Civil Rights Movement Research Articles

Black emergency department visits for schizophrenia/psychosis following the police killing of George Floyd: An empirical test of “protest psychosis”

In the United States, there exists a large disparity in the diagnosis of schizophrenia between Black and White individuals. Some of the symptoms associated with schizophrenia, such as agitation, delusions, and non-compliance, were previously linked to a now-discontinued condition known as “Protest Psychosis.” This proposed subtype of schizophrenia diagnosis emerged during the 1950s and 1960s in response to racial tensions during the Civil Rights movement and preceded an increase in schizophrenia diagnosis among Black populations, potentially leading to racial disparities in this psychiatric condition that continue to permeate the modern context.In May 2020, the police killing of George Floyd sparked widespread protests through the Black Lives Matter Movement. Given the historical precedence of “protest psychosis” in response to the Civil Rights Movement, we examined disparities in Emergency Department (ED) visits diagnosed as schizophrenia/psychosis immediately following the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020. We used monthly data on ED visits from January 2016 to December 2020 across 5 University of California health systems. We used ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) time-series analysis to derive the residual values of ED visits diagnosed as schizophrenia/psychosis among Black persons and examined whether these residuals increased selectively among Black persons in June 2020. Results from time-series analyses indicate 34 additional ED visits above expected levels diagnosed as schizophrenia/psychosis among Black persons in June 2020 (p < 0.05), amounting to a 25% increase in these visits among Black persons. These results indicate a perpetuation of historical trends and cohere with expectations from the legacy of “Protest Psychosis”.

A Minority View: Reynell Parkins and Creative Tension in the Civil Rights Movement of Texas, 1965–1975

A Minority View: Reynell Parkins and Creative Tension in the Civil Rights Movement of Texas, 1965–1975

Introduction: Toward a Radical International Thought

Bringing together political theorists of empire with critical scholars of international relations who have interrogated the methodological nationalism (indeed the fetish of the nation-state) of their disciplines, this special issue examines the multifaceted dimensions (including political, ideological, and psycho-affective) of a radical international thought. Going beyond articulations of anti-colonial struggle at the national level, the issue charts radical theories and praxes of insurgency and revolutionary violence and brings an internationalist framework to bear on historical moments like the Spanish Civil War, the rise of anti-imperial development alternatives, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and others. In doing so, the issue spotlights thinkers who are rarely read in a global register, such as Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Jalāl Āl-e Ahmad, Ghassan Kanafani, and Eqbal Ahmad, among others. Furthermore, the introduction argues, the essays track these understudied articulations of radical international thought in the context of the traveling projects of imperial domination to which they responded. These radical figures’ political thought and action, in turn, inspired further imperial responses, such as political assassinations in the Third World, counterrevolutionary tactics, and other modes of violence in the service of empire.

Beyond Militarisation: Reclaiming Gandhian Ideals for a Harmonious World

In a world grappling with conflict and violence, the principles of Mahatma Gandhi pertaining to non-violence and peace offer a beacon of hope to all the global leaders (Anita Bhatt, 2019). The paper provides insights into the relevance and applications of Gandhian principles in today's context, and emphasizes the need to reclaim these ideals in order to make this world more harmonious and a better place to work. As militarisation and global tensions escalate, as evident from the increasing trend of military expenditure, there is a pressing need to embrace Gandhian values of truth, non-violence, and compassion. Gandhi's philosophy, rooted in truth, non-violence, and compassion, resonates in today's context of increasing militarisation and global tensions. The article discusses how Gandhian principles can inform efforts in conflict resolution, sustainable development, and human rights promotion. The Global Peace Index (GPI) and Global Terrorism Index (GTI) reports highlight the urgency of reclaiming Gandhian ideals. The GPI shows a 0.42 percent decline in global peacefulness, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine driving the deterioration. The GTI reveals a 22 percent increase in deaths from terrorism in 2023. The article also presents case studies, such as the Salt March and the Civil Rights Movement, showcasing the power of Gandhian non-violence in inspiring social change around the globe. It also discusses challenges, including the military-industrial complex and historical conflicts, and opportunities, such as non-violent resistance movements and international cooperation, in moving beyond militarisation. Gandhian principles of nonviolence, truth, self-reliance, and respect for all beings can help us strive towards a more peaceful and harmonious world. The article calls for collective efforts and commitment to reclaiming these ideals for a safe and brighter future for all.

