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The '''mesomeric effect''' or '''resonance effect''' in [[chemistry]] is a property of [[substituent]]s or [[functional group]]s in a [[chemical compound]]. The effect is used in a qualitative way and describes the electron withdrawing or releasing properties of substituents based on relevant [[resonance structure]]s and is symbolized by the letter '''M'''. The mesomeric effect is negative ('''-M''') when the substituent is an electron-withdrawing group and the effect is positive ('''+M''') when based on resonance the substituent is an electron releasing group.
''Italic text''yeahYEAHThe '''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. It has been made up of many movements, though it is often used to refer to the struggles between [[1945]] and [[1970]] to end discrimination against [[African-American]]s and to end [[racial segregation]], especially in the [[U.S. South]].
*Examples of -M substituents: [[acetyl]] (UPAC ethanoyl) - [[nitrile]] - [[nitro]]
This article focuses on that particular struggle, rather than the comparable movements to end discrimination against other ethnic groups within the United States or those struggles, such as the [[women's liberation]], [[gay liberation]], and [[disability rights movement|disabled rights]] movements, that have used similar tactics in pursuit of similar goals. The civil rights movement has had a lasting impact on United States society, both in its tactics and in increased social and legal acceptance of civil rights.
*Examples of +M substituents: [[alcohol]] - [[amine]]
The net electron flow from or to the substituent is determined also by the [[inductive effect]]. It's important to note that the mesomeric effect as a result of p - orbital overlap (resonance) has absolutely no effect on this inductive effect, as the inductive effect is purely to do with the [[electronegativity]] of the atoms and their structural chemistry (which atoms are connected to which).
== Background ==
Following the Civil War, the [[Federal Government of the United States|federal government]] moved to extend legal equality to African-Americans with the passage of the [[Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution]] ([[1865]]), which outlawed slavery, the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] ([[1868]]), which made citizens of all persons born in the USA and afforded equal protection of the laws to all citizens, and the [[Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|15th Amendment]] ([[1870]]), which provided the right to vote to all citizens, regardless of race. During [[Reconstruction]] (1865-[[1877]]), Northern troops occupied the South and enforced these new constitutional amendments. Many blacks took prominent positions in society, including elected office.
The concepts of mesomeric effect, '''mesomerism''' and '''mesomer''' were introduced by [[Christopher Kelk Ingold|Ingold]] in 1938 as an alternative to the [[Linus Pauling|Pauling's]] synonymous concept of [[resonance effect|resonance]] <ref>''If It's Resonance, What Is Resonating?'' Kerber, Robert C. . J. Chem. Educ. '''2006''' 83 223. [http://www.jce.divched.org/Journal/Issues/2006/Feb/abs223.html Abstract]</ref>. Mesomerism is in this context is often encountered in German and French literature but in English literature the term resonance dominates.
Reconstruction ended following the [[Compromise of 1877]] between Northern white elites and Southern white elites. The compromise called for the withdrawal of Northern troops from the South, giving Southern whites a free hand to reinstitute discriminatory practices, in exchange for deciding the contentious Presidential election in favor of [[Rutherford B. Hayes]], supported by Northern states, over his opponent, [[Samuel J. Tilden]].
== External links==
The [[Radical Republican]]s who spearheaded Reconstruction had attempted to eliminate both governmental and private discrimination by legislation. That effort was largely ended by the [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]]'s decision in the [[Civil Rights Cases]], {{ussc|163|3|1883}}, in which it held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give Congress power to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals or businesses.
* IUPAC [[Gold Book]] [http://www.iupac.org/goldbook/M03844.pdf definition]
== See also ==
The Court's later decision in [[Plessy v. Ferguson]], {{ussc|163|537|1896}} went even further by endorsing state-mandated discrimination in public transportation under the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Court soon extended that ruling to schools and other programs. ''Plessy'' and the cases that followed it spurred many states, particularly in the South, to adopt restrictive laws which enforced segregation of the races and the second-class status of African-Americans, generally known as ''[[Jim Crow laws]]''.
