The Tactics And Organizational Structure Of The Civil Rights Movement

In the wee hours of the night on February 26th 2012 a young African-American teen named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in the town of Sanford Florida by George Zimmerman (Hoffman, 2016: 596). Though Zimmerman was eventually arrested and put on trial he was declared not-guilty by means of Self defense, a verdict that shocked the nation and was treated as a national shame by the country’s black community. In response three racial equality activists, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, started tweeting and sharing the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter, and from here a movement was born. This paper will argue that the tactics and organizational structure of the Black Lives Matter movement is a natural progression from the civil rights movement of the past. This paper will achieve that in the following ways. First it will provide historical context of both the civil rights movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement in order to …show more content…
The Civil Rights Movement sustained boycotts and sit-ins, and other non-violent means of protests throughout the 50s and 60s, relying on a strong network of support groups. These groups included national organizations like the NAACP, and local church groups. These activities were sustained and constant across the US, primarily in the south for years and eventually culminated in a series of legal victories in various states and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 (McAdam, 2009: 59). Through strong networks of support and constant protests the Civil Rights Movement won stunning victories, but unfortunately there was another backlash like the reconstruction before. President Nixon won the republican ticket on the back of his “southern” strategy and the concerns of African Americans were sidelined for generations (McAdam, 2009: