Civil Rights Movement: Difference between revisions
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As of this writing, the Civil Rights Movement is still within living memory, and many of the participants on both sides are still alive. Those who were on the racist side are often, today, deeply ashamed of their former attitudes ([[wikipedia:Hazel Massery|Hazel Massery]] is one example; [[wikipedia:Segregation now|George Wallace]] was another). Others are finally being prosecuted for their crimes (when, for example, former lynchers feel the prick of conscience and confess). And racism still exists, but these days the civil rights movement is heavily fractured and has no clear leader, with those at the forefront (Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) known more for their self-promotion and scandal-filled pasts (Jackson and Sharpton have both made offensive remarks about the Jewish community, Jackson had a child out of wedlock, and Sharpton's reputation was [[Never Live It Down|tarnished]] by his involvement in the controversial Tawana Brawley case).
In the months leading up to the 2008 presidential election, many looked at the election as the ultimate litmus test towards whether or not the civil rights movement had succeeded, as the idea of Americans having the chance to elected an African-American to the Presidency would be the ultimate way to see if the movement's successes had any impact upon the generations who came afterwards. Needless to say, [[Barack Obama]]'s election proved that the movement did indeed have its desired impact - but not without a lot of complaints, mostly imagined, from many quarters (including a sustained attack on his eligibility to be President carried out by his successor, [[Donald Trump]]), so the Civil Rights Movement still has a long way to go before reaching complete equality.
Despite most of the examples listed here being set in [[The Sixties]], the issues behind the Civil Rights Movement are still in existence. During the [[The
The Civil Rights Movement did have some reverberation across the world: Canada and Australia, in particular, had their own voting rights movements to enshrine voting rights for Native populations that have been disenfranchised on account of race. The movement was successful there, as Canada amended the Indian Act to allow First Nations to vote for the House of Commons and provincial Assemblies in 1962, while the last two Australian states that barred Aboriginals from voting, Western Australia and Queensland, enfranchised Aboriginal populations living there in 1962 and 1965, respectively, and in 1966 an amendment to the Australian constitution allowed Aboriginals to officially be counted as citizens for the very first time. Other, non-Anglophone countries had their own civil rights movements that focused less on race (particularly in more racially and ethnically homogenous countries), instead opting to focus on youth and women's rights. In particular, abortion legalization took off worldwide after ''Roe v. Wade'' in 1972, as many European countries chose to legalize abortion - this, however, had the unfortunate effect of abortion being abused as a means of contraception due to the lack of proper sex education.
{{examples|Appearances of the Civil Rights Movement in fiction include:}}
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Mississippi Burning]]''
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