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gay rights movement | Definition & History

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gay rights movement, also called homosexual rights movement or gay liberation movement, civil rights movement that advocates equal rights for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons; seeks to eliminate sodomy laws barring homosexual acts between consenting adults; and calls for an end…

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On March 8, 1965, two battalions of U.S. Marines landed on beaches of Da Nang, marking the first official engagement of American troops in the Vietnam War. Over the next several years, as the United States escalated its ill-fated involvement in that conflict, hundreds of thousands of Americans joined in mass protests across the country, repulsed and outraged by the terrible bloodshed taking place in Southeast Asia.

Though the anti-war movement had begun on college campuses at the dawn of the 1960 s, more and more people joined in opposition to the war in the latter half of the decade, as television brought images of its atrocities into American homes in a new level of excruciating detail.

The hippie counterculture, which emerged in the late 1960s and grew to include hundreds of thousands of young Americans across the country, reached its height during this period of escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War, and subsided as that conflict drew to a close. But hippies' rejection of mainstream American culture, and their distinctive brand of rebellion-including their long hair and beards, colorful style, psychedelic drug use, love of rock music and eco-conscious lifestyle-left a lasting impact on the nation in the decades to come.

Counterculture Prior to the Vietnam War

In many ways, the hippies of the 1960s descended from an earlier American counterculture: the Beat Generation. This group of young bohemians, most famously including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, made a name for themselves in the 1940s and '50s with their rejection of prevailing social norms, including capitalism, consumerism and materialism.

Centered in bohemian havens like San Francisco and the East Village of New York City, Beats embraced Eastern religions, experimented with drugs and a looser form of sexuality; their followers became known by the diminutive term " beatniks."

"What's significant about [the Beats] is that the movement was very small, it was literary-so it had a claustrophobic quality about it," explains William Rorabaugh, professor of history at the University of Washington and author of American Hippies (2015). "You weren't allowed to be in the group unless you were either a friend of or a poet."

Who Were the Hippies?

As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, the Beats and beatniks gradually gave way to a new kind of counterculture: the hippies, who actually preferred to call themselves "freaks" or "love children." The hippies were much younger than the beatniks (they could even have been the Beats' children) and had a much different style. They listened to folk and rock music, not jazz; they dressed flamboyantly, in bright colors, where the Beats and beatniks had favored shades of black and grey. Ripped jeans, bell bottoms, tie-dyed clothing and flowers worn in the hair were all big parts of the typical hippie style.

The biggest difference between the hippies and the Beats? " LSD came on the scene," Rorabaugh says. "The hippie counterculture, more than anything else, was about taking LSD. Seeking spiritual perfection through drugs, but particularly through psychedelic drugs."

The vast majority of hippies were young, white, middle-class men and women who felt alienated from mainstream middle-class society and resented the pressure to conform to the "normal" standards of appearance, employment or lifestyle. By wearing their hair long and growing beards (for the men), taking drugs and exploring spirituality outside of the confines of the Judeo-Christian tradition, hippies sought to find more meaning in life-or at least have a good time.

Though the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco and New York City's East Village were famous hippie meccas, the movement thrived all over the country.

In a cover story published in July 1967, during the "Summer of Love," Time magazine reported that the hippie movement was "blooming in every major U.S. city from Boston to Seattle, from Detroit to New Orleans," encompassing some 300,000 people. Many hippies eventually chose to move outside the city, where the cost of living was lower. (Hippies were perennially broke.)

On a growing number of rural communes, hippies joined disaffected political radicals and Vietnam draft dodgers in embracing back-to-the-land living, including free love, organic farming, vegetarianism, holistic medicine and a lot of marijuana use.

Among the various groups that made up the vibrant '60s counterculture in the United States-including the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, gay rights and women's liberation activists, anarchists and other political radicals-hippies stood out for their relative lack of a distinct political ideology. Hippie politics was more a "politics of no politics," Rorabaugh says. "One of the things hippies said was 'you should do your own thing, you should do whatever you feel like doing.'"

All the same, it's no accident that the path of the hippie movement that emerged in the late '60s traced very closely the trajectory of American involvement in Vietnam. Hippies saw mainstream authority as the origin of all society's ills, which included the war. According to Rorabaugh, hippies joined with political radicals in their support for the civil rights movement and their opposition to the Vietnam War. "Hippies would agree with that, but they would not protest," he points out. "That was the difference-hippies were not protesters."

