BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY Movements for civil rights were a worldwide series of political movements for equality before the law that peaked in the 1960s. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change through nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and armed rebellion. The process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not fully achieve their goals, although the efforts of these movements did lead to improvements in the legal rights of previously oppressed groups of people.
The main aim of the movements for civil rights included ensuring that the rights of all people are equally protected by the law, including the rights of minorities, women's rights, and LGBT rights.
NICRA originally had five main demands:
- one man, one vote
- an end to discrimination in housing
- an end to discrimination in local government
- an end to the gerrymandering of district boundaries, which limited the effect of Catholic voting
- the disbandment of the B-Specials, an entirely Protestant Police reserve, perceived as sectarian.
All of these specific demands were aimed at an ultimate goal that had been the one of women at the very beginning: the end of discrimination.
Civil rights activists all over Northern Ireland soon launched a campaign of civil resistance. There was opposition from Loyalists, who were aided by the Royal Ulster Constabulary(RUC), Northern Ireland's police force.[citation needed] At this point, the RUC was over 90% Protestant. Violence escalated, resulting in the rise of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) from the Catholic community, a group reminiscent of those from the War of Independence and the Civil War that occurred in the 1920s that had launched a campaign of violence to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Loyalist paramilitaries countered this with a defensive campaign of violence and the British government responded with a policy ofinternment without trial of suspected IRA members. For more than 300 people, the internment lasted several years. The huge majority of those interned by the British forces were Catholic. In 1978, in a case brought by the government of the Republic of Ireland against the government of the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the interrogation techniques approved for use by the British army on internees in 1971 amounted to "inhuman and degrading" treatment.
The IRA encouraged Republicans to join in the movement for civil rights but never controlled NICRA. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association fought for the end of discrimination toward Catholics and did not take a position on the legitimacy of the state.[3] Republican leader Gerry Adams explained subsequently that Catholics saw that it was possible for them to have their demands heard. He wrote that "we were able to see an example of the fact that you didn't just have to take it, you could fight back".[2] For an account and critique of the movements for civil rights in Northern Ireland, reflecting on the ambiguous link between the causes of civil rights and opposition to the union with the United Kingdom, see the work of Richard English.[4].
Canada's Quiet Revolution
Main articles: Quiet Revolution and October Crisis
The 1960s brought intense political and social change to the Canadian province of Quebec, with the election of Liberal Premier Jean Lesage after the death of Maurice Duplessis, whose government was widely viewed as corrupt.[6] These changes included secularization of the education and health care systems, which were both heavily controlled by theRoman Catholic Church, whose support for Duplessis and his perceived corruption had angered many Québécois. Policies of the Liberal government also sought to give Quebec more economic autonomy, such as the nationalization of Hydro-Québec and the creation of public companies for the mining, forestry, iron/steel and petroleum industries of the province. Other changes included the creation of the Régie des Rentes du Québec (Quebec Pension Plan) and new labour codes that made unionizing easier and gave workers the right to strike.
The social and economic changes of the Quiet Revolution gave life to the Quebec sovereignty movement, as more and more Québécois saw themselves as a distinctly culturally different from the rest of Canada. The segregationist Parti Québécois was created in 1968 and won the 1976 Quebec general election. They enacted legislation meant to enshrineFrench as the language of business in the province, while also controversially restricting the usage of English on signs and restricting the eligibility
Movements for civil rights in the United States
Main articles: African-American Civil Rights Movement (1896–1954), African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968), and Timeline of the African-American Civil Rights Movement
Movements for civil rights in the United States include noted legislation and organized efforts to abolish public and private acts of racial discrimination African Americans and other disadvantaged groups between 1954 to 1968, particularly in the southern United States. It is sometimes referred to as the Second Reconstruction era, alluding to the unresolved issues of the Reconstruction era in the United States :
Ethnicity equity issues
Integrationism
See also: Racial integration and Jim Crow laws
After 1890 the system of Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, and second class citizenship degraded the citizenship rights of African Americans, especially in the South. It was the nadir of American race relations. There were three main aspects: racial segregation – upheld by the United States Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 –, legally mandated by southern governments—voter suppression or disfranchisement in the southern states, and private acts of violence and mass racial violence aimed at African Americans, unhindered or encouraged by government authorities. Although racial discrimination was present nationwide, the combination of law, public and private acts of discrimination, marginal economic opportunity, and violence directed toward African Americans in the southern states became known as Jim Crow.
