Civil Rights & Responsibilities

Children

Child Labor and Child Slavery

Despite the fact that many people believe that slavery no longer exists, an estimated five million children are in slavery worldwide, including in the UK.

Chocolate and Child Labor

Big Chocolate’s child-labor problem is still far from fixed (Oct. 2020)
The chocolate industry still relies on child labor (April 2018)
Hershey, Nestle and Mars broke their pledges to end child labor in chocolate production (June 2019)
Does Your Chocolate Come From Slaves? (Feb. 2018)
Slave Free Chocolate.org

The Clothes on Your Back; Factory Kids video

Report looking at the situation of children working in clothing factories in Bangladesh. (2013)

CRIN: Child Rights Information Network

Guided by our passion for social and legal change, CRIN is building a global network for children’s rights. We press for rights, not charity, and advocate for a genuine systemic shift in how governments and societies view children.

COVID-10 And Child Labor: A Time Of Crisis, A Time to Act

Nearly half of today’s roughly 152 million child laborers are working in jobs deemed hazardous to their health and mental well-being… And now the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to push millions more youth into the workforce as job losses and sharp declines in household income are hitting already vulnerable families hard — putting pressure on kids to contribute. (Oct. 2020)

Forbes: Towards Eradication Of Child Labor (June 2018)

According to the United Nations, over 218 million children between 5 and 17 years are engaged in labor worldwide. Over 152 million of these children are victims of child labor, ranging from forced labor, debt bondage, slavery, prostitution or illicit activities.

Global March Against Child Labour

A movement to mobilise worldwide efforts to protect and promote the rights of all children, especially the right to receive a free, meaningful education and to be free from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be harmful to the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.

The Price of Free

152 million children are victims of child labor — making the stuff you buy and use every day. Join Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi in the movement to free every child. Includes link to The Price of Free documentary.

Stop Child Labor Coalition

A national network for the exchange of information about child labor; provide a forum and a unified voice on protecting working minors and ending child labor exploitation; and develop informational and educational outreach…

U.S. Dept. of Labor: Bureau of International Labor Affairs: Child Labor

Information about child labor in the U.S. and abroad.

Child Soldiers

Child Soldiers World Index: This global map visualises trends in the military exploitation of children according to three essential criteria: ratification of OPAC (the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict), minimum recruitment age, and use of children in hostilities.
The effects of being a child soldier can last a lifetime: Even if children are released or escape, they may find their families have been killed in conflict—or sometimes the children are rejected by their own communities, especially girls who have had babies with soldiers. (April 2018)
Human Rights Watch: Child Soldiers: News, reports, and commentary about the plight of child soldiers.
The New Humanitarian: Child Soldiers: Ongoing look at the plight of child soldiers with reports, videos, and personal accounts.
Stolen Childhoods: The Release of Child Soldiers in South Sudan: “They told me to kill my mother.” This is the realty of life as a child soldier in South Sudan. (Feb. 2018)

Child Welfare

Child Welfare Information Gateway: Child Welfare Information Gateway connects child welfare and related professionals to comprehensive information and resources to help protect children and strengthen families. We feature the latest on topics from prevention to permanency, including child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption.
Children’s Defense Fund: We champion policies and programs that lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation.
Children’s Rights.org: We are a national advocacy group working to reform failing child welfare systems on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of abused and neglected children who depend on them for protection and care.
Juvenile Law Center: A national nonprofit public interest law firm that advances and protects the rights and well-being of youth in the child welfare and justice systems by using legal advocacy, publications, projects, public education, and training to ensure those children receive the protection and services they need to become productive adults.
New York State Office of Children and Family Services: Information about adoption, day care, child protective services, the blind and visually handicapped and more.
UNICEF: We believe that nurturing and caring for children are the cornerstones of human progress. UNICEF was created with this purpose in mind – to work with others to overcome the obstacles that poverty, violence, disease and discrimination place in a child’s path.
Youth Advocate Program International: YAP International works to prevent and eliminate the worst forms of child labor, the use of children in armed conflict, commercial sexual exploitation of children, and the practice of incarcerating children as adults.

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: Nobel Prize-winning grassroots activist organization … focused on preventing and ending grave abuses of the rights to physical and mental integrity, freedom of conscience and expression, and freedom from discrimination…. The U.S. branch is Amnesty International USA.
Campaign Nonviolence: Campaign Nonviolence is a new, long-term movement to mainstream active nonviolence –making nonviolence an obvious and natural way of living and of fostering a world that works for all.
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.
Civil Rights Suite: As current debates surrounding civil liberties, immigration, and changing demographics increase, CHSA is at the forefront of the movement to examine the historical impact of the Chinese American fight for equality on our society.
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. Website includes an Online Guide to Privacy Resources.
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.
Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights: Hosted by the Thurgood Marshall Law Library, this special collection includes hundred of articles (mostly in .pdf format) from the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1957 through the present.
Human Rights Watch: Information about human rights around the world today.
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.
Newsela: America’s Long History of Protest: Protests are as old as America…. This page links to articles about U.S. protest movements from the founding of the country through modern times.
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.
Racial Profiling: The ACLU’s Campaign Against Racial Profiling fights law enforcement and private security practices that disproportionately target people of color for investigation and enforcement. We represent individuals who have been victims of racial profiling by airlines, police, and government agencies.
Teaching Tolerance: Daily news about groups and individuals working for tolerance and fighting hate; Guidebooks for adult and youth activists; Practical resources for parents and teachers; and Entertaining and educational games for young children.
Thought.co: Understanding Civil Liberties: Links to articles about various civil liberties issues both in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Tracked in America: This documentary Web site explores more than two centuries of surveillance in America. Included are two hours of audio interviews, 300 photographs, and 25 personal stories beginning in 1917.
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.
United Nations Refugee Agency: News, publications, and statistics about refugees from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Understanding Prejudice: Web site for students, teachers, and others interested in the causes and consequences of prejudice … (with) more than 2,000 links to prejudice-related resources, as well as searchable databases with hundreds of prejudice researchers and social justice organizations.
U.S. Department of State: Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor: Reports and information on human rights worldwide.
WITNESS: WITNESS uses video and online technologies to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We empower people to transform personal stories of abuse into powerful tools for justice, promoting public engagement and policy change.
World Values Survey: A worldwide investigation of sociocultural and political change.

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.

The Civil Rights Documentation Project

A detailed timeline covering civil rights from 1963-1965 in the U.S.

Civil Rights Resource Guide

From the Library of Congress, a wide variety of material related to civil rights, including photographs, documents, and sound recordings.

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.

Finishing the Dream: Learning from the Civil Rights Era

Free online video series from NBC News.

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 (mostly in .pdf format) from the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1957 through the present.

History Channel: Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. It was led by people like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Little Rock Nine and many others.

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.

Stories of Freedom and Justice

A retrospective about the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

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

Freedom of Speech and of the Press

ACLU: Free Speech: Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process, diversity of thought, and so much more.
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.
Cornell Law School: Freedom Of Expression—speech And Press: History of the free speech doctrine and how it has been interpreted through American 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.
Index on Censorship: Index on Censorship is a nonprofit that campaigns for and defends free expression worldwide. We publish work by censored writers and artists, promote debate, and monitor threats to free speech.
National Coalition Against Censorship: NCAC’s mission is to promote freedom of thought, inquiry and expression and oppose censorship in all its forms.
Project Censored: Project Censored educates students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. We expose and oppose news censorship and we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking.
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.
Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders (RSF) provides information about the media freedom situation worldwide…. After checking and corroborating our information, we issues press releases every day about abuses against journalists and about the many different kinds of censorship.

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.