Study
Questions & Essay Topics
Always use specific historical examples to support
your arguments.
Study Questions
1. How were the
NAACP, the SCLC, and the SNCC different? How were they similar?
Which organization had the most success in desegregating the South?
2. Why did the
civil rights movement gain momentum in the
1950s
and
1960s?
3. How did Eisenhower,
Kennedy, and Johnson affect the civil rights movement? Which of
these presidents had the most impact and why?
Suggested Essay Topics
1. How did earlier civil rights
leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus
Garvey, influence the civil rights movement of the 1950s
and 1960s?
2. Where did the term and philosophy
“black power” come from? Why did black activists turn to violence
in the mid- to late 1960s?
3. Why did the civil rights movement
fall apart in the late 1960s and
early 1970s?
Was the movement a success?
4. How did Malcolm X and the
Black Panthers affect the goals of the civil rights movement?
5. How was the civil rights movement
of the 1950s
and 1960s
a continuation of the Reconstruction-era struggle for blacks to achieve
equality?
6. Were the SCLC's and the SNCC's
strategies of nonviolence successful?