Multicultural education and global citizenship: Literature review

The aim of this study is to conduct a systematic exploration of the literature, delving into the realm of multicultural education and global citizenship. It seeks to comprehensively understand these concepts by tracing the origins and evolution of multicultural education, drawing connections to its inception during the Civil Rights Movement, and spotlighting the contributions of influential scholars in this field. The concept of global citizenship is also examined, emphasizing its relevance in an interconnected world and its alignment with the United Nations' development goals. The manuscript identifies the significance of studying multicultural education and global citizenship, including its role in promoting social cohesion, preparing students for an interconnected world, and fostering responsible citizenship. Intersectionality means promoting a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of social issues and advocating for more comprehensive approaches to equity and justice. This review has the potential to contribute to the understanding and implementation of effective multicultural education and global citizenship programs. Overall, this review of the literature aims to address literature gaps and challenges in the field and provide valuable information for educators, policymakers, and stakeholders involved in multicultural education and global citizenship.

Peran Gerakan Hak Sipil dalam Membentuk Masyarakat Amerika: Analisis Sejarah dan Dampaknya, 1950-1960

This study analyzes the important role of the Civil Rights Movement in shaping United States society through a historical approach and its impact. It explores the movement's long history, from its 19th-century roots to the monumental struggles of the 20th century, revealing how it emerged in response to rampant social, racial, and political injustice. By examining key figures, strategies, and important events, this study traces the evolution of the movement from the anti-slavery era to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, it examines the movement's impact on American society, highlighting significant transformations in law, policy, and societal perceptions of civil rights and equality. The study also documents the movement's legacy in driving systemic change and shaping views on inclusion, justice, and diversity. In conclusion, the Civil Rights Movement has played a crucial role in shaping modern American society by laying the foundation for progress toward equality, justice, and human rights, with its legacy continuing to influence ongoing struggles for a more just and inclusive society.

A Case Study of Integrating Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) in Heritage Bridge Documentation: The Edmund Pettus Bridge

The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Selma, Alabama, a symbol of the American Civil Rights Movement and an exemplar of early 20th-century engineering, stands as a testament to the progress and challenges of its era. The bridge, recognized for its pivotal role in the 1965 “Bloody Sunday” conflict and the following Selma to Montgomery marches for voting rights, also represents significant engineering achievements with its distinctive design and construction methodology. In this study, the research team presents a comprehensive framework for documenting heritage bridges by utilizing Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) technology, supplemented by other Reality Capture (RC) techniques, including Structure from Motion (SfM), 360-degree photography, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), and integrating the data within a Building Information Modeling (BIM) environment. The focus on the Edmund Pettus Bridge case study demonstrates how this novel approach can capture the intricate details of its structural and architectural features while preserving its historical narratives. The documentation outcomes, including a detailed BIM model and a set of Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) drawings, highlight the effectiveness of combining TLS and BIM in conserving unconventional heritage structures like bridges. This paper also discusses the technological challenges encountered, such as dealing with heavy traffic and environmental constraints during data acquisition and developing the BIM model and drawings. It outlines the strategies implemented to address these issues. This research contributes to preserving a severely under-represented American National Historic Landmark (NHL). It sets a precedent for documenting other non-building heritage structures, balancing technological advancements with historical integrity.

T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.: Tupac Shakur as a Symbol of Black Rebellion for the “Pac Babies” of Black Lives Matter! 1

The late Bay Area Hip Hop legend Shock G stated that Tupac Shakur “rhymed from this pit of his stomach,” asserting that Tupac’s greatness was in the potency and relevance of his message more than the technical skill of his lyricism. Tattooed across the stomach that Tupac rhymed from was the acronym “T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E.” Tupac proclaimed that it stood for “The Hate You Gave Little Infants, Fucks Everyone,” a statement that reflected his worldview and echoed sentiments of those like Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and Huey P. Newton who viewed youth as the centerpiece of the struggle for Black Liberation. Though Tupac was murdered in 1996, his lyrics and interviews resurfaced in the aftermath of the police killing of Oscar Grant in 2009 and introduced a generation born after his death to his thug persona and T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. ideology as relavent, and accessible symbols of Black Rebellion. This article explores how Pac Babies, Black youth born after Tupac’s death, have adopted his Persona and Ideology to inform their entry into the Post Racial, social media era of the Black Freedom Struggle. I offer that, by providing T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. as an alternative to the politics of respectability of the Civil Rights Movement and being resurrected as mythical super hero battling police violence, Tupac influenced both the street protests and social media engagement during the protest phase of "Black Lives Matter!".

