fight for rights essay

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Essay on Human Rights: Samples in 500 and 1500

Updated on
Jun 20, 2024

Essay writing is an integral part of the school curriculum and various academic and competitive exams like IELTS , TOEFL , SAT , UPSC , etc. It is designed to test your command of the English language and how well you can gather your thoughts and present them in a structure with a flow. To master your ability to write an essay, you must read as much as possible and practise on any given topic. This blog brings you a detailed guide on how to write an essay on Human Rights , with useful essay samples on Human rights.

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Human rights mark everyone as free and equal, irrespective of age, gender, caste, creed, religion and nationality. The United Nations adopted human rights in light of the atrocities people faced during the Second World War. On the 10th of December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its adoption led to the recognition of human rights as the foundation for freedom, justice and peace for every individual. Although it’s not legally binding, most nations have incorporated these human rights into their constitutions and domestic legal frameworks. Human rights safeguard us from discrimination and guarantee that our most basic needs are protected.

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Kenneth R. Janken
Professor, Department of African and Afro-American Studies and
Director of Experiential Education, Office of Undergraduate Curricula
University of North Carolina
National Humanities Center Fellow
©National Humanities Center

When most Americans think of the Civil Rights Movement, they have in mind a span of time beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision in , which outlawed segregated education, or the Montgomery Bus Boycott and culminated in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The movement encompassed both ad hoc local groups and established organizations like the

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The drama of the mid-twentieth century emerged on a foundation of earlier struggles. Two are particularly notable: the NAACP’s campaign against lynching, and the NAACP’s legal campaign against segregated education, which culminated in the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown decision.

The NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign of the 1930s combined widespread publicity about the causes and costs of lynching, a successful drive to defeat Supreme Court nominee John J. Parker for his white supremacist and anti-union views and then defeat senators who voted for confirmation, and a skillful effort to lobby Congress and the Roosevelt administration to pass a federal anti-lynching law. Southern senators filibustered, but they could not prevent the formation of a national consensus against lynching; by 1938 the number of lynchings declined steeply. Other organizations, such as the left-wing National Negro Congress, fought lynching, too, but the NAACP emerged from the campaign as the most influential civil rights organization in national politics and maintained that position through the mid-1950s.

Houston was unabashed: lawyers were either social engineers or they were parasites. He desired equal access to education, but he also was concerned with the type of society blacks were trying to integrate. He was among those who surveyed American society and saw racial inequality and the ruling powers that promoted racism to divide black workers from white workers. Because he believed that racial violence in Depression-era America was so pervasive as to make mass direct action untenable, he emphasized the redress of grievances through the courts.

The designers of the Brown strategy developed a potent combination of gradualism in legal matters and advocacy of far-reaching change in other political arenas. Through the 1930s and much of the 1940s, the NAACP initiated suits that dismantled aspects of the edifice of segregated education, each building on the precedent of the previous one. Not until the late 1940s did the NAACP believe it politically feasible to challenge directly the constitutionality of “separate but equal” education itself. Concurrently, civil rights organizations backed efforts to radically alter the balance of power between employers and workers in the United States. They paid special attention to forming an alliance with organized labor, whose history of racial exclusion angered blacks. In the 1930s, the National Negro Congress brought blacks into the newly formed United Steel Workers, and the union paid attention to the particular demands of African Americans. The NAACP assisted the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest black labor organization of its day. In the 1940s, the United Auto Workers, with NAACP encouragement, made overtures to black workers. The NAACP’s successful fight against the Democratic white primary in the South was more than a bid for inclusion; it was a stiff challenge to what was in fact a regional one-party dictatorship. Recognizing the interdependence of domestic and foreign affairs, the NAACP’s program in the 1920s and 1930s promoted solidarity with Haitians who were trying to end the American military occupation and with colonized blacks elsewhere in the Caribbean and in Africa. African Americans’ support for WWII and the battle against the Master Race ideology abroad was matched by equal determination to eradicate it in America, too. In the post-war years blacks supported the decolonization of Africa and Asia.

The Cold War and McCarthyism put a hold on such expansive conceptions of civil/human rights. Critics of our domestic and foreign policies who exceeded narrowly defined boundaries were labeled un-American and thus sequestered from Americans’ consciousness. In a supreme irony, the Supreme Court rendered the Brown decision and then the government suppressed the very critique of American society that animated many of Brown ’s architects.

White southern resistance to Brown was formidable and the slow pace of change stimulated impatience especially among younger African Americans as the 1960s began. They concluded that they could not wait for change—they had to make it. And the Montgomery Bus Boycott , which lasted the entire year of 1956, had demonstrated that mass direct action could indeed work. The four college students from Greensboro who sat at the Woolworth lunch counter set off a decade of activity and organizing that would kill Jim Crow.

Elimination of segregation in public accommodations and the removal of “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs was no mean feat. Yet from the very first sit-in, Ella Baker , the grassroots leader whose activism dated from the 1930s and who was advisor to the students who founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pointed out that the struggle was “concerned with something much bigger than a hamburger or even a giant-sized Coke.” Far more was at stake for these activists than changing the hearts of whites. When the sit-ins swept Atlanta in 1960, protesters’ demands included jobs, health care, reform of the police and criminal justice system, education, and the vote. (See: “An Appeal for Human Rights.” ) Demonstrations in Birmingham in 1963 under the leadership of Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was affiliated with the SCLC, demanded not only an end to segregation in downtown stores but also jobs for African Americans in those businesses and municipal government. The 1963 March on Washington, most often remembered as the event at which Dr. King proclaimed his dream, was a demonstration for “Jobs and Justice.”

Movement activists from SNCC and CORE asked sharp questions about the exclusive nature of American democracy and advocated solutions to the disfranchisement and violation of the human rights of African Americans, including Dr. King’s nonviolent populism, Robert Williams’ “armed self-reliance,” and Malcolm X’s incisive critiques of worldwide white supremacy, among others. (See: Dr. King, “Where Do We Go from Here?” ; Robert F. Williams, “Negroes with Guns” ; and Malcolm X, “Not just an American problem, but a world problem.” ) What they proposed was breathtakingly radical, especially in light of today’s political discourse and the simplistic ways it prefers to remember the freedom struggle. King called for a guaranteed annual income, redistribution of the national wealth to meet human needs, and an end to a war to colonize the Vietnamese. Malcolm X proposed to internationalize the black American freedom struggle and to link it with liberation movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Thus the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was not concerned exclusively with interracial cooperation or segregation and discrimination as a character issue. Rather, as in earlier decades, the prize was a redefinition of American society and a redistribution of social and economic power.

Guiding Student Discussion

Students discussing the Civil Rights Movement will often direct their attention to individuals’ motives. For example, they will question whether President Kennedy sincerely believed in racial equality when he supported civil rights or only did so out of political expediency. Or they may ask how whites could be so cruel as to attack peaceful and dignified demonstrators. They may also express awe at Martin Luther King’s forbearance and calls for integration while showing discomfort with Black Power’s separatism and proclamations of self-defense. But a focus on the character and moral fiber of leading individuals overlooks the movement’s attempts to change the ways in which political, social, and economic power are exercised. Leading productive discussions that consider broader issues will likely have to involve debunking some conventional wisdom about the Civil Rights Movement. Guiding students to discuss the extent to which nonviolence and racial integration were considered within the movement to be hallowed goals can lead them to greater insights.

Nonviolence and passive resistance were prominent tactics of protesters and organizations. (See: SNCC Statement of Purpose and Jo Ann Gibson Robinson’s memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It. ) But they were not the only ones, and the number of protesters who were ideologically committed to them was relatively small. Although the name of one of the important civil rights organizations was the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, its members soon concluded that advocating nonviolence as a principle was irrelevant to most African Americans they were trying to reach. Movement participants in Mississippi, for example, did not decide beforehand to engage in violence, but self-defense was simply considered common sense. If some SNCC members in Mississippi were convinced pacifists in the face of escalating violence, they nevertheless enjoyed the protection of local people who shared their goals but were not yet ready to beat their swords into ploughshares.

Armed self-defense had been an essential component of the black freedom struggle, and it was not confined to the fringe. Returning soldiers fought back against white mobs during the Red Summer of 1919. In 1946, World War Two veterans likewise protected black communities in places like Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a bloody race riot. Their self-defense undoubtedly brought national attention to the oppressive conditions of African Americans; the NAACP’s nationwide campaign prompted President Truman to appoint a civil rights commission that produced To Secure These Rights , a landmark report that called for the elimination of segregation. Army veteran Robert F. Williams, who was a proponent of what he called “armed self-reliance,” headed a thriving branch of the NAACP in Monroe, North Carolina, in the early 1950s. The poet Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” dramatically captures the spirit of self-defense and violence.

Often, deciding whether violence is “good” or “bad,” necessary or ill-conceived depends on one’s perspective and which point of view runs through history books. Students should be encouraged to consider why activists may have considered violence a necessary part of their work and what role it played in their overall programs. Are violence and nonviolence necessarily antithetical, or can they be complementary? For example the Black Panther Party may be best remembered by images of members clad in leather and carrying rifles, but they also challenged widespread police brutality, advocated reform of the criminal justice system, and established community survival programs, including medical clinics, schools, and their signature breakfast program. One question that can lead to an extended discussion is to ask students what the difference is between people who rioted in the 1960s and advocated violence and the participants in the Boston Tea Party at the outset of the American Revolution. Both groups wanted out from oppression, both saw that violence could be efficacious, and both were excoriated by the rulers of their day. Teachers and students can then explore reasons why those Boston hooligans are celebrated in American history and whether the same standards should be applied to those who used arms in the 1960s.

