Greenville, SC Civil Right Movement: Our Story Matters
Session Title
Vulnerable Populations 2
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Department
History
Abstract
The Civil Rights Movement has long been studied by Historians as a national movement. Most of history has highlighted the movement in through such as the stories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Continuously, history has conveyed these two moments of the movement as exclusive impetuses of achievements such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. By doing this, other events, places, and people that made huge contributions to the movement are left uncredited. Furthermore, depicting the Civil Rights Movement in its national lens weakens the movements’ long and hard fight to freedom that historically happened in local cities and communities. There are several places, such as Greenville, South Carolina, that have had their own moments in the Civil Rights Movement, that have been disregarded. The local movement in Greenville, South Carolina has a rich history of sit-ins, one of which that has led to the desegregation of its cities library and one that led to a United States Supreme Court case. Greenville County has shaped the influenced the national movement through sit-ins and activism.
Start Date
15-4-2022 12:00 PM
Greenville, SC Civil Right Movement: Our Story Matters
The Civil Rights Movement has long been studied by Historians as a national movement. Most of history has highlighted the movement in through such as the stories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Continuously, history has conveyed these two moments of the movement as exclusive impetuses of achievements such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. By doing this, other events, places, and people that made huge contributions to the movement are left uncredited. Furthermore, depicting the Civil Rights Movement in its national lens weakens the movements’ long and hard fight to freedom that historically happened in local cities and communities. There are several places, such as Greenville, South Carolina, that have had their own moments in the Civil Rights Movement, that have been disregarded. The local movement in Greenville, South Carolina has a rich history of sit-ins, one of which that has led to the desegregation of its cities library and one that led to a United States Supreme Court case. Greenville County has shaped the influenced the national movement through sit-ins and activism.