* [[List of publications in chemistry#Organic chemistry|Important publications in organic chemistry]]
==Segregation References ==
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In many cities and towns, African-Americans were not allowed to share a [[taxi]] with whites or enter a building through the same entrance. They had to drink from separate water fountains, use separate restrooms, attend separate schools, be buried in separate cemeteries and even swear on separate [[Bible]]s. They were excluded from restaurants and public libraries. Many parks barred them with signs that read "Negroes and dogs not allowed." One municipal zoo went so far as to list separate visiting hours.
[[Category:Chemical bonding]]
The etiquette of racial segregation was even harsher, particularly in the South. African-Americans were expected to step aside to let a white person pass, and black men dared not look any white woman in the eye. Black men and women were addressed as "Tom" or "Jane" but rarely as "Mr." or "Miss" or "Mrs." Whites referred to black men of any age as "boy" and a black woman as "girl"; both often were called by labels such as "[[Nigger (word)|nigger]]" or "colored."
[[de:Mesomerer Effekt]]
==Voting rights==
Voting rights discrimination was widespread. In [[Tennessee]], as the Justice Department's John Doar discovered on a self-appointed tour of rural [[Haywood County, Tennessee|Haywood County]] in the early [[1960s]], black sharecroppers were being evicted by white farmers for trying to vote. In [[Mississippi]], names of new voter applicants had to be published in local newspapers for two weeks before acceptance, and voters had the right to object to an applicant's "moral character." Black applicants, many of whom were illiterate or poorly educated, were also required to pass literacy tests and to interpret sections of the state constitution to the satisfaction of the registrars. These tests were not generally applied to illiterate whites. In [[Alabama]], many registration centers were only open two days a month; voting registrars often arrived late and took long lunch hours. In [[1957]] the town of [[Tuskegee, Alabama|Tuskegee]] gerrymandered black residents outside the city limits to make them ineligible to vote. In nearby [[Macon County, Alabama|Macon County]] voter registration boards used discriminatory practices such as these to limit the number of eligible black voters:
:''holding black applicants to a higher standard of accuracy than whites''
:''allowing white applicants to register in their cars and in their homes''
:''processing black applicants last, even when they were first in line''
:''establishing separate registration offices in different parts of the courthouse''
:''offering assistance only to white applicants in completing the registration form''
:''refusing to notify black applicants about the status of their applications''
Some counties in the [[Deep South]] resorted to harsher means of preventing local blacks from voting. Authorities jailed black applicants and vigilantes firebombed places where voter education classes had been conducted, such as Mt. Olive Baptist Church in [[Terrell County, Georgia]]. They threatened, beat, and in some cases, murdered black applicants.
All of these social barriers were aided by the underlying job discrimination; while the freed slaves often had artisan's skills, these were eroded over the next generation without the incentive and supportive environment that the old plantation system had allowed. Instead, sharecropping and low-wage labor served to enforce economic insecurity in the black population; only a small middle class of ministers and educators remained.
Southern blacks who resisted segregation, particularly those in rural areas, lived in constant fear--fear of their employers, who vowed to fire them; fear of "white citizens' councils," who adopted policies of economic reprisal against demonstrators; and fear of white vigilante groups like the [[Ku Klux Klan]], who engaged in [[lynching]] of African-Americans without fear of prosecution. Nearly 4,500 African-Americans were lynched in the United States between [[1882]] and the early [[1950s]].
== Black churches ==
The leadership role of black churches in the movement was a natural extension of their structure and function. They offered members an opportunity to exercise roles denied them in society. Throughout history, the black church served not only as a place of worship but also as a community "bulletin board," a credit union, a "people's court" to solve disputes, a support group, and a center of political activism. These and other functions enhanced the importance of the minister.
The most prominent clergyman in the civil rights movement was [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]] He joined as well as led protest demonstrations and, as comedian [[Dick Gregory]] put it, "he gave as many fingerprints as autographs." King's powerful oratory and persistent call for racial justice inspired sharecroppers and intellectuals alike. His strong leadership role in the black freedom struggle won him worldwide acclaim and the [[Nobel Peace Prize]].
