Creating Social Change: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract

Abstract The civil rights movement has had a lasting impact in the United States through its influence on social policies, political alignments, public opinion, and other social movements. Even though many of its fundamental goals were never realized and other gains have been rolled back, the civil rights movement is still viewed as one of the most influential social movements in U.S. history. For example, Aldon Morris, in The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, argues that the civil rights movement had “a profound impact on American society” (1984: 266). Similarly, Dennis Chong points to the movement as “the quintessential example of public-spirited collective action in our time” that “spark[ed] radical changes in American society” (1991: 1). Nevertheless, our understanding of how the civil rights movement (and movements more generally) brought about change is limited. I use the civil rights movement to demonstrate the theoretical insights that emerge from a closer analysis of the process by which movements generate change. In short, I argue that our understanding of the cause and form of movement impact is underdeveloped. In this chapter, I will compare explanatory strategies that focus on the organizations and the public activity (e.g., demonstrations, boycotts) of movements and propose that organizations and movement activity may work together to bring change. I begin by addressing general questions about movement outcomes. Then, I describe causal mechanisms through which movement organizations and events can produce broader changes. I illustrate these dynamics using examples from the civil rights movement from my own research on the Mississippi movement and from the broader scholarship on this influential case.