The most identifiably political hippie group was the Diggers, an anarchist organization formed in 1966 in San Francisco. They were known for passing out free food to the hippies panhandling in Golden Gate Park, and operating a free store (stocked with stolen goods) that would provide clothing for draft dodgers and AWOL soldiers seeking to go incognito. Like the Diggers, the Yippies, or the Youth International Party (YIP) founded in early 1968, also tried to attract hippies to politics, with little success.

In addition to the Summer of Love, that hippie heyday in 1967 when some 100,000 people from around the country converged on Haight-Ashbury, the most famous celebration of hippie counterculture occurred in August 1969 at the Woodstock Music Festival. Advertised as "three days of peace, music and love," Woodstock "brought both political people and counterculture people together," Rorabaugh says. Indeed, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 people, far more than its organizers originally expected, flocked to upstate New York to hear artists like Joan Baez, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and Creedence Clearwater Revival play the music that fueled the hippie movement.

Decline and Lasting Effects of the Hippie Movement

In some ways, the Summer of Love also marked the beginning of the end for the hippie movement, as drugs, homelessness and crime had infested Haight-Ashbury, pushing out many of the neighborhood's original residents. In October 1967, the Diggers held a "Death of the Hippie March" in San Francisco to decry the commercialization of hippie culture. The march ended at the famed Psychedelic Shop, an early hippie hangout that was closing. Marchers buried the shop's signs, marking a symbolic death for the hippie heyday.

On November 15, 1969, several months after Woodstock, growing opposition to the Vietnam War culminated in the largest antiwar demonstration in U.S. history, with as many as half a million people attending a protest in Washington, D.C., in addition to smaller protests around the country. A month later, violence broke out at another hippie gathering, the Altamont Music Festival, leaving five people dead. When combined with other acts of violence, including the gruesome Manson Murders of 1969 and the National Guard shootings of students at Kent State in 1970, Altamont brought the free-wheeling attitudes of the "love generation" crashing down into a more sordid reality.

By the time U.S. participation in the Vietnam War ended in 1973, the media had largely lost interest in the hippie movement, even though many of the hippies' formerly radical style choices (beards, sideburns and long hair on men, for example) had been adopted by mainstream American culture. But the communes, which endured until the mid-'70s and even longer, in some cases, would be the source of many of the hippies' lasting legacies, including pro-environmental attitudes and practices that are still very much in force today.

"Natural food, organic food, eating local, co-op groceries-all of that came out of the communes," Rorabaugh says. "Also a looser style of child-rearing, and more casual attitudes about sex. And solar panels-Northern California hippie communes were the first people to have solar panels in 1970. They did it because they needed some hot water for washing dishes. They were off the grid, and they didn't want anything to do with the utility company."

Though some hippies remained committed to the lifestyle for the long haul, many others assimilated themselves into the mainstream culture they had once despised. Perhaps the most famous of these, Rorabaugh says, was Steve Jobs, founder of Apple.

Jobs, who embraced Buddhism after a trip to India in the early '70s, "conceived of the idea of personal computer as putting computer power in the hands of ordinary people, and taking it away from IBM," as Rorabaugh puts it. "Taking computer power away from giant corporations and giving it to ordinary people"-what could be more anti-establishment than that?

Fact Check

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How the Vietnam War Empowered the Hippie Movement | HISTORY

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The hippie counterculture reached its height during the war's escalation, and subsided as the conflict drew to a close.

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A Brief History Of Hippies, The Counter-Culture Movement That Took Over America

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A look at the social movement that took America by storm in the 1960s.

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Harry Edwards is a sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1967, he founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which organized a boycott by African-American athletes of the 1968 Olympics and black power demonstrations at the Mexico City Games to protest continued racial discrimination faced by African-American athletes in college and within a larger, racially polarized society.

Two members of the movement, sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, staged the famous black power protest, raising clenched fists with black gloves as the national anthem was played on the medal stand at the Olympic Games. Both were kicked off the U.S. Olympic team and were ostracized by much of white America.

A former star basketball player at San Jose State University, the 75-year-old Edwards is the author of The Revolt of the Black Athlete and numerous articles. In recent years, he has served as a consultant to the San Francisco 49ers and the Golden State Warriors.

Edwards was interviewed by Sunni M. Khalid for The Undefeated. The interview was before LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul made their statements supporting Black Lives Matter at The ESPYS Wednesday night.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE RECENT POLITICAL ACTIVISM BY SOME BLACK ATHLETES TO THE RECENT SURGE OF POLICE KILLINGS OF BLACKS AND THE BLACK LIVES MATTERS MOVEMENT?
"There's no question that they are in a tradition. To be honest, it goes back to Jack Johnson, who wanted to be more than an athlete and a celebrity. This was a man who went into a hotel in St. Louis, and when they told him they don't have any rooms for 'your kind,' he told them, 'It's not me, it's for my lady and she's your kind.' And he was immediately escorted out of town. Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby stood for more. And, of course, there's Paul Robeson, who was not only a tremendous athlete, but an artist. Then there was Jackie Robinson, Kenny Washington and Woody Strode in the NFL, and Marion Motley and Bill Willis in the All-America Football Conference.

