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Should the Mexican American and American Indian movements be included here too? The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lariano (talk • contribs) .

There are many important parts of American History that are both deserving of their own articles, and being part of a relevant Category or collection of related links. AlMac|(talk) 23:16, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I believe (as reflected in the edits I have made) that this article should primarily confine itself to the Civil Rights movement between 1945 and 1970, with references of course to the historical background for the movement and the results of the movement. I believe it's simply too much to include SNCC in the same article as abolitionists or Booker T. Washington. DanKeshet

Topics to be discussed

  • Historical background to how the blacks in the US became second class citizens in many states.
  • Definition of citizen in US.
  • Constitutional amendments: 13th abolishes slavery, 14th guarantees equal protection under the law, 15th grants right to vote to former slaves.
  • Differences in how people in the northern and southern US states viewed these issues.
  • Political responses to the issues.
  • Religious responses from conservative Christians, liberal Christians, the Catholic Church, Unitarian Universalism, and Judaism.

In Judaism Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a theology professor at Conservative Judaism's primary seminary, became one of the era's most outspoken civil rights activists. Many rabbis within Reform Judaism, and some within the other Jewish denominations, took strong public stands on this issue and led their congregations to protest violations of civil rights.

  • Imporant legislation passed during this era.
  • Results of the civil rights struggle.

The best-known part of the movement has been the struggle to obtain full rights by African-Americans. But the struggles for equality for women, the disabled and others, including homosexuals and bisexuals, have been part of the movement too. The preceding unsigned comment was added by DanKeshet (talk • contribs) .


As a major historical event, the title should be capitalized. (U.S. Civil Rights Movement) --Jiang

No need for periods in acronyms though. --mav 04:29, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

How do you tell it's an acronym? --Jiang

Capital letters all together like NASA and WYSIWYG. --mav

The American media always puts in the full stops: [1][2]. --Jiang

This US media is not a good source for correct literary style. this Google search yeilds these references (all of which say to not use periods): [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]. And that is just from the first page of results. --mav 21:58, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)~

Your links agree with me:

3. "when they use it as an adjective they should punctuate it with periods"
4. "United States or U.S. is more precise."
5. "The abbreviation U.S. is acceptable when used as an adjective."
7. "Spell out United States when it is a noun; use U.S. (note periods) when it is an adjective."
8. "It is preferable to spell out the names of countries and federal agencies, abbreviating or using acronyms only when space is limited and then with periods."
9. "The two-letter abbreviation for the United States of America uses periods."

--Jiang 22:49, 29 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Fine then either use "United States" or "American". Both are common. --mav 00:25, 30 Nov 2003 (UTC)
What's wrong with "U.S."? --Jiang
It looks hackish. Best to spell it out if a clean acronym is not used. "American Civil Rights Movement" is the far more common name anyway. --mav

Mississippi Burning

This text was on civil rights and I think it should be here instead, but not sure where.

In 1964 civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi. Their deaths shocked the United States public and Congress and helped pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. The incident became the inspiration for the film, "Mississippi Burning." The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gazpacho (talk • contribs) .

I have merged the above text with a pre-existing paragraph about the incedent in uner The Cost heading. I hope it meets with your expectations Gazpacho. -JCarriker 13:31, Sep 30, 2004 (UTC)

Other Ethnicities

This page should also mention the struggle of other ethnicities. See e.g. Wing Luke. The preceding unsigned comment was added by SebastianHelm (talk • contribs) .

Radical Republicans

This article is clearly not NPOV, phrases like "Radical-Republican measures" have no place in a Wikipedia article. I will check back in a couple days to see if it has been fixed. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 216.18.46.6 (talk • contribs) .

This anonymous contributor [216.18.46.6] apparently does not recognize the special meaning of "Radical Republicans" in this context: it refers to the group of Senators and members of the House of Representatives in the years after the Civil War, led by Thaddeus Stevens, who championed "Radical Reconstruction." The mistake is understandable, since we did not link to the article on Radical Republicans; I have taken care of that. That article on Radical Republicans also needs to be improved. [I am also moving this comment to the end of the page, for logical and chronological consistency.]
This comment also highlights DanKeshet's point at the top of the page--this article sprawls too much by trying to cover blacks' struggles from 1865 (and before). While I do not think that we should set 1945 as the starting point, given the significant activities of the NAACP and others in the 1930s and 1940s, the article might benefit from some pruning of the 'background" section. Other sections, such as the part on the role of the federal government, are way too simplistic and give JFK and RFK much more credit than they deserve. Given the size of the article, we may want to spin off some subsidiary articles rather than making this one any longer and more unwieldy. A bibliography would be good too. -- Italo Svevo 10:00, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

An ommission?

