Civil Rights Movement Research Articles

The Evolution of Activism: From Civil Rights to Digital Advocacy

This paper investigates the transformation of activism from the Civil Rights Movement to the modern era of digital advocacy. Activism has historically served as a powerful catalyst for societal change, shaping public policy, social norms, and cultural values. From civil rights demonstrations in the mid-20th century to today’s online campaigns, the methodologies and mediums of activism have evolved significantly, mirroring shifts in technology, political ideologies, and social dynamics. The paper traces these changes, highlighting key historical movements, the integration of environmental and social justice issues, and the rapid rise of digital platforms as vehicles for mass mobilization. Despite the efficiency and global reach of digital activism, challenges such as misinformation, digital privacy, and the sustainability of online engagement persist. Examining the interplay between technology and activism, the study ultimately considers the opportunities and limitations that digital platforms present for the future of social advocacy. Keywords: Activism, Civil Rights Movement, Social Justice, Digital Advocacy, Environmental Activism.

“All Crookedly Blessed in God’s Mercy”

Bruce Springsteen has repeatedly reinvented himself through a long process of vocational discernment that often draws on a distinctly Catholic imagination. In this process, he has repeatedly explored complex relationships between religious faith, American identity, older traditions of popular music, and race. At pivotal moments in his career, his vocational discernment has led him to the work of musicians raised in Pentecostal and Holiness churches. From this perspective, this essay explores the relationship between Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” and Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “This Train,” the gospel-inspired song that she first recorded in 1938. Both of these songs arise from Christian imaginations nurtured in local communities of faith—in Tharpe’s case, a congregation of the Church of God in Christ in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, and in Springsteen’s case, an immigrant Catholic parish in Freehold, New Jersey. Tharpe draws directly from Holiness traditions, combining her belief in a distinctly embodied version of sanctification with the religious practice of tongues speaking, most powerfully in her guitar improvisations. Like Springsteen, Tharpe brings to contemporary music the performance dynamics of Holiness and Pentecostal preachers, possessed by the Holy Spirit, accompanied by a choir, before an enraptured congregation. In these respects, the resemblances between these two songs are not a matter of “direct influence.” Rather, these resemblances provide a critical test case in a kind of artistic influence that is multi-directional, unpredictable, and often subversive. They arise from shared sources, particularly a long tradition of train songs that find their way into country and gospel music. Even more important, they arise from similarities in the faith traditions—and the religious imaginations—of the two musicians. From this perspective, Tharpe and Springsteen both belong to a larger tradition of “gospel redemption” in American popular music, which becomes particularly evident when “Land of Hope and Dreams” ends with a cover of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready,” invoking the ideals of the early civil rights movement and, at the same time, our repeated failures to achieve these ideals.

Solidarity and colonial analogies in Irish republican feminists’ discursive practices, 1890s–1980s

Irish republican feminists across twentieth-century Ireland occupied an ambivalent position in the Global North. The Irish were complicit in imperialism in the non-West or Global South. However, they also operated against an evolving backdrop of colonialism, violence and resistance, spanning the all-Ireland anti-colonial campaign, partition, and postcolonial civil war, as well as the late twentieth-century civil rights movement and ensuing ‘Troubles’ (1969–1998) north of the disputed border. Irish women were, therefore, subject to various iterations of violent patriarchy informed by British imperialism, anti-colonialism, settler-colonialism or postcoloniality. Using the texts of a small number of prominent Irish republican feminists, including Helena Molony (1883–1967) and Hanna Sheehy Skeffington (1877–1946), as well as Bernadette Devlin (1947–) and Roisin Boyd (?–) later in the century, this article examines political women’s attempts to understand their positionality and, through this, formulate their identity. To do so, I am indebted to Global South feminist and ‘feminist of colour’ epistemologies, beginning with Chandra Mohanty’s understanding of relevant terminology as denoting ‘political and analytic sites and methodologies’ rather than geographical or spatial constructs. I hope to use this theorising in a way that does not perpetrate a recolonising of ‘women of colour’ knowledge.

