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Civil Rights & Responsibilities
Civil Rights & Human Rights
- American Civil Liberties Union
- The American Civil Liberties Union has information on a wide range of social issues from criminal justice to free speech to religious liberty to workplace rights.
- Amnesty International USA
- The US branch of the Nobel Prize-winning activist organization, Amnesty International, which is
… focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination…
. - Civil Rights.org
- Current issues in civil rights, focusing on policy and legislation, with hate crime information and statistics, and the “Civil Rights Monitor” journal online.
- EPIC – Electronic Privacy Information Center
A public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values.
- Exploring Race in Society
This free research database offers essential content covering important issues related to race in society today. Essays, articles, reports and other reliable sources provide an in-depth look at the history of race and provide critical context for learning more about topics associated with race, ethnicity, diversity and inclusiveness.
- Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History believes that students must be trusted to examine history in all of its complexities, including its legacies of prejudice and discrimination, resilience and courage.
- Introduction to Social Policy
This set of web pages offers a brief outline of key topics and issues in Social Policy.
- NAACP – Natioanl Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
- This organization has among its goals to
raise consumers’ awareness of how technology affects personal privacy.
They have guides on a variety of privacy-related topics including online privacy, identity theft, and other issues. - Project Implicit
Project Implicit blends basic research and educational outreach in a virtual laboratory at which visitors can examine their own hidden biases
via an interactive test.- Public Agenda Online
Public Agenda is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public opinion research and citizen education organization
which supplies information about current social and political issues. Great source for quick facts and figures.- Thought.co: Understanding Civil Liberties
- Links to articles about various civil liberties issues both in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
- Understanding Race
Looking through the eyes of history, science and lived experience, the RACE Project explains differences among people and reveals the reality – and unreality – of race.
- UNICEF
Working in over 150 countries, UNICEF is a global humanitarian relief organization providing children with health care and immunizations, clean water, nutrition and food security, education, emergency relief and more.
UNICEF USA is the American branch of the group.- United Nations – Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
- News, treaties, research guide, and other information on human rights.
- U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
- Reports and information on human rights worldwide.
Civil Rights Movement (1950-70)
- 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act (video)
A commemorative look at one of the most important pieces of legislation of the civil rights movement: the Voting Rights Act of 1965, with Congresswoman Alma Adams.
From the Library of Congress.- A Brief History of Jim Crow
‘Jim Crow’ was a derisive slang term for a black man. It came to mean my law that established different rules for blacks and whites. First passed in the North long before the Civil War, such laws were based on the theory of white supremacy.
- Brown v. Board of Education
- Civil Rights Digital Library
The Civil Rights Digital Library promotes an enhanced understanding of the Movement by helping users discover primary sources and other educational materials from libraries, archives, museums, public broadcasters, and others on a national scale.
- Crossroads to Freedom
Crossroads to Freedom connects a digital archive of materials from the Civil Rights era in Memphis, TN … We have over 70 oral history interviews, along with Judge Russell Sugarmon’s papers, the 1962 Hearings of the Commission on Civil Rights and more.
- Freedom Riders
Freedom Riders were groups of white and African American civil rights activists who participated in Freedom Rides, bus trips through the American South in 1961 to protest segregated bus terminals.
- The Freedom Riders History (video)
In the spring of 1961, black and white civil rights activists rode buses to protest the segregationist policies of the Deep South.
A video from the Smithsonian.- Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights
- Hosted by the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, this special collection includes hundred of articles from the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1957 through the present.
- History Channel: Civil Rights Movement
- Part of the History Channel’s section on Black History, these pages look at the history and progression of the Civil Rights Movement in America.
- Library of Congress: Civil Rights in America: A Resource Guide
This guide provides access to selected Library of Congress digital and print resources as well as links to external websites on civil rights.
- National Civil Rights Museum
- Virtual tour of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Riding Freedom: 10 Milestones in U.S. Civil Rights History
- Discusses the Freedom Riders and other important events in the history of U.S. civil rights. From the Britannica blog.
- The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow
Jim Crow was not a person, yet affected the lives of millions of people. Named after a popular 19th-century minstrel song that stereotyped African Americans, “Jim Crow” came to personify the system of government-sanctioned racial oppression and segregation in the United States.
- Television Network News of the Civil Rights Era
- This site
aims to collect, digitize, and present in streaming video format over the World Wide Web television news footage from the period and to make these valuable materials available to scholars, teachers, and students.
Freedom of Religion
- Annenberg Classroom: Freedom of Religion
- A timeline of laws and court cases involving the First Amendment and how it has been understood at different times in America’s history.
- Crash Couse on Government and Politics: Freedom of Religion
- This short video aims to
examine some significant Supreme Court decisions and talk about how they’ve affected our interpretations of the law with respect to stuff like animal sacrifice and prayer in schools. As you’ll see, there aren’t always clearly defined, or bright-line, rules in approaching legal questions.
- First Amendment Center
Our mission: providing resources to help the public understand how their First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition work, and how they can be protected.
- History Channel: Freedom of Religion
- This short article takes a brief look at the history of religious tolerance in America.
- Legal Information Institute: First Amendment
- An overview from the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
- Religion Clause (blog)
- This active blog offers
objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
- Religious Liberty: Landmark Supreme Court Cases
- List and short description of some major cases, from the Bill of Rights Institute.
- US Conference of Catholic Bishops: Religious Liberty
- Links and information on religious liberty, with a focus on Catholic news and materials.