Other notable minister-activists included [[Ralph Abernathy]], King's closest associate; Bernard Lee, veteran demonstrator and frequent traveling companion of King; [[Fred Shuttlesworth]], who defied Bull Connor and who created a safe path for a colleague through a white mob in Montgomery by commanding "Out of the way!"; and [[C.T. Vivian]], who debated Sheriff Clark on his conduct and the [[Constitution of the United States|Constitution]].
== Students ==
Students and seminarians in both the South and the North played key roles in every phase of the civil rights movement--from bus boycotts to sit-ins to [[freedom rides]] to social movements. The student initiated group the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]], or SNCC (pronounced "snick"), was a powerful force in the movement.
The student movement involved such celebrated figures as [[John Lewis (civil rights leader)|John Lewis]], the single-minded activist who "kept on" despite many beatings and harassments; [[James Lawson]], the revered "guru" of nonviolent theory and tactics; [[Diane Nash]], an articulate and intrepid public champion of justice; [[Bob Moses]], pioneer of voting registration in the most rural--and most dangerous--part of the South; and [[James Bevel]], a fiery preacher and charismatic organizer and [[facilitator]]. Other prominent student activists included [[Charles McDew]], [[Bernard Lafayette]], [[Charles Jones]], [[Lonnie King]], [[Julian Bond]] (associated with [[Atlanta University]]), [[Hosea Williams]] (associated with [[Brown Chapel]]), and [[Stokely Carmichael]], who later changed his name to Kwame Toure.
== Institutional frameworks ==
Church and student-led movements developed their own organizational and sustaining structures. The [[Southern Christian Leadership Conference]] (the SCLC), founded in 1957, coordinated and raised funds, mostly from northern sources, for local protests and for the training of black leaders. The [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]], or SNCC, founded in 1957, developed the "jail-no-bail" strategy. SNCC's role was to develop and link sit-in campaigns and to help organize freedom rides, voter registration drives, and other protest activities. Bob Moses of SNCC created the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) to coordinate the work of the SCLC, SNCC, and various other national and independent civil rights groups.
These three new groups often joined forces with existing organizations such as the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP), founded in [[1909]], the [[Congress of Racial Equality]] (CORE), founded in [[1942]], and the [[National Urban League]]. The NAACP and its Director, [[Roy Wilkins]], provided legal counsel for jailed demonstrators, helped raise bail, and continued to test segregation and discrimination in the courts as it had been doing for half a century. CORE initiated the [[1961]] [[Freedom Rides]] which involved many SNCC members, and CORE's leader [[James L. Farmer, Jr.|James L. Farmer]] later became executive secretary of SNCC. The [[National Urban League]], founded in [[1911]] and headed by Whitney M. Young, Jr., helped open up job opportunities for African-Americans. Labor was represented by A. Philip Randolph, vice-president of the [[American Federation of Labor]], and his chief assistant and organizer, [[Bayard Rustin]].
== Federal involvement ==
All branches of the federal government impacted the civil rights movement. President John Kennedy supported enforcement of desegregation in schools and public facilities. Attorney General [[Robert Kennedy]] brought more than 50 lawsuits in four states to secure black Americans' right to vote. President [[Lyndon Johnson]] was personally committed to achieving civil rights goals. Congress passed and President Johnson signed the century's two most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation--the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] and the [[Voting Rights Act]] of [[1965]]. Johnson advocated civil rights even though he knew it would cost the [[United States Democratic Party|Democratic Party]] the South in the next presidential election, and for the foreseeable future. FBI director [[J. Edgar Hoover]], concerned about possible Communist influence in the civil rights movement and personally antagonistic to Martin Luther King, Jr., used the FBI to investigate and harass King and other civil rights leaders. U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., ruled against segregation and voting rights discrimination in Alabama and made the [[Selma-to-Montgomery March]] possible.