"The struggle was for legitimacy, as Jack Johnson and others understood, but it was not recognized. Then in the '60s, it was for access, because it was already proven we had athletic ability. Then we had Curt Flood, who demanded respect and dignity as men, both in the arena and beyond. These athletes have simply begun to find their voices. These broader issues in the society are issues with a large scope."
HOW CLOSELY HAVE YOU FOLLOWED THIS MOVEMENT?
"Very closely. Two years ago, there was Ariyana Smith, a women's basketball player from Knox College in Illinois, which was just a few miles from Ferguson, Missouri. She found it unconscionable to go to [Fontbonne University in Clayton, Missouri] and play there and not say anything about Michael Brown. During the national anthem, she went in front of the flag and laid there on the floor for four minutes and 30 seconds, which was a reminder that the Ferguson police had let the body of Michael Brown lay in the street for four hours and 30 minutes before they removed it.

"Then there were the St. Louis Rams players, who came out for introductions with the 'don't shoot' pose. Then there was LeBron [James] and [Dwyane] Wade wearing hoodies in the pregame shoot-around after Trayvon Martin was murdered. Then there was the Donald Sterling issue, with players on the [Los Angeles] Clippers threatening to refuse to play, which threatened to collapse the league. They forced the sale there.

"There is an evolution of the black athlete. It's no longer enough to tweet. They've realized we've got to do something and make a statement."
WHAT IS YOUR REACTION TO SOME OF THE MEDIA COVERAGE OF BLACK LIVES MATTER?
"After Dallas, you had all these talking heads on CNN and other networks talking about this was the largest massacre in a major American city, but they don't know enough to mention the wholesale killings of black people.

"In 1917, there were 300 blacks killed in riots by white mobs in East St. Louis, where I'm from, where homes were burned down. There were probably even more people killed. There were bodies buried in homes that were never recovered. We all grew up in an environment when there was an ongoing struggle for freedom, justice and equality."
HOW DOES THIS RESONATE IN PLACES LIKE OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, WHERE MANY OUTSPOKEN BLACK ATHLETES ARE FROM?
"Oakland is the birthplace of so many great athletes, from Bill Russell, Frank Robinson. Cito Gaston, Vada Pinson, Gary Payton to Jason Kidd, all come out of a history of struggle.

"You have these communities across the country, which had the infrastructure to create great athletes, but they also had a long record of struggle. The larger society wants you to forget these things, when you're an athlete, but the background of struggle that is still there."
DO THE ACTIONS OF SOME OF TODAY'S AFRICAN-AMERICAN ATHLETES REMIND YOU OF THE MOVEMENT OF THE 1960S?
"It doesn't remind me; it's the same struggle.

"People don't understand that, to this day, Jim Brown is still reviled for some of the positions he took 50 years ago. Bill Russell is still questioned. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is still questioned. And despite the fact that Muhammad Ali is being honored now, many Americans still despise, revile and resent him for not taking the step forward."
WHAT ROLE DOES MONEY PLAY IN DISCOURAGING SOME ATHLETES FROM TAKING A POLITICAL STAND?
"Money has always been a counter. But human dignity, freedom and justice are not for sale. Bill Russell, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali and Curt Flood, they put everything on the line. But no amount of money is worth everything. Money is potentially corrupting, but you can only be corrupted if you allow yourself to be corrupted."
HOW DOES THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT FIT INTO YOUR HISTORICAL NARRATIVE?
"This is supposedly a post-racial America. The biggest difference now between then and now is the big money of television contracts from the '80s into the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century. Society would like to turn away from facing and confronting injustice. That's not working for black America. These are the same issues that are built into the cultural affairs of this country, which have always trended toward white supremacy in every walk of life. Law enforcement, police brutality and white supremacy have always been where the rubber meets the road.

"Don't just look at the athletes, look at society. There was always this conclusion that the civil rights era was dead, that it wasn't necessary.
DO YOU SEE ANY OTHER SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE BLACK LIVES MATTER AND PREVIOUS MOVEMENTS?
"Yes. You had the civil rights movement, SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] and other organizations. The Black Panthers, which started in Oakland, with Huey Newton, David Hilliard and Bobby Seale, grew out of a resistance to white supremacy. These people were out in the streets, taking Polaroids. They said the only real evidence in confronting police was to have photographic evidence of police brutality. They were accused of interfering with the law and being anti-police. They were demonized in the press.

