Research Guides: Social Justice: History of Movements

Black Lives Matter from Films on Demand

Black Lives Matter from Films on Demand
In 2013 in Sanford, Florida, vigilante George Zimmerman was found not guilty of the murder of 17-year-old African American Trayvon Martin. As a result, the struggle against police violence flared up under the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and turned into one of the biggest grassroots movements in the United States.
Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise
This is a 4-part series from PBS created in 2016 that follows Black Americans through the years after MLK, highlighting struggles and victories.

Religious Freedom

Fighting Intolerance and Slavery: Christianity in the 17th and 18th Centuries Full Video (47:41)
Part one of this program traces the spread of Christianity via the Puritans to North America. Victims of intolerance in the Old World, the émigrés swiftly proved intolerant of others in the New World, leaving it to the Quakers to promote the religious freedom later associated with the United States.

Feminism from Credo Reference

Feminism Topic Page from Credo Reference
Over 3,000 articles from reference materials in Credo Reference.

Women's Rights Credo Reference

Women's Rights Topic Page from Credo Reference
Over 11,000 articles from reference materials from Credo Reference.

Salem Press eBooks for Social Justice

Defining Documents in American History: Immigration and Immigrant Communities (1650-2016)

Civil Rights Movement

Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest

Cover of Civil Disobedience, Social Justice book

Current Topics: Selected Essays on Civil Disobedience, Social Justice, Nationalism & Populism, Violent Demonstrations, and Race Relations

Racial & Ethnic Relations in America

Primary Documents - History of Social Injustice/Movements in the US

Petition to Congress Regarding Women's Suffrage
This petition was presented to the Senate and the House of Representatives in December 1865, requesting an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the states from disfranchising women. With it, the authors, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, approac
Civil Rights Act, 1875
Federal act designed to prohibit social discrimination against blacks, passed by Congress on March 1, 1875. The act guaranteed to all citizens—regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—equal rights in public places, such as inns, theaters, restaurants, and public conveyances. Denial of these rights was punishable by payment to the aggrieved person and fine or imprisonment. Many whites refused to obey the act, and in 1883 the Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress did not have the authority to legislate the social customs of any state. The 1875 act was the last federal civil rights legislation until the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Dawes Severalty Act
Federal U.S. legislation enacted on February 8, 1887, that provided for the dissolution of the Indian tribes as legal entities and the distribution of tribal lands among individual members. In an attempt to remove any remaining authority from the Native peoples, the act granted citizenship to Indians who renounced tribal allegiance and "adopted the habits of civilized life." It allotted to heads of families 160 acres of reservation land and to adult single people 80 acres; the land was initially awarded in trust, with full title to be transferred after twenty-five years.
Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882
In 1879 Congress passed a bill prohibiting further Chinese immigration, but it was vetoed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. The following year a new treaty with China gave the United States the right to limit or suspend the entry of Chinese labor, but not to prohibit it absolutely. The 1882 suspension of immigration was renewed in 1892 and was followed by other exclusionary legislation. These acts were repealed in 1943.
"Guarding the Gates Against Undesirables" (excerpt)
This excerpt comes from an article originally published in Current Opinion in April 1924. Many Americans believed that some populations were simply "unassimilable" into the nation, as the unidentified author of the following document reports.

Asian Americans from Credo Reference

Asian Americans from Credo Reference
Ever since Chinese sought out the “Gold Mountain” in the California gold rush, Asians have been coming to America in significant numbers. Once America opened its doors—although at times halfheartedly or reluctantly—to Asian immigration, Americans of Asian descent experienced lives as diverse as their backgrounds. Many live in communities with such names as Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, and Little Saigon. From western railroads to New York City's Chinatown, from Alaskan canneries to hospitals in New York and New Jersey, from California's Silicon Valley assembly lines to high-technology laboratories of Route 128 in Massachusetts—people of Asian descent have contributed much to the building of society and the development of culture in America.

LGBTQ+

Stonewall Uprising - Video from Films on Demand
Stonewall Uprising explores the dramatic events that launched a worldwide civil rights movement. When police raided a Mafia-run gay bar in Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn, on June 28, 1969, gay men and women did something they had not done before—they fought back. As the streets of New York erupted into violent protests and street demonstrations, the collective anger announced that the gay rights movement had arrived.
After Stonewall: America's LGBT Movement Full Video (01:26:03)
Narrated by Melissa Etheridge. In 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City's Greenwich Village, leading to three nights of rioting by the city's gay community. With this outpouring of courage and unity the Gay Liberation Movement had begun. After Stonewall, the sequel to Before Stonewall, chronicles the history of lesbian and gay life from the riots at Stonewall to the end of the century.
Stonewall Riots: Summary from Culture Wars in America: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
Topic page from Credo Reference database
The Stonewall Riots:The Fight for LGBT Rights
eBook
Gay Power! : The Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights Movement, 1969
eBook
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)
This Supreme Court ruling declared a Georgia statue constitutional that criminalized consensual sodomy.
Lawrence et al. v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)
This Supreme Court ruling overturned the previous ruling of Bowers v. Hardwick.
Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003)
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court says state constitution requires state to recognize same-sex marriage, becoming the first state to do so.
Obergefell v. Hodges
Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage for all 50 states.
"President Obama Signs the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"
From "Great Events from History: The 21st Century (2000-2016)" by Charles E. “Chuck” MacLean
Biden Reopens Military to Transgender Troops: [National Desk]
The action reverses a Trump administration move, and came less than a week after the new president issued another wide-ranging civil rights executive order.