How do we have an article about the American Civil Rights Movement that doesn't even mention Rosa Parks? ---B- 05:15, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've added a link to the documentary At The River I Stand, which examines the Memphis sanitation workers efforts to unionize. This gives further context to the events surrounding King's assassination. An section on civil rights struggles in and through the labor movement should be added. A 2005 review of At the River I Stand DJ Silverfish 23:50, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's a good idea, but it probably needs its own page. Among the aspects to be covered are (1) historic exclusion of African-American workers from labor unions, particularly craft unions, and black estrangement from the labor movement, (2) labor's halting efforts to include black workers on an equal basis in the first thirty years of the last century (the IWW, Steel and Packinghouse organizing during WWI), (3) black-led unions, such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (which is already the subject of a good article that links the BSCP to the civil rights movement through people such as A. Philip Randolph and E.D. Nixon), (4) CIO efforts in Packinghouse, steel, auto (particularly Ford), mining, tobacco and elsewhere, (5) the modern era, when AFSCME, District 1199 and other unions took up the cause of civil rights as a union issue/workers' rights as a civil rights issue, and (6) affirmative action struggles within the labor movement, particularly but not exclusively construction, with a satellite articles on Weber v. Steelworkers, the Philadelphia plan and the like.
Not all of this has to do with the civil rights movement as we usually understand it, i.e., as the assault on state-sponsored segregation, Jim Crow and white supremacy. But I don't know that you can really cover 3, 4 and 5, where the connection between the labor movement and the civil rights movement was strongest, without covering 1 and 2 as well. And once you get to 5, you really have to cover 6 as well. Which makes for a somewhat sprawling article. Any suggestions on how to do it better? --Italo Svevo 02:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Split it?

Which is another point some of us have made before. This article, which mentions Newton Minow but not E.D. Nixon or Rosa Parks and which leaves out the years between Plessy and Brown, is a mess. Individually the sections are good—I like the quote from Dick Gregory, as an example—but it does not do the subject justice because there is no sense of history. Even within the period covered, for example, there is hardly any mention of the real tensions over strategy and leadership between the SCLC and the NAACP, between the SCLC and SNCC, and within SNCC. Plus, as I've said earlier, it gives the Kennedy administration far more credit than it deserves. It has the fault of many histories: looking back we know it had to turn out this way because . . . well, because it did.

I don't think making it longer would fix it, so maybe we need to split it into two: the American civil rights movement (1900 – 1954) and the American civil rights movement (1954 and after). The obvious split would be before and after Brown, as the movement became a sustained mass movement. I would also start the history at 1900 or so, with the Niagara movement, although obviously the forty years before would get a section. The first section would cover the battle between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, the NAACP's activities in those years, Garvey and the UNIA, Scottsboro and the March on Washington that didn't happen. The second would also cover Malcolm X and black nationalism, "black capitalism", the Poor People's March and Operation PUSH, and the current state of the movement, such as it is.

This is obviously a radical reconstruction of the article, so I won't make the mistake I've made before of hacking away without getting some sort of consensus. Nor do I claim, it goes without saying, any monopoly on the right to make changes this sweeping; there are too many people who have put time into improving it over the past few years. But I don't think we can fix it with incremental changes. --Italo Svevo 02:47, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

IS, if you check out the history of the article, it's based on public domain text from the U.S. government. That is the explanation for many of the biases you're noting, esp. it's emphasis on government in the movement. The current structure was largely dictated by this public domain source, and I imagine, has stood so long because nobody was willing to restructure it. I would be quite happy if you were to reorganize it as you see fit, as the ideas you have stated so far seem quite appropriate to me. DanKeshet 00:20, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