"We need to recognize that the Black Panther Party - they got it right in 1966, before there were cellphones. When they talked about self-defense, this is what it was. The courts have recognized this. They realized that the black community must be protected and respected."
HAVE ANY CURRENT ATHLETES REACHED OUT TO YOU?
"No one has contacted me. I'm not offended. They have my full support. They're dealing within the context of the modern culture. Many of them don't even know the history.

"They don't know that Muhammad Ali - the most recognized man on the planet - that he never would have been recognized and embraced around the world if he had not taken a stand. Ali made it possible for people to go to the polls and vote for a man with a funny-sounding name and put him in the White House, twice. The fact that he was the greatest boxer of his era will eventually be recognized as a mere footnote to his life.

"What I am hoping is that they will do much more. Given the billions of dollars in sports, many of these athletes are walking corporations. What if LeBron James or Serena Williams were to contact a mayor of a city or the elected officials and ask to sit down with them and see what could be done to solve these problems? There is no way a mayor could tell them to get lost. They have that power."

Sunni Khalid, an award-winning journalist, lives in Oakland, California. The former foreign correspondent and amateur boxer is currently writing a book on Egypt.

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Black athletes have always been at forefront of the struggle

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Harry Edwards is a sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1967, he founded the Olympic Project for Human Rights, which organized a boycott by African-American athletes of the 1968 Olympics and black power demonstrations at the Mexico City Games to protest continued racial discrimination faced by African-American athletes in college and within a larger, racially polarized society.

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The Women’s Rights Movement, 1848–1917 | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives

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The fight for women’s suffrage in the United States began with the women’s rights movement in the mid-nineteenth century. This reform effort encompassed a broad spectrum of goals before its leaders decided to focus first on securing the vote for women. Women’s suffrage leaders, however, disagreed ov…

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Why Did the Boston Tea Party Happen?

In the 1760s, Britain was deep in debt, so British Parliament imposed a series of taxes on American colonists to help pay those debts.

The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed colonists on virtually every piece of printed paper they used, from playing cards and business licenses to newspapers and legal documents. The Townshend Acts of 1767 went a step further, taxing essentials such as paint, paper, glass, lead and tea.

The British government felt the taxes were fair since much of its debt was earned fighting wars on the colonists' behalf. The colonists, however, disagreed. They were furious at being taxed without having any representation in Parliament, and felt it was wrong for Britain to impose taxes on them to gain revenue.

Boston Massacre Enrages Colonists

On March 5, 1770, a street brawl happened in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers.

Later known as the Boston Massacre, the fight began after an unruly group of colonists-frustrated with the presence of British soldiers in their streets- flung snowballs, ice and oyster shells at a British sentinel guarding the Boston Customs House.

Reinforcements arrived and opened fire on the mob, killing five colonists and wounding six. The Boston Massacre and its fallout further incited the colonists' rage towards Britain.

Tea Act Imposed

Britain eventually repealed the taxes it had imposed on the colonists except the tea tax. It wasn't about to give up tax revenue on the nearly 1.2 million pounds of tea the colonists drank each year.

In protest, the colonists boycotted tea sold by British East India Company and smuggled in Dutch tea, leaving British East India Company with millions of pounds of surplus tea and facing bankruptcy.

In May 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act which allowed British East India Company to sell tea to the colonies duty-free and much cheaper than other tea companies-but still tax the tea when it reached colonial ports.

Tea smuggling in the colonies increased, although the cost of the smuggled tea soon surpassed that of tea from British East India Company with the added tea tax.

Still, with the help of prominent tea smugglers such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams -who protested taxation without representation but also wanted to protect their tea smuggling operations-colonists continued to rail against the tea tax and Britain's control over their interests.

Sons of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonial merchants and tradesmen founded to protest the Stamp Act and other forms of taxation. The group of revolutionists included prominent patriots such as Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere, as well as Adams and Hancock.

Led by Adams, the Sons of Liberty held meetings rallying against British Parliament and protested the Griffin's Wharf arrival of Dartmouth, a British East India Company ship carrying tea. By December 16, 1773, Dartmouth had been joined by her sister ships, Beaver and Eleanor; all three ships loaded with tea from China.

That morning, as thousands of colonists convened at the wharf and its surrounding streets, a meeting was held at the Old South Meeting House where a large group of colonists voted to refuse to pay taxes on the tea or allow the tea to be unloaded, stored, sold or used. (Ironically, the ships were built in America and owned by Americans.)