Noted strategies employed prior to 1955 included litigation and lobbying attempts by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These efforts were a hallmark of the American Civil Rights Movement from 1896 to 1954. However, by 1955, blacks became frustrated by gradual approaches to implement desegregation by federal and state governments and the "massive resistance" by whites. The black leadership adopted a combined strategy of direct action withnonviolent resistance known as civil disobedience. The acts of civil disobedience produced crisis situations between practitioners and government authorities. The authorities of federal, state, and local governments often had to act with an immediate response to end crisis situations – sometimes in the practitioners' favor. Some of the different forms of protests and/or civil disobedience employed included boycotts, as successfully practiced by the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama which gave the movement one of its more famous icons in Rosa Parks; "sit-ins", as demonstrated by the influentialGreensboro sit-in (1960) in North Carolina; and marches, as exhibited by the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama. The evidence of changing attitudes could also be seen around the country, where small businesses sprang up supporting the movements for civil rights, such as New Jersey's notable Everybody's Luncheonette.[7]
The most illustrious march is probably the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It is best remembered for the speech Martin Luther King, Jr. gave, in which the "I have a dream" part turned into a national text and eclipsed the troubles the organizers had to bring to march forward. It had been a fairly complicated affair to bring together various leaders of civil rights, religious and labor groups. As the name of the march tells us, many compromises had to be made in order to unite the followers of so many different causes. The "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom" emphasized the combined purposes of the march and the goals that each of the leaders aimed at. These leaders, informally named the Big Six, were A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr., Whitney Young,James Farmer and John Lewis. Although they came from different political horizons, these leaders were intent on the peacefulness of the march, which even had its own marshal to ensure that the event would be peaceful and respectful of the law.[8] The success of the march is still being debated but one aspect has been raised in the last few years: the misrepresentation of women. A lot of feminine civil rights groups had participated in the organization of the march but when it came to actual activity, women were denied the right to speak and were relegated to figurative roles in the back of the stage. As some female participants have noticed, the March can be remembered for the "I Have a Dream" speech but for most female activists it was a new awakening, forcing black women not only to fight for civil rights but also to engage in the Feminist movement.[9]
Noted achievements of the movements for civil rights in this area include the judicial victory in the Brown v. Board of Education case that nullified the legal article of "separate but equal" and made segregation legally impermissible, passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964[10] that banned discrimination in employment practices and public accommodations, passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that restored voting rights, and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.
Black Power
By 1965, the emergence of the Black Power movement (1966–1975) began to gradually eclipse the original "integrated power" aims of the movements for civil rights that had been espoused by Martin Luther King, Jr.. Advocates of Black Power argued for black self-determination, and asserted that the assimilation inherent in integration robs Africans of their common heritage and dignity; e.g., the theorist and activist Omali Yeshitela argues that Africans have historically fought to protect their lands, cultures and freedoms from European colonialists, and that any integration into the society which has stolen another people and their wealth is actually an act of treason.
Today, most Black Power advocates have not changed their self-sufficiency argument. Racism still exists worldwide and it is believed by some that blacks in the United States, on the whole, did not assimilate into U.S. "mainstream" culture, either by King's integration measures or by the self-sufficiency measures of Black Power—rather, blacks arguably became even more oppressed, this time partially by "their own" people in a new black stratum of the middle class and the ruling class. Black Power's advocates generally argue that the reason for this stalemate and further oppression of the vast majority of U.S. blacks is because Black Power's objectives have not had the opportunity to be fully carried through.
One of the most public manifestations of the Black Power movement took place in the 1968 Olympics, when two African-Americans stood on the podium doing a Black Power salute. This act is still remembered today as the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.
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