An important goal of the Civil Rights Movement was the elimination of segregation. But if students, who are now a generation or more removed from Jim Crow, are asked to define segregation, they are likely to point out examples of individual racial separation such as blacks and whites eating at different cafeteria tables and the existence of black and white houses of worship. Like most of our political leaders and public opinion, they place King’s injunction to judge people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin exclusively in the context of personal relationships and interactions. Yet segregation was a social, political, and economic system that placed African Americans in an inferior position, disfranchised them, and was enforced by custom, law, and official and vigilante violence.

The discussion of segregation should be expanded beyond expressions of personal preferences. One way to do this is to distinguish between black and white students hanging out in different parts of a school and a law mandating racially separate schools, or between black and white students eating separately and a laws or customs excluding African Americans from restaurants and other public facilities. Put another way, the civil rights movement was not fought merely to ensure that students of different backgrounds could become acquainted with each other. The goal of an integrated and multicultural America is not achieved simply by proximity. Schools, the economy, and other social institutions needed to be reformed to meet the needs for all. This was the larger and widely understood meaning of the goal of ending Jim Crow, and it is argued forcefully by James Farmer in “Integration or Desegregation.”

A guided discussion should point out that many of the approaches to ending segregation did not embrace integration or assimilation, and students should become aware of the appeal of separatism. W. E. B. Du Bois believed in what is today called multiculturalism. But by the mid-1930s he concluded that the Great Depression, virulent racism, and the unreliability of white progressive reformers who had previously expressed sympathy for civil rights rendered an integrated America a distant dream. In an important article, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?” Du Bois argued for the strengthening of black pride and the fortification of separate black schools and other important institutions. Black communities across the country were in severe distress; it was counterproductive, he argued, to sacrifice black schoolchildren at the altar of integration and to get them into previously all-white schools, where they would be shunned and worse. It was far better to invest in strengthening black-controlled education to meet black communities’ needs. If, in the future, integration became a possibility, African Americans would be positioned to enter that new arrangement on equal terms. Du Bois’ argument found echoes in the 1960s writing of Stokely Carmichael ( “Toward Black Liberation” ) and Malcolm X ( “The Ballot or the Bullet” ).

Scholars Debate

Any brief discussion of historical literature on the Civil Rights Movement is bound to be incomplete. The books offered—a biography, a study of the black freedom struggle in Memphis, a brief study of the Brown decision, and a debate over the unfolding of the movement—were selected for their accessibility variety, and usefulness to teaching, as well as the soundness of their scholarship.

Walter White: Mr. NAACP , by Kenneth Robert Janken, is a biography of one of the most well known civil rights figure of the first half of the twentieth century. White made a name for himself as the NAACP’s risk-taking investigator of lynchings, riots, and other racial violence in the years after World War I. He was a formidable persuader and was influential in the halls of power, counting Eleanor Roosevelt, senators, representatives, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices, union leaders, Hollywood moguls, and diplomats among his circle of friends. His style of work depended upon rallying enlightened elites, and he favored a placing effort into developing a civil rights bureaucracy over local and mass-oriented organizations. Walter White was an expert in the practice of “brokerage politics”: During decades when the majority of African Americans were legally disfranchised, White led the organization that gave them an effective voice, representing them and interpreting their demands and desires (as he understood them) to those in power. Two examples of this were highlighted in the first part of this essay: the anti-lynching crusade, and the lobbying of President Truman, which resulted in To Secure These Rights . A third example is his essential role in producing Marian Anderson’s iconic 1939 Easter Sunday concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which drew the avid support of President Roosevelt and members of his administration, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. His style of leadership was, before the emergence of direct mass action in the years after White’s death in 1955, the dominant one in the Civil Rights Movement.

There are many excellent books that study the development of the Civil Rights Movement in one locality or state. An excellent addition to the collection of local studies is Battling the Plantation Mentality , by Laurie B. Green, which focuses on Memphis and the surrounding rural areas of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi between the late 1930s and 1968, when Martin Luther King was assassinated there. Like the best of the local studies, this book presents an expanded definition of civil rights that encompasses not only desegregation of public facilities and the attainment of legal rights but also economic and political equality. Central to this were efforts by African Americans to define themselves and shake off the cultural impositions and mores of Jim Crow. During WWII, unionized black men went on strike in the defense industry to upgrade their job classifications. Part of their grievances revolved around wages and working conditions, but black workers took issue, too, with employers’ and the government’s reasoning that only low status jobs were open to blacks because they were less intelligent and capable. In 1955, six black female employees at a white-owned restaurant objected to the owner’s new method of attracting customers as degrading and redolent of the plantation: placing one of them outside dressed as a mammy doll to ring a dinner bell. When the workers tried to walk off the job, the owner had them arrested, which gave rise to local protest. In 1960, black Memphis activists helped support black sharecroppers in surrounding counties who were evicted from their homes when they initiated voter registration drives. The 1968 sanitation workers strike mushroomed into a mass community protest both because of wage issues and the strikers’ determination to break the perception of their being dependent, epitomized in their slogan “I Am a Man.” This book also shows that not everyone was able to cast off the plantation mentality, as black workers and energetic students at LeMoyne College confronted established black leaders whose positions and status depended on white elites’ sufferance.

Brown v. Board of Education: A Brief History with Documents , edited by Waldo E. Martin, Jr., contains an insightful 40-page essay that places both the NAACP’s legal strategy and 1954 Brown decision in multiple contexts, including alternate approaches to incorporating African American citizens into the American nation, and the impact of World War II and the Cold War on the road to Brown . The accompanying documents affirm the longstanding black freedom struggle, including demands for integrated schools in Boston in 1849, continuing with protests against the separate but equal ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson of 1896, and important items from the NAACP’s cases leading up to Brown . The documents are prefaced by detailed head notes and provocative discussion questions.

Debating the Civil Rights Movement , by Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, is likewise focused on instruction and discussion. This essay has largely focused on the development of the Civil Rights Movement from the standpoint of African American resistance to segregation and the formation organizations to fight for racial, economic, social, and political equality. One area it does not explore is how the federal government helped to shape the movement. Steven Lawson traces the federal response to African Americans’ demands for civil rights and concludes that it was legislation, judicial decisions, and executive actions between 1945 and 1968 that was most responsible for the nation’s advance toward racial equality. Charles Payne vigorously disagrees, focusing instead on the protracted grassroots organizing as the motive force for whatever incomplete change occurred during those years. Each essay runs about forty pages, followed by smart selections of documents that support their cases.

Kenneth R. Janken is Professor of African and Afro-American Studies and Director of Experiential Education, Office of Undergraduate Curricula at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP and Rayford W. Logan and the Dilemma of the African American Intellectual . He was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2000-01.

Illustration credits

To cite this essay: Janken, Kenneth R. “The Civil Rights Movement: 1919-1960s.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. DATE YOU ACCESSED ESSAY. <https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1917beyond/essays/crm.htm>

TeacherServe® Home Page National Humanities Center 7 Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12256 Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 Phone: (919) 549-0661 Fax: (919) 990-8535 Copyright © National Humanities Center. All rights reserved. Revised: April 2010 nationalhumanitiescenter.org

Intro Essay: The Civil Rights Movement

To what extent did founding principles of liberty, equality, and justice become a reality for african americans during the civil rights movement.

I can explain the importance of local and federal actions in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
I can compare the goals and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Malcolm X and Black Nationalism, and Black Power.
I can explain challenges African Americans continued to face despite victories for equality and justice during the civil rights movement.

Essential Vocabulary

	The movement of millions of Black Americans from the rural South to cities in the South, Midwest, and North that occurred during the first half of the twentieth century
	A civil rights organization founded in 1909 with the goal of ending racial discrimination against Black Americans
	A civil rights organization founded in 1957 to coordinate nonviolent protest activities
	A student-led civil rights organization founded in 1960
	A school of thought that advocated Black pride, self-sufficiency, and separatism rather than integration
	An action designed to prolong debate and to delay or prevent a vote on a bill
	A 1964 voter registration drive led by Black and white volunteers
	A movement emerging in the mid-1960s that sought to empower Black Americans rather than seek integration into white society
	A political organization founded in 1966 to challenge police brutality against the African American community in Oakland, California

Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

The struggle to make the promises of the Declaration of Independence a reality for Black Americans reached a climax after World War II. The activists of the civil rights movement directly confronted segregation and demanded equal civil rights at the local level with physical and moral courage and perseverance. They simultaneously pursued a national strategy of systematically filing lawsuits in federal courts, lobbying Congress, and pressuring presidents to change the laws. The civil rights movement encountered significant resistance, however, and suffered violence in the quest for equality.

During the middle of the twentieth century, several Black writers grappled with the central contradictions between the nation’s ideals and its realities, and the place of Black Americans in their country. Richard Wright explored a raw confrontation with racism in Native Son (1940), while Ralph Ellison led readers through a search for identity beyond a racialized category in his novel Invisible Man (1952), as part of the Black quest for identity. The novel also offered hope in the power of the sacred principles of the Founding documents. Playwright Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun , first performed in 1959, about the dreams deferred for Black Americans and questions about assimilation. Novelist and essayist James Baldwin described Blacks’ estrangement from U.S. society and themselves while caught in a racial nightmare of injustice in The Fire Next Time (1963) and other works.