== The strategy ==
In the early days of the civil rights movement, desegregation efforts focused on litigation. The NAACP in particular sought to dismantle segregation through a gradual campaign aimed first at segregation of professional schools, as in ''[[Sweatt v. Painter]]'', {{ussc|339|629|1950}}, and ''[[McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Board of Regents]]'', {{ussc|339|637|1950}}, then ultimately in grade school, in ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'', {{ussc|347|483|1954}}. Civil rights lawyers also attacked discrimination in the criminal justice system in ''[[Powell v. Alabama]]'', {{ussc|287|45|1932}}, in voting rights in cases such as ''[[Smith v. Allwright]]'', {{ussc|321|649|1944}}, and in housing in ''[[Shelley v. Kraemer]]'', {{ussc|334|1|1948}}.
That strategy shifted after ''Brown'', however, to "direct action"--primarily bus [[boycott]]s, [[sit-in]]s, [[freedom rides]], and similar movements-- from [[1955]] to [[1965]]. In part this was the unintended result of the local authorities' attempt to outlaw and harass the mainstream civil rights organizations throughout the Deep South. The State of Alabama had effectively barred the [[NAACP]] from operating in Alabama by requiring it to give the state a list of its members. In the South of the [[1950s]], that would have exposed every member of the NAACP to retaliation, from being fired to being firebombed. While the United States Supreme Court ultimately reversed the order, for a few years in the mid 1950s the NAACP was unable to operate above-ground in Alabama.
Churches and local grassroots organizations stepped in to fill the gap, and brought with them a much more energetic and broad-based style than the more legalistic approach of groups such as the NAACP. Locally initiated boycotts of segregated buses, especially the [[Montgomery bus boycott]] of 1955-1956, united and mobilized black communities on commonly-shared concerns. Protestors refused to ride on the buses, opting instead to walk or carpool. The nearly one yearlong boycott ended bus segregation in Montgomery and triggered other bus boycotts such as the highly successful [[Tallahassee, Florida]] boycott of 1956-1957.
In 1957, [[Septima Clarke]], [[Bernice Robinson]], and [[Esau Jenkins]], with the help of the [[Highlander Research and Education Center|Highlander Folk School]] began the first [[Citizenship Schools]] in [[South Carolina]]'s [[Sea Islands]], to teach literacy to allow blacks to pass voting tests. The program was an enormous success, tripling the number of black voters on [[St. John Island]]. The program was taken over by the SCLC and copied in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama.
Student-organized sit-ins like the [[February]] [[1960]] protest at [[F.W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth's]] lunch counter in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]], offered young men and women with no special skills or resources an opportunity to display their discontent and raise white awareness. Protestors were encouraged to dress up, sit quietly, and occupy every other stool so potential white sympathizers could join in. The success of the Greensboro sit-in led to a rash of student campaigns all across the South. Probably the best organized and disciplined of these, and the most immediately effective, was in [[Nashville, Tennessee]]. By the end of 1960 the sit-ins had spread to every southern and border state and even to [[Nevada]], [[Illinois]], and [[Ohio]]. Demonstrators focused not only on lunch counters but also on parks, beaches, libraries, theaters, museums, and other public places. When they were arrested, student demonstrators made "jail-no-bail" pledges to call attention to their cause and to reverse the cost of protest (putting the financial burden of jail space and food on the jailors).
The [[1961]] [[Freedom Rides]] on public buses tested compliance with court orders to desegregate interstate transportation terminals. The trips enabled students from both the South and the North to protest away from campus and to form a tightly knit community of activists, many of whom would participate in the last protest phase, which began in 1961. National civil rights leaders launched these efforts to involve poor blacks and other blacks who had been uninvolved until then. The movements included door-to-door voter education projects in rural Mississippi, "[[The Birmingham Campaign]]" to desegregate public accommodations in the city, and "[[Freedom Summer]]," to try to unseat the regular delegation at the [[1964 Democratic National Convention]] and to publicize the disenfranchisement of southern blacks.
While some groups and individuals within the civil rights movement advocated [[Black Power]], black separatism, or armed resistance, the majority of participants remained committed to the principles of [[nonviolence]] -- a deliberate decision by an oppressed minority to abstain from violence for political gain. This commitment to nonviolence gave the civil rights movement great moral authority.