Ableism

Disability Discrimination from SIRS
Americans with Disabilities Act
From Salem Press ebook, The Civil Rights Movement.
The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discrimination against the disabled and created a lasting impact on the lives of millions of people.

Reference articles about Women's Rights from Salem Press eBooks

Abortion Rights - The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition
With its controversial decision in Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court declared that women had the right to have an abortion, which it later interpreted to prohibit laws that unduly burdened a woman’s ability to choose an abortion until the third trimester of pregnancy.
Roe v. Wade from The Bill of Rights, 2nd Edition
The Supreme Court ruled that a fetus is not a “person” under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy before the fetus acquires viability. The justices based the decision on the penumbras of the Bill of Rights and on the substantive liberty interests protected by the Due Process Clause.
Roe v. Wade from Defining Documents in American History: The 1970s (1970-1979)
For about a decade prior to the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade, abortion laws had been changing in the United States. Whereas prior to that time the only legal abortions were to save the life of the mother, states were beginning to consider other reasons. During the 1960s, twelve states had loosened regulations on abortions, with four others putting virtually no restrictions on early term abortions in 1970.
Seneca Falls Convention Declaration of Sentiments
The Declaration of Sentiments was written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and was presented to the participants at a convention in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19–20, 1848. Modeling her work on the Declaration of Independence, the author sought to address the wrongs perpetrated against womankind and called for redress of those wrongs. The Seneca Falls meeting was the first convention specifically devoted to the issue of women’s rights.
Susan B. Anthony: Original Analysis 1820–1906
In all her writings and speeches, Susan B. Anthony displayed her single-minded devotion to the cause of women’s rights, and particularly the right to vote. Over the years she honed her arguments until the success of the cause of suffrage and women’s rights became inevitable. This major shift in public opinion was the result in large part of Anthony’s carefully crafted arguments.
“Why Women Should Vote”
Addams’s essay on women’s suffrage, “Why Women Should Vote,” published as an editorial in the Ladies’ Home Journal in January 1910, inscribes itself in the intense debate on the topic that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century in America.

Salem Press eBooks Collection of eBooks in Literature, Careers, History, Immigration, and Primary Sources.

Civil Rights Movement 1945-1966

Civil Rights Act, 1964
Federal legislation enacted on July 2, 1964, providing the strongest American civil rights legislation since Reconstruction (1867–1877). It prohibited discrimination in all public accommodations (including hotels, gas stations, restaurants, and theaters), if their operations affect commerce, and in any program receiving federal funds.
Civil Rights Act, 1968
Federal legislation enacted on April 11, 1968, intended to end discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin in housing in the United States.
Letter to Martin Luther King Jr. on the Need for a United Front
Despite earlier disputes, Malcolm X's letter, below, of July 31, 1963, to Martin Luther King Jr. illustrates his willingness to work with other civil-rights leaders in order to defuse what he called the "racial powder keg." He laments the fact that black leaders have failed to come together due to "minor" ideological differences.
"I've Been to the Mountain Top" Speech
Speech delivered by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the evening of April 3, 1968, to an African-American congregation at the Masonic Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. It was the last speech King gave before his assassination.
Speech on Black Power
Richard Wright used the phrase "black power" in his 1954 book of the same title, and Malcolm X developed what he called the gospel of black nationalism. But Stokely Carmichael, as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) chairman, first developed the idea into a full movement ideology. In this July 28, 1966, speech in Chicago, Carmichael laid out a philosophy that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale adopted for their newly formed Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP).
Brown v. Board of Education
Landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision issued on May 17, 1954, declaring that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

Social Justice: History of Movements

New All-in-One Search

Black Lives Matter from Films on Demand

Religious Freedom

Feminism from Credo Reference

Women's Rights Credo Reference

Salem Press eBooks for Social Justice

Defining Documents in American History: Immigration and Immigrant Communities (1650-2016)

Civil Rights Movement

Defining Documents in American History: Dissent and Protest

Current Topics: Selected Essays on Civil Disobedience, Social Justice, Nationalism & Populism, Violent Demonstrations, and Race Relations

Racial & Ethnic Relations in America

Primary Documents - History of Social Injustice/Movements in the US

Asian Americans from Credo Reference

LGBTQ+

Ableism

Reference articles about Women's Rights from Salem Press eBooks

Civil Rights Movement 1945-1966