Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive 1

first message
Much text has been taken from the presumed public domain resource http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/civilrights/intro1.htm on the U.S. Government National Parks Service site, which appears to be a Federal Government source that does not have a copyright claim asserted.

It needs copyediting and wikification. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.253.40.31 (talk) 09:32, 9 June 2002 (UTC)

Other movements?
Should the Mexican American and American Indian movements be included here too? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lariano (talk &bull; contribs).


 * There are many important parts of American History that are both deserving of their own articles, and being part of a relevant Category or collection of related links. AlMac|(talk) 23:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I believe (as reflected in the edits I have made) that this article should primarily confine me to the Civil Rights movement between 1945 and 1970, with references of course to the historical background for the movement and the results of the movement. I believe it's simply too much to include SNCC in the same article as abolitionists or Booker T. Washington.  DanKeshet

Topics to be discussed

 * Historical background to how the blacks in the US became second class citizens in many states.
 * Definition of citizen in US.
 * Constitutional amendments: 13th abolishes slavery, 14th guarantees equal protection under the law, 15th grants right to vote to former slaves.
 * Differences in how people in the northern and southern US states viewed these issues.
 * Political responses to the issues.
 * Religious responses from conservative Christians, liberal Christians, the Catholic Church, Unitarian Universalism, and Judaism.

In Judaism Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a theology professor at Conservative Judaism's primary seminary, became one of the era's most outspoken civil rights activists. Many rabbis within Reform Judaism, and some within the other Jewish denominations, took strong public stands on this issue and led their congregations to protest violations of civil rights.


 * Imporant legislation passed during this era.
 * Results of the civil rights struggle.

The best-known part of the movement has been the struggle to obtain full rights by African-Americans. But the struggles for equality for women, the disabled and others, including homosexuals and bisexuals, have been part of the movement too. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by DanKeshet (talk &bull; contribs).

Title capitalization
As a major historical event, the title should be capitalized. (U.S. Civil Rights Movement) --Jiang


 * No need for periods in acronyms though. --mav 04:29, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How do you tell it's an acronym? --Jiang


 * Capital letters all together like NASA and WYSIWYG. --mav

The American media always puts in the full stops:. --Jiang


 * This US media is not a good source for correct literary style. this Google search yeilds these references (all of which say to not use periods):, , , , , , , . And that is just from the first page of results. --mav 21:58, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

Your links agree with me:

3. "when they use it as an adjective they should punctuate it with periods" 4. "United States or U.S. is more precise." 5. "The abbreviation U.S. is acceptable when used as an adjective." 7. "Spell out United States when it is a noun; use U.S. (note periods) when it is an adjective." 8. "It is preferable to spell out the names of countries and federal agencies, abbreviating or using acronyms only when space is limited and then with periods." 9. "The two-letter abbreviation for the United States of America uses periods."

--Jiang 22:49, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * Fine then either use "United States" or "American". Both are common. --mav 00:25, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)


 * What's wrong with "U.S."? --Jiang


 * It looks hackish. Best to spell it out if a clean acronym is not used. "American Civil Rights Movement" is the far more common name anyway. --mav

Mississippi Burning
This text was on civil rights and I think it should be here instead, but not sure where.

In 1964 civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. Their deaths shocked the United States public and Congress and helped pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. The incident became the inspiration for the film, "Mississippi Burning." &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gazpacho (talk &bull; contribs).


 * I have merged the above text with a pre-existing paragraph about the incedent in uner The Cost heading. I hope it meets with your expectations Gazpacho. -JCarriker 13:31, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

I think the information on Mississippi warrants its own page. 2-5-07 bwoodsonii
 * There is a separate article about the lynching of the three Civil Rights workers.--Parkwells (talk) 15:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Other Ethnicities
This page should also mention the struggle of other ethnicities. See e.g. Wing Luke. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by SebastianHelm (talk &bull; contribs).

Radical Republicans
This article is clearly not NPOV, phrases like "Radical-Republican measures" have no place in a Wikipedia article. I will check back in a couple days to see if it has been fixed. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.18.46.6 (talk &bull; contribs).


 * This anonymous contributor [216.18.46.6] apparently does not recognize the special meaning of "Radical Republicans" in this context: it refers to the group of Senators and members of the House of Representatives in the years after the Civil War, led by Thaddeus Stevens, who championed "Radical Reconstruction." The mistake is understandable, since we did not link to the article on Radical Republicans; I have taken care of that. That article on Radical Republicans also needs to be improved. [I am also moving this comment to the end of the page, for logical and chronological consistency.]