Governor Thomas Hutchison refused to allow the ships to return to Britain and ordered the tea tariff be paid and the tea unloaded. The colonists refused, and Hutchison never offered a satisfactory compromise.

Facts: What Happened at the Boston Tea Party

That night, a large group of men-many reportedly members of the Sons of Liberty- disguised themselves in Native American garb, boarded the docked ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the water.

Said participant George Hewes, "We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water."

Hewes also noted that "We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us."

Did you know? It took nearly three hours for more than 100 colonists to empty the tea into Boston Harbor. The chests held more than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today.

Boston Tea Party Aftermath

While some important colonist leaders such as John Adams were thrilled to learn Boston Harbor was covered in tea leaves, others were not.

In June of 1774, George Washington wrote: "the cause of Boston...ever will be considered as the cause of America." But his personal views of the event were far different. He voiced strong disapproval of "their conduct in destroying the Tea" and claimed Bostonians "were mad." Washington, like many other elites, held private property to be sacrosanct.

Benjamin Franklin insisted the British East India Company be reimbursed for the lost tea and even offered to pay for it himself.

No one was hurt, and aside from the destruction of the tea and a padlock, no property was damaged or looted during the Boston Tea Party. The participants reportedly swept the ships' decks clean before they left.

Who Organized the Boston Tea Party?

Though led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty and organized by John Hancock, the names of many of those involved in the Boston Tea Party remain unknown. Thanks to their Native American costumes, only one of the tea party culprits, Francis Akeley, was arrested and imprisoned.

Even after American independence, participants refused to reveal their identities, fearing they could still face civil and criminal charges as well as condemnation from elites for the destruction of private property. Most participants in the Boston Tea Party were under the age of 40 and 16 of them were teenagers.

Coercive Acts

But despite the lack of violence, the Boston Tea Party didn't go unanswered by King George III and British Parliament.

In retribution, they passed the Coercive Acts (later known as the Intolerable Acts) which:

Closed Boston Harbor until the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party was paid for

Ended the Massachusetts Constitution and ended free elections of town officials

Moved judicial authority to Britain and British judges, basically creating martial law in Massachusetts

Required colonists to quarter British troops on demand

Extended freedom of worship to French-Canadian Catholics under British rule, which angered the mostly Protestant colonists

Britain hoped the Coercive Acts would squelch rebellion in New England and keep the remaining colonies from uniting, but the opposite happened: All the colonies viewed the punitive laws as further evidence of Britain's tyranny and rallied to Massachusetts' aid, sending supplies and plotting further resistance.

Second Boston Tea Party

A second Boston Tea Party took place in March 1774, when around 60 Bostonians boarded the ship Fortune and dumped nearly 30 chests of tea into the harbor.

The event didn't earn nearly as much notoriety as the first Boston Tea Party, but it did encourage other tea-dumping demonstrations in Maryland, New York and South Carolina.

First Continental Congress Is Convened

Many colonists felt Britain's Coercive Acts went too far. On September 5, 1774, elected delegates from all 13 American colonies except Georgia met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress to figure out how to resist British oppression.

The delegates were divided on how to move forward but the Boston Tea Party had united them in their fervor to gain independence. By the time they adjourned in October 1774, they'd written The Declaration and Resolves which:

Censured Britain for passing the Coercive Acts and called for their repeal

Established a boycott of British goods

Declared the colonies had the right to govern independently

Rallied colonists to form and train a colonial militia

Britain didn't capitulate and within months, the " shot heard round the world," rang out in Concord, Massachusetts, sparking the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Sources

A Tea Party Timeline: 1773-1775. Old South Meeting House.
The Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Boston Tea Party, 1773. EyewitnesstoHistory.com.
The Intolerable Acts. U.S.History.org.

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Boston Tea Party - Definition, Dates & Facts | HISTORY

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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest staged on December 16, 1773 at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation," dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists.

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Why Did the Boston Tea Party Happen?

In the 1760s, Britain was deep in debt, so British Parliament imposed a series of taxes on American colonists to help pay those debts.

The Stamp Act of 1765 taxed colonists on virtually every piece of printed paper they used, from playing cards and business licenses to newspapers and legal documents. The Townshend Acts of 1767 went a step further, taxing essentials such as paint, paper, glass, lead and tea.

The British government felt the taxes were fair since much of its debt was earned fighting wars on the colonists' behalf. The colonists, however, disagreed. They were furious at being taxed without having any representation in Parliament, and felt it was wrong for Britain to impose taxes on them to gain revenue.

