Civil Rights

The advances of the black civil rights movement encouraged other groups—including women, Hispanics and Latinos, American Indians, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Americans, students, and people with disabilities—to mount their own campaigns for legislative and judicial recognition of their civil equality. Students can use the question How did various movements for equality build upon one another?to identify commonalities in goals, organizational structures, forms of resistance, and members. Students can note major events in the development of these movements and their consequences. Students may study how Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the United Farm Workers’ movement used nonviolent tactics, educated the general public about the working conditions in agriculture, and worked to improve the lives of farm workers. Students should understand the central role of immigrants, including Latino Americans and Filipino Americans, in the farm labor movement. This context also fueled the brown, red, and yellow power movements. The manifestos, declarations, and proclamations of the movements challenged the political, economic, and social discriminations faced by their groups.