 * This comment also highlights DanKeshet's point at the top of the page--this article sprawls too much by trying to cover blacks' struggles from 1865 (and before). While I do not think that we should set 1945 as the starting point, given the significant activities of the NAACP and others in the 1930s and 1940s, the article might benefit from some pruning of the 'background" section. Other sections, such as the part on the role of the federal government, are way too simplistic and give JFK and RFK much more credit than they deserve. Given the size of the article, we may want to spin off some subsidiary articles rather than making this one any longer and more unwieldy. A bibliography would be good too. -- Italo Svevo 10:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

An ommission?
How do we have an article about the American Civil Rights Movement that doesn't even mention Rosa Parks? ---B- 05:15, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've added a link to the documentary At The River I Stand, which examines the Memphis sanitation workers efforts to unionize. This gives further context to the events surrounding King's assassination. An section on civil rights struggles in and through the labor movement should be added. A 2005 review of At the River I Stand DJ Silverfish 23:50, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * It's a good idea, but it probably needs its own page. Among the aspects to be covered are (1) historic exclusion of African-American workers from labor unions, particularly craft unions, and black estrangement from the labor movement, (2) labor's halting efforts to include black workers on an equal basis in the first thirty years of the last century (the IWW, Steel and Packinghouse organizing during WWI), (3) black-led unions, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (which is already the subject of a good article that links the BSCP to the civil rights movement through people such as A. Philip Randolph and E.D. Nixon), (4) CIO efforts in Packinghouse, steel, auto (particularly Ford), mining, tobacco and elsewhere, (5) the modern era, when AFSCME, District 1199 and other unions took up the cause of civil rights as a union issue/workers' rights as a civil rights issue, and (6) affirmative action struggles within the labor movement, particularly but not exclusively construction, with a satellite articles on Weber v. Steelworkers, the Philadelphia plan and the like.


 * Not all of this has to do with the civil rights movement as we usually understand it, i.e., as the assault on state-sponsored segregation, Jim Crow and white supremacy. But I don't know that you can really cover 3, 4 and 5, where the connection between the labor movement and the civil rights movement was strongest, without covering 1 and 2 as well. And once you get to 5, you really have to cover 6 as well. Which makes for a somewhat sprawling article. Any suggestions on how to do it better? --Italo Svevo 02:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Split it?
Which is another point some of us have made before. This article, which mentions Newton Minow but not E.D. Nixon or Rosa Parks and which leaves out the years between Plessy and Brown, is a mess. Individually the sections are good&#8212;I like the quote from Dick Gregory, as an example&#8212;but it does not do the subject justice because there is no sense of history. Even within the period covered, for example, there is hardly any mention of the real tensions over strategy and leadership between the SCLC and the NAACP, between the SCLC and SNCC, and within SNCC. Plus, as I've said earlier, it gives the Kennedy administration far more credit than it deserves. It has the fault of many histories: looking back we know it had to turn out this way because. . . well, because it did.

I don't think making it longer would fix it, so maybe we need to split it into two: the American civil rights movement (1900 &#8211; 1954) and the American civil rights movement (1954 and after). The obvious split would be before and after Brown, as the movement became a sustained mass movement. I would also start the history at 1900 or so, with the Niagara movement, although obviously the forty years before would get a section. The first section would cover the battle between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP's activities in those years, Garvey and the UNIA, Scottsboro and the March on Washington that didn't happen. The second would also cover Malcolm X and black nationalism, "black capitalism", the Poor People's March and Operation PUSH, and the current state of the movement, such as it is.

This is obviously a radical reconstruction of the article, so I won't make the mistake I've made before of hacking away without getting some sort of consensus. Nor do I claim, it goes without saying, any monopoly on the right to make changes this sweeping; there are too many people who have put time into improving it over the past few years. But I don't think we can fix it with incremental changes. --Italo Svevo 02:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * IS, if you check out the history of the article, it's based on public domain text from the U.S. government. That is the explanation for many of the biases you're noting, esp. it's emphasis on government in the movement.  The current structure was largely dictated by this public domain source, and I imagine, has stood so long because nobody was willing to restructure it.  I would be quite happy if you were to reorganize it as you see fit, as the ideas you have stated so far seem quite appropriate to me. DanKeshet 00:20, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

"mass movement" started
To pick a particular event as precipitating a "mass movement" can be very misleading, because different events had different impacts on different demographics. The funeral of Emmett Till may well have started a mass movement by Black Americans of the North, while other groups of people were inspired by the actions of a few brave people like Rosa Parks and speeches of various orators. News media attention brought college student volunteers in great numbers at a time when darn few blacks able to get into American colleges, even given the contributions of troops mobilized to escort a few students to a few institutions. AlMac|(talk) 23:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

The split and an overhaul
As I suggested, I have split the article into two pieces, overhauling both. While the first one (1896-1954) has no obvious narrative, the second one does, perhaps a little too much so. In the process I have eliminated a lot of anecdotal material simply because we could not fit it all in and still offer a history. Others may think I have put in too much in the way of quotations. Since this is wikipedia, you know how to make your preferences known.

I was not able to devote much space to the Black Power movement and none to Malcolm X or the Panthers or "black capitalism" or Operation PUSH or the current state of the movement. The fact is, I ran out of steam just as we were running up against the 31 kilobyte mark. I also cut off the history at 1968, which is certainly arbitrary, but defensible. If it sounded as if I conflated King and the movement in the last few sections of the article, I think it is fair to say that King's problems represented the movement's problems and vice versa. Italo Svevo 03:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that we should also add ...
The integration of the University of Mississippi (which resulted in an armed insurrection in Northern Mississippi for a time in the fall of 1962, which was put down only by thousands of federal troops. Also, in Little Rock, there were ten students, not just nine.  The first day, local authorities prevented them from entering.  A day or two later when the 101st was providing security only nine showed up.  One of the students got fed up with the protestors and transferred to Horace Mann (an all black school). Morris 03:48, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)