Civil Rights and Social Movements
Analyze civil rights strategies, legislation, grassroots activism, Black Power, feminism, Latino activism, Indigenous activism, and environmentalism.
A lesson of AP United States History, in Periods 8-9: 1945-Present, about 10 minutes.
Civil Rights and Social Movements (1965–1980)
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to analyze the evolution of the civil rights movement after 1965, explain the emergence of new social movements, and evaluate the causes and consequences of the era's political turmoil.
The Civil Rights Movement After 1965
The Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964–65 addressed legal discrimination in the South — but not economic inequality, Northern segregation, or police brutality. The movement fractured and evolved.
Black Power and Urban Rebellion
Urban rebellions (1964–68): Massive uprisings in Watts (Los Angeles, 1965), Newark, Detroit, and other cities — not about Southern Jim Crow but about Northern poverty, police brutality, and economic exclusion.
Kerner Commission Report (1968): Concluded the U.S. was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal"; blamed white racism; recommended massive investment in urban communities. Johnson largely shelved the report.
Malcolm X: Minister in the Nation of Islam; advocated Black self-defense and Black nationalism rather than integration; assassinated 1965; increasingly moved toward pan-Africanism before his death.
Black Power (Stokely Carmichael, 1966): Rejected nonviolence and integration; emphasized Black self-determination, community control, and cultural pride.
Black Panther Party (Oakland, 1966): Armed self-defense against police brutality; free breakfast programs; brutally suppressed by FBI's COINTELPRO; J. Edgar Hoover called them "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country."
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Later Years
King increasingly linked civil rights to economic justice and opposition to the Vietnam War:
- Chicago Campaign (1966): Open housing; met with virulent white resistance in the North
- Poor People's Campaign: demanded economic bill of rights
- Opposition to Vietnam War (1967): "Beyond Vietnam" speech — argued the war drained resources from antipoverty programs and disproportionately killed Black soldiers
- Assassination (April 4, 1968): Memphis; uprisings in 110 cities; 46 killed nationally