Civil rights movement - Politics in Minutes (2016)

Politics in Minutes (2016)

Civil rights movement

Despite its avowed commitment to equality and rights set out in its Declaration of Independence, the USA denied rights to all but privileged white men until well into the 20th century. While it took a civil war to achieve the abolition of slavery, the substantial black population remained without equal rights and suffered segregation in the southern states from the notorious ‘Jim Crow laws’.

At the beginning of the 20th century, black activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois helped to instigate campaigns for equal rights, which gained momentum to become a major civil rights movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King in the 1960s, segregation was brought to an end. Similar struggles for civil rights were ongoing, notably in South Africa, where the white-minority government’s oppressive system of apartheid was finally brought to an end by pressure from an international anti-apartheid movement and the inspiration of the leader of the African National Congress party, Nelson Mandela.

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