World War II wrought great changes in U.S. society. Black soldiers fought for a “double V for victory,” hoping to triumph over fascism abroad and racism at home. Many received a hostile reception, such as Medgar Evers who was blocked from voting at gunpoint by five armed whites. Blacks continued the Great Migration to southern and northern cities for wartime industrial work. After the war, in 1947, Jackie Robinson endured racial taunts on the field and segregation off it as he broke the color barrier in professional baseball and began a Hall of Fame career. The following year, President Harry Truman issued executive orders desegregating the military and banning discrimination in the civil service. Meanwhile, Thurgood Marshall and his legal team at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) meticulously prepared legal challenges to discrimination, continuing a decades-long effort.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought lawsuits against segregated schools in different states that were consolidated into Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka , 1954. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that “separate but equal” was “inherently unequal.” Brown II followed a year after, as the court ordered that the integration of schools should be pursued “with all deliberate speed.” Throughout the South, angry whites responded with a campaign of “massive resistance” and refused to comply with the order, while many parents sent their children to all-white private schools. Middle-class whites who opposed integration joined local chapters of citizens’ councils and used propaganda, economic pressure, and even violence to achieve their ends.

A wave of violence and intimidation followed. In 1955, teenager Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was lynched after being falsely accused of whistling at a white woman. Though an all-white jury quickly acquitted the two men accused of killing him, Till’s murder was reported nationally and raised awareness of the injustices taking place in Mississippi.

In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks (who was a secretary of the Montgomery NAACP) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus. Her willingness to confront segregation led to a direct-action movement for equality. The local Women’s Political Council organized the city’s Black residents into a boycott of the bus system, which was then led by the Montgomery Improvement Association. Black churches and ministers, including Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, provided a source of strength. Despite arrests, armed mobs, and church bombings, the boycott lasted until a federal court desegregated the city buses. In the wake of the boycott, the leading ministers formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) , which became a key civil rights organization.

Rosa Parks is shown here in 1955 with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the background. The Montgomery bus boycott was an important victory in the civil rights movement.

In 1957, nine Black families decided to send their children to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to prevent their entry, and one student, Elizabeth Eckford, faced an angry crowd of whites alone and barely escaped. President Eisenhower was compelled to respond and sent in 1,200 paratroops from the 101st Airborne to protect the Black students. They continued to be harassed, but most finished the school year and integrated the school.

That year, Congress passed a Civil Rights Act that created a civil rights division in the Justice Department and provided minimal protections for the right to vote. The bill had been watered down because of an expected filibuster by southern senators, who had recently signed the Southern Manifesto, a document pledging their resistance to Supreme Court decisions such as Brown .

In 1960, four Black college students were refused lunch service at a local Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they spontaneously staged a “sit-in” the following day. Their resistance to the indignities of segregation was copied by thousands of others of young Blacks across the South, launching another wave of direct, nonviolent confrontation with segregation. Ella Baker invited several participants to a Raleigh conference where they formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and issued a Statement of Purpose. The group represented a more youthful and daring effort that later broke with King and his strategy of nonviolence.

In contrast, Malcolm X became a leading spokesperson for the Nation of Islam (NOI) who represented Black separatism as an alternative to integration, which he deemed an unworthy goal. He advocated revolutionary violence as a means of Black self-defense and rejected nonviolence. He later changed his views, breaking with the NOI and embracing a Black nationalism that had more common ground with King’s nonviolent views. Malcolm X had reached out to establish ties with other Black activists before being gunned down by assassins who were members of the NOI later in 1965.

In 1961, members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) rode segregated buses in order to integrate interstate travel. These Black and white Freedom Riders traveled into the Deep South, where mobs beat them with bats and pipes in bus stations and firebombed their buses. A cautious Kennedy administration reluctantly intervened to protect the Freedom Riders with federal marshals, who were also victimized by violent white mobs.

Malcolm X was a charismatic speaker and gifted organizer. He argued that Black pride, identity, and independence were more important than integration with whites.

King was moved to act. He confronted segregation with the hope of exposing injustice and brutality against nonviolent protestors and arousing the conscience of the nation to achieve a just rule of law. The first planned civil rights campaign was initiated by SNCC and taken over mid-campaign by King and SCLC. It failed because Albany, Georgia’s Police Chief Laurie Pritchett studied King’s tactics and responded to the demonstrations with restraint. In 1963, King shifted the movement to Birmingham, Alabama, where Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor unleashed his officers to attack civil rights protestors with fire hoses and police dogs. Authorities arrested thousands, including many young people who joined the marches. King wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after his own arrest and provided the moral justification for the movement to break unjust laws. National and international audiences were shocked by the violent images shown in newspapers and on the television news. President Kennedy addressed the nation and asked, “whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities . . . [If a Black person]cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?” The president then submitted a civil rights bill to Congress.

In late August 1963, more than 250,000 people joined the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in solidarity for equal rights. From the Lincoln Memorial steps, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. He stated, “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”

After Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, President Lyndon Johnson pushed his agenda through Congress. In the early summer of 1964, a 3-month filibuster by southern senators was finally defeated, and both houses passed the historical civil rights bill. President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, banning segregation in public accommodations.

Activists in the civil rights movement then focused on campaigns for the right to vote. During the summer of 1964, several civil rights organizations combined their efforts during the “ Freedom Summer ” to register Blacks to vote with the help of young white college students. They endured terror and intimidation as dozens of churches and homes were burned and workers were killed, including an incident in which Black advocate James Chaney and two white students, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered in Mississippi.

In August 1963, peaceful protesters gathered in front of the Lincoln Memorial to draw attention to the inequalities and indignities African Americans suffered 100 years after emancipation. Leaders of the march are shown in the image on the bottom, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the center.

That summer, Fannie Lou Hamer helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as civil rights delegates to replace the rival white delegation opposed to civil rights at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. Hamer was a veteran of attempts to register other Blacks to vote and endured severe beatings for her efforts. A proposed compromise of giving two seats to the MFDP satisfied neither those delegates nor the white delegation, which walked out. Cracks were opening up in the Democratic electoral coalition over civil rights, especially in the South.

Fannie Lou Hamer testified about the violence she and others endured when trying to register to vote at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. Her televised testimony exposed the realities of continued violence against Blacks trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

In early 1965, the SCLC and SNCC joined forces to register voters in Selma and draw attention to the fight for Black suffrage. On March 7, marchers planned to walk peacefully from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. However, mounted state troopers and police blocked the Edmund Pettus Bridge and then rampaged through the marchers, indiscriminately beating them. SNCC leader John Lewis suffered a fractured skull, and 5 women were clubbed unconscious. Seventy people were hospitalized for injuries during “Bloody Sunday.” The scenes again shocked television viewers and newspaper readers.

The images of state troopers, local police, and local people brutally attacking peaceful protestors on “Bloody Sunday” shocked people across the country and world. Two weeks later, protestors of all ages and races continued the protest. By the time they reached the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, their ranks had swelled to about 25,000 people.

Two days later, King led a symbolic march to the bridge but then turned around. Many younger and more militant activists were alienated and felt that King had sold out to white authorities. The tension revealed the widening division between older civil rights advocates and those younger, more radical supporters who were frustrated at the slow pace of change and the routine violence inflicted upon peaceful protesters. Nevertheless, starting on March 21, with the help of a federal judge who refused Governor George Wallace’s request to ban the march, Blacks triumphantly walked to Montgomery. On August 6, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act protecting the rights to register and vote after a Senate filibuster ended and the bill passed Congress.

The Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act did not alter the fact that most Black Americans still suffered racism, were denied equal economic opportunities, and lived in segregated neighborhoods. While King and other leaders did seek to raise their issues among northerners, frustrations often boiled over into urban riots during the mid-1960s. Police brutality and other racial incidents often triggered days of violence in which hundreds were injured or killed. There were mass arrests and widespread property damage from arson and looting in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, Cleveland, Chicago, and dozens of other cities. A presidential National Advisory Commission of Civil Disorders issued the Kerner Report, which analyzed the causes of urban unrest, noting the impact of racism on the inequalities and injustices suffered by Black Americans.

Frustration among young Black Americans led to the rise of a more militant strain of advocacy. In 1966, activist James Meredith was on a solo march in Mississippi to raise awareness about Black voter registration when he was shot and wounded. Though Meredith recovered, this event typified the violence that led some young Black Americans to espouse a more military strain of advocacy. On June 16, SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael and members of the Black Panther Party continued Meredith’s march while he recovered from his wounds, chanting, “We want Black Power .” Black Power leaders and members of the Black Panther Party offered a different vision for equality and justice. They advocated self-reliance and self-empowerment, a celebration of Black culture, and armed self-defense. They used aggressive rhetoric to project a more radical strategy for racial progress, including sympathy for revolutionary socialism and rejection of capitalism. While its legacy is debated, the Black Power movement raised many important questions about the place of Black Americans in the United States, beyond the civil rights movement.

