scholarly journals Collective memory and historical narratives: The African American civil rights movement

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Hughes ◽  
Sarah Drake Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
African American Civil Rights

This study explores how undergraduates, as historical thinkers, learn to interact with history and construct their understanding of the past, and examines the role that primary and secondary sources play in narrative construction and revision. Using the African American civil rights movement as a content focus, participants used images to create initial narratives that reflected their understanding of the movement. Half the participants then read an essay on the movement written by a prominent historian, and the other half examined 18 primary sources that reflected the historian’s interpretation of the movement. Participants then each created a second narrative, again selecting images to depict their understanding of the movement. The results of the study suggest that even as students work with primary sources, they need an effective narrative framework based on recent scholarship to forge powerful counter-narratives that transcend outdated interpretations and historical myths. In terms of teaching and learning about the lengthy struggle for racial justice in the United States, simply encouraging teachers and students to ‘do history’ and conduct their own online research is unlikely to change persistent narrative structures that continue to enable and excuse systemic racism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Southern States ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Martin Luther King

The introduction includes Bible verses cited by ministers to defend segregation and verses to oppose segregation. There are slices of the history of the United States, the Civil Rights Movement, and African American history. The southern states, where white ministers confronted segregation, are identified. The term “minister” is explained as well as the variety of labels given these ministers ranging from “Liberal,” Progressive,” “Neo-Orthodox,” “Evangelical Liberal,” “open conservative,” ‘Last Hurrah of the Social Gospel Movement” to “Trouble Maker,” “Traitor, “ “Atheist,” “Communist,” “N_____ Lover.” Rachel Henderlite, the only woman minister mentioned in the book, is identified. Synopses of the book’s seven chapters are included. Comments by historians David Chappell, Charles Reagan Wilson, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ernest Campbell, and Thomas Pettigrew are cited.

Mortality, Incarceration, and African American Disenfranchisement in the Contemporary United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-237 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Cottrell ◽  
Michael C. Herron ◽  
Javier M. Rodriguez ◽  
Daniel A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Right

On account of poor living conditions, African Americans in the United States experience disproportionately high rates of mortality and incarceration compared with Whites. This has profoundly diminished the number of voting-eligible African Americans in the country, costing, as of 2010, approximately 3.9 million African American men and women the right to vote and amounting to a national African American disenfranchisement rate of 13.2%. Although many disenfranchised African Americans have been stripped of voting rights by laws targeting felons and ex-felons, the majority are literally “missing” from their communities due to premature death and incarceration. Leveraging variation in gender ratios across the United States, we show that missing African Americans are concentrated in the country’s Southeast and that African American disenfranchisement rates in some legislative districts lie between 20% and 40%. Despite the many successes of the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement, high levels of African American disenfranchisement remain a continuing feature of the American polity.

Principled Disobedience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice Delmas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The United States ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
The Status

Chapter 1 surveys the literature on civil disobedience and places the author’s own approach to resistance and principled disobedience within this context. Public understanding of civil disobedience is the product of two different strands: the broadly Rawlsian philosophical conception of civil disobedience and the official narrative of the civil rights movement in the United States. This chapter calls upon history to show how the standard, broadly Rawlsian conception of civil disobedience (though not necessarily Rawls’s own) rests on an unrealistic and objectionable reading of the African American civil rights struggle. It also argues that the official reading of the civil rights movement functions as a counter-resistance ideology, deterring any form of protest against the status quo. It then examines and critiques recent “inclusive” accounts of civil disobedience, proposing instead a broad matrix of resistance that includes lawful acts of resistance and principled—civil and uncivil—disobedience.

Equal Time

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniko Bodroghkozy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Television News ◽  
The United States ◽  
News Story ◽  
University Of Mississippi ◽  
Network Television ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The University

This book explores the crucial role of network television in reconfiguring new attitudes in race relations during the civil rights movement. Due to widespread coverage, the civil rights revolution quickly became the United States' first televised major domestic news story. This important medium unmistakably influenced the ongoing movement for African American empowerment, desegregation, and equality. The book brings to the foreground television news treatment of now-famous civil rights events including the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, integration riots at the University of Mississippi, and the March on Washington, including Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech. It also examines the most high-profile and controversial television series of the era to feature African American actors—East Side/West Side, Julia, and Good Times—to reveal how entertainment programmers sought to represent a rapidly shifting consensus on what “blackness” and “whiteness” meant and how they now fit together.