"mass movement" started

To pick a particular event as precipitating a "mass movement" can be very misleading, because different events had different impacts on different demographics. The funeral of Emmett Till may well have started a mass movement by Black Americans of the North, while other groups of people were inspired by the actions of a few brave people like Rosa Parks and speeches of various orators. News media attention brought college student volunteers in great numbers at a time when darn few blacks able to get into American colleges, even given the contributions of troops mobilized to escort a few students to a few institutions. AlMac|(talk) 23:33, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The split and an overhaul

As I suggested, I have split the article into two pieces, overhauling both. While the first one (1896-1954) has no obvious narrative, the second one does, perhaps a little too much so. In the process I have eliminated a lot of anecdotal material simply because we could not fit it all in and still offer a history. Others may think I have put in too much in the way of quotations. Since this is wikipedia, you know how to make your preferences known.

I was not able to devote much space to the Black Power movement and none to Malcolm X or the Panthers or "black capitalism" or Operation PUSH or the current state of the movement. The fact is, I ran out of steam just as we were running up against the 31 kilobyte mark. I also cut off the history at 1968, which is certainly arbitrary, but defensible. If it sounded as if I conflated King and the movement in the last few sections of the article, I think it is fair to say that King's problems represented the movement's problems and vice versa. Italo Svevo 03:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that we should also add ...

The integration of the University of Mississippi (which resulted in an armed insurrection in Northern Mississippi for a time in the fall of 1962, which was put down only by thousands of federal troops. Also, in Little Rock, there were ten students, not just nine. The first day, local authorities prevented them from entering. A day or two later when the 101st was providing security only nine showed up. One of the students got fed up with the protestors and transferred to Horace Mann (an all black school). Morris 03:48, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

My view on the split

Even though the page would be very long without the split, I find it makes it much harder to go betwene both pages. I also noted some things are missing that I thought was good to leave in (Smith v. Allwright for example). Any thoughts? The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.34.224.237 (talk • contribs) .

POV implicit in terminology?

There is no genetic or other scientific test for "whiteness" or "blackness" (Or "negroness" or "african-american-ness"). Classifying human beings according to these concepts is a POV. Any use of the terms "white", "black", "negro" or "african-american" is a POV unless a definition is provided. Centuries ago people were divided into "nobles" and "commoners". This distinction was entirely a political/religious belief, which supported the feudalist system.
Can anyone provide non-POV definitions of "white" or "black"? 24.64.166.191 05:47, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. Even if we think it was a ridiculous idea, we can still have an article that discuss the division of people into "nobles" and "commoners". I think that people with any point of view would agree that during the period 1955 to 1968, that there was a partially successful movement to help one group of people gain some rights to be legally equal to the other group. Morris 21:21, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

I did put a note near the top of the article that the terms (e.g. African American) have evolved over time, and refering the reader to the article on that. Morris 21:21, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

From the perspective of the racists, a black person was someone whose ancestry included so much as a single suspected black person, just like in Nazi Germany a Jew by definition was someone whose ancestry included a single person who had practiced that religion, irrespective of what their religion was at the time of the persecution. AlMac|(talk) 23:36, 18 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ho Hum

The main article and the discussion page are the most boring things in this encyclopedia. The preceding unsigned comment was added by 141.151.165.192 (talk • contribs) .

See Cultural Catastrophe (Below)

Timeline

A comment in the Article Improvement Drive discussion requested a Timeline, apparently not noticing that one already existed! I looked for a place in the body to place a link, and finally decided it had to go in te intro - where it fit best at the very end. Simesa 08:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Famous image

I'm trying to find a famous image in which a white woman screams at a black woman in front of a university during a civil rights protest. The black woman was trying to enrol as a protest during segregation in the US. The racist woman later denounced racism and began campaigning with the woman she had been abusing in the image. I would very much like to find out their names and find a copy of the image, if anyone here can help please leave a note on my talk page, thanks. - Solar 19:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Frequent vandalism

I just want to add content, in order to agree with the article's title -- to be consistent with the article's present content, the title would need to be "(Some topics within the) American civil rights movement (1955-1968)" -- instead, I'm adding the needed content, in a manner as non-disruptive as possible but still more-or-less chronologically fitting into the time segment spanned by that section. Obviously I'm disagreeing with previous editors... who perhaps had good reasons for not using an accurate title, but failed to put those reasons on this talk page....

