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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.