After the rebellion: black youth, social movement activism, and the post-civil rights generation

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (13) ◽  
pp. 2467-2469
Author(s):  
Steve Song ◽  
Jack Henderson
Author(s):  
Robert L. Heath ◽  
Damion Waymer

Social movement activism presumes strategic communication processes by which groups achieve extra-governmental changes to public and private policy through public pressure. Such pressure presumes conditions of five kinds: strain, mobilization, confrontation, negotiation, and resolution. To explain this process, several cases will be offered but especially the U.S. civil rights movement and the activist career of John Lewis. Social movement activism is a test of wills, a test of character, strength, fact, value, identity, identification, and place


Women have long been involved in social movement activism in the United States, from the nation’s beginning up to the present, and in waves of feminist activism as well as in a variety of other social movements, including the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, and conservative mobilizations. The Oxford Handbook of U.S. Women’s Social Movement Activism provides both a detailed and extensive examination of the wide range of U.S. women’s collective efforts, as well as a broad overview of the scholarship on women’s social movement struggles. The volume’s five sections consider various dimensions of women’s social movement activism: (1) women’s collective action over time exploring the long history of women’s social movement participation, (2) the variety of social issues that mobilize women to act collectively, (3) the myriad types of resistance strategies and tactics utilized by activists, (4) both the forums and targets of women’s mobilizations, and (5) women’s participation in a diversity of activist efforts beyond women’s movements. The five sections present a total of thirty-six chapters, each written by leading scholars of women’s social movement mobilizations. The chapters, in addition to describing women’s activism and reviewing the scholarly literature, also define important directions for future research on women and social movements, providing scholars with a guide to what we still do not know about women’s collective struggles.


Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-94
Author(s):  
Amina Gautier

Amina Gautier reflects on her childhood tendency to ask when, not if, there would be a black president. Growing up in the post-civil rights era, she was influenced by knowledge of earlier presidential bids by African Americans as well as references to the idea of a black president in popular culture, including television programs of the 1970s and 1980s that often saw adult characters project the ability to run for office onto black youth. However, Gautier cautions against conflating Barack Obama's historic election to president with the beginning of a “post-racial” era. She uses a personal experience of racial insensitivity to observe the distance we have yet to go before we are truly post-anything.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document