The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was accompanied, or followed, by civil unrest and armed rebellion. The process was long and tenuous in many countries, and many of these movements did not fully achieve their goals although, the efforts of these movements did lead to improvements in the legal rights of previously oppressed groups of people.
Read more about Civil Rights Movement: Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland, Independence Movements in Africa, Canada's Quiet Revolution, Civil Rights Movement in The United States, LGBT Rights and Gay Liberation, German Student Movement, France 1968, Tlatelolco Massacre, Mexico, Prague Spring, 1967 Australian Referendum
Famous quotes containing the words civil rights, civil, rights and/or movement:
“There are those who say to you—we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“Love your enemies. I saw this admonition now as simple, sensible advice. I knew I could face an angry, murderous mob without even the beginning of fear if I could love them. Like a flame, love consumes fear, and thus make true defeat impossible.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)
“I’m real ambivalent about [working mothers]. Those of use who have been in the women’s movement for a long time know that we’ve talked a good game of “go out and fulfill your dreams” and “be everything you were meant to be.” But by the same token, we want daughters-in-law who are going to stay home and raise our grandchildren.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)