Also, I feel a lot of time pressure in making edits on this article. Right now, at least 2 sections are missing: 10 The March on Washington and the next section 11 Mississippi Freedom Summer. This must be due to vandalism since the history page certainly does not show their removal, missing since yesterday at least and numerous times in the recent past. My conclusion is to divide my edits up by section, doing one at a time and as quickly as possible in an attempt to NOT have a vandal making changes at the same time as I am making my changes. All I can do about it is explain where I'm coming from, in making my edits piecemeal. On the vandalism topic, if the administrators are removing comments about it in order not to encourage vandalism by even mentioning it, that's fine with me, please email me to that effect so I'll know it for the future, and remove these comments now. I'm NOT going to add this article to my watchlist, so perhaps I'll never know. I don't regard my work here as a contribution, just an unpleasant repair job that I can do because I'm familiar with the topic for the time being, and which I therefore altruistically do as an affirmative WP citizen. For7thGen 18:00, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

After (re)reading some of the above comments, I want to add: I see nothing wrong with splitting the article into about 4 sub-articles, to get down well under 32 KB even after years of further growth. And I LIKE the article's style, just a knowledgeable friend talking to me about a few big topics, in an encyclopedia-manner of course; provided that the main Timeline items for that time segment are kind of thrown in at the end of the topic = section. I don't like a title like "some topics within the" any more than others do, so in order to be consistent with the title, this smoothly-add-timeline-items-at-section-ends alternative is what I would choose and did in fact choose, in my edits. For7thGen 18:35, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Reporting vandalism from 2 or 3 or 4 days ago: Two sections were removed, see two paragraphs higher. They were missing when I was on the page Fri or Sat or Sunday evening/night, and the usual line substituted, "poopoo" but poo 10-15 times instead of just 2 times, and something like "yiur" was there too. Then when I looked for that line a minute or an hour later, it was gone but the 2 sections haven't returned yet. This has happened at least 3 times before, during the last month. For7thGen 01:18, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Now I (think I) know how to fix vandalism (see changes to Wikipedia:Revert), and I've fixed it for now. And a bit later, I made my last (I hope) additions to this article. For7thGen 01:58, 19 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Post-1968?

I hadn't referred to this article in a while, so I hadn't known that it was no longer simply American Civil Rights Movement. I was wikifying Howard Lee, the former mayor of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and I came to this sentence: "His election was considered a step forward for the ongoing American civil rights movement . . . ." If I make "American civil rights movement" a wikilink, it now redirects here, which seems pretty silly in referring to an event that occurred in 1969. Suggestions, anyone? My own preference would be to make this article cover the period since 1955, recognizing that most of the material will concern the 1955-68 period but there will be some relevant items from 1969 on. JamesMLane 09:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I experienced the same problem when working on the article about the song "Dixie". That song is still being opposed to this day, and lots of people would claim that the Civil Rights Movement is ongoing. I'd support a change to American Civil Rights Movement (1955-present). —BrianSmithson 19:03, 1 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

New footnotes

I think the new footnotes are splendid! I'll be interested in the reaction of other editors. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article length

With the impressive addition of the timeline by User talk:Mr ethanboy, the article is over 100k long. I wonder if it might be well to discuss moving some of the content into new related articles? --Walter Siegmund (talk) 04:02, 14 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There is already an article Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement and the additions should be merged into there. Simesa 01:07, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
First, though, we have to ask - is this information from a copyrighted source? Simesa 01:31, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup

It seems there is agreement that this article needs reformatting and probably to be divided up and merged with existing articles on each event. Hopefully by adding this template, we will attract folks with the time to put this into motion. --159.28.7.144 23:17, 16 January 2006 (UTC) oops, sorry. that was me. --Schwael 23:20, 16 January 2006 (UTC) you were the one that wrote this article?[reply]

The paragraph that begins with "This article focuses on that particular struggle..." needs to be changed, per Wikipedia:Avoid self-references, but I'm not quite sure how to fix it. ~MDD4696 03:48, 31 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New lead and background paragraphs for this article