After World War II, Black Americans confronted the iniquities and indignities of segregation to end almost a century of Jim Crow. Undeterred, they turned the public’s eyes to the injustice they faced and called on the country to live up to the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and to continue the fight against inequality and discrimination.

Reading Comprehension Questions

What factors helped to create the modern civil rights movement?
How was the quest for civil rights a combination of federal and local actions?
What were the goals and methods of different activists and groups of the civil rights movement? Complete the table below to reference throughout your analysis of the primary source documents.

	Martin Luther King, Jr., and SCLC	SNCC	Malcolm X	Black Power

116 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics & Examples

Trying to write a successful civil rights movement essay? Questions about the subject may flood your brain, but we can help!

📃 8 Tips for Writing a Civil Rights Movement Essay

🏆 best civil rights movement topic ideas & essay examples, 🎓 most interesting civil rights movement topics to write about, 📌 good civil rights research topics, 👍 interesting civil rights essay topics, ❓ civil rights movement essay questions.

As a student, you can explore anything from civil disobedience to the work of Martin Luther King Jr in your paper. And we are here to help! Our experts have gathered civil rights movement essay topics for different assignments. In the article below, see research and paper ideas along with tips on writing. Besides, check civil rights essay examples via the links.

A civil rights movement essay is an essential assignment because it helps students to reflect on historical events that molded the contemporary American society. Read this post to find some useful tips that will help you score an A on your paper on the civil rights movement.

Tip 1: Read the instructions carefully. Check all of the documents provided by your tutor, including the grading rubric, example papers, and civil rights movement essay questions. When you know what is expected of you, it will be much easier to proceed with the assignment and achieve a high mark on it.

Tip 2: Browse sample papers on the topic. If you are not sure of what to write about in particular, you can see what other students included in their essays. While reading civil rights movement essay examples, take notes about the content, sources used, and other relevant points. This might give you some ideas on what to include in your paper and how to enhance it to meet the requirements.

Tip 3: Collect high-quality material to support your essay. The best sources are scholarly articles and books. However, there are also some credible websites and news articles that offer unbiased information on the civil rights movements. If the instructions don’t prevent you from using these, you could include a wide array of resources, thus making your essay more detailed.

Tip 4: Offer some context on the civil rights movement. The 20th century was instrumental to the history of America because there were many political and social events, including World War II and the subsequent Cold War. While some events may not relate to the history of the civil rights movement, they are important for the readers to understand the context in which the movement took place.

Tip 5: Consider the broader history of discrimination in the American society. Discrimination is the key focus of most civil rights movement essay topics. For the black population, the movement was instrumental in reducing prejudice and improving social position. However, there were many other populations that faced discrimination throughout the American history, such as women, Native Americans, and people from the LGBT community. Can you see any similarities in how these groups fought for equal rights?

Tip 6: Reflect on the sources of the civil rights movement. The story of racial discrimination and oppression in America spanned for over 400 years, so there is a lot of history behind the civil rights movement. Here, you could talk about slavery and segregation policies, as well as how the black communities responded to the struggle. For instance, you could consider the Harlem Renaissance and its influence on the Black identity or about other examples or cultural movements that originated in the black community.

Tip 7: If relevant, include a personal reflection. You can write about what the civil rights movement means for you and how it impacted the life of your family. You can also explore racial discrimination in contemporary society to show that some issues still remain unsolved.

Tip 8: Maintain a good essay structure. Ensure that every paragraph serves its purpose. A civil rights movement essay introduction should define the movement and state your main argument clearly. Follow it with several main body paragraphs, each one exploring a certain idea that relates to the key argument. In conclusion, address all the points you’ve made and demonstrate how they relate to your thesis.

With these few tips, you will be able to write an excellent paper on the civil rights movement. Check the rest of our website for essay titles, topics, and more writing advice!

