement begins and ends with the United States and Britain. Hundreds of thousands of women petitioned, canvassed, lobbied, demonstrated, engaged in mass civil disobedience, went to jail, and engaged in hunger strikes in a seventy-five-year ongoing political and social struggle for the right to vote. Free registration for students and teachers required to access resource.
Reconstruction and Citizenship
Historian Eric Foner, of Columbia University, discusses the major changes in citizenship during and after the Civil War, particularly for African Americans.
Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940
James Basker & Johnathan Holloway discuss the novel written by Mr. Holloway, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory & Identity in Black America Since 1940.
America at the End of the 20th Century, Part 1
James T. Patterson, historian at Brown University, discusses the end of the 20th century, focusing on the changes in the United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore.
Brown v. Board of Education and its Effects on Civil Rights
Larry Kramer, former Dean of Stanford Law School and constitutional scholar, discusses Brown v. Board of Education and its effect on civil rights, and the question of resolving segregation.
The Legal History of Desegregation
Pulitzer prize winning historian Jack Rakove of Stanford discusses the legal history of desegregation, focusing on the analytical problems facing the struggle for desegregation.
The Civil Rights Movement
Clarence Taylor, historian at Baruch University, discusses the Civil Rights Movement from Brown v. Board of Education to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.