Civil Rights Movement

This guide features films, pictures, articles, books, and more about the Civil Rights Movement, with a particular focus on primary source documents where possible. 

Photos credits (clockwise from top left): Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964 by Warren K. Leffler, U.S. News & World Report Magazine; Restored by Adam Cuerden; American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, along with Australian Peter Norman, during the award ceremony of the 200 m race at the Mexican Olympic games. During the awards ceremony, Smith (center) and Carlos protested against racial discrimination: they went barefoot on the podium and listened to their anthem bowing their heads and raising a fist with a black glove. Mexico City, Mexico, 1968; In front of 170 W 130 St., March on Washington, l to r, Bayard Rustin, Deputy Director, and Cleveland Robinson, Chairman of Administrative Committee, August 7, 1963 / World Telegram & Sun photo by O. Fernandez; Rosa Parks being fingerprinted on February 22, 1956, by Lieutenant D.H. Lackey as one of the people indicted as leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott. She was one of 73 people rounded up by deputies that day after a grand jury charged 113 African Americans for organizing the boycott. This was a few months after her arrest on December 1, 1955, for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated municipal bus in Montgomery, Alabama, photo by Associated Press; restored by Adam Cuerden; Looking north toward Selma, Alabama police prepare to confront peaceful demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge during Bloody Sunday in 1965; Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963, photo by U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service; Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X meet before a press conference. Both men had come to hear the Senate debate on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was the only time the two men ever met; their meeting lasted only one minute, March 26, 1964, Marion S. Trikosko, U.S. News & World Report Magazine.