FREE Civil Rights and Women's Liberation Essay (original) (raw)

The Civil Rights Movement in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the most significant and successful social movements in the 20th century. Millions of African Americans fought for achieving racial equality before the law. A major factor in the success of the movement was the strategy of protesting against discrimination without using violence as an alternative to armed uprising. This movement's success inspired many other social movements, including the Women's Liberation Movement. This paper explores the connection between the Civil Rights Movement and the events of the Women's Liberation Movement, occurring in the 1970s-1980s. The latter of the two was the collective social struggle for equality that aimed to eliminate forms of oppression based on gender and to free women from male supremacy. Throughout the paper, the Civil Rights Movement will be regarded as the precedent that opened the doors for the Women's Liberation Movement. It will be discussed that the Civil Rights Movement influenced the Women's Liberation Movement in four key ways. Firstly, it provided women with a model for success on how a successful movement should be organized. Secondly, the Civil Rights Movement broadened the concept of informal leadership to include women, even though black women had to deal with sexism from both white men and black men. Thirdly, by fighting for equality, the Civil Rights Movement changed the culture of advocacy and made social justice a legitimate cause. Finally, by eventually excluding women from formal movement leadership, the Civil Rights movement spurred women to organize their own movement in order to fight for their rights. .
The activists involved in the Civil Rights Movement gave women a model for success. The protest tactics such as sit-ins, boycotts and marches demonstrated that the movement used demonstrated the power of solving social problems through collective action without being aggressive.

1. Women's Involvement In The Civil Rights

Beside the more visible black male leaders of the Civil Rights Movement both black and white women played important and key roles in the struggle for racial equality. Women's experiences in the Civil Rights Movement can tell us a lot about the lives of ordinary and extraordinary women and their ability to access and be denied power in a movement for black liberation that was based on the idea of equality. ... One such woman is Ella Baker who for nearly 50 years worked within many different areas of the civil rights and black liberation movement in various capacities. ... But there is m...

2. Women's Liberation Movement

Popular social protests were opposition to the Vietnam war and the civil rights movements protests, which was exemplified by the struggle for black equality. ... Other reasons for protests included the women's liberation, gay liberation, and the environmental movement. ... The Women's Liberation Movement (WLM) exploded into existence in the late 1960's in America after a period of relative inactivity in feminism during the 1950's. ... It is said that WLM grew out of the civil rights movement. ... Liberal feminism concentrated on equal rights and attempted to bring about cha...

3. The Women's Liberation Movement

The Women's Liberation Movement a series of political campaigns for reforms on issues. ... Areas where improvement has been accomplished including voting rights but more can be done to improve women's rights. ... The Women's Liberation Movement should not be a one-time event because it's reminding us that changes are still occurring for improvements for women. Throughout the 1960's women faced many challenges based on gender and race such as sexual violence and harassment, reproductive rights, equal pay, and discrimination at the workplace. ... The Title five of the 1...

4. Successes of the Civil Rights Movement

Board of Education of Topeka case along with influential leaders such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., emphasized the need for civil liberties, while events such as Rosa Park's seat refusal, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Women's Political Caucus, and the establishment of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sparked the onset of the Civil Right's Movement. ... Board of Education of Topeka paved way for the liberation from segregation and racial discrimination. ... Finally, in 1960, a civil rights act was created that strengthened voting rights but still there was a ...

5. U.S. History - The Civil Rights Movement

The Civil Rights Movement also changed the way people treated women. ... Women were also denied basic rights before the Civil Rights Movement, like voting and getting a job. After the Civil Rights Movement, there was a decrease to violence towards women, equal chance of receiving jobs and less sexual harassment. ... This changed the culture by having a different work environment since women would now be working with men and after achieving some gains, the violence and riots about women's liberation also stopped. ... The Civil Rights Movement had a big effect on the cultural changes in the...

6. Civil Rights Movement

That movement was the Civil Rights Movement. ... There was a fair share of success and failures that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement. ... During the Civil Rights movement there were many women who helped the movement become successful. Rosa Parks is one of the women who made a significant difference just by her actions. ... The civil rights movement also started the rise of a black power movement towards the middle of the 1960's. ...

7. Journalism and the Women's Rights Movement

Anthony began working for women's rights. ... Women such as Sally Jory, who five years after the Civil War, as an 18-year-old girl, obtained a position on the Boston Herald. ... In the postwar period, few social commentators thought about the liberation of both sexes from the traditional definitions of women's work and men's work. ... Why didn't they agitate in Washington for women's rights?"... With the start of the Women's Liberation movement in the mid-sixties (Cot, Gordon, Stacey, Mitchell, and Oakley 5) came Betty Friedan who wrote The Feminine Mystique,...

8. Womens Liberation in Australia

What were the goals, methods and successes of the women's liberation movement? ... Equality meant the right to: - work and participate in the paid workforce - equal pay and opportunity - economic independence - participate in civic life: to sit on juries, boards and in parliament - enter clubs, pubs, venues and events without restriction Methods: To gain these rights, women fought to remove the discriminatory laws that prevented their participation in society - they also fought for the rights of abos and immigrants through various political strategies: - the formation of orga...

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