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3. How did the idea of "civil rights" change after the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

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About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we think about how the idea of "civil rights" changed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, focusing in particular on: (i) the series of urban riots between 1964-68 that came to be known as the 'long, hot summers'; (ii) the realisation in the Johnson administration that de facto segregation existed across the United States, not just in the south; (iii) the figure of Stokely Carmichael and the idea of Black Power; (iv) the importance of the March Against Fear; and (v) the change in the rhetoric used by Carmichael and others, and the reasons for these changes.

Course

In this course, Dr Malcolm McLaughlin (University of East Anglia) explores the theme of protest and reaction in the United States during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy (1961-63) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-69). In the first module, we provide an introduction to US politics in the 1960s and its three major presidents: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. In the five modules that follow, we try to answer the following five questions: (1) How successful was Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society?; (2) How did the idea of "civil rights" change after the Civil Rights Act of 1964?; (3) How did liberals respond to the demands of the Black Power movement?; (4) Which did more to change America: the political activism of the New Left or the freethinking Counterculture?; and (5) To what extent was 1968 a turning point in American history?

Lecturer

Malcolm McLaughlin is Associate Professor in American Studies and History at the University of East Anglia. His area of expertise is in twentieth-century US history. More particularly, his work is concerned with culture and American democracy, and his work has focused on race, class, and liberalism. His first book was a study of white identity and violence in the Progressive Era, focusing on events surrounding the notorious East St. Louis race riot or massacre of 1917. (Power, Community, and Racial Killing, 2005). His second book was about liberal politics and the urban riots or rebellions of the of the 1960s, and took a critical look at the response of Lyndon B. Johnson’s White House to those events. (The Long, Hot Summer of 1967. 2014).