This is the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. February was chosen to be Black History Month and to be the month where people like Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Fanny Lou Hamer are celebrated for fighting for civil rights. The history of civil rights in the United States is the story of free African Americans and Americans of other ethnicities who set out to define what rights citizens of a country should have. Once civil rights were defined, these people worked hard to get our state and federal governments to protect those rights. Over the years, it has been the African Americans who have started organizations and movements to bring people’s attention to the need for equal rights. Some of these were the Afro-American League, the Colored Convention Movement, the Niagara Movement, the National Council of Negro Women, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Today, there are organizations like the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality. Let’s celebrate the Civil Rights Act and greater equality this month!
Black History Month – Civil Rights
