Existing comment:
Twentieth-Century: The American Search for Justice:
One of the great achievements of this past century was a series of successful campaigns to strike down long-standing segregationist practices and discrimination in American society. While these changes ultimately became enacted in the nation's courts and legislatures, the struggle to secure them was principally fought where intolerance reigned. As such, the nation's polls, buses, schools, and countless other places became battlegrounds in the crusade for equal rights.
The figures represented in this gallery were important catalysts during the mid-twentieth century, a period that witnessed historic changes concerning the status of women, Native Americans, gays, and the disabled. Most striking perhaps was the progress achieved by African Americans. Although born in an earlier century, the civil rights struggle reached a crescendo in the 1950s and 1960s. Its triumphs recast the contours of American society and contributed to ongoing campaigns being waged to bring equal opportunity to all Americans. |