Impact of Civil Rights Movement The freedom to vote for all Americans became central in the civil rights movements, and one of its successes was the legislation that culminated in the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Civil Rights-Black Power Movement Barack Obama was aware of the violence and oppression of black people in the United States. It shows self determination of the black people in struggles for civil rights- black power.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett: Leader of the Civil Rights Movement The psychology of a leader is the psychology of a winner. One such example is one of the early leaders of the civil rights movement, American investigative journalist Ida Bell Wells-Barnett, who, thanks to her […]
The Civil Rights Movement: Martin King and Malcolm X’s Views King also stressed that the major concepts he adopted were taken from the “Sermon on the Mount and the Gandhian method of nonviolent resistance”.
Plan: Civil Rights Movement in United States The following assessment plan has details on the objectives of the assessment plan, the types of assessment plans, and the adaptation of the lesson plan to fit special groups of students.
Civil Rights Movement Major Events in 1954-1968 This research paper seeks to highlight the historical events that took place in 1954-1968 in the United States which were instigated by the Civil Rights Movement in the hope of securing the civil and basic […]
The Civil Rights Movement: Historical Interpretation Rosa Parks was one of the pivotal figures in the Montgomery Bus Boycott and a critical event in the Civil Rights Movement.
The Civil Rights Movement’s Goals and Achievements Despite the considerable oppression of non-white groups of the population and the fear accompanying it, the Movement continued to fight and achieved success in its goals, affecting the country even in the modern period.
The Civil Rights Movement: I Have a Dream The civil rights movement has changed many aspects of the nation, such as housing, the economy, and jobs. The movement changed the outlook, the power structure, and the very core of the nation.
The Civil Rights Movement in the United States In the United States, the 1960s was characterized by the rise of Civil Rights Movements, the aim of which was to suppress and end discrimination and racial segregation against African Americans.
Music and the Civil Rights Movement It was famous in the 1960s and 1970s and continues to live now.”We Shall Overcome”, like many other freedom songs, reflects the goals and methods of the early protestors.
Invisible Southern Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement Based on 36 personal interviews and multiple published and archived sources, the author demonstrates that black women in the South have played a prominent role in the struggle for their rights.
“The Souls of Black Folk” and the Civil Rights Movement At the beginning of the 20th century, multiple decades had passed since the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
Law History From Jim Crow to Civil Rights Movement It was not until the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.that the problems of law enforcement in the South was truly recognized and reforms started designed to reduce the influence of political agendas on the […]
Civil Rights Movement: Fights for Freedom The Civil Rights Movement introduced the concept of black and white unification in the face of inequality. Music-related to justice and equality became the soundtrack of the social and cultural revolution taking place during the […]
Civil Rights Movement and Political Parties One of the examples of the effects of social unrest on political institutions in American history is the Civil Rights Movement, and it defined the general courses of the main parties as well as the […]
Civil Rights Movement Distorted Image The study of the role and image of historical characters in CRM is incorrect and distorted. Rosa Parks is considered the person who informally initiated the movement due to the refusal to give up a […]
Protest Music and the US Anti-Lynching and Civil Rights Movement In the 1950s and 1960s, the civil rights movement continually challenged the government to fulfill the promise of equality and justice.
“Black Power” in the Civil Rights Movement They wanted to reform the system to ensure a more democratic and actively participating society in the decision-making process of governance for the country.
Civil Rights Movement in “Freedom Riders” Documentary As a commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of freedom movements, Nelson’s movie is a story of segregation and racism, abhorrence, courage, and the general brutality of the depicted events.
Medgar Wiley Evers in the Civil Rights Movement Following the rejection of his application to study at the University of Mississippi, NAACP hired him as a field secretary to Jackson that was to the Deep South in recognition of his effort and contribution […]
Civil Rights Movement by E. Durkheim and K. Marx The theories will also be used to predict the future of racism in the United States. The level of segregation experienced in the country led to new interferences and constraints.
Civil Rights Movement: Purposes and Effects The civil rights movement was a popular lobby group created to advocate for equality in the United States for both blacks and whites. To a large extent, the civil rights movement completely transformed the lives […]
Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War The Vietnam War caused unintended consequences for the civil rights movements of the 1960s as it awakened the African-Americans’ consciousness on the racism and despotism that they experienced in the United States.
Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance in the Civil Rights Movement by Lance Hill The book describes the tension and struggles that existed between the African Americans and the members of the white citizens’ council, Ku Klux Klan.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights Movement Martin Luther King noticed the negative trend and he took his stand to make people see the devastating effects of the war.
Presidents Eisenhower and Johnson: the Civil Rights Movement The social historians have managed to cogently present the politics that surrounded the civil rights movement. The movement also managed to gain the support of the aims of government, the executive, legislature, and even the […]
African-American Women and the Civil Rights Movement The key factors that left the Black women unrecognized or led to recognition of just a few of them as leaders are class, race and gender biases.
The Civil Rights Movement in the USA The movement’s main aim was to end the racial segregation and fight for the voting power of the black people in America.
The Civil Rights Movement Although the positive role of the Civil Rights Movement for changing the role of the African Americans in the American society is visible, this topic is also essential to be discussed because the movement for […]
The Contributions of Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks to the Civil Rights Movement Among these were Richard Wright and Gwendolyn Brooks who used literary works to voice out their displeasure on the discrimination against blacks as well as portray a humanitarian point of view on the plight of […]
The Civil Rights Movement: Oppressing the Black Population In response, the black citizen resorted to fighting for his rights; thus, the rise of the civil rights movement. In conclusion, these key events helped to reinforce the African American struggle for equal right rights, […]
Music of the Civil Wars, Civil Rights & Freedom Movements of Europe, Africa, North & South America During the 20th Century The aim of Giovinezza was to reinforce the position of Mussolini as the leader of the Fascist Movement and of Italy.
Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement This is the why she gets my nomination for recognition in the “Museum of Silent Voices of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”.
Dr. King’s Role in United States Civil Rights Movement His popularity started after he led other activists in boycotting the services of the Montgomery Bus Service in the year 1955 after an incident of open discrimination of a black woman in the bus. Martin […]
The Civil Rights Act as a Milestone Element of American Legislation Although the Civil Rights Act has undergone several amendments, the Civil Right Act amendment of 1964 was the main amendment that addressed the above types of discrimination.
Harold Washington With Civil Rights Movement Hence, this study examines the main achievements of Harold Washington in the fields of employment, racism, equality in provision of social amenities, gender equality, freedom of expression, and the creation of the ethics commission in […]
American Africans Action in the Struggle for Equality Community leaders in various segmentations of the society had showed resistance to the white supremacy and domination against the African Americans which had been abounded in some states.’Everyday’s Use’ written at the peak of the […]
The Civil Rights Movement: Ending Racial Discrimination and Segregation in America Finally, the paper will look at both the positive and negative achievements of the civil rights movements including an assessment of how the rights movement continues to influence the socio-economic and political aspects of the […]
The African American Civil Rights Movement During the 1960s notable achievements were made including the passage of a Civil rights Act in 1964 that outlawed any form of discrimination towards people of a different “race, color or national origin in employment […]
Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights Movement is an era that was dedicated for equal treatments and rights to the activism of the African American in the US.
Theatre in the Era of the Civil Rights Movement
To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement
The Stages of the Progressive Reform in the Civil Rights Movement
The Contradicting Outcome of the Civil Rights Movement in America
The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Civil Rights Movement
The Fight for Aid from the Civil Rights Movement
The Long Term Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
Violent and Non-violent Methods of Protests Embraced by African American in the Civil Rights Movement
The Role of The Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement
The Success of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s
Women in the Civil Rights Movement
U.S. Democracy and the Civil Rights Movement
The History of the Civil Rights Movement in the United Stats and Its Impact on African Americans
The Relationship of Southern Jews to Blacks and the Civil Rights Movement
The Importance of Students During the Civil Rights Movement
A Look at Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the Role of Martin Luther
White Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement
The Impact of Rock ‘n’ Roll on the Civil Rights Movement
African Americans and Religion During the Civil Rights Movement
The Historical Accuracy of the Portrayal of the Civil Rights Movement in Selma, a Drama Film by Ava DuVernay
The War on Drugs and the Civil Rights Movement
The Civil Rights Movement and the Black Middle Class
The Role of Police During the Civil Rights Movement
The Achievements of Peaceful Protest During the Civil Rights Movement
Analyzing the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War
The True Face of The Civil Rights Movement
The History of the Civil Rights Movement, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)
Successes and Failures of Civil Rights Movement
The Historiography of Womens Role and Visibility in The Civil Rights Movement
The Relationship Between Activism and Federal Government During the Civil Rights Movement
To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s
The Value of Studying the Civil Rights Movement
A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Feminist Movement in the United States
The Foundation of the Niagara Movement and Its Influence on the Civil Rights Movement in America
The Role of Black Women in the Civil Rights Movement
The Role and Importance of the Grassroot Organizers on the Civil Rights Movement
The Effect of Society on the World of Doubt and the Effects of the Civil Rights Movement
The Importance and Impact of the Civil Rights Movement to the Public Policy
The New York Times and The Civil Rights Movement
Understanding the Civil Rights Movement: America Vs. Australia
The Laws in the Reconstruction Era and the Civil Rights Movement
How Effective Was the Early Civil Rights Movement in Advancing Black Civil Rights in 1880-1990?
What Role Did Jews Play in the American Civil Rights Movement?
How Did the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s?
Did Minority Rights Campaigners Copy the Tactics of the Black American Civil Rights Movement?
What is the NAACP’s Impact on the Civil Rights Movement in the US?
How Did Gandhi Influence the Civil Rights Movement?
To What Extent Can the 1950’s Be Viewed as a Great Success for the Civil Rights Movement?
How Far Was the Effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Limited by Internal Divisions?
How the Cold War Promoted the Civil Rights Movement in America, and How It Promoted Change?
How Far Was Martin Luther King Responsible for the Civil Rights Movement?
How Was Civil Disobedience Used in the Civil Rights Movement?
How Did the Civil Rights Movement Change America?
How Successful Had the Civil Rights Movement Been by the Late 1960s?
Did Black Power Groups Cause Harm to the Civil Rights Movement in America?
To What Extent Was Grass Roots Activism a Significant Reason to Why the Civil Rights Movement Grew in the 1950s and 1960s?
How Did Kennedy and His Administration Effect the Civil Rights Movement?
Did the Black Power Movement Help or Hinder the Civil Rights Movement?
How the Civil Rights Movement Influenced the Women?
What Are the Results of the Effort of the Civil Rights Movement?
How Did Martin Luther King Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
Are the Problems Faced by the Feminist and Sexual Emancipation Movements Similar to Those Faced by Civil Rights Movement, or Are There Major Differences?
Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful?
Has America Really Changed Since the Civil Rights Movement?
Why Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful by 1965?
How Did Religion Influence Martin Luther King, Jr as He Led the Civil Rights Movement?
How Significant Was Martin Luther King Jr. to the Black Civil Rights Movement?
How Did Martin Luther Kings Jr Death Affect the Civil Rights Movement?
How Important Was Martin Luther King to the Civil Rights Movement?
Does the Civil Rights Movement Have an Effect on the Way Minorities Are Treated by Authorities?
Was the Civil Rights Movement a Success or Failure?
Malcolm X Questions
Equality Topics
Cuban Revolution Ideas
Great Depression Research Topics
Martin Luther King Titles
Freedom Topics
Children’s Rights Research Ideas
Women’s Suffrage Essay Ideas
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Collection Civil Rights History Project

Articles and essays.

Why do equal rights matter?

People are not equal, but they are of equal value. They have equal rights and are equal before the law. These human rights are an important principle of any democratic society.

Human rights are also called fundamental rights. These are rights stipulate, for instance, that everyone has freedom of expression. That everyone may freely profess their religion or belief. That everyone has the right to privacy, the right to keep personal information private.

Why do these rights matter? Imagine that these rights did not apply to everyone. That in your country, a certain group of people would not be allowed to express themselves freely or to practise their religion freely. That a group of people, not suspected of any crime, would still be monitored by the government.

All this would make for a very unpleasant society. One in which one or more groups of people would repeatedly be slighted and discriminated against. An unliveable society. Would you want to live there?

Human rights are worth defending. And everyone can make a contribution!

Is unequal treatment always discrimination?

Where do we draw the line between freedom of expression and discrimination, is antisemitism a form of racism.

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Women's Power in the Struggle for Freedom and Equal Rights

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“Democracy is a universally recognized ideal based on common values shared by people across the world, irrespective of cultural, political, social and economic differences. As recognized in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action , democracy is based on the freely expressed will of the people to determine their own political, economic, social and cultural systems and their full participation in all aspects of their lives . Democracy, development, rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing.” - United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

The principles of democracy insist on, especially from a twenty-first century perspective, the inclusion of all people, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, or ability. And yet governments around the world have a history of barring certain classes of people from being heard, seen, and fairly represented. Throughout history this has been especially true for women. And yet, despite repeated and ongoing attempts to sideline women in society, there has always been a consistent female force, fighting for freedom, equality, and democratic ideals.

For example, Chilean women who lived during Pinochet’s dictatorship were under the threat of constant danger, but they resisted by creating dissident art and forming the Moviemento Pro Emancipación de la Mujer. The Turkish coup of 1980 inspired a feminist movement that existed in open rebellion. They decried their loss of freedom and organized mass protests, including a 1987 march against gender-based violence. And here, in the United States of America, one of the oldest modern democracies in the world, it took a staggering 144 years for women in the US to be granted suffrage with the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920. It would take 45 more years for the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to be passed before Black women gained full access to the vote. But the right to vote was not just granted to women—they had to fight for it.

There are endless examples of “the fairer sex” doing anything in their power to be seen as the equal sex—these examples are a testament to women's impact on society, government, and history. As we celebrate Women’s History Month in March, Facing History has curated a list of resources to showcase female upstanders who have fought for freedom, human rights, and promoted the principles of democracy, even under oppressive regimes and laws restricting them from representation.

The American Revolution and Challenging the Ideals of a Fledgling Democracy

Elizabeth freeman.

Entering the world as Mum Bett in the mid-sixteenth century, Elizabeth Freeman was born into slavery. As the white men around her—and notably her enslaver, Colonel Ashley—spoke of rights and freedoms amidst the creation of the Declaration of Independence and war with England, the idea of her own freedom took root. Freeman acquired legal representation in Massachusetts and sued for her right to be free. She became the first African American to win her freedom from the courts in Massachusetts, leading to abolition of slavery in that state. Learn more about Freeman’s life from the National Women’s History Museum and from the New-York Historical Society .

