Freedom movements in the North

Abstract

Abstract The conditions of possibility for the development of the civil rights movement had emerged first in northern cities during the First World War. The intensification of racial discrimination in employment, housing, and publics schools together with more resources and freedom to mobilize resistance encouraged and enabled the founding of permanent protest organizations. Although the public focus of many of these organizations shifted to supporting the southern movement during the 1950s and early 1960s, northern protests continued. After the passage of major civil rights legislation, national attention and resources shifted again to northern cities and to issues of education, housing, and employment that recent civil rights legislation had not adequately addressed. The agenda of the ill-fated Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 epitomized the difficulties of mobilizing a national response to those problems.