COMPARISON OF MOVEMENTS

Comparison of Movements



The women's suffrage movement and African American civil rights movement

Women's suffrage movement

Women's suffrage is the right of women to vote in elections of Representatives. Historically included political and economic movement aimed at empowering women voting rights. Voting rights for women became part of international law in 1948, when the country Organization of American States adopted the Inter-American Convention on securing women's political rights, and the United Nations - Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Women's suffrage right is enshrined in the Convention on the Political Rights of Women and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, adopted by the UN, respectively, in 1952 and 1979. The first victory in the fight was won in the territories of Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870), although the women of Utah were disenfranchised by the federal Edmunds-Tucker Act, passed by Congress in 1887. Women's suffrage was introduced in Utah in the hope that women will refuse polygamy, however, when voters endorsed polygamy, they were denied the right to vote. By the end of XIX century, there were women's suffrage in the states of Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming (Daley, 1994).

The growing influence of the movement led to the arrests of activists; many were in prison. One of the largest protests took place on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House and the eve of the inauguration of President Wilson. The marchers, from 5000 to 8000 have been attacked, insulted and spit. As a result, public opinion is inclined in favor of discriminated. In the end, President Woodrow Wilson persuaded Congress to enact legislation, after ratification in 1920 became the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibited discrimination in the election on grounds of sex (Daley, 1994).

Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement (1955 - 1968) refers to the movement the U.S. aimed at establishing real equality of civil rights for black Americans by abolishing the law establishing the racial segregation. The Protestant pastor Martin Luther King, apostle of nonviolence, became one of the most famous. Several scholars refer to this movement as the "second reconstruction", in reference to the Reconstruction that followed the Civil War, during which the slavery was abolished, while the American-born blacks became citizens and were entitled to vote. However, in 1896 the decision Plessey v. Ferguson legitimized Jim Crow laws in place in the south and other racist legislation.

Organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a pioneer in the civil rights campaigns of the early 1960s, turned to both the Black Power and to protest against the Vietnam War, student at Federated by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), originally led by Tom Hayden. Before dissolving, the SDS is involved in the development of the Second Left, born of plural and diverse experience of these years, while born on its ruins the Weather Underground, white group that takes the path of armed struggle for alleviate repression of the Black Panthers, AIM, and national liberation movements (in Vietnam, etc.) (Weisbrot, ...