Black Lives Matter, Then and Now

Abstract

The current grassroots ‘‘Black Lives Matter’’ campaign resonates with the freedom movements of the 1960s. Today’s attempts at organizing youth against police brutality and other social injustices recall moments nearly five decades earlier when leaders from groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), as well as local organizations, fought for the civil rights and voting rights of all Americans. The 2014 Paramount Pictures film release, Selma, and the New-York Historical society’s exhibition, Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery March by Stephen Somerstein, remind audiences how much ground America has covered while also pointing out the distances it still must travel. In the mid-1960s, the Civil Rights Movement reached fever pitch. The United States faced extreme racial tensions, particularly in the South. Civil rights organizations challenged racial segregation and fought for the right to vote for all citizens. On March 7, 1965, nearly eight hundred people led by local and national civil rights leaders like James Bevel, Amelia Boynton, John