Judith Sargent Murray

Born into a wealthy family in 1751, Judith Sargent Murray was curious and intelligent, but was not permitted to attend school because of her gender. Undeterred, she turned to her family’s extensive library and became a self-taught intellectual and writer. Murray was a radical (at the time) advocate for white women’s rights, declaring that men and women held equal ability if given equal access to education. Murray penned her first essay, “On the Equality of the Sexes,” in 1770—it was finally published 20 years later.

This Facing History Reading , included in our US History Curriculum Collection , excerpts “On the Equality of the Sexes” and offers questions and exercises for deeper reflection and connection to the text. The entire essay can be found here .

Learn more about Murray’s life from the National Women’s History Museum .

Suffragettes and the Right to Vote

Frances ellen watkins harper.

In 1825 Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was born to free African American parents. Following the death of her parents, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, the latter of whom was an impassioned abolitionist. As a young adult she was mentored by her uncle’s friend William Still known as the “father of the Underground Railroad.” Harper then became a strong voice in the anti-slavery movement and a fierce supporter of women’s rights, publishing works based on these ideals and delivering speeches across the country.

This Facing History Reading excerpts one of her most famous speeches and offers connection questions for deeper learning.

Learn more about Harper’s life from the National Women’s History Museum .

Emmeline Pankhurst

It is perhaps no surprise that Emmeline Pankhurst became among the most influential suffragists in Great Britain. Born in 1858, she was raised by parents committed to the full expansion of rights to women. She went on to found the Women’s Franchise League and later the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) whose famous slogan was “Deeds not Words.” Pankhurst threw her body and mind into the suffrage cause including participating in a hunger strike and being jailed on multiple occasions for her provocative protests.

This Facing History Handout on Women in Edwardian Society includes excerpts from Pankhurt’s “Freedom or Death” speech and offers a wide range of connection questions.

Learn more about Pankhurst’s life from the National Park Service .

The Pursuit for Civil Rights and Racial Equality

Anti-apartheid movement.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “apartness.” South Africans abolished slavery in 1834, but the colonial influence on the country made segregation the de facto state. It wasn’t until the National Party, which ran on a platform of Afrikaner nationalism, won the 1948 South African election that segregation was codified by law. One way that Black women in South Africa pushed back on segregationist policies was to protest the limitations placed on the free movement of Black Africans in the country. The 1950s saw the formation of the Federation of South African Women. In 1956 this grassroots movement enjoined a crowd 20,000 strong to march to Pretoria. Facing History’s Confronting Apartheid Collection provides a comprehensive set of lessons to explore critical moments in South Africa's history. This collection includes the Reading: Women Rise Up Against Apartheid and Change the Movement .

Mamie Till-Mobley

Mamie Carthan was born in Mississippi in 1921, but as a toddler she moved just outside of Chicago, Illinois with her parents. On July 25, 1941 she gave birth to her only child, Emmett Till. In the summer of 1955, when Emmett was 14, Mamie dropped her son off at the train station in Chicago to go visit her Uncle Moses’s farm in Mississippi and spend some time with family. He never came home. On August 28 Emmett was brutally murdered by a group of white men, led by the husband of a shopkeeper who was incensed that the young boy had allegedly whistled at his wife. The horrific death of her son, and the subsequent acquittal of Emmett’s murderers, resulted in Mamie Till-Mobley’s emergence as a leading activist for the civil rights movement.

Facing History’s “I Wanted the Whole World to See”: The Murder of Emmett Till Unit includes the following moving accounts of Mamie Till-Mobley as a mother and a civil rights pioneer. Reading: “ I Knew I Had to Give Him the Talk ” Lesson: " A Rallying Cry and a Cause "

Today’s Global Advocates for Human Rights

Anti-war sudanese organizers.

During the 30 year rule of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudanese women came out multiple times to protest the abhorrent treatment of women under his regime, often in open defiance of their family or the law. In 2019 it was estimated that two-thirds of Sudanese protesters were women. The military coup d'état in 2019 prompted the current devastating civil war between rival factions in Sudan, and again women face the biggest obstacles among the violence. Almost 90% of Sudanese people seeking refugee status in neighboring Chad are women. Learn more about the plight of Sudanese women today in these articles from Al Jazeera and the Norwegian Refugee Council . A look at the freedom and peace efforts of Sudanese women can be seen in these reports from the Christian Michelsen Institute and ReliefWeb .

Protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran's Regime

The 2022 arrest and death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Jhina Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police has led to what some are calling a new Iranian Revolution. Since Amini’s death the people of Iran—including a flood of girls and women who have risked the same fate—have crowded the streets to demand an end to the brutal tactics and oppressive laws of the theocratic, dictatorial government. Even as the street protests have decreased, Iranian women continue to fight back through acts of civil disobedience including not following the strict veiling regulations or opting to go out publicly without a hijab altogether. The protest call of “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (Woman, Life, Freedom - shown above in Kurdish) continues to galvanize the movement, garnering support and participation from Iranians of all backgrounds in Iran and abroad. Learn more about the Iranian women mobilizing government resistance in these articles from Ms. and the Wilson Center . These quotes collected by Women’s Voices Now provide an inspirational glimpse at some of the individuals pushing for change.

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5 new books on women's history for 2022, 4 resources on refugee crises in global context, 10 virtual exhibitions on women's history, 6 new books on human rights, 5 new ya books on women's history, competing visions of black civic participation, eyes on the prize in the classroom: voices from the civil rights movement, ambassador samantha power: upstanding in a time of crisis, becoming an activist: a conversation with dolores huerta, bringing lgbtqia+ upstanders into your classroom: a conversation with eric marcus, brother outsider, wwii in asia: between history & memory, donate now and together we'll build a better world, inspiration, insights, & ways to get involved.

5 Women’s Rights Essays You Can Read For Free

Women and girls are the most disenfranchised group in the world. Even in places where huge strides have been made, gaps in equality remain. Women’s rights are important within the realm of human rights. Here are five essays exploring the scope of women’s rights, which you can download or read for free online:

“A Vindication on the Rights of Woman” – Mary Wollstonecraft

Mother of Mary Shelley, who wrote the novel Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft is a juggernaut of history in her own right, though for a different reason. Self-educated, Wollstonecraft dedicated her life to women’s education and feminism. Her 1792 essay A Vindication on the Rights of Woman represents one of the earliest writings on women’s equality. In the Western world, many consider its arguments the foundation of the modern women’s rights movement. In the essay, Wollstonecraft writes that men are not more reasonable or rational than women, and that women must be educated with the same care, so they can contribute to society. If women were left out of the intellectual arena, the progress of society would stop. While most of us believe the idea that women are inherently inferior to men is very outdated, it’s still an accepted viewpoint in many places and in many minds. Wollstonecraft’s Vindication is still relevant.

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” – Audre Lorde

Poet and activist Audre Lorde defied the boundaries of traditional feminism and cried out against its racist tendencies. While today debates about intersectional feminism (feminism that takes into account race, sexuality, etc) are common, Audre Lorde wrote her essay on women’s rights and racism back in 1984. In “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde explains how ignoring differences between women – whether its race, class, or sexuality – halts any real change. By pretending the suffering of women is “all the same,” and not defined by differences, white women actually contribute to oppression. Lorde’s essay drew anger from the white feminist community. It’s a debate that feels very current and familiar.

“How to convince sceptics of the value of feminism” – Laura Bates

Laura Bates founded the Everyday Sexism Project website back in 2012. It documents examples of everyday sexism of every degree and has become very influential. In her essay from 2018, Bates takes reader comments into consideration over the essay’s three parts. This unique format allows the essay to encompass multiple views, just not Bates’, and takes into consideration a variety of experiences people have with skeptics of feminism. Why even debate skeptics? Doesn’t that fuel the trolls? In some cases, yes, but skeptics of feminism aren’t trolls, they are numerous, and make up every part of society, including leadership. Learning how to talk to people who don’t agree with you is incredibly important.

“Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most influential voices in women’s rights writing. Her book, We Should All Be Feminists , is a great exploration of 21st-century feminism. In this essay from Elle, Adichie takes a seemingly “small” topic about fashion and makes a big statement about independence and a woman’s right to wear whatever she wants. There is still a lot of debate about what a feminist should look like, if wearing makeup contributes to oppression, and so on. “Why Can’t A Smart Woman Love Fashion?” is a moving, personal look at these sorts of questions.

“The male cultural elite is staggeringly blind to #MeToo. Now it’s paying for it.” – Moira Donegan

There are countless essays on the Me Too Movement, and most of them are great reads. In this one from The Guardian, Moira Donegan highlights two specific men and the publications that chose to give them a platform after accusations of sexual misconduct. It reveals just how pervasive the problem is in every arena, including among the cultural, intellectual elite, and what detractors of Me Too are saying.

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About the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

Essay on Fundamental Rights for Students and Children

500+ words essay on fundamental rights.

There are some basic rights that are very well-known as fundamental to human existence and crucial for human expansion. In the absence of fundamental rights, a man’s existence would be worthless. So, the political institution’s role and responsibility mainly emphasized on empowering the people, especially the minorities to live in dignity with rights of equality, dignity and religious freedom. Fundamental Rights have been classified into 6 categories that are Right to Equality, Right to Freedom, Right against Exploitation, Right to Freedom of Religion, Right to Cultural and Educational, Right to Constitutional Remedy.

Right to Equality

This right includes the equality before the Law which implies a prohibition of discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, color or sex, equal protection of the law, equal opportunity in public employment and abolition of untouchability and titles. It also states that every citizen shall have equal access to all public places.

