The civil rights movement

The Civil Rights movement had it's origins in the aftermath of the US Civil War.

Despite the Union achieving one of it's primary objectives in the war, the abolition of slavery in the United States, in the decades following the war many US states enacted restrictive and oppressive laws which provided for the segregation of African-American and White Americans.

Over the 20th century, African-Americans were subject to a wide range of discrimination, from being unable to vote, segregated schools, hospitals and public facilities and were subject to blatant racial profiling.

The Civil Rights movement, which culminated in the Civil Rights Act, was a series of protests and actions by the African-American and allied communities which denounced the oppressive and discriminatory legislation (particularly in the Deep South) which treated African-Americans as second class citizens.