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights by Dylan C. Penningroth (review)

Recovered History: Chicanx Representation in the Dual Credit Classroom

Abstract Recent legislation in Texas effectively prohibits K-12 educators from addressing issues of racism and explicitly prevents teachers from discussing the place of racism in Chicanx relations across Texas history. University educators, and dual-credit instructors especially, must intercede if future generations of learners are going to encounter the true and complete history of border culture, colonialism, and the complex relationship that Chicanx people have with the Southern region of the United States. I argue that the use of digital archives and recovered history like the internet project Are We Good Neighbors? Mapping Discrimination Against Mexicans in 1940s Texas, which catalogs racial discrimination through individual testimony, the Library of Congress database of Mexican American documents, and Chicano! History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement offer educators an opportunity to incorporate key research skills into the classroom while also establishing a linear context for liminality as a feature of identity formation in contemporary Chicanx literature. The combination of research and critical inquiry is vital to instructing students on the realities of Chicano relations and introducing them to the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement, a key element of American history that is not only conspicuously absent from most K-12 curricula but also an inescapable influence on identity formation and contemporary discussions around Mexican American relations. The use of digital archives to recover and center Chicanx history is actionable on a small scale and serves as an important opportunity to resist anti-ethnic legislation in real time, a vital act of subversion that sidesteps prolonged challenges to censorship at the legislative level.

Delegitimizing protest: Psychology's omissions and commissions

AbstractPsychological research has failed to take accountability for the ways it has aligned with State interests, at the expense of solidarity with Black people protesting the criminal legal system and pursuing liberation in the U.S. Through a case study analysis of six psychological research articles, ranging from 1968 to 2022, this paper tracks evidence of psychology's alignment with the State's interests. Evidence emerges in clinical disease(s) assigned to enslaved and incarcerated Black people (drapetomania, protest psychosis) and in empirical assumptions and (il)logics binding research methods and analyses. While theoretical and methodological frameworks, language (“patients,” “rioters,” “ghetto residents,” “minority group members”) and levels of analysis (psyche, personality, social, community, identity, movement) evolve over time and across subdisciplines, racialized carceral ideologies persist across psychological research approaches. By tracing carceral footprints across this vast psychological literature, this analysis reveals how traditional empirical research weaponized pathologizing and criminalizing accounts to delegitimize Black protests of State violence from the Civil Rights Movement to the Movement for Black Lives and beyond.

Black Informational Past: History, Data, and Archives of Chicago's ‘New Negro’ Wonder books

ABSTRACTIn 1927, an organized group of Black college and graduate students from the Washington Intercollegiate Club of Chicago compiled a rich informational reference text reflecting the mosaic of Black life in Chicago, IL, USA. This effort resulted in the publication of two editions of the Intercollegian Wonder Book in 1927 and 1929. These books are reflective of the New Negro movement and cultural renaissance of the Black urban population in the early 20th Century. Our project examines the influence of the Wonder Books through methods that express the layered informational context of a Black community. The poster reflects the iterative development of a phased descriptive, archival, data and visual analysis of an historic Black Community. such as citation tracking, genealogical research of individual members, and analysis of data usage by the club's active students.

White by Force and the Racialized State of Exception

White identity is forged through violence. The moment that whites aspired to be white, they set themselves up for immediate, inevitable failure: they try to inhabit an identity of superiority that cannot exist, and this sets them into a perpetual identity crisis, an existential emergency that threatens who they are and who they think they want to be. The ensuing identity formation—white by force—comprises an entire set of strategies, tactics, institutions, and structures meant to prop up an inherently failure-based identity and to do so through brutality, resentment, anger, contrived fear, and murder. Such an identity impacts everyone, including white people themselves, in devastating ways. In what following article, I will put forward a theoretical model called “White by Force and the Racialized State of Exception”, conceptualizing key aspects of this model to provide an emerging vocabulary for studying, discussing, and dismantling white identity, violence, authoritarianism, racism, and the existential crises that we are all facing. Our discourse around race and racism, since the Civil Rights Era, needs new language from which to diagnose an inherently violent identity formation that ultimately benefits no one, especially not people of color or white people from lower socioeconomic strata.

The Reflection of African American History and Culture in African American Literature

This paper explores the intricate relationship between African American history, culture, and literature, highlighting how African American literary works serve as a profound reflection of the community's historical and cultural journey. By examining significant historical periods such as slavery, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and contemporary issues, the paper delves into the impact of these events on African American identity and cultural expression. Additionally, it analyzes the representation of African American cultural elements like music, oral traditions, and religious practices in literature. Through a detailed examination of selected literary works, the paper reveals how African American authors articulate the complexities of their experiences, capturing themes of resilience, resistance, and identity. This study underscores the importance of literature in preserving and conveying the rich history and culture of African Americans, offering a deeper understanding of their enduring struggle for justice and equality.