Protest and prayer: the Jewish and Catholic presence at Selma

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cory Callahan ◽  
Janie Hubbard
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Domain Knowledge ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Teachers And Students

Purpose The recent motion picture Selma infused fresh interest – and controversy – into the political and emotional peak of America’s modern Civil Rights Movement. Ava DuVernay, the film’s director, faced criticism for her exclusion of the Jewish presence from the movie’s portrayal of the March 21, 1965 Voting Rights March. The recent attention presents a teachable moment and new energy for thinking deeply about this pivotal event in America’s past. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The authors provide valuable historical domain knowledge surrounding the 1965 Voting Rights March, present the requisite plans and curriculum resources for implementing wise-practice instructional strategies, and explore the rationale underpinning the inquiry-based activities. Findings The authors share innovative approaches, at the secondary and elementary levels, integrating historical domain knowledge with renewed interest in the 1965 Voting Rights March to create powerful teaching-and-learning experiences. The approaches are innovative because they contain dynamic curriculum materials and reflect wise-practice use of historical photographs within the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. Practical implications The approaches shared here are centered around questioning, a key to student learning. The lessons feature the development of questions, both from teachers and students, as classes work collaboratively to interpret a potentially powerful historical photograph and use historical events to practice thinking deeply about important topics. Originality/value Social studies classrooms are ideal educational spaces to develop and practice the analytical skills and dispositions students need to meet the challenge of critiquing visual information that concerns complex public issues, such as the role of religion in society.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Sartain
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court Case ◽  
The Us ◽  
Us Supreme Court ◽  
Monthly Journal

The NAACP, established in 1909, was formed as an integrated organization to confront racism in the United States rather than seeing the issue as simply a southern problem. It is the longest running civil rights organization and continues to operate today. The original name of the organization was The National Negro League, but this was changed to the NAACP on May 30, 1910. Organized to promote racial equality and integration, the NAACP pursued this goal via legal cases, political lobbying, and public campaigns. Early campaigns involved lobbying for national anti-lynching legislation, pursuing through the US Supreme Court desegregation in areas such as housing and higher education, and the pursuit of voting rights. The NAACP is renowned for the US Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that desegregated primary and secondary schools and is seen as a catalyst for the civil rights movement (1955–1968). It also advocated public education by promoting African American achievements in education and the arts to counteract racial stereotypes. The organization published a monthly journal, The Crisis, and promoted African American art forms and culture as another means to advance equality. NAACP branches were established all across the United States and became a network of information, campaigning, and finance that underpinned activism. Youth groups and university branches mobilized younger members of the community. Women were also invaluable to the NAACP in local, regional, and national decision-making processes and campaigning. The organization sought to integrate African Americans and other minorities into the American social, political, and economic model as codified by the US Constitution.

scholarly journals African Canadian Anti-Discrimination Activism and the Transnational Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1965

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosanne Waters
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Canadian History ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Rights History ◽  
African Canadian

Several recent historical works have challenged interpretations of the civil rights movement in the United States as a strictly domestic story by considering its connections to anti-racist struggles around the world. Adding a Canadian dimension to this approach, this article considers linkages between African Canadian anti-discrimination activism in the 1950s and early 1960s and African American civil rights organizing. It argues that Canadian anti-discrimination activists were interested in and influenced by the American movement. They followed American civil rights campaigns, adapted relevant ideas, and leveraged the prominent American example when pressing for change in their own country. African Canadian activists and organizations also impacted the American movement through financial and moral support. This article contributes to the study of African Canadian history, Canadian human rights history, and the American civil rights movement by emphasizing the local origins of anti-discrimination activism in Canada, while also arguing that such efforts are best understood when contextualized within a broader period of intensive global anti-racist activism that transcended national borders.

African American Civil Rights Movements to End Slavery, Racism and Oppression in the Post Slavery Era: A Critique of Booker T. Washington’s Integration Ideology

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (Issue 3) ◽  
pp. 62-68
Author(s):  
Nancy Bwalya Lungu ◽  
Alice Dhliwayo
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
The United States ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
The Impact

The Transatlantic Slave trade began during the 15th century when Portugal and subsequently other European kingdoms were able to expand overseas and reach Africa. The Portuguese first began to kidnap people from the West Coast of Africa and took those that they enslaved to Europe. This saw a lot of African men and women transported to Europe and America to work on the huge plantations that the Whites owned. The transportation of these Africans exposed them to inhumane treatments which they faced even upon the arrival at their various destinations. The emancipation Proclamation signed on 1st January 1863 by the United States President Abraham Lincoln saw a legal stop to slave trade. However, the African Americans that had been taken to the United States and settled especially in the Southern region faced discrimination, segregation, violence and were denied civil rights through segregation laws such as the Jim Crow laws and lynching, based on the color of their skin. This forced them especially those that had acquired an education to rise up and speak against this treatment. They formed Civil Rights Movements to advocate for Black rights and equal treatment. These protracted movements, despite continued violence on Blacks, Culminated in Barack Obama being elected the first African American President of the United States of America. To cement the victory, he won a second term, which Donald Trump failed to obtain. This paper sought to critic the philosophies of Booker T. Washington in his civil rights movement, particularly his ideologies of integration, self-help, racial solidarity and accommodation as expressed in his speech, “the Atlanta Compromise,” and the impact this had on the political and civil rights arena for African Americans.

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