Boston Massacre Enrages Colonists

On March 5, 1770, a street brawl happened in Boston between American colonists and British soldiers.

Later known as the Boston Massacre, the fight began after an unruly group of colonists-frustrated with the presence of British soldiers in their streets- flung snowballs, ice and oyster shells at a British sentinel guarding the Boston Customs House.

Reinforcements arrived and opened fire on the mob, killing five colonists and wounding six. The Boston Massacre and its fallout further incited the colonists' rage towards Britain.

Tea Act Imposed

Britain eventually repealed the taxes it had imposed on the colonists except the tea tax. It wasn't about to give up tax revenue on the nearly 1.2 million pounds of tea the colonists drank each year.

In protest, the colonists boycotted tea sold by British East India Company and smuggled in Dutch tea, leaving British East India Company with millions of pounds of surplus tea and facing bankruptcy.

In May 1773, British Parliament passed the Tea Act which allowed British East India Company to sell tea to the colonies duty-free and much cheaper than other tea companies-but still tax the tea when it reached colonial ports.

Tea smuggling in the colonies increased, although the cost of the smuggled tea soon surpassed that of tea from British East India Company with the added tea tax.

Still, with the help of prominent tea smugglers such as John Hancock and Samuel Adams -who protested taxation without representation but also wanted to protect their tea smuggling operations-colonists continued to rail against the tea tax and Britain's control over their interests.

Sons of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty were a group of colonial merchants and tradesmen founded to protest the Stamp Act and other forms of taxation. The group of revolutionists included prominent patriots such as Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry and Paul Revere, as well as Adams and Hancock.

Led by Adams, the Sons of Liberty held meetings rallying against British Parliament and protested the Griffin's Wharf arrival of Dartmouth, a British East India Company ship carrying tea. By December 16, 1773, Dartmouth had been joined by her sister ships, Beaver and Eleanor; all three ships loaded with tea from China.

That morning, as thousands of colonists convened at the wharf and its surrounding streets, a meeting was held at the Old South Meeting House where a large group of colonists voted to refuse to pay taxes on the tea or allow the tea to be unloaded, stored, sold or used. (Ironically, the ships were built in America and owned by Americans.)

Governor Thomas Hutchison refused to allow the ships to return to Britain and ordered the tea tariff be paid and the tea unloaded. The colonists refused, and Hutchison never offered a satisfactory compromise.

Facts: What Happened at the Boston Tea Party

That night, a large group of men-many reportedly members of the Sons of Liberty- disguised themselves in Native American garb, boarded the docked ships and threw 342 chests of tea into the water.

Said participant George Hewes, "We then were ordered by our commander to open the hatches and take out all the chests of tea and throw them overboard, and we immediately proceeded to execute his orders, first cutting and splitting the chests with our tomahawks, so as thoroughly to expose them to the effects of the water."

Hewes also noted that "We were surrounded by British armed ships, but no attempt was made to resist us."

Did you know? It took nearly three hours for more than 100 colonists to empty the tea into Boston Harbor. The chests held more than 90,000 lbs. (45 tons) of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today.

Boston Tea Party Aftermath

While some important colonist leaders such as John Adams were thrilled to learn Boston Harbor was covered in tea leaves, others were not.

In June of 1774, George Washington wrote: "the cause of Boston...ever will be considered as the cause of America." But his personal views of the event were far different. He voiced strong disapproval of "their conduct in destroying the Tea" and claimed Bostonians "were mad." Washington, like many other elites, held private property to be sacrosanct.

Benjamin Franklin insisted the British East India Company be reimbursed for the lost tea and even offered to pay for it himself.

No one was hurt, and aside from the destruction of the tea and a padlock, no property was damaged or looted during the Boston Tea Party. The participants reportedly swept the ships' decks clean before they left.

Who Organized the Boston Tea Party?

Though led by Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty and organized by John Hancock, the names of many of those involved in the Boston Tea Party remain unknown. Thanks to their Native American costumes, only one of the tea party culprits, Francis Akeley, was arrested and imprisoned.

Even after American independence, participants refused to reveal their identities, fearing they could still face civil and criminal charges as well as condemnation from elites for the destruction of private property. Most participants in the Boston Tea Party were under the age of 40 and 16 of them were teenagers.

Coercive Acts

But despite the lack of violence, the Boston Tea Party didn't go unanswered by King George III and British Parliament.