The “People’s Tour” as Conflict Pedagogy: Using Site Visits to Engage Students with the Struggle for Civil Rights

Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has a rich history of Civil Rights struggles and its people continue to resist racial oppression in systems of housing, labor, education, policing, transportation, and others. Dating to 1892, Winston-Salem State University (WSSU), a historically Black college/university (HBCU), has attracted students who have become organizers and activists in the fight for social justice in the local community. These include Theodosia Simpson, a leader of the radical Black women-led tobacco workers union; Carl Matthews, who started the first victorious lunch counter sit-in in North Carolina; and Dr. Larry Little, who co-founded the first official Black Panther Party chapter in the South. In that tradition, I have developed a “People’s History Tour of Winston-Salem” that takes current WSSU students outside the classroom to learn about the Civil Rights struggle at a variety of important sites. This critical pedagogy has students apply key sociological concepts that bolster their understanding of racial stratification and efforts to eradicate it. The goals of this assignment are for students to explore classroom curriculum about White supremacy, racial capitalism, and social movements at relevant historical and contemporary sites in Winston-Salem. By doing so, I aim for students to have transformative experiences that tie their readings and classroom discussions to the community spaces where that material comes alive.

(Re)Imagined Black Informational Past: Chicago’s New Negro Intercollegiate Club and the Wonder Books, 1927 & 1929

In 1927, the collective of Black students known as the Washington Intercollegiate Club of Chicago went out into their community to collect data about the various components of the Black experience. This research turned into the two editions of the Intercollegian Wonder Book. The Wonder Books present a Black past that notes a time of youth envisioning their communitythrough the lens of the New Negro Movement, galvanizing to uplift and promote a new Black present in Chicago. Our project tracks the impact of the Wonder Books by examining how they have been referenced in research and journalism since their publication.

Power in the Social Gospel: Howard Kester, Claude Williams and the Southern Tenant Farmers Union

This essay explores how social gospelers in the U.S. South organized for relational power by building institutions for economic and political democracy in the 1930s and 1940s. In their organizing, Howard Kester and Claude Williams built relational power and institutions that fed the institutional ecology of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. While it might be surprising to find a worthwhile analysis of power by social gospelers like Kester and Williams, they keenly understood the role of power in theology, the work of the church, and movement building, especially as they organized for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU). Kester and Williams built relational power by building institutions through which grassroots people organized to build political and economic power to confront the ravages of racial capitalism.

Her Fierce Faith: Contextualizing Ellen Tarry as a Catholic Convert and Foremother of Black Lives Matter Activism

Abstract: This article contextualizes the timely significance of Ellen Tarry as an African American teacher, writer, activist, and Catholic convert who engaged in interracial justice before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement. It similarly presents her as a foremother of present-day Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism. Locating her divergences from other Black writers across time, this analysis features the distinctive admixture of secular and sacred values pervading her writings and work as a Harlem Renaissance journalist, autobiographer, and pioneering author of picture books for Black children and youth that promoted collaborative Catholic social action on behalf of her race.

Fragmentation of Identities: Adrienne Kennedy's Funnyhouse of a Negro

Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) is an Obie winning play penned by a prolific writer, Adrienne Kennedy. Premiered at the 4th Street Theatre in New York City, the play has earned significant recognition for its innovative approach and poignant exploration of racial and psychological themes. The play was awarded with an Obie for Best New American Play in 1965, marking a significant milestone in Kennedy’s career and in the landscape of American Drama. Set against the backdrop of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, the play reflects the era’s racial tensions and societal pressures. The play follows Sarah, a young black woman struggling with a fractured identity. Through a series of disjointed scenes and dialogues, Sarah adopts multiple personas that represent different facets of her racial, cultural, and psychological self. This paper aims to analyze Sarah’s identity by exploring the symbolism of each persona and the impact of her parents. This paper argues that Sarah’s personas are not arbitrary but represent her profound psychological conflict and the impossibility of reconciling disparate aspects of her identity.