I've formulated a set of new lead and background paragraphs to introduce this subject. I've tried to address some of the concerns presented on the discussion page. Does anyone have any other concerns, suggestions, or ideas before I post it? - Mitchumch 10:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Given the sensitivity of this issue, and since you're apparently proposing a massive rewrite, you should probably post your proposed text in Discussion first. Simesa 12:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merging of 1954-1968 info into Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

The 1954-1968 timeline info that user Mitchumch placed in American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) has been merged into Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement as "Unsourced/Unchecked Info". This was done because one line stated that Bobby Bland graduated from the University of Virginia's Engineering school - which was patently false. Also, there may be copyright violation concerns. I (or, hopefully other editors as well) will check each line and move the info up into the normal text as time permits. I do appreciate Mitchumch's hard work, and want to see it installed properly. Simesa 16:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC) yo[reply]

Unclear sentence

The section Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 end with the following sentence:

"Faubus was re-elected Governor the following year and for three terms after that! and they felt that it was very improtaqnt."

Can anyone figure out what it was ment to say? And I think we should drop the '!', as it is POV. --Kristjan Wager 18:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cultural Catastrophe

An economic disaster has been fomented. Modern negroes earn less money than before 1950, percentage-wise. The 1950s percentage was about 65% of what a "white man" earned, but the percentage today is about 55% of what a "white man" earns. I've never before seen so many raggedy negroes. Superslum 16:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Be reasonable. Claiming that the average African American earns less today than in 1950? What planet are you on? The standard of living today is incomparably higher than fifty years ago. It makes about as much sense as comparable claims for white workers ("Employees are earning less in real dollars than in 1960...") The source of almost all such "statistics" is utterly without foundation. Ask any of your parents or grandparents. I am not going to say,"If you want more evidence, just look around: Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Andrew Young..," because in 1961, I could just as well have written Marian Anderson, Diana Ross, or James Baldwin, BUT when Diana Ross or Marian Anderson travelled around the United States, they could not stay in the same hotel as some of their staff or orchestra members who were white. I grew up in an America where such achievement and accomplishment would have been almost unthinkable. Although it is definitely true that the United States still has a long road ahead in creating a society with racial equality of opportunity, we should never deny that progress has been made. It is an insult to the many brave people, both black and white, who fought and struggled so hard, to provide the degree of equality that we do have today.
More importantly, not everything is about money. Human dignity and self-repect are also so very important. The Civil Rights movement was about these ideas, much more than about making money. Being able to sit anywhere in the bus, or being able to try on a dress in a department store are more than just about money. African Americans live in an utterly different social and cultural universe today than in 1950, 1960, and even 1970. An African American child in school today has a radically different vista open to him/her. His/Her view of the world is light-years away from what a similar child had in 1955 or 1965. As I wrote, we Americans still have a tremendously long road ahead as a nation, and I would even acknowledge that real equality is still largely elusive, but this ought not obscure the progress made. 66.108.105.21 19:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth[reply]

Category?

Random idea: should the American Civil Rights Movement be made into a category? There are certainly enough related articles, and if we have a list right there on the article page that links to all the major related articles, we should then be able to drastically reduce this article's size by removing the details that readers could get by going to the specific pages. --BigShock 01:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

