Introduction

After the Second World War (1939-1945), the calls to end racial inequality increased in many countries. People in the Allied countries saw similarities between Nazism in Germany and ideas of racial superiority elsewhere. The Allies refers to Great Britain, the U.S., and Russia who had joined together to fight in World War II.

When veterans returned home, they started to demand full political rights for Black Americans.

Many Black people had been fighting for those rights since the end of slavery. By the 1950s and 1960s, the actions to end racial discrimination became a mass movement. It came to be known as the Civil Rights Movement.

Similar movements against racial segregation and discrimination soon emerged elsewhere. Some successfully made racial segregation and discrimination unlawful. However, even today, racism and racial inequality persists worldwide.

The long Civil Rights Movement

During the 1940s, there were many important movements to combat racism in the U.S., but no unified strategy. For example, W.E.B. DuBois began the Pan-African Congress. Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Both had similar goals, but DuBois and Garvey were at odds with how to reach those goals.

The Second World War presented another opportunity to fight for racial justice. The popular Black American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier launched a “Double V” campaign. It promoted two victories: one overseas against fascism and another at home against racial discrimination. The campaign publicized issues important to its Black American leadership. It boosted their ability to organize. These efforts helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.

The Civil Rights Movement describes a number of approaches used in an effort to achieve equal rights for Black Americans.

Actions included the use of the legal system to fight discriminatory laws. Racial segregation — the separation of people based on race—was legal in the United States. It had been legal since the 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. That ruling said separate accommodations were acceptable as long as they were equal.

In 1954, in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka, ,Brown’s side argued that it was harmful to have racial segregation in public schools. This time, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. The court said that having separate facilities was “inherently unequal.” The Brown ruling overturned Plessy v. Fergusson.

Other actions included civil disobedience. Activists actively disobeyed laws as a way to create change. This is exactly what happened in 1955.

Rosa Parks was told to give her seat to a white passenger on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was told to move to the back section reserved for Black American riders, but she refused. Her refusal was unlawful.

Parks’s civil disobedience led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. People protested by refusing to ride the bus. This boycott drew in the young activist Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The boycott lasted nearly a year. It ended when the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on public buses. In addition to lawsuits and boycotts, civil rights activists organized peaceful rallies, like the 1963 March on Washington.

Together, these approaches brought pressure on Congress. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made racial discrimination unlawful in education, employment, housing, and public facilities. Then, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 removed voting barriers such as literacy and poll tests. These had stopped Black American southerners from exercising their right to vote.

Black American women in the Civil Rights Movement extended the fight to gender equality. By the 1970s, some of these women pushed onward. They sought to fight for racial and gender equality.

Racial democracy challenged in Latin America

Racial segregation was not legal in Latin America. Still, racism and racial discrimination were widespread.

Many Latin Americans drew inspiration from the American activists. In Brazil, Afro-Brazilians adopted a strong sense of racial identity. During the 1970s, Afro-Brazilians regularly wore an afro hairstyle. They dressed in African attire. This embrace of a black identity renewed efforts to end racially discriminatory policies in Brazil.

In 1978, Brazilian activists formed the Black Unified Movement (or MNU, from Movimento Negro Unificado). They sought to respond to the poverty and the violence affecting people of African ancestry. This was an ambitious goal. The Brazilian military had banned the right to protest or organize. Military leaders considered MNU a threat to the country’s image. Still, the MNU met and successfully lobbied for November 20 as a National Day of Consciousness. MNU also gained ancestral rights to the descendants of the quilombo. These were communities of enslaved people who had escaped.

As in the United States, these efforts spurred female activists. Afro-Brazilian female activists separated and formed new organizations. By 1988, they had organized the First National Encounter of the Black Woman to attain national recognition as a distinct collective identity in the country: a mulher negra or “the Black woman”.

By the 1980s, Indigenous movements emerged in the region. The movements sought to end policies that had failed to protect their traditional languages and cultures. Some even fought against economic policies that harmed the environment or limited their economic opportunities. In 1986, Ecuador’s fourteen Indigenous ethnicities formed the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

They, in turn, formed a political party. They, too, lobbied for Ecuador’s recognition as a multicultural state. Activists wanted the state to do more to preserve the cultural rights of Indigenous peoples. In Guatemala, Indigenous communities openly protested against racial stereotyping and discrimination. Like CONAIE, the Guatemalan Maya peoples formed a movement to create laws promoting the Maya language and cultural traditions. Unlike Indigenous communities in Ecuador, the Maya faced insecurity. The government waged an ongoing civil war against them.

The plight of the Maya and the civil war gained international attention in 1992. That year, Maya activist Rigoberta Menchú received the Nobel Peace Prize. She was the second Guatemalan awarded a Nobel Prize. She introduced readers to the hardships of Indigenous communities. She did this by writing her memoir I, Rigoberta Menchú.¹ Despite the activism, the 1999 Guatemala legislature refused to grant rights to the Maya peoples.

Conclusion

By the late 1900s, people worldwide began to organize around issues of racial justice. Through civic and political movements, governments made racial discrimination unlawful. Yet racism and racial violence persist. In response, people are once again organizing to end not just racial discrimination but also racial violence.

In 2013, young activists in the U.S. formed the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The movement denounced the alarming number of police shootings of unarmed Black Americans.

These issues are not unique to the United States. In Latin America, Black and Indigenous activists are the victims of violence due to their activism. Since 2015, over one hundred Afro-Colombian activists have been killed because of their work. These tragic deaths are a reminder that there is still much to do to reach equality and justice for all.

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1 Although an American anthropologist later discovered Menchú had fabricated some details in her account, most activists and scholars acknowledge I, Rigoberta Menchú still reflects a truthful representation of the collective experience of many Maya families.