It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.
In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was about getting to know your culture, your history. I know all about my history.
Soul lyrics, soul music came at about the same time as the civil rights movement, and it's very possible that one influenced the other.
The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.
My father wanted me to be a dentist like him, or any doctor, really. There was this attitude of, 'The civil rights movement was not about you being an artist.'
You can't separate the phenomenal birth of unionism in the United States of America from the Pullman porters. This same small group of men, who grew to be 10,000 strong, was also the organizational foundation for the civil rights movement and all of the gains that were made in the '40s and the '50s. That, and the black church.
There's no problem on the planet that can't be solved without violence. That's the lesson of the civil rights movement.
The unsung heroes of the civil rights movement were always the wives and the mothers.
Growing up in Mississippi - a state that historically was a place of racial injustice, inequality and oppression - gave me the unique opportunity to experience first-hand the evolution of the civil rights movement through the eyes of my parents, grandparents, and the black elders of our community.