Taking a longer historical view of America’s renaming moment: The role of Black onomastic activism within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Renaming practices are increasingly deployed as a political technology in USA campaigns to do greater justice to the rights, histories, and identities of historically marginalized groups. African American social actors and groups have been especially active in this onomastic or naming activism. To fully make sense of this renaming moment, which is often popularly misrepresented as brand new, we outline an approach that takes a longer view of the history of Black naming by drawing together ideas from the field of Black geographies, specifically Katherine McKittrick’s ideas about Black livingness, and our work in critical place naming studies. As an illustration, we conduct a study of SNCC and the way civil rights workers and mobilized communities valued names and deployed onomastic tactics—the (re)naming of people, places, and institutions as part of their creative and grass-roots activism. These onomastic tactics facilitated and accompanied SNCC’s gathering of antiracist intelligence, constructing a subaltern transportation system, and carrying out a revolutionary remaking of place and affective atmosphere in the face of oppression. We not only seek to add a needed racial genealogy of ongoing naming struggles in America, but also use SNCC’s onomastic tactics to tell a story of the Civil Rights Movement generally not well understood and to expand what counts as activism and who counts as activists beyond canonized celebrations of the Movement in popular media and education. As an important guide to current naming struggles, the SNCC experience is instructive of the fact that renaming alone cannot count as liberation. Rather, the efficacy of naming as a civil rights practice comes from the assembling and mobilizing of names with the broader capacities of people, material places, and political practices and discourses.

Ruben Salazar: Beyond Postage Stamp Memory

ABSTRACT In 2008, Ruben Salazar was memorialized on a US postage stamp, one of several media icons of moral courage that included John Hersey, George Polk, and Martha Gellhorn, so honored at the same time. Unlike most postage stamp journalists, Salazar—whose career is a study in civil rights reportage—has largely faded from public memory and journalism history. Salazar lived and died civil rights reporting, killed by authorities while covering a Mexican American Vietnam War protest. This essay traces Salazar’s impact as a narrator of the Mexican American freedom struggle, putting his work at the Los Angeles Times, and at Spanish-language station KMEX, in context with the broader civil rights movement.

Review Essay: The American Civil Rights Movement as a Military Campaign

Thomas E. Ricks, Waging a Good War. A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2022. Ricks’s book has been labelled a “tour de force” by “interpreting one of America’s most consequential social movements as a classic military operation” (Nightingale). Ricks “examines the struggle for racial equality through the analytical framework of military history” (Grenier), focusing on the Movement, the people who shaped it, its long-term goals, its strategies, its actions, and its consequences.

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) Survey and Building Information Modeling (BIM) of The Edmund Pettus Bridge: A Case Study

Abstract. The comprehensive digital documentation of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a symbol of the American Civil Rights Movement located in Selma, Alabama, serves as an example of integrating Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) technologies for the conservation of heritage infrastructure. This study aimed to employ advanced TLS and other Reality Capture (RC) techniques to generate a high-resolution, three-dimensional representation of the bridge, thereby aiding in its structural assessment and preservation. Utilizing TLS alongside 360-degree photography and UAV surveys, the project achieved detailed coverage of the bridge's architectural and structural features. The data collected was processed into a BIM model using Autodesk Revit, offering comprehensive analysis and preservation planning. The findings from this research highlighted previously undetected areas of material degradation and structural vulnerabilities, emphasizing the value of TLS and BIM in revealing critical insights into the condition of heritage structures. This project preserved the digital memory of an iconic Civil Rights landmark and set a framework for applying digital documentation technologies in heritage infrastructure conservation. The success of this methodology offers a valuable precedent for future conservation efforts, showcasing how RC technologies can enhance the preservation of historical sites and ensure their legacy is maintained for future generations.

Echoes from the past: How America's major moments shaped mental health policies through a young adult lens.

