In modern society, equal rights for women and different races are often taken for granted. Sadly, this was not always the case, and during the 19th and 20th centuries, a movement arose which sought to provide rights and recognition for African-Americans in American society. Slavery was abolished in the USA in 1865, but there was still much racial discrimination until the mid-20th Century.

From the late 19th Century, until the mid-1960s, the Jim Crow Laws in the USA stipulated racial segregation on public transport. By the 1950s, blacks had significantly more freedom than they had had in previous decades; however, they still experienced discrimination in many other areas of daily life. Eventually, events had to come to a head, and blacks began to take a stand.

From 1877 until 1965, many states in the USA instituted what were known as the Jim Crow Laws which segregated blacks and whites in daily life. The origin of the name is unclear, but it is thought that it may have come from a song called ‘Jump Jim Crow‘ which was popular in blackface (a form of theatre which depicted African-Americans in a demeaning manner) at that time.

After the American Civil War in the Reconstruction Era, a group named the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded by veterans from the Confederate Army in 1865. The name Ku Klux Klan is derived from the Greek word ‘kyklos’ (κυκλος) meaning ‘circle’. The KKK supported the ideology of white supremacy and in the decades that followed the war, they sought to restore order and give power to rich whites living in the southern states, which were still experiencing civil unrest in the aftermath of the war.