Nonviolent resistance became a particularly potent tool in the early days of the television era. Civil rights activists took advantage of emerging national network-news reporting, especially [[television]], to capture national attention and the attention of Congress and the White House. It has been speculated that the Civil Rights Movement benefited from good timing in respects to television. The medium in the US during the later [[1950s]] and early 1960s was shaken by the [[Quiz show scandal]] and [[Federal Communications Commission|FCC]] chairman [[Newton Minow]]'s condemnation of the medium as being a "vast wasteland" in his famous [[Wasteland Speech|speech]]. The industry was looking for something to restore the medium's respectability using their journalism department and the Civil Rights Movement suited their needs well. The topic of civil rights for an oppressed minority was a suitably important topic to cover, the protests and the violent reaction to them made for attractively compelling and dramatic footage and the fact that the protesters were predominantly black and the authorities were exclusively white made for a simple dichotomy for the viewer to follow.
The media was critical, in any event, in exposing Southern realities to the nation at large, including many in the South who preferred to ignore them. In 1955, journalists covered the Mississippi trial of two men accused of murdering 14-year-old [[Emmett Till]] from [[Chicago, Illinois]]. The cover of ''Jet'' Magazine featured a photo of the boy's mutilated face. Two years later, Americans watched the live footage of violent unrest at [[Little Rock Central High School]] as whites rioted to try to prevent nine black students from entering the school. Radio, television, and print journalism exhaustively covered such [[1960s]] events as police dogs attacking children in [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], former sharecropper [[Fannie Lou Hamer]] describing her jail beatings to delegates at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, and a mounted posse charging "[[Bloody Sunday (1965)|Bloody Sunday]]" demonstrators in [[Selma, Alabama]].
== The cost ==
In [[1963]] the [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing]] killed four girls in a church (decades later a jury in [[Birmingham, Alabama]] convicted former [[Ku Klux Klan]] member [[Bobby Frank Cherry]] on [[May 22]], [[2002]] of the murders). A few weeks later, [[William L. Moore]], a postal worker who was walking to [[Jackson, Mississippi]] in support of equal rights, was gunned down in [[Alabama]].
Southern blacks who tried to register to vote--and those who supported them--were typically jeered and harassed, and sometimes beaten or killed. In [[1963]], the NAACP's [[Medgar Evers]] was gunned down in front of his wife and children in [[Jackson, Mississippi]]. Reverend [[George Lee]] of [[Belzoni, Mississippi]], was murdered when he refused to remove his name from a list of registered voters, and farmer [[Herbert Lee]] of [[Liberty, Mississippi]], was killed for having attended voter education classes.
In [[1964]] three ''[[Freedom Summer]]'' field-workers--[[Michael Schwerner]], [[Andrew Goodman]] and [[James Chaney]] were shot down by the [[Ku Klux Klan]] in [[Mississippi]] for their part in helping African-Americans register and organize. Michael Schwerner a social worker from [[Manhattan]]'s Lower East Side, James Chaney, a local plasterer's apprentice, and Andrew Goodman, a [[Queens College, New York|Queens College]] anthropology student, disappeared while inspecting the recent burning of a black church in [[Neshoba County, Mississippi|Neshoba County]] on [[June 21]], [[1964]]. They had earlier been arrested by the Neshoba County sheriff and deputies, who released Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney, then caught up with the three workers later and murdered them. Their bodies were discovered on [[August 4]] in an earthen dam outside [[Philadelphia, Mississippi]]. Schwerner and Goodman had been shot once; Chaney, the lone African-American, had been savagely beaten and shot three times. Their deaths shocked the American public and [[Congress]] and helped pass the landmark [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]]. The incident became the inspiration for the film, ''[[Mississippi Burning]]''.
Episcopal seminarian [[Jonathan Myrick Daniels]] was murdered in 1965 while he was protecting an African-American teenager.