American Civil Rights Movement

I don't know if anybody is aware but the american civil rights movement was a BIG movement in which minorities demanded civil rights, so it wasn't just about African Americans; mexican-americans, native americans, women, and prisioners were ALL part of the civil rights movement, and, to me, there is no mention whatsoever about this group. Since this article strictly discusses African Americans in the Civil rights movement, I say we change the title of this article to something like "African-American Civil Rights movement"--Vircabutar 05:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think a better solution would be to create articles for the rights struggles of other groups and then reference them at the top of this article. I recommend this because 1) the American Civil Rights Movement is commonly used as referring to the struggles of African-Americans, and 2) this article is overly long already. Simesa 18:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes they may be commonly refered to as the african-american movement. but the problem is that it is not technically. The civil rights movement represent an era of civil rights. I say we move it to change the article's name to "African-American Civil Rights Movement." The "American Civil RIghts Movement" page could be the main page that would list all of the civil rights movement specifically: feminist movement, african americans, mexican americans, etc.--Vircabutar 08:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I am renaming the article; help anyone?--Vircabutar 08:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This edit is a major edit. The issue of the exact meaning of the Civil Rights Movement has been constantly debated on this page beginning with the first entry on this discussion page. However, the use of the term "American Civil Rights Movement" is commonly referenced in scholarly articles, encyclopedias, and textbooks as solely referring to the struggle by African-Americans (If you want citations, I would be more than happy to provide a list for you).
Also, 1965-1968 (a three year period) is a major misrepresentation of that movement -- a movement that has consistently been cited as starting around 1954 (please read the article with dates posted to nearly every section).
No one is debating the existence of other movements around the same period, but all of those movements occured after the struggle by African-Americans -- many of those were inspired by African-Americans organizing and fighting for their rights. Check the start dates for each of the movements that is generally accepted by scholars.
Because this is a major edit that did not attempt to allow time for a discussion on this issue, a revert of user Vircabutars' rederict will occur. If sufficient time had been allowed, a revert of this edit would have proven unnecessary. I'm sorry I had to revert this edit, because is obvious that you feel strongly on this matter, but more time was needed to see how this change would play with wikipedians -- especially those who maintain this article on their watchlist. Sorry again. --Mitchumch 17:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. —Wknight94 (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) – {the page exclussively talks about African Americans as being the sole participant of the civil rights movement; however, under the current title, the Civil Rights Movement era excludes other importan such as Mexican-Americans, Feminist, Native-Americans, and etc.--Vircabutar 22:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)}[reply]

Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support as stated above --Vircabutar 07:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

I'm abstaining. From how I understand MLK, i think he would have rather seen as one movement, independent of race. But I don't have a strong opinion about the name of this article. — Sebastian (talk) 07:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Add any additional comments ...

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move

Oh, dear, was this the wrong thing to do. Leaving aside the issue of scope for the moment, the term "Civil Rights Movement" or "American Civil Rights Movement" is the most common name in use for this topic. The Google test: american.civil.rights.movement nets 225,000 results, african.american.civil.rights.movement just 23,000. Thus the name violates naming policy, which calls for using the most common name for something unless it is impossible to do so with clarity.
This isn't a generic term that can be futzed with, it's the encyclopedic term. (A generic name would be, for example, Human rights activism in the United States.) It's the term that was used at the time, and it's the term that appears in hundreds, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of scholarly and academic works referencing the period. Now, I can see the urge to describe the contents of the article more accurately, but that would have required looking to a generic name as outlined. That wasn't done. The objection appeared to be that the article was not an overview of all civil rights movements in the United States. That article does not exist, and it's unclear whether anyone has proposed writing one. The question then becomes why we are disambiguating from an article that doesn't exist.
Finally, there is another problem with the name that I recall from a year or so ago, and that's the appended "(1955-1968)". Again, this was apparently done to fix the article's scope, but that shouldn't have been necessary, unless again there were an umbrella article -- History of African-American civil rights in the United States, for example. The American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954) article does exist, and now they are named differently, which is an example of narrow awareness on the part of certain editors. That's one small problem. But I, and I'm almost 100% sure that contemporary members of the movement would agree, object to the scoping of the article as a movement for African-American Civil Rights. In fact, the opening of that article states, "The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans." The very concept of the movement was to enforce civil rights that inherently existed for everyone, but were denied to one segment. The idea that this was a movement on behalf of only one segment is disturbing and offensive -- sort of the way "civil rights" have been rhetorically redefined as "special rights" that one segment is fighting to get over and above another segment. Thus, I object on the grounds of inappropriate and POV rhetoric (although I hasten to add it's not clear that there was any such intent, it is just an error).
Thus, I hope that editors involved (yes, a small number indeed, not exactly a consensus) will reconsider the reasoning behind this name change and whether it is appropriate. --Dhartung | Talk 11:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Re: "not exactly a consensus":
  1. The page was on WP:RM for 6 days and then re-listed for an additional 10 days. The move tag was on this talk page itself for 10 days. The generally accepted length of a WP:RM discussion is 5 days or less.
  2. There was not a single voice of opposition in that extended length of time.
  3. You made around 450 edits in the final 10 days and around 700 in the overall 16 days including more than one move request vote.
  4. Enough people have batted this article back and forth in the past that it must be on someone's watchlist. I take their silence as a neutral vote.
In summary, everything was done by the book in my opinion. I find it unfair to expect the original requestors and supporters to wait triple or quadruple the length of time clearly stated in WP:RM. You're free to resume discussion with the original supporters. If they all agree, I'll happily move it back.
Wknight94 (talk) 13:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One can only notice so much. In any case, my objections were not procedural, but speak directly to the rationale. --Dhartung | Talk 18:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I for one am convinced of Dhartung's rationale. — Sebastian (talk) 17:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Then maybe you guys should have voted and voiced your oppinion when I put the "move" request; it is very unacceptable to invalidate a procedure that was formally done and approved. --Vircabutar 02:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry you feel disappointed. But what do you expect? I came here on your invitation, and your argument was the only one I saw. At that time, I abstained, but I raised a concern. Without answering that concern or any other further discussion, only 4 days later the move was performed, as if there was nothing more urgent to do. Now my concern was substantiated, and my opinion is much firmer. What's "very unacceptable" with that? — Sebastian (talk) 02:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not saying that your oppinion or your concern is unacceptable; I'm saying what Dhartung is requesting is unacceptable. The procedure has been done (as wknight94 stated above). Just because people didn't have enough time to respond to the discussion (which wasn't the case here) doensn't give them excuse to invalidate the move. --Vircabutar 06:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unilateral nonsense such as this is what I get for taking a wikibreak during classes. I note that "American Civil Rights Movement" redirects here - who do you think you're kidding? Simesa 21:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Non sequitur?

Re:

Cities such as Detroit, Newark, and Baltimore now have a less than 40% White population as a result of these riots. To this day, these cities contain some of the worst living conditions for blacks anywhere in America.

The second sentence doesn't seem to follow logically - it may be true, but it's not quite clear why it's stated in this context. --Singkong2005 talk 12:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This article covers Jewish participation in the movement, but no other white religious support. Here's a quote from [11]: "Many Unitarian Universalists became active in the civil rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he and twenty percent of the denomination’s ministers responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to march for justice." From [12]: "The instructor, the Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson, first encountered issues of race in the South as a Unitarian teenager. As a newly ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he was a participant in the early phases of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, and served a jail sentence in Selma. From 1969 through 1984 he was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Mississippi, where the previous full-time settled minister was shot and critically injured by the Klan in 1965."

Although I don't have a source for the statistic, a Unitarian Univeralist minister who had marched with Rev. King once told me that half of all the white clergy who did so were Unitarian Universalist. Surely this is worth a mention? Durova 17:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Mecca of silliness

This particular article contains the most-concentrated batch of silliness that I have seen in any single article in Wikipedia. Who wrote all of it? Silliness pervades it throughout. Even the title of the article is creepy. Velocicaptor 11:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

external review

Please see Wikipedia:External peer review/The Chronicle of Higher Education October 2006 for the comments of a professor who graded this article as C. Thanks, BanyanTree 15:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Robert F. Kennedy

Hi. I must admit I find the ommission of any specific mention of the efforts and dedication of Robert F. Kennedy to be quite remarkable. JFK's record on civil rights before attaining the presidency was negligible. It was his younger brother's obsession and passion for the rights of the blacks and other minorities which in very large part initiated the Kennedy administration's efforts to secure the Civil Rights acts. Robert Kennedy did more to desegregate Capitol Hill and all other branches of government than any politician before or since - he even threatened Vice Presidenct Johnson over the issue. I would be happy to write a section on RFK's work in this field, and I feel that without mention of his work this article fails to give the fuller picture of events from 1960-1968. Such was RFK's standing on this issue that on the night, and following day, of King's assassination when RFK gave a speech (on the need for peace following the killing) in Indiannapolis that city was to be virtually the only major city where rioting did not take place.

Having just read the article in full, virtually every mention of 'President Kennedy' or 'The Kennedy administration' ought in fact be a refererence to Robert Kennedy - who took the majority of the decisions alluded to.