Freedom of Speech and of the Press
- ALA: Banned & Challenged Books
- Information about frequently banned and challenged books, from the American Library Association.
- Annenberg Classroom: Freedom of the Press
- Annenberg Classroom: Freedom of Speech
- Timelines of laws and court cases involving the First Amendment and how it has been understood at different times in America’s history.
- Electronic Frontier Foundation
EFF uses the unique expertise of leading technologists, activists, and attorneys in our efforts to defend free speech online, fight illegal surveillance, advocate for users and innovators, and support freedom-enhancing technologies.
- First Amendment Center
Our mission: providing resources to help the public understand how their First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly and petition work, and how they can be protected.
- The Free Speech Center
The Free Speech Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy center dedicated to building understanding of the five freedoms of the First Amendment through education, information and engagement.
Includes an encyclopedia, articles, news, and related information.- Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
- Offers legal aid to reporters dealing with freedom of the press issues, along with materials on freedom of the press topics, such as a First Amendment Handbook.
Gun Control and Gun Rights
- AllSides: Gun Control and Gun Rights
- Background information, definition, and articles from left, center, and right on issues relating to gun control.
- America’s gun culture in 10 charts
- A look at data and statistics about guns and gun violence in the U.S. by the BBC. (August 2019)
- America’s unique gun violence problem, explained in 16 maps and charts
In the developed world, these levels of gun violence are a uniquely American problem. Here’s why.
(August 2019)- FindLaw: Gun Laws
- Article describing federal gun laws, with links to pages about state gun control laws and related topics.
- Gun Control and Second Amendment News
- Gun control in America: How we got here
- A look at the historical roots of gun control in America, from CNN. (July 2016)
- Gun Violence Archive
Gun Violence Archive (GVA) is a not for profit corporation formed in 2013 to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States.
- History.com: Second Amendment
Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the rights of individual citizens to buy, own and carry firearms.
- New York Times: Guns and Gun Control
News about Guns and Gun Control, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
- Opposing Viewpoints: Gun Control
- Opposing Viewpoints: Guns and Violence
- Viewpoints, reference materials, statistics, newspaper, magazine, and journal articles, and more. (SCC students, check with librarian for password.)
- Pew Research: Gun Policy
See the latest Pew Research Center data and reports on issues and attitudes toward gun control and related policies.
- ProCon.org: Gun Control
- Review of the top current pro and anti gun control arguments plus a background page exploring the history of gun control.
- The Second Amendment: Text, Origins, and Meaning
- This article from Thought.co, part of their series on the Bill of Rights, looks at the “right to bear arms”.
- Thought.co: Overview of Gun Laws
Whether you want to learn more about gun rights, gun control or gun reform, use these resources to get an overview of current laws.
- Timeline of Gun Control in the Unisted States
The gun control debate in the United States goes back to the nation’s founding, when the framers of the Constitution first wrote the Second Amendment, allowing private citizens to ‘keep and bear arms.’
- U.S. Gun Policy – Global Comparisons
High-profile mass shootings in the United States in recent years have rekindled the gun control debate and raised comparisons of policies around the world.
(Aug. 2019)
Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery
- Anti-Slavery International: Slavery Today
- Information from an international organization to fight modern slavery, including bonded labor, child slavery, trafficking, and other sorts of forced labor.
- CNN: What Is Modern Slavery?
- An article with video clips discussing the various forms modern slavery can take. (March 2019)
- DHS: Blue Campaign
Blue Campaign is a national public awareness campaign, designed to educate the public, law enforcement and other industry partners to recognize the indicators of human trafficking, and how to appropriately respond to possible cases.
- End Slavery Now.org : Learn
Learn about today’s forms of slavery and abolition
from this action site.- FBI.gov: Human Trafficking/Involuntary Servitude
- A short overview of human trafficking in the U.S. and a description of the FBI’s Human Trafficking Task Forces.
- Free the Slaves.net
Our mission is to end slavery worldwide. We believe that ending slavery is an ambitious–and realizable–goal.
- Freedom United
- Anti-slavery organization with a selection of information on topics such as child slavery, human trafficking, products of slavery, and other related issues.
- Human Trafficking Search
- Interactive maps and news about slavery, child labor, and human trafficking issues.
- Modern Slavery
An exploration of its root causes and the human toll.
From the Council on Foreign Relations.- Modern Slavery: Hidden in Plain Sight
If you think slavery is a thing of the past, think again. Millions of people around the world are trapped in modern slavery – and they could be working for you. In this powerful talk Kate Garbers makes the unseen seen and helps us spot the signs of modern slavery in our midst.
(TED Talks, June 2018)- Modern Slavery: Myths and Facts
Modern slavery is all around us, but most people don’t even realize it.
- New York Times: Slavery
News about Slavery, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.
- Slavery Footprint: Made in a Free World
- Offers the eye-opening “How Many Slaves Work For You?” quiz, showing how many products and services we take for granted are made by forced labor.
- Spotlight on Human Trafficking: How to Join the Fight
This guide aims to raise awareness by explaining the types and signs of human trafficking, discussing who is most at risk, shedding light on common myths and statistics, and showing how everyone can get involved and join the fight.
Though aimed at truckers, this guide has good infomration for everyone.- What Does Modern Slavery Look Like?
Modern forms of slavery can include debt bondage, where a person is forced to work for free to pay off a debt, child slavery, forced marriage, domestic servitude and forced labour, where victims are made to work through violence and intimidation.
(BBC, May 2016)- What is Modern Slavery?
- Information about various kinds of human trafficking from the U.S. Department of State.