Civil Rights Movement

In the 1960s, the civil-rights movement owed much of its momentum and power to a moral authority derived from historical circumstances. Most fair-minded Americans accepted the idea that African Americans' historical experience of discrimination justified legal and social redress. By contrast, the addition of women, Latinos and Asians to the civil rights movement was more politics than morality. One consequence is that race lost its role as the primary determinant of a civil-rights claim.

SAN FRANCISCO - In 1958, the Gallup Poll asked Americans whether they approved or disapproved of marriage between blacks and whites. The response was overwhelming: 94% were opposed, a sentiment that held for decades. It took nearly 40 years until a majority of those surveyed said marriage between people of different skin colors was acceptable. By contrast, attitudes toward gays and lesbians have changed so much in just the last 10 years that, as Gallup reported last week, "half or more now agree that being gay is morally acceptable, that gay relations ought to be legal and that gay or lesbian couples should have the right to legally marry.

The startling political changes that have occurred in East Germany, Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and, now, in long-despaired-of South Africa, represent to my mind the greatest simultaneous civil-rights movement the world has ever seen. The lesson to be learned is that human beings, regardless of where they are, will ultimately demand freedom and other basic rights.

"Students' Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated," one headline announced. "Civil Rights Movement Education 'Dismal' in American Schools," declared another. The alarming headlines, which appeared in newspapers across the country, grew out of a report released three weeks ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Teaching the Movement," which claims that the civil rights movement is widely ignored in history classrooms. By not teaching it, the report claims, American education is "failing in its responsibility to educate its citizens to be agents of change.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

His unblinking yet compassionate photographs in the 1950s and '60s documented Los Angeles' beat culture and emerging art scene, the civil rights movement here and in the Deep South, the Black Panthers and antiwar protests. Yet Charles Brittin was relatively unknown. Sidelined by declining health beginning in the '70s, he faded from the scene as documentary photographers were first being recognized as artists, said Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, which holds Brittin's photographic archive.

Dorothy Height, who was called the queen mother of the civil rights movement through seven decades of advocacy for racial equality -- including 41 years as president of the National Council of Negro Women -- has died. She was 98. Height, who also played a key role in integrating the YWCA, died Tuesday of natural causes at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the council announced. Though not nearly as well known as her male contemporaries, Height was a steadfast presence in the civil rights movement.

Imagine that soldiers are standing guard to keep you from going to school. Then imagine that soldiers are called in help you enter your school. That's just what happened 40 years ago when nine black students wanted to attend Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. It was a crucial moment in the American civil rights movement, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And it was one of the events that eventually helped bring greater equality for African Americans.

Imagine that soldiers are standing guard to keep you from going to school. Then imagine that soldiers are called in to help you enter your school. That's just what happened 40 years ago when nine black students wanted to attend Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. It was a crucial moment in the American civil rights movement, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And it was one of the events that helped bring greater equality for African Americans.

Msgr. John J. Egan, 84, one of the first Roman Catholic priests to become active in the civil rights movement, died Saturday in Chicago of cardiovascular disease. Egan was the first director of the Office of Urban Affairs for the Chicago Roman Catholic Archdiocese, a post he held from 1958 to 1969. During that time he marched in the civil rights campaigns in Alabama; in Chicago he worked to prevent eviction of the poor. He won a religious leaders award from the Rev.

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a blunt-talking preacher who braved beatings, bombings and fire-hosings to push Birmingham, Ala., to the forefront of the civil rights movement and advanced the historic fight with a confrontational strategy that often put him at odds with its most charismatic leader, died Wednesday. He was 89. Shuttlesworth had been in poor health for the last year and was hospitalized with breathing problems three weeks ago at Birmingham's Princeton Baptist Medical Center, where he died, said family spokeswoman Malena Cunningham.

As "X-Men: First Class" completes nearly a week of release, thoughts wander, well, much further ahead, all the way to a sequel. Though they're not confirming any new development, executives at studio Fox have certainly hoped that the movie's performance warrants a new installment. Like every big Hollywood company these days, Fox craves a franchise, and young actors such as Jennifer Lawrence and James McAvoy were cast at least in part so they can grow with the series. The plot of Matthew Vaughn's movie -- which tells of the origins of the mutant superhero group against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- does pave the way for a follow-up.

His unblinking yet compassionate photographs in the 1950s and '60s documented Los Angeles' beat culture and emerging art scene, the civil rights movement here and in the Deep South, the Black Panthers and antiwar protests. Yet Charles Brittin was relatively unknown. Sidelined by declining health beginning in the '70s, he faded from the scene as documentary photographers were first being recognized as artists, said Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, which holds Brittin's photographic archive.

Lamont Johnson, an Emmy-winning director who was honored for his work on the TV programs "Gore Vidal's Lincoln" and "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" during a wide-ranging career in television, film and theater, died of congestive heart failure at his Monterey home Sunday, his son, Chris, said. He was 88. Johnson, known for his sensitive treatment of controversial subjects in made-for-TV movies, dealt with interracial romance in "My Sweet Charlie" (1970), homosexuality in "That Certain Summer" (1972)

Dorothy Height, who was called the queen mother of the civil rights movement through seven decades of advocacy for racial equality -- including 41 years as president of the National Council of Negro Women -- has died. She was 98. Height, who also played a key role in integrating the YWCA, died Tuesday of natural causes at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the council announced. Though not nearly as well known as her male contemporaries, Height was a steadfast presence in the civil rights movement.

Charles Moore, a photojournalist who both chronicled and helped alter the course of history through extraordinary photographs that reflected the brutal reality of the civil rights movement in the South, has died. He was 79. Moore died Thursday of natural causes at a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., said his daughter Michelle Moore Peel. From 1958 to 1965, he trained his lens on the unfolding drama of civil rights as a news photographer for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and Life magazine.

The "sixties" were born on Feb. 1, 1960, 50 years ago this week, when four African American college students staged the first sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. Since then, the mythology of the '60s has dominated the idea of youthful activism. Of the three big events of the early civil rights movement -- the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, the 1955-56 Montgomery bus boycott and the sit-ins -- the sit-ins have always been the least understood and, yet, the most important for today's young activists.