In retribution, they passed the Coercive Acts (later known as the Intolerable Acts) which:

Closed Boston Harbor until the tea lost in the Boston Tea Party was paid for

Ended the Massachusetts Constitution and ended free elections of town officials

Moved judicial authority to Britain and British judges, basically creating martial law in Massachusetts

Required colonists to quarter British troops on demand

Extended freedom of worship to French-Canadian Catholics under British rule, which angered the mostly Protestant colonists

Britain hoped the Coercive Acts would squelch rebellion in New England and keep the remaining colonies from uniting, but the opposite happened: All the colonies viewed the punitive laws as further evidence of Britain's tyranny and rallied to Massachusetts' aid, sending supplies and plotting further resistance.

Second Boston Tea Party

A second Boston Tea Party took place in March 1774, when around 60 Bostonians boarded the ship Fortune and dumped nearly 30 chests of tea into the harbor.

The event didn't earn nearly as much notoriety as the first Boston Tea Party, but it did encourage other tea-dumping demonstrations in Maryland, New York and South Carolina.

First Continental Congress Is Convened

Many colonists felt Britain's Coercive Acts went too far. On September 5, 1774, elected delegates from all 13 American colonies except Georgia met in Carpenter's Hall in Philadelphia for the First Continental Congress to figure out how to resist British oppression.

The delegates were divided on how to move forward but the Boston Tea Party had united them in their fervor to gain independence. By the time they adjourned in October 1774, they'd written The Declaration and Resolves which:

Censured Britain for passing the Coercive Acts and called for their repeal

Established a boycott of British goods

Declared the colonies had the right to govern independently

Rallied colonists to form and train a colonial militia

Britain didn't capitulate and within months, the " shot heard round the world," rang out in Concord, Massachusetts, sparking the start of the American Revolutionary War.

Sources

A Tea Party Timeline: 1773-1775. Old South Meeting House.
The Boston Tea Party. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
The Boston Tea Party. Massachusetts Historical Society.
The Boston Tea Party, 1773. EyewitnesstoHistory.com.
The Intolerable Acts. U.S.History.org.

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Boston Tea Party - Definition, Dates & Facts | HISTORY

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The Boston Tea Party was a political protest staged on December 16, 1773 at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. American colonists, frustrated at Britain for imposing "taxation without representation," dumped 342 chests of British tea into the harbor. The event was the first major act of defiance to British rule over the colonists.

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For many years after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster nuclear power was off the policy agenda in most countries, and the anti-nuclear power movement seemed to have won its case. Some anti-nuclear groups disbanded.

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The Modern Environmental Movement | American Experience | PBS

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Explore a timeline of the environmental movement from 1948 to 1990.

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'not my president's day' protesters gather to oppose trump - cnn

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'Not My President's Day' protesters rally to oppose Trump

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Protesters in cities across the country took to the streets on Monday for "Not My President's Day" rallies with a strong anti-Trump message.

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People from all over the country take part in the Women's March on Washington on Saturday, January 20, 2017.

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MeToo Movement: stories of sexual allegations and workplace misconduct

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Follow the timeline of the #MeToo movement, which demonstrates the prevalence of sexual assault in the workplace.

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Look at how these women Democrats wore white to Trump's SOTU to stand with suffragettes who 'refused to take no for an answer':

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These women Democrats wore white to Trump's SOTU to stand with suffragettes who 'refused to take no for an answer'

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Contents

Black Panthers Origins and History

Political Activities And Social Programs

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The FBI And COINTELPRO

New Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community.

Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities. At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members. The organization later declined as a result of internal tensions, deadly shootouts and FBI counterintelligence activities aimed at weakening the organization.

Black Panthers Origins and History

Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale met in 1961 while students at Merritt College in Oakland, California.

They both protested the college's "Pioneer Day" celebration, which honored the pioneers who came to California in the 1800s, but omitted the role of African Americans in settling the American West. Seale and Newton formed the Negro History Fact Group, which called on the school to offer classes in Black history.

They founded the Black Panthers in the wake of the assassination of Black nationalist Malcolm X and after police in San Francisco shot and killed an unarmed Black teen named Matthew Johnson.

Originally dubbed the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the organization was founded in October 1966. The Black Panthers' early activities primarily involved monitoring police activities in Black communities in Oakland and other cities.

As they instituted a number of social programs and engaged in political activities, their popularity grew. The Black Panthers drew widespread support from urban centers with large minority communities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. By 1968, the Black Panthers had roughly 2,000 members across the country.
READ MORE: How the Black Power Movement Influenced the Civil Rights Movement
Political Activities And Social Programs

Newton and Seale drew on Marxist ideology for the party platform. They outlined the organization's philosophical views and political objectives in a Ten-Point Program.