Influence of Historical Events on American Literature of the 21st Century

Purpose: The aim of the study was to assess the influence of historical events on American literature of the 21st century. Materials and Methods: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: The terrorist attacks marked a significant turning point, inspiring a wave of literature that grapples with themes of loss, trauma, and the complexities of patriotism. This era saw the rise of novels, memoirs, and poems that explore the personal and collective impact of the event, such as Don DeLillo's "Falling Man" and Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close." Additionally, the economic downturn of 2008 influenced a body of work that critiques capitalism and explores themes of financial instability and inequality, exemplified by novels like John Lanchester's "Capital" and Jess Walter's "The Financial Lives of the Poets." The rise of social movements, such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, has significantly shaped contemporary American literature, prompting a surge in works addressing racial injustice, gender equality, and social activism. Authors like Ta-Nehisi Coates with "Between the World and Me" and Angie Thomas with "The Hate U Give" provide powerful narratives that reflect the ongoing struggle for civil rights and social justice. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Historical materialism, trauma theory and cultural theory may be used to anchor future studies on assessing the influence of historical events on American literature of the 21st century. Encouraging the inclusion of diverse voices and perspectives in literary production and academic studies is essential. Government and private institutions should provide funding and grants specifically aimed at supporting literary works that address significant historical events.

United for what and for whom? An analysis of White Christian nationalism in a 2023 school board election campaign

Public school board elections have become cultural battlegrounds as groups with opposing views on education, politics, religion, and social and cultural issues vie to shape public education, their communities, and the nation. To date, little research has examined White Christian nationalism as a political force shaping these elections. This paper analyzes the November 2023 State College Area School District (SCASD) school board election in a polarized Pennsylvania town, focusing on the five “United for SCASD” candidates. Using public data (e.g., Facebook, websites, radio interviews, emails from candidates to board and administrators), the paper examines how these candidates’ rhetoric – largely drawing on Civil Rights-era minoritarian framing – mobilized key White Christian nationalist tropes such as persectuion and voicelessness. The findings explore how candidates characterized desirable versus undesirable types of unity and diversity. For instance, they advocated for focusing on students’ “common humanity” and teaching American exceptionalism as unifying strategies, argued for “parents’ rights” to opt children out of objectionable material, and asserted the need for “viewpoint diversity” on the board. However, they opposed the board’s alleged ideological uniformity and “divisive” initiatives and curricula focusing on systemic inequities, especially concerning race/racism and gender. The data show some evidence of White Christian nationalist tropes, particularly beliefs in American exceptionalism, the trope of persecution and voicelessness, the assertion of a common cultural template for US public schools, and us-them binaries, in this case, between liberal board members and their constituents versus the U4SCASD slate and more "conservative," often rural, families.

Unveiling the Mask of Asia: Representation of Western and Eastern Values in Crazy Rich Asians

The release of the film Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 caused a sensation. Its all Asian cast and commercial success are extolled as a breakthrough for Asian American cinema. The author attempts to explore how the film presents the Western and Eastern values and cultures by applying Representation theory, constructed in the intersectionality of gender, race and class. The author finds the film’s release is probably the byproduct of the Feminist Movements and the Civil Rights Movement and that the representation on Eastern values is stereotyped by Western-centered ideas, thus Asian American still have a long road before they can effect a change.

Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement

“There are some customs in the U.S. which are stronger than laws”: DeHaven Hinkson and the Fight for Equality in the Pennsylvania National Guard

ABSTRACT This article examines a little-known fight by African American veterans to desegregate the Pennsylvania National Guard from 1920 to 1948. This narrative follows the life of DeHaven Hinkson, a Philadelphia doctor, veteran, and one of the driving forces behind the movement. Building on scholarship of post–World War I activism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, this article demonstrates the need for scholars to consider not only widespread and national civil rights activism, but also the local and more traditional movements as influential in breaking the grip of Jim Crow on the United States. This article also suggests the need to examine conservative African American efforts at obtaining civil rights and how that conservatism remained a part of civil rights activism beyond the 1940s.

Learning About the Civil Rights Movement Through Multi-Perspective Biographical YA Graphic Novels

No single story can represent fully and comprehensively a complex historical movement such as the Civil Rights fight for freedom and social justice. Learning about this movement through multi-perspective biographical young adult graphic novels cultivates in students a nuanced understanding of this historical struggle, making it more concrete and relatable for student readers. In this article, we describe how teachers can use graphic novels from diverse perspectives for teaching the Civil Rights Movement.