To provide equal opportunities there will be no reservation in government services except in the case of scheduled caste, scheduled tribes, and other backward classes and for war widows and physically handicapped person. This right was made to abolish untouchability which was practiced in India for decades.

Right to Freedom

This right includes the right to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom to form unions and associations. It also includes freedom to travel anywhere in India, freedom to live in any part of India, and the freedom to choose any profession of their interest.

This right also states that any citizen of India has the full right to purchase, sell and hold property in any part of the country. According to these rights, people will have the liberty to indulge in any trade or business. This right also defines that a person cannot be convicted twice for the same offense and it also cannot be compelled to stand as a witness against oneself.

Right against Exploitation

This right includes the prohibition of any form of forced labor. Children who are below the age of 14 years are not allowed to work in mines or factories where the risk of life is involved. According to these rights, no person has the right to exploit the other person in any way.

Therefore human trafficking & begging have been made legal offenses and those found involved are to be penalized. According to this rights slavery and traffic among women and children for dishonest purposes has been declared an offense. Payment of minimum wage against the labor is defined and no compromise is allowed in this regard.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Right to Freedom of Religion

These right states that there will be full freedom of conscience for all citizens of India. All people shall have equal right to freely adopt, practice and spread the religion of their choice. The state shall not hinder in any religious affairs of any individual in any manner. In this, all religions have a right to establish and uphold institutions for religious and charitable purposes. Also, they will be free to manage their own affairs with respect to these rights.

Cultural and Educational Right

This right is one of the most important rights as education is the primary right of each child. According to this right, all are free to follow the culture of their choice. Also, all are free to get the education of their choice.

No individual will be denied admission in any of the educational institutes on the basis of their culture, caste or religion. According to this, all the minorities have the right to establish their own educational institutes.

Right to Constitutional Remedy

This right is a very special right given to all the citizens. According to this right, a citizen has the power to go to the court in case of denial of any of the fundamental rights. The court stands as a guard for anybody against the breach of these rights.

If the government forcefully or intentionally does injustice to any individual or if a person is imprisoned without any reason or by the unlawful act then this right allows the person to go to the court for getting justice against the actions of the government.

Fundamental rights play a very significant role in the life of any citizen. These rights can defend during the time of complexity & difficulty and help us grow into a good human being and that’s why all the rights are the needs of people.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Women's Rights — Equal Rights for Women: The Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality

Equal Rights for Women: The Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality

Categories: Women's Rights

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Published: Mar 6, 2024

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Fight for Human Rights

Introduction: contextualisation and thesis statement.

For a long time, the United States has involved itself in various issues around human rights and liberty among its citizens. Precisely, the fight for human rights is an issue that is evident in various aspects of the country. This fight dates back to times before the Declaration of Independence and the acquisition of the Constitution. Such an analogy provides an avenue for analyzing the historical context of the issue and relating it to the present state. Hence, this paper seeks to ascertain the fight for human rights among United States citizens. This process would utilize the views of scholars and authors, including Dr. Martin Luther King, among others.

Body Paragraph

United States people of color are known to fight for their rights for a long time. The speech by Dr. Martin Luther King indicates the complexity of the fight for human rights in the United States among the people of color. For example, the prevalent issues before the Constitution include injustice against black people and limiting their freedom. These issues have a significant impact on the lives of these individuals. The speech “I have a dream” aims to emphasize the need for equal treatment of United States citizens regardless of the existing stereotyping. Through his speech, Dr. Martin Luther King championed justice and freedom among United States citizens.

Native Americans fought for their rights as they protested the occupation of Alcatraz. Indian movements during this period were critical in reclaiming their land. The document provides an overview of the events during this occupation. Ideally, the fight took a long time before its success. The resistance and associated torture among the protestors was a key factor that motivated them to reclaim their ancestral land. It is essential to consider the provisions in this document to understand the prevalent issue. Thus, using this document provides essential information needed for understanding the issues that Native Americans faced in their struggle against dispossession by the elite.

Outside Evidence

The black power movement was a revolutionary movement between the 1960s and 1970s (Pruitt, 2020). This movement is known to exist during a period when social movements formed an important factor in society. Specifically, the black power movement considered several principles that guided their actions. These included racial pride, self-determination, and autonomy alongside equality among all people, majorly those of African descent. Ideally, Malcolm X’s assassination motivated social movements toward the need to fight for these principles. Black Americans considered creating their social, political, and economic power instead of seeking integration with the whites in society. Hence, embracing such issues as equality and freedom among members of society was essential to societal wellbeing in the United States.

In conclusion, the fight for human rights is an issue that has dominated the United States arena for a considerable time. The social movements among the people of color and the Native Americans show a considerable violation of human rights in almost all facets of society. Such moves delivering speeches used by Dr. Martin Luther King and Native American protests alongside black power movements formed an essential aspect that led to the transformation of society. Such events as the acquisition of the Constitution were essential factors that occurred during this period. However, they had a limited impact on the issues considered in this paper. Hence, human rights is an issue common to United States citizens.

Pruitt, S. (2020, February 20). How the Black power movement influenced the civil rights movement . HISTORY. https://www.history.com/news/black-power-movement-civil-rights

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Lawyer Gloria Allred speaks on VP Harris and the fight to protect women's rights

It's been two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion that women had for nearly half a century.

Since then, the issue has been taken to state legislatures, with some codifying the right and others enacting intense bans. The issue has also played a central role in the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz.

RELATED STORY | Citizens in half of states can't force ballot measures on abortion

Gloria Allred is an acclaimed women's rights attorney, and she joined Scripps News Tuesday night from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to explain why she believes Harris is the right candidate to beat Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"When the vice president is elected, Kamala Harris has promised — if we can also win a majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate — that she will sign a bill to codify Roe v. Wade," Allred said. "Meaning, make it legal again, pass it into law as a statute. So I am dedicated to fighting to help her win as president of the United States."

You can watch Scripps News' full interview with Gloria Allread in the video player above.

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The EPA can’t use Civil Rights Act to fight environmental injustice in Louisiana, judge rules

FILE - The Marathon Petroleum Refinery is visible in Reserve, La., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Environmental advocates and residents of the Louisiana chemical corridor known as Cancer Alley have spent decades calling for change in the way industrial activity is regulated there. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has weakened the Biden administration’s effort to use a historic civil rights law to fight industrial pollution alleged to have taken a heavier toll on minority communities in Louisiana.

U.S. District Judge James David Cain of Lake Charles handed down the ruling Thursday, permanently blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing what are known as “disparate impact” requirements on the state.

Cain had already issued a temporary blocking order in January. His ruling was a victory for Louisiana officials who challenged the EPA policy, which was based on possible violations of Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act forbids anyone who receives federal funds from discriminating based on race or national origin. It’s been used in housing and transportation, but rarely on environmental matters. The EPA under President Joe Biden, however, tried to use it more aggressively.

The state sued in May 2023, a move that may have played a role in the EPA dropping an investigation into whether Louisiana officials put Black residents living in an industrial stretch of the state at increased cancer risk. The area, often referred to as “cancer alley” because of the amount of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there, stretches along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

In its lawsuit, the state argued that the Biden administration’s plans went beyond the scope of Title VI. The state said the EPA wrongfully targeted pollution policies that unintentionally hurt minorities communities most when the law applies only to intentional discrimination. The state also said the policy is discriminatory because it would allow regulation of pollutants based on the race of those affected. Cain agreed the EPA went too far.

While Cain’s ruling was a victory for Republican state officials — Gov. Jeff Landry, who was attorney general when the suit was filed, and his successor in that office, Elizabeth Murrill — environmental groups decried it.

“Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities,” Patrice Simms of the Earthjustice organization, said in a news release.

The ruling applies only to Louisiana and can be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

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Widow vows to fight drunk driving after husband, 4 others killed in I-35W crash

By Olivia Leach

Updated on: August 22, 2024 / 10:04 PM CDT / CBS Texas

NORTH TEXAS – Alecia Gunn recalls her wedding day as the happiest day of her life.

"Him coming into my life was a big deal for me," she said, reflecting on her time with husband Willie Gunn before he tragically became one of five victims in a fiery crash on I-35W on Monday morning.

She fondly remembers him as a family man who loved to make her laugh.

"My children were small when he met me, and immediately, he stepped up as a father figure," she said, noting they were separated at the time of the crash.

Despite their separation, Alecia Gunn always believed they would reunite as a couple.

"You don't always have time at all," she said, reflecting on the fleeting nature of life.

Willie Gunn, his girlfriend Amber Hopewell and her children were among the dead. Police say 19-year-old suspect Eduardo Gonzalez slammed into the sedan the family was traveling in at a high speed. The sedan caught fire, but Gonzalez survived the crash. He was charged with five counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle and driving while intoxicated.

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"The young man is 19 years old. Not only is he responsible, but people around him are responsible. The person that gave him alcohol, gave him the keys of the car," she said.

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Willie Gunn's family plans to have a balloon release for him Friday at 6 p.m. in Fort Worth's Glenwood Park. The family of Amber Hopewell said this has been an overwhelming loss for their family.

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From Celine Dion to Kid Rock, can political rallies use music without the artist's permission?

