Historical Sources on the Civil Rights Movement

When most Americans think of the civil rights movement, they think of the organized struggle for equality in the 1950s and 1960s. However, the civil rights movement actually has its roots in the Reconstruction era of the late nineteenth century as the country tried to rebuild itself after the Civil War. In this book, students will read accounts from early civil rights activists and leaders like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Booker T. Washington, as well as from mainstays of the later movement like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Other primary sources, such as poems and Supreme Court decisions, fill in the details about the fight against racial injustice in the United States. Students will gain a better understanding of the long road to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation, and the legacy of the civil rights movement.