Civil rights and social movements in the Americas post-1945

State laws in the US South enforcing racial segregation in schools, transport and public places.

End federal recognition of Native American tribes, pushing assimilation and causing land and service losses.

Founded 1968, organized urban Native Americans against police harassment, poverty and loss of treaty rights; led Alcatraz and Wounded Knee occupations.

Used the courts to challenge segregation directly, leading the legal campaign behind Brown v. Board of Education.

SCLC: church-based, led by Dr King, organized mass non-violent protest. SNCC: student-led, organized sit-ins and voter registration, often more confrontational.

Segregated public schools were unconstitutional, overturning the 1896 'separate but equal' doctrine.

Banned discrimination in employment and public places, ending legal segregation in businesses.

Banned literacy tests and sent federal officials to register Black voters in the South.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat; the 381-day boycott ended when the Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional, launching Dr King to national leadership.

Dr King targeted a heavily segregated city; televised police violence against peaceful marchers built national pressure for civil rights legislation.

250,000 people gathered to hear Dr King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, pushing forward the civil rights bill that became the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Police beat marchers on 'Bloody Sunday'; national outrage directly pressured Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act later that year.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a network of Black churches organising non-violent protest across the South.

'Bloody Sunday' — peaceful voting-rights marchers were beaten by state troopers; the violence, shown on TV, helped push Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act months later.

Civil Rights Act (1964) — segregation and employment discrimination; Voting Rights Act (1965) — voter registration; Fair Housing Act (1968) — housing discrimination.

He argued for self-defence 'by any means necessary' and Black self-determination through separate institutions, rejecting King's non-violent integrationism.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, in Oakland, California, in 1966.

An FBI programme of surveillance, infiltration and repression used against radical groups including the Black Panthers, intensified from 1967; it included the 1969 killing of Panther leader Fred Hampton.

The Feminine Mystique (1963), by Betty Friedan, who went on to co-found the National Organization for Women (NOW) in 1966.

A US Supreme Court ruling that legalised abortion nationwide, a major legal victory for the feminist movement.

He organised the Delano Grape Strike and a national consumer boycott of table grapes (1965-1970), pressuring growers into signing improved contracts.

It scrapped the old quota system favouring European migrants, opening much larger legal migration from Latin America and Asia.

Opposition to the Vietnam War/draft, and new music and communal gatherings such as Woodstock (1969); also linked to New Left groups like Students for a Democratic Society.

Because those laws ended legal segregation and protected voting rights but did not fix poverty, housing discrimination or police brutality in northern cities — the gap between legal and lived equality fuelled Black Power.