When violence failed to stop voter registration efforts, whites used economic pressure. In Mississippi's [[Leflore County, Mississippi|LeFlore]] and [[Sunflower County, Mississippi|Sunflower]] Counties--two of the poorest counties in the nation--state authorities cut off federal food relief, resulting in a near-famine in the region. Many black registrants throughout the South were also fired from their jobs or refused credit at local banks and stores. In one town, a black grocer was forced out of business when local whites stopped his store delivery trucks on the highway outside town and made them turn around.
Like voter registrants, freedom riders paid a heavy price for racial justice. When the interracial groups of riders stepped off [[Greyhound Lines|Greyhound]] or [[Trailways Transportation System|Trailways]] buses in segregated terminals, local police were usually absent. Angry mobs were waiting, however, armed with baseball bats, lead pipes, and bicycle chains.
In [[Anniston, Alabama]], one bus was firebombed, forcing its passengers to flee for their lives. In Birmingham, where an FBI informant reported that Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor had encouraged the [[Ku Klux Klan]] to attack an incoming group of freedom riders "until it looked like a bulldog had got a hold of them," the riders were severely beaten. In eerily quiet [[Montgomery, Alabama|Montgomery]], a mob charged another bus load of riders, knocking [[John Lewis (civil rights leader)|John Lewis]] unconscious with a crate and smashing [[Life Magazine|Life]] photographer [[Don Urbrock]] in the face with his own camera. A dozen men surrounded [[Jim Zwerg]], a white student from [[Fisk University]], and beat him in the face with a suitcase, knocking out his teeth.
The freedom riders did not fare much better in jail. There, they were crammed into tiny, filthy cells and sporadically beaten. In [[Jackson, Mississippi]], some male prisoners were forced to do hard labor in 100-degree heat. Others were transferred to [[Parchman]] Penitentiary, where their food was deliberately oversalted and their mattresses were removed. Sometimes the men were suspended by "wrist breakers" from the walls. Typically, the windows of their cells were shut tight on hot days, making it hard for them to breathe.
Out of jail, the freedom riders joined mass demonstrations where the violent response of local police shocked the world. In [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]], police loosed attack dogs into a peaceful crowd of demonstrators, and the German shepherds bit three teenagers. In Birmingham and [[Orangeburg, South Carolina]], firemen blasted protestors with hoses set at a pressure to remove bark from trees and mortar from brick.
On "[[Bloody Sunday (1965)|Bloody Sunday]]" in [[Selma, Alabama]], police and troopers on horseback charged into a group of marchers, beating them and firing tear gas. Several weeks later the marchers trekked the 54 miles from Selma to [[Montgomery]] without incident, but afterwards four Klansmen murdered [[Detroit]] homemaker [[Viola Liuzzo]] as she drove marchers back to Selma. [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], gave his life for the movement, struck down by an assassin's bullet in [[Memphis]] on [[April 4]] [[1968]].
When white supremacists could not halt the civil rights movement, they tried to demoralize its supporters through [[terrorism]]. They bombed churches and other meeting places. They set high bail and paced trials slowly, forcing civil rights organizations to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. At a [[Nashville, Tennessee|Nashville]] lunch counter sit-in, the store manager locked the door and turned on the insect fumigator. In [[St. Augustine, Florida]], city officials who had promised to meet with black demonstrators at City Hall offered them an empty table and a tape recorder instead. In Selma, Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies forced 165 students into a three-mile run, poking them with cattle prods as they ran.
Random violence accompanied calculated acts. The Klan bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in [[1963]] killed four black girls. On the campus of the [[University of Mississippi]], a stray bullet struck a local jukebox-repairman in a riot of white students protesting the [[segregation|desegregation]] of the university in [[1962]]; violence from students and white supremacists attracted to the scene killed one reporter and wounded more than 150 federal marshals. In [[Marion, Alabama]], 26-year-old [[Jimmy Lee Jackson]] was gunned down while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from State Police. Not far away in Selma, a white [[Boston]] minister who had lost his way was clubbed to death by white vigilantes.
The more violent southern whites became, the more their actions were publicized and denounced across the nation. Increasing violence in the South's streets, jails, and public places failed to break the spirits of the freedom fighters. Indeed, it emboldened them and fostered sympathy and support with the general public.
== Legislation ==
The [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]], which required equal access to public places and outlawed discrimination in employment, was a major victory of the black freedom struggle, followed by the [[Voting Rights Act]] of 1965. The 1965 Act suspended literacy tests and other voter tests and authorized federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. African-Americans who had been barred from registering to vote finally had an alternative to the courts. If voting discrimination occurred, the 1965 Act authorized the attorney general to send federal examiners to replace local registrars.
The Act had an immediate impact. Within months of its passage on August 6, 1965, one quarter of a million new black voters had been registered, one third by federal examiners. Within four years, voter registration in the South had more than doubled. In [[1965]], [[Mississippi]] had the highest black voter turnout--74%--and led the nation in the number of black leaders elected. In [[1969]], [[Tennessee]] had a 92.1% turnout; [[Arkansas]], 77.9%; and [[Texas]], 73.1%.
Winning the right to vote changed the political landscape of the South. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, barely 100 African-Americans held elective office in the U.S.; by [[1989]] there were more than 7,200, including more than 4,800 in the South. Nearly every [[Black Belt (U.S. region)|Black Belt]] county in Alabama had a black sheriff, and southern blacks held top positions within city, county, and state governments. Atlanta boasted a black mayor, [[Andrew Young]], as did [[Jackson, Mississippi]]--[[Harvey Johnson]], and [[New Orleans]], with [[Ernest Morial]]. Black politicians on the national level included [[Barbara Jordan]], who represented Texas in Congress, and former mayor Young, who was appointed [[U.S. Ambassador]] to the [[United Nations]] during the [[Jimmy Carter|Carter]] Administration. [[Julian Bond]] was elected to the [[Georgia Legislature]] in 1965, although political reaction to his public opposition to U.S. involvement in [[Vietnam]] prevented him from taking his seat until [[1967]]. John Lewis currently represents [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]]'s 5th Congressional District in the [[United States House of Representatives]], where he has served since [[1987]]. Lewis sits on the House Ways and Means and Health committees.
The enormous gains of the civil rights movement stand to last a long time. Yet the full effect of these gains is yet to be felt. "Equal rights" struggles now involve multiple races, as well as the issues of rights based upon age, gender, and sexual orientation.
== After the South: Did the movement end? ==
A debate in civil rights history appeared in the decades following the well-publicized struggles of the early 1960s and continues today. This debate is of whether the movement was finished with its goals when it attained equal treatment under the law, or whether it had changed to a new goal of fighting all forms of discrimination, not just the formal version found in Jim Crow.
Those who argue for the continuation of the movement point to events of the later 1960s that continue to have an impact today: Race [[riot]]s in every major city in the country, on an almost yearly basis; the formation of more militant groups such as the [[Black Panthers]]; and evidence that implies continued and consistent discrimination in the housing and job markets.
Those who argue against it note that other discriminated groups in the past have managed to overcome their problems with time and community help, and for that reason the movement for civil rights (if not civil equality) ended with the legal struggle.
==External links==
* [http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/what.htm What Was Jim Crow?] ''(The racial caste system that precipitated the Civil Rights Movement)''
*[http://www.robinwashington.com/jimcrow/1_home.html "You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!"] PBS documentary on first Freedom Ride, in 1947
*[http://www.floridamemory.com/OnlineClassroom/PhotoAlbum/civil_rights.cfm Images of the Civil Rights Movement in Florida] from the State Archives of Florida
*[http://www.newsreel.org/films/attheriv.htm At the River I Stand] California Newsreel documentary on Civil Rights and labor rights in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation workers' strike. 56 minutes, 1993.
[[Category:African-American history]]
[[Category:Political movements]]
[[Category:Social justice]]
[[Category:U.S. civil rights history]]
[[de:Bürgerrechtsbewegung]]
[[he:%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%91%D7%A7_%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%95-%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%9C%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9F_%D7%96%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA]]
[[ja:公民権運動]]
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