Emmet Till
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Taking a Look Back at Emmett Till’s Brutal Murder on the Anniversary of the ‘Historic’ Jet Cover
By: #TeamEBONY Before he was killed, Till was kidnapped and tortured for allegedly flirting with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman and cashier at Bryant’s Grocery Store. Till became an icon in the long-established persecution of African-Americans in the United States. |
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The Impact of Emmett Till’s Murder
By: PBS American Experience Emmett Till's murder was a spark in the upsurge of activism and resistance that became known as the Civil Rights Movement. The sight of his brutalized body pushed many who had been content to stay on the sidelines directly into the fight. |
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The Untold Story of Emmett Luis Till
Directed by: Keith Beauchamp Never-before-seen testimony is included in this documentary on Emmett Louis Till, who, in 1955, was brutally murdered after he whistled at a white woman. The lynching was so gruesome that a media circus surrounded the trial--and what stunned the nation was not only the crime, but the blithe unconcern the citizens of a small Mississippi town felt toward the brutal murder of a Black teenager. His murder sparked the Civil Rights Movement. |
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4 Little Girls
Directed by: Spike Lee A documentary of the notorious racial terrorist bombing of an African-American church during the Civil Rights Movement |
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Gordon Parks Photography: 1940's-1950's
Photographs from famed photographer Gordon Parks, who is primarily known for documenting Black life and the Civil Rights Movement. |
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Gordon Parks "Segregation in the South"
In the wake of the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Life Magazine asked Parks to go to Alabama and document the racial tensions entrenched there. |
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Women in the Civil Rights Movement
By: Library of Congress Many women played important roles in the Civil Rights Movement, from leading local civil rights organizations to serving as lawyers on school segregation lawsuits. Their efforts to lead the movement were often overshadowed by men, who still get more attention and credit for its successes in popular historical narratives and commemorations. Many women experienced gender discrimination and sexual harassment within the movement and later turned towards the feminist movement in the 1970s. |
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Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Dubois
By: Gerald Horne In Race Woman, Gerald Horne draws a revealing portrait of this controversial figure who championed the Civil Rights Movement in America, the liberation struggles in Africa and the socialist struggles in Maoist China. Through careful analysis and use of personal correspondence, interviews, and previously unexamined documents, Horne explores her work as a Harlem Renaissance playwright, biographer, composer, teacher, novelist, left political activist, advisor and inspiration, who was a powerful historical actor. |
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Footsoldiers: Class of 1964
Directed by: Dr. Alvelyn Sanders The story of students from Spelman College, a Historically Black College for women. The Class of 1964 participated in the largest coordinated series of civil rights protests in Atlanta history, and their bold activism changed the world. As young women, they were the foot soldiers of the Atlanta University Center, who carried the Atlanta Student Movement through relentless non-violent demonstrations. |
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Spelman Civil Rights Foot Soldiers Featured in Documentary
By: Gracie Bonds Staples Despite their parent’s stern warming not to participate, members of Spelman College’s freshman class eagerly joined the student protests sweeping the country. |
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This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible
By: Charles E. Cobb Jr. Drawing on his experiences in the civil rights movement and giving voice to its participants, Cobb lays bare the paradoxical relationship between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the long history and importance of African Americans taking up arms to defend themselves against white supremacist violence. |
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A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks
By: Aldon D. Morris This review provides an analysis of the political and intellectual contributions made by the modern civil rights movement. It argues that the civil rights movement was able to overthrow the Southern Jim Crow regime be- cause of its successful use of mass nonviolent direct action. Because of its effectiveness and visibility, it served as a model that has been utilized by other movements both domestically and internationally. |
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Music of the Movement
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A Change is Gonna Come
Performed by: Sam Cooke The song was written after Sam Cooke and his wife were barred from entering a whites-only hotel. The song is his declaration that racism will come to an end. |
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People Get Ready
Performed by: The Impressions Written by the lead singer Curtis Mayfield, the song talks about freedom coming. |
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Freedom Songs
Songs sung by protesters during marches and in jail to keep their spirits lifted
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The Role of Freedom Songs
By: SNCC Freedom songs were a vital part of student organizing during the Civil Rights Movement. Borrowing from traditional church songs, freedom songs helped bring people together and hold them together.
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Watch online - freedom songs by Sweet Honey in the Rock (members of SNCC)
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Civil Rights Movement History, 1960
By: Bruce Hartford In most segregated communities, Black people were encouraged to shop at chain and department stores, but they were not permitted to eat at a store's "white-only" lunch counters and restaurants. And unlike whites, Blacks were not permitted to try on clothes prior to buying them or return purchases that did not fit. The sit-ins focused on the lunch-counters and restaurants, but all forms of discrimination were the ultimate target. |
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Durham Manifesto
By: Southern Conference on Race Relations Published in 1942 by a gathering of Black intellectuals and academics meeting in Durham, North Carolina. The document lists demands for interracial cooperation and development in the south. |
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Eyes on the Prize: Episode 1 Awakenings
Chronicles 1954 to 1965, from the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi to the battle of desegregation during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. |
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Eyes on the Prize Study Guide
A guide to the documentary series "Eyes on the Prize." This guide provides a timeline and context for the start of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. |
Read online
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"Fight the Power!" The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement
By: Leon F. Litwack The history of Black struggle, from enslavement to the Civil Rights Movement, and implications for the future. |
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Freedom Riders
By: Civil Rights Movement Archive In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court declared segregation in inter-state travel illegal. The Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) participated in bus and train rides across the south to test each state’s compliance with the law. |
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Freedom Riders
Directed by: Stanley Nelson Civil rights activists' challenge racial segregation on public transportation by attempting to travel across the south. |
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Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice
By: Raymond Arsenault The book tells the story of the Freedom Riders, a diverse group of people who in the spring and summer of 1961 put their lives on the line, riding buses through the U.S. south to challenge segregation in interstate transport. |
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How the Children of Birmingham Changed the Civil Rights Movement
By: Lottie L. Joiner, The Daily Beast In 1963, over one thousand students faced fire hoses and police dogs to march in support of civil rights. This article contains interviews with participants 50 years after the march and examines the impact of the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. |
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Looking Back on 1963 Fifty Years Later
By: Jon Greenbaum An analysis of the Birmingham Campaign—a series of lunch counter sit-ins, marches, arrests, and the Children’s Crusade that resulted in the passing of federal civil rights legislation. |
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Montgomery Bus Boycott
By: Stanford University's The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks on 1 December 1955, the Montgomery bus boycott was a 13-month mass protest that ended with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. The Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) coordinated the boycott, and its president, Martin Luther King, Jr., became a prominent civil rights leader as international attention focused on Montgomery. |
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The Black Civil Rights Movement
By: George Burson This article attempts to present the Civil Rights Movement from a historical perspective by dealing with the following questions: 1) Why were Blacks segregated and disenfranchised prior to the movement? 2) Why did the movement take place during the 1950s and 1960s? 3) What were the immediate results of the movement? 4) What is the present condition of Blacks in American society? |
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The Children’s Crusade: When the Youth of Birmingham Marched for Justice
By: History Channel Facing a dwindling movement in Alabama, civil rights leaders recruited Black students to revive the march to end segregation. |
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The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past
By: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Today, the history of the Civil Rights Movement is retold in a manner that “distorts and suppresses” the truth, preventing the movement’s lessons from being applied to the present. |
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