Best, Iamlondon 07:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, insightful. But will need a source for that. Simesa 21:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Not a problem - Schlesinger covers most of this and I can cite everything. I'll write it up when I get a chance.Iamlondon 04:55, 8 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

1957: NOI

James L. Hicks wrote a piece in the Amsterdam News, December 28, 1957: "1957: Year Negroes Fought Back". In it he alludes not only to Little Rock, but also to the independence of Ghana and also to the incident in which (as Scott Saul put it recently—Scott Saul, Harper's, December 2006, "On the Lower Frequencies: Rethinking the Black Power movement", p.92-98, the relevant passage is on p.94) "hundreds of members of the Nation of Islam lined up in strict military formation outside a [Harlem] police station when one of their own was bludgeoned by officers; the disciplined Black Muslims marched off—and the much rowdier crowd that had gathered dispersed—only after Malcolm X gave word that the beaten man was assured proper medical care." I think something about this may belong in the article; it is a landmark in the more militant side of the struggle for Black American civil rights. - Jmabel | Talk 02:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If the incident was gven a popular name, an article about it would be appropriate. Then place a link in Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement. Note: can't plagiarize from copyrighted material. Simesa 05:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I would think that as an administrator with well over 50,000 edits I don't need to be admonished not to plagiarize. No, to the best of my knowledge the incident does not have a name. We could put it under Johnson Hinton, the otherwise non-notable victim of the police beating. I'm a little surprised that there is nothing about it at Nation of Islam#History. I suspect that this mostly means that most Wikipedians are young. Further references: [13] [14] [15] - Jmabel | Talk 05:58, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My apologies, I didn't check. This article has an issue with unsourced material. I will look at the refs tomorrow and make an entry into Timeline of the ACRM. Agan, my apologies. Simesa 06:41, 24 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
No problem. If no one else gets to this, I will do it myself, but it is likely to be January 2007 by the time it would get to the top of my list. - Jmabel | Talk 02:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cold War

I notice that the only mention here of the Cold War as context is an afterthought at the end saying it should not be ignored. But, of course, the rest of the article ignores it. Seems to me like someone might want to consider how to better lace this thought through the article. - Jmabel | Talk 20:43, 27 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pro- and Anti-Civil Rights people

Why do the same names appear on both the Pro and Anti lists? It seems as if these Pro- and Anti-Civil Rights people sections were added merely to further certain viewpoints or ideologies. Just because someone refuses to support or oppose certain laws does not mean s/he is against or for the entire concept. —Lagalag 04:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Seems a pretty poor way to organize the material. - Jmabel | Talk 20:13, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Plus, little of what is there deals with the period in question for this article. - Jmabel | Talk 20:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Let's start by removing the presidents. No president in the relevant period was notably anti-civil rights. - Jmabel | Talk 20:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Kennedy Administration

I have removed my former analysis of the article and contributed the section as was suggested to me by another editor (see above). It took quite some time but I hope you all feel it is an important/worthy addition. Best, Iamlondon 03:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of this is good, but it is a bit essayistic for Wikipedia. It also seems a bit disproportionate: this is supposed to be an article about a movement, not about certain privileged and powerful people's sympathy toward that movement. - Jmabel | Talk 06:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe it is 'essayistic'. Ultimately, the Kennedys were an integral part of the of the Civil Rights history - whether one denounces them for 'privilege' or not. Bobby Kennedy more or less wrote into Johnson's administration the Civil Rights Act - as publicly confessed and welcomed by Johnson himself. Iamlondon 08:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Name change

I support the name change back to American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968), consistent with the other articles American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954) and Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement. Simesa 20:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry...but i don't think you have the authority to do so. The admin was not at all misinformed. It was a decision based on a consensus(seeing that there was no opposition) that the name should be changed. Whether you thing that two voice in the vote is fair or not is a different problem. Now i don't mind if people oppose this move...but i do have a problem with people complaining after the discussion was ended. The move discussion was even extended. So please don't give excuses about this and that ...b/c if people felt really strongly about it (that it shouldn't be change) people should've voiced your oppinion earlier. If you want to discuss this issue further...please contact the administrator directly. I respect the procedure. When i changed the article's title, many people opposed and said that i should contact the administator first before i make major changes, and i, too, would truly appreciate it if you would do the same. Thank you very much. Sincerely--Vircabutar 04:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]