Social movements in the Americas (1945–2020)

Southern US laws enforcing racial segregation in schools, transport, restaurants and public life after Reconstruction, upheld by *Plessy v. Ferguson* (1896).

Black soldiers fought for freedom abroad then faced segregation at home; the USSR used US racism as Cold War propaganda, embarrassing US leaders internationally.

The movement of millions of Black Southerners to Northern cities (1910s–1970) seeking jobs and escaping Jim Crow, which built large organized Black communities able to support a mass movement.

Job discrimination, sharecropping poverty and exclusion from the postwar economic boom gave African Americans direct material reasons to demand change.

Black church teaching, American founding ideals of equality, and Gandhian non-violent resistance from India's independence movement.

Non-violent direct action through the SCLC — the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56), Birmingham campaign (1963), and March on Washington (1963).

Malcolm X argued for Black self-defense and self-reliance 'by any means necessary' rather than non-violent acceptance of arrest and suffering.

A movement emphasizing Black pride and community control, popularized by Stokely Carmichael after 1966; embodied by the Black Panther Party.

Combined armed self-defense against police brutality with community programs like free breakfasts for children and health clinics, founded in 1966.

Helped found the SCLC and SNCC (1960), believing ordinary grassroots people, not just famous leaders, should drive the movement's decisions.

A Mississippi sharecropper beaten for registering to vote, who became a powerful voting-rights activist and co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (1964).

NAACP (court cases), SCLC (non-violent campaigns), SNCC (sit-ins, Freedom Summer), CORE (Freedom Rides testing bus desegregation).

Supreme Court ruled segregated public schools unconstitutional, overturning **Plessy v. Ferguson**'s 'separate but equal' — a legal breakthrough, but one the Court could not enforce on its own.

The ruling had no built-in enforcement; many Southern school districts ignored, delayed, or violently resisted it (e.g. Little Rock 1957) for years afterward.

Banned discrimination in employment and public places (restaurants, hotels, theatres) based on race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin; created the EEOC to enforce workplace rules.

Johnson used his Senate experience, the emotional momentum after Kennedy's assassination, and pressure from the Birmingham and March on Washington images to push the bill through Congress in 1964.

Banned literacy tests and sent federal registrars to Southern counties, directly enforcing the 15th Amendment; Black voter registration in the South rose sharply within a few years.

Social/cultural: desegregated public spaces, greater Black political representation, cultural pride (Black is Beautiful). Economic: much smaller — Black family income and wealth gaps versus white Americans barely narrowed.

Legal segregation ended, but de facto segregation (housing, school funding, policing, wealth) persisted — some argue the movement won rights but not economic equality.

Mexican Americans were underrepresented in government and faced unequal treatment by police and courts, despite having fought in WWII and Korea.

Farm workers, many Mexican American, endured low pay, no job security, and dangerous conditions — grievances that fed the Delano Grape Strike (1965).

Co-founded the National Farm Workers Association (later United Farm Workers) and led the Delano Grape Strike and boycott, using nonviolent tactics inspired partly by the Black civil rights movement.

The idea/ideology of pride in Mexican American identity and culture, rejecting assimilation and demanding equal rights — the 'role of ideas' behind the Chicano Movement.

School segregation and curricula that ignored Mexican American history and culture, plus discrimination in housing and everyday life, pushed a new generation (especially students) to organize.

The Mexican American civil rights movement of the 1960s-70s, fighting for labour rights, land rights, political power, and cultural identity.

A 1965-70 campaign by farmworkers (led by Chavez and Huerta) striking and asking consumers to boycott table grapes, ending in the first farmworker union contracts.

Co-founder of the UFW; used non-violent methods (strikes, boycotts, fasting) to fight for farmworker rights.

UFW co-founder and chief negotiator; coined the phrase "Si, se puede" ("Yes, we can").

Led the New Mexico land-grant movement, using confrontational tactics like occupying a national forest and raiding a courthouse.

School walkouts by over 15,000 East LA students protesting unequal schools and demanding Chicano history in the curriculum.

Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan — a student organization founded in 1969 spreading Chicano activism on college campuses.

A Chicano political party founded in 1970 that won local elected office in Texas and Colorado — an example of political change.

Non-violent (boycotts, fasting) won broad public sympathy and contracts; confrontational methods (land occupations, Brown Berets) grabbed attention but drew crackdowns and criticism.

The 1970 Delano contracts gave farmworkers their first union recognition, higher pay, and pesticide safety rules.

UFW bargaining power declined through the 1980s as growers found ways around contracts, and farmworkers remained among the lowest-paid US workers.

They pushed the movement to confront sexism within its own ranks, not just from growers — foreshadowing a separate Chicana feminist movement.