Donald trump has faced backlash and the threat of legal action from artists whose music has been used without authorization at his campaign rallies., by mike gavin • published august 21, 2024 • updated on august 21, 2024 at 8:41 pm.

Pause that playlist, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Not even the future President of the United States has the authority to play any song they want.

📺 Watch News4 now: Stream NBC4 newscasts for free right here, right now.

What they listen to once inside the comfort of the White House is, of course, their right. But while on the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election , those seeking entry into the highest office in the country need the proper licenses and approvals to play an artist's copyrighted music. Without it, the presidential candidates could face untimely public condemnation from the artists and possible litigation.

Obtaining these approvals isn't quite as easy as signing up for a Spotify subscription.

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Just as a politician might not listen to the music of an artist they aren't a fan of, musicians might not want their work used by a political party they aren't affiliated with.

In many cases, campaign organizers pay an annual fee to obtain a blanket license from performance rights organizations to play or perform any work within a rightsholder's entire catalog.

“The campaign will use it for live performances only, which means when they're outside somewhere or they're in an arena where they're just gonna put out the song live, no one's recording it, it's not being simulcast, it's not being streamed, none of that,” said Kenneth Freundlich, a business, entertainment and intellectual property attorney “That implicates only one right.

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“You do not need to license the master recording of the song for a live performance only. So, what would normally happen is when you go to a concert, the venues themselves get what's called a blanket license from the performance rights organizations.”

But even with that license, an artist or license holder can still object. So, campaign organizers often just press play on a song and hope it doesn't anger those holding the rights to it.

"Campaigns operate on the ask for forgiveness rather than permission basis, especially when it is not in the context of a television commercial," Joel Sawyer, the former head of communication for South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. "If you are playing music at a live event, you kind of operate like a college cover band, just use the music and you hope for the best."

Trump has faced recent backlash from artists after their songs were used at his campaign rallies. Celine Dion made a post on social media saying Trump used unauthorized video of her performing her song "My Heart Will Go On" at his rally in Montana.

Today, Celine Dion’s management team and her record label, Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., became aware of the unauthorized usage of the video, recording, musical performance, and likeness of Celine Dion singing “My Heart Will Go On” at a Donald Trump / JD Vance campaign… pic.twitter.com/28CYLFvgER — Celine Dion (@celinedion) August 10, 2024

"Today, Celine Dion’s management team and her record label, Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., became aware of the unauthorized usage of the video, recording, musical performance, and likeness of Celine Dion singing “My Heart Will Go On” at a Donald Trump / JD Vance campaign rally in Montana," read a statement posted on Dion's X account . "In no way is this use authorized, and Celine Dion does not endorse this or any similar use. …And really, THAT song?"

The family of late soul singer Isaac Hayes threatened legal action against Trump for the unauthorized use of the song "Hold On I’m Coming" at campaign rallies from 2022 to 2024.

"It's just about not having their music associated," Freundlich said. "Either they are not down with that political party, and they want to be with the other party, or they're just not political. They don't want their songs thrown in the fray."

Trump has received authorization from musicians like Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood, known for his patriotic anthem, “God Bless the USA.”

Artists, however, do not always have control over how and when their music is played. Political campaigns obtain licenses from performing rights organizations like ASCAP that enable them to use a wide variety of songs from the catalogs of recognizable artists at live events. If an artist objects to its use, the song is pulled from the license.

“If the artist has already gone to the PRO and told them to stop using it ...your first step is a cease and desist letter from a lawyer. And sometimes that will work. And it does in many cases,” Freundlich said. “Now, once it's pulled, technically, it's a copyright infringement for the campaign to continue to use it.”

But not every campaign immediately complies, risking up to $150,000 in statutory damages from the copyright infringement for each work used.

“It's simply a public pressure campaign,” Sawyer said. “In cases where it is a national figure who is very divisive, when you have artists who do not want their work associated with a divisive figure, you're going to see more and more of this.

"You're putting together a playlist, but look, you don't want any unforced errors, right? You don't want stories like this coming out in the middle of the campaign. So if you get that first letter saying, don't use this anymore, the best practice would be don't use it anymore."

So, which party has the better musical catalog to choose from for its campaign playlist?

"I don't think it's inaccurate to say the Democrats have had a little bit better luck than Republicans in finding good and popular bands," Sawyer said. "Kamala Harris has Beyoncé in one of her ads for God's sake. I mean, how are Republicans supposed to compete with that?"

The Associated Press contributed to this story

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10 Reasons Why Human Rights Are Important
The marriage between human rights and environmentalism is becoming stronger due to climate change and the effects it has on people. We live in the world, we need the land, so it makes sense that what happens to the environment impacts humanity. The right to clean air, clean soil, and clean water are all as important as the other rights included ...
5 Women's Rights Essays You Can Read For Free
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most influential voices in women's rights writing. Her book, We Should All Be Feminists, is a great exploration of 21st-century feminism. In this essay from Elle, Adichie takes a seemingly "small" topic about fashion and makes a big statement about independence and a woman's right to wear whatever ...
Essay on Women Rights in English for Students
Answer 2: Women's rights are the essential human rights that the United Nations enshrined for every human being on the earth nearly 70 years ago. These rights include a lot of rights including the rights to live free from violence, slavery, and discrimination. In addition to the right to education, own property; vote and to earn a fair and ...
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Essay on Fundamental Rights for Students| 500+ Words Essay
500+ Words Essay on Fundamental Rights. There are some basic rights that are very well-known as fundamental to human existence and crucial for human expansion. In the absence of fundamental rights, a man's existence would be worthless. So, the political institution's role and responsibility mainly emphasized on empowering the people ...
Equal Rights for Women: The Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality
Furthermore, gender equality is a fundamental human right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, asserts that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Denying women equal rights is a violation of this principle and perpetuates a cycle of discrimination and inequality.
Fighting for Rights
Thanh Le Professor Jacky English 1B 27 April 2019 Fighting for Civil Rights The idea of fighting for equal rights from white people is never considered easily for African American. To gain equal rights, black people have no better choice than standing up to protest their rights in different ways whether it is violent or non-violent.
Right to protest
Is protest a human right? When taking part in a protest, a person is exercising a variety of universally recognized human rights. As well as the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, this includes other rights that are essential to enable peaceful protest, including the right to life, to freedom of association, to privacy, and to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention ...
Fight For Our Rights Essay
Fight For Our Rights Essay. 713 Words3 Pages. Over the years people have fought for their rights in many different ways. The most effective and best ways to fight and ensure our rights are peacefully protesting and negotiating. These are effective because they bring about change without bringing about injuries or deaths of either party.
Fight for Human Rights
Introduction: Contextualisation and Thesis statement For a long time, the United States has involved itself in various issues around human rights and liberty among its citizens. Precisely, the fight for human rights is an issue that is evident in various aspects of the country. This fight dates back to times before the Declaration of Independence […]
Lawyer Gloria Allred speaks on VP Harris and the fight to protect women
Gloria Allred is an acclaimed women's rights attorney, and she joined Scripps News to explain why she believes Kamala Harris is the right candidate to beat Donald Trump in the presidential election. ... "Meaning, make it legal again, pass it into law as a statute. So I am dedicated to fighting to help her win as president of the United States ...
Man stabbed after argument turned into fight in Chicago Loop
CHICAGO (CBS) — A man was hurt after being stabbed during a fight in the Loop Thursday night. Chicago police say just before 10:30 p.m., a 44-year-old man was arguing with another man in the 100 ...
UN rights chief raises alarm about Myanmar's Rohingya civilians trapped
The U.N.'s human rights chief has joined a chorus of concern for members of Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority after many were reported killed in recent fighting between the military ...
The EPA can't use Civil Rights Act to fight environmental injustice in
The state sued in May 2023, a move that may have played a role in the EPA dropping an investigation into whether Louisiana officials put Black residents living in an industrial stretch of the state at increased cancer risk. The area, often referred to as "cancer alley" because of the amount of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there, stretches along the Mississippi River from ...
Trans advocate Roxy Tickle wins discrimination case after being banned
The fight for women's rights continues." The court determined that Tickle, in the case called Tickle v. Giggle, has been "indirectly discriminated against" in being disallowed from accessing Giggle. "The indirect discrimination cases succeeded because Ms Tickle was excluded from the use of the Giggle app because she did not look sufficiently ...
Widow vows to fight drunk driving after husband, 4 others killed in I
Fort Worth crash victims identified, widow vows to fight drunk driving 02:43. NORTH TEXAS - Alecia Gunn recalls her wedding day as the happiest day of her life. "Him coming into my life was a ...
Can political rallies use music without the artist's permission?
Pause that playlist, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Not even the future President of the United States has the authority to play any song they want. What they listen to once inside the comfort of ...

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Intro Essay: The Civil Rights Movement

Essential Vocabulary

Continuing the Heroic Struggle for Equality: The Civil Rights Movement

Reading Comprehension Questions

116 Civil Rights Movement Essay Topics & Examples

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Judith Sargent Murray

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Protest against the Islamic Republic of Iran's Regime

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5 Women’s Rights Essays You Can Read For Free

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“The male cultural elite is staggeringly blind to #MeToo. Now it’s paying for it.” – Moira Donegan

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Essay on Fundamental Rights for Students and Children

Right to Equality

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Right against Exploitation

Right to Freedom of Religion

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Equal Rights for Women: The Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality

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