Civil Rights Movement

The Return of the Protest Song

Young musicians are finding their role in this modern civil rights movement through the protest song tradition

Selma Cast Will March in Alabama to Celebrate MLK Day

Director Ava DuVernay and stars Oprah Winfrey and David Oyelowo will be there too

The Link Between The Civil Rights Movement and Ferguson

International criticism during the Civil Rights Movement helped bring about new legislation

It's Now Up to Whites to Dismantle Racism

Black people have done everything we can do. Righting these wrongs rests on the shoulders of white people who get it

How to Fool a Racist Mob: Lesson One

LIFE photographer Joe Scherschel discusses how he tricked a mob of racists in 1956 Texas into believing that he was handing over the film he shot of them behaving like lawless clowns.

Hatred on the Home Front: The Detroit Race Riots During WWII

Seventy years after race riots tore through Detroit -- "the arsenal of democracy" -- during World War II, LIFE offers a series of photos from a great American city in turmoil.

After 'Brown v. Board of Education': Portraits of Integration, Virginia, 1959

On the 60th anniversary of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that forever reshaped America's educational landscape, LIFE recalls a school integration battle in Virginia five long years later.

The Night MLK Was Murdered: A Photographer's Story

March on Washington: Rare Photos From a Star-Studded Fundraiser, 1963

Photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Ray Charles, Nina Simone, James Baldwin and other political and pop-culture stars at a fundraiser in Birmingham, Ala, in August 1963.

The Girl Who Lived: Portrait of a Birmingham Church Bombing Survivor, 1963

Fifty years after the notorious 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, LIFE.com recalls a portrait that captured the lethal aggression behind so much of the rhetoric of the Deep South.

A Savage Season in Mississippi: The Murder of Emmett Till

In 1955, when an all-white, all-male jury acquitted two men of kidnapping and murdering 14-year-old Emmett Till, the verdict shocked observers across the country and around the world.

The Concert That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement

LIFE.com celebrates Marian Anderson's life and career through the lens of a single, memorable image by LIFE's Thomas McAvoy, made during the 1939 Easter concert that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

LIFE and Civil Rights: Anatomy of a Protest, Virginia, 1960

LIFE.com presents a gallery of photos -- many of which never ran in LIFE magazine -- from a series of protests and sit-ins in Petersburg, Virginia, in May 1960.

Brave Hearts: Remembering the Little Rock Nine

Six decades after nine courageous teens integrated Little Rock Central High School, LIFE.com presents pictures -- many of which never ran in LIFE magazine -- from those ugly and, ultimately, inspiring days.

The Dream Continues: Camilo José Vergara's Photographs of MLK Murals

For more than 30 years, photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has documented murals of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in America's inner cities. Here, Vergara writes for LightBox about the roles King's image has played in American culture.

Erasing Type: Hank Willis Thomas on What Advertisements Are Really Saying

Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America 1968-2008,” part of a new installation at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, is a project by artist Hank Willis Thomas. Appropriating ads that have targeted the black audience...