This essay is a summary of the civil rights movement.

The Modern Civil Rights Movement can be traced back to the arrival of blacks in America as slaves in 1619, through the questions of slavery pondered (and ultimately avoided) by the Founding Fathers, into the increasing rancor of the 19th century and the abolitionist movements and the rise to prominence of such black luminaries as Frederick Douglass. The questions of civil rights was obviously a profound aspect of the Civil War, and an animating aspect of …

…problems of blacks in America. Many of them turned to even more powerfully militant organizations like the Black Panther Party to continue the fight, but even that marginalized movement had mostly fizzled out by the mid-1970s. The history of the United States has always been profoundly intermingled with its treatment (and mistreatment) of black Americans. The struggle to navigate and overcome those issues is one that continues to frustrate and define the country today.