This commentary examines key mental health policies across four transformative historical periods in America: the aftermath of World War II (1939-1946), the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), the Great Recession (2007-2009), and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2023). The post-WWII era established today's foundational mental health system, emphasizing military personnel, as reflected in the National Mental Health Act of 1946. During the Civil Rights Movement, the focus shifted toward community equality, leading to the Community Mental Health Act of 1963. The economic challenges of the Great Recession, especially affecting young adults, prompted a deep dive into the Affordable Care Act. The social isolation and economic suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic led to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The article highlights the need for a more inclusive policy development approach, one that recognizes and integrates the unique perspectives of young adults in shaping mental health policies and discourse. It concludes with recommendations to guide future policy evolution for enhanced mental health and societal well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Bobby J. Smith II: Food Power Politics—The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

Bobby J. Smith II: Food Power Politics—The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

Review: New Mexico’s Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, by Ramón A. Gutiérrez

Review: <i>New Mexico’s Moses: Reies López Tijerina and the Religious Origins of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement</i>, by Ramón A. Gutiérrez

Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era: An “Integrated Effort.” by Beth Fowler (review)

Rock and Roll, Desegregation Movements, and Racism in the Post–Civil Rights Era: An “Integrated Effort.” by Beth Fowler (review)

The Role of Black Christian Beliefs in the Civil Rights Movement: A Paradigm for a Better Understanding of Religious Freedom

This paper builds upon and extends Christian and legal scholarship on the civil rights movement by illuminating a climate of religious freedom that served as a catalyst for and was integral to the success of the spirited activism of the civil rights movement. To date, scholars have not extensively considered how the expansion of religious freedom in church and state jurisprudence both directly and indirectly created a climate that contributed to the success of the CRM, and how advancements in civil rights impacted the broader revolution occurring in constitutional rights. The climate of religious freedom included court support for evangelizing in residentially exclusive areas, exemptions for conscientious opposers from participating in oath swearing and other ceremonies, and exemptions from other general laws that unduly inhibited the free exercise of religious rights.

From Brazil to The Planet: politics of race in the american black press

In the passage of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, Brazilian and American Black intellectuals expressed their views on racial disputes over the Black press. This article evaluates views of Black politics in the U.S. and Brazil as an essential grounding of the struggle for civil rights, understanding the past of both countries as emerging from a collective experience of discrimination. The primary sources are the letters written by J. S. Moore, an African American intellectual who lived in Bahia, Brazil. Moore addressed his writings to newspapers such as the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and particularly the Richmond Planet. His critics' articles debated directly with editors from 1917 to the 1930s. The dialogue between the American continents also sheds light on Brazilians’ racial issues. It gives us a more complex perspective of the global fight against racism and makes it possible to understand the potential choices for resistance among diasporic societies.

Machine Learning for Predicting Intent of Radical Action in Text Data

Many cases of radicalism, especially violent radicalism, manifest within the context of inter-ethnic conflict and war. Research in this domain has significantly contributed to our overarching comprehension of the issue. This form of radicalism is inherently linked to the dynamics of group affiliation. However, our focus here is directed towards the individual motivation driving radical actions. While radical actions may encompass dynamics of group affiliation (e.g., the most radical pro-life activists being members of the Army of God), they also possess a substantial individual component. For instance, numerous attacks on abortion doctors or clinics are categorized as ’lone-wolf terrorism’. In this study, we sought to examine whether state-of-the-art Machine Learning tech- nology for text analysis could effectively discern the intent behind radical actions from user-generated content. We analyzed a diverse array of radical texts published online by various activists, including anarchists, Iranian guerrilla members, Indian revolution- aries, activists from the US civil rights movement, and The Army of God. Our analysis reveals that Machine Learning models can successfully identify potential signals indica- tive of the author’s intent behind radical actions.

Hip Hop, Social Reproduction, and the Possible Selves of Young Black Men

Twenty-seven years ago, the documentary Hoop Dreams solidified a theory—that the world of athletics was one of the few places where adolescent Black males could find success. By the late 1990s, researchers were framing athletics as the next direction in the Civil Rights Movement. In this article, I argue that the historical framing of Black boys in athletics—as a way up, a way out—is similar to the contemporary framing of Black boys in Hip Hop Based Education (HHBE). Using an ethnographic case example of the Homeboys, a group of adolescent Black males experiencing homelessness, I maintain that HHBE, without critical implementation and reflection, limits the possible selves of Black boys in socially reproductive ways. Unlike Hoop Dreams, which historically created an incentive to stay invested in formal educational settings, HHBE offers little “possible selves” development for young Black men. This research asserts that if HHBE, and the myriad ways Hip Hop is taken up in formal and informal educational settings is not dually paired with the critical process of institutional actors envisioning all the possible selves that black boys can become, then it becomes another hegemonic socially reproductive tool wielded by educators.