The Ten-Point Program called for an immediate end to police brutality; employment for African Americans; and land, housing and justice for all.

The Black Panthers were part of the larger Black Power movement, which emphasized Black pride, community control and unification for civil rights.

While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office. They were unsuccessful on this front. By the early 1970s, FBI counterintelligence efforts, criminal activities and an internal rift between group members weakened the party as a political force.

The Black Panthers did, however, start a number of popular community social programs, including free breakfast programs for school children and free health clinics in 13 African American communities across the United States.

Black Panthers Violence And Controversies

The Black Panthers were involved in numerous violent encounters with police. In 1967, founder Huey Newton allegedly killed Oakland police officer John Frey. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968 and was sentenced to two to 15 years in prison. An appellate court decision later reversed the conviction.

Eldridge Cleaver, editor of the Black Panther's newspaper, and 17-year old Black Panther member and treasurer Bobby Hutton, were involved in a shootout with police in 1968 that left Hutton dead and two police officers wounded.

Conflicts within the party often turned violent too. In 1969, Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley was tortured and murdered by other Black Panthers who thought he was a police informant.

Black Panther bookkeeper Betty Van Patter was found beaten and murdered in 1974. No one was charged with the death, though many believed that party leadership was responsible.

The FBI And COINTELPRO

The Black Panthers' socialist message and black nationalist focus made them the target of a secret FBI counterintelligence program called COINTELPRO.

In 1969, the FBI declared the Black Panthers a communist organization and an enemy of the United States government. The first FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, in 1968 called the Black Panthers, "One of the greatest threats to the nation's internal security."

The FBI worked to weaken the Panthers by exploited existing rivalries between black nationalist groups. They also worked to undermine and dismantle the Free Breakfast for Children Program and other community social programs instituted by the Black Panthers.
READ MORE: How the Black Panthers' Breakfast Program Both Inspired and Threatened the Government
In 1969, Chicago police gunned down and killed Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, who were asleep in their apartment.

About a hundred bullets were fired in what police described as a fierce gun battle with members of the Black Panther Party. However, ballistics experts later determined that only one of those bullets came from the Panthers' side.

Although the FBI was not responsible for leading the raid, a federal grand jury later indicated that the bureau played a significant role in the events leading up to the raid.

The Black Panther Party officially dissolved in 1982.

New Black Panther Party

The New Black Panther Party is a black nationalist organization founded in Dallas, Texas, in 1989. Members of the original Black Panther Party say there's no relation between the New Black Panther Party and the original Black Panthers.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center have called the New Black Panther Party a hate group.

Sources

5 things to know about the Black Panthers. USA Today.
Black Panther Party. Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, free breakfast pioneers.

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The Black Panthers made up a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against African Americans. Dressed in black berets and black leather jackets, the Black Panthers organized armed citizen patrols of Oakland and other U.S. cities.

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If you're one of the people who still don't "get" the Black Lives Matter movement, it might be worth it to watch a video going viral this week that provides a straightforward explanation of what the movement is ― and why it's so important.

In a video titled "Context For Black Lives Matter," YouTube creator Vi Hart gives viewers a visual breakdown of the history of the Black Lives Movement from its 2013 inception to the past month of protests in the wake of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling's deaths.

The 9-minute video, posted on Tuesday, should really be watched in its entirety, as Hart makes some excellent points in response to people who believe the Black Lives Matter movement excludes other "lives". She dismissed the tendency of the media and politicians to speak about the need to be united without offering up actual solutions, adding that while being united is all very well and good, "being united is an ideal, not a plan."

"Without a plan all it translates to is 'Be united by joining me in doing nothing! Don't speak out or protest because that's divisive to my non-plan!" she says.

The YouTuber also nails the importance of everyone, especially white people, educating themselves on the current racial climate in the country and the true meaning of Black Lives Matter.

"Black organizers of social change don't have time to give 101 courses to every Internet person who's of the opinion that if you just do what the police say you'll be fine," says Hart.

She continues: "Listening to black people is important, and white people have got to talk to other white people to try to get up to speed and learn how to listen. Hence this video."
Watch the full video above.

BEFORE YOU GO

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The 'Black Lives Matter' Movement Explained In Under 10 Minutes

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If you're one of the people who still don't "get" the Black Lives Matter movement, it might be worth it to watch a video going viral this week that provides a straightforward explanation of what the movement is ― and why it's so important.

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Jim Crow Laws

During Reconstruction, Black people took on leadership roles like never before. They held public office and sought legislative changes for equality and the right to vote.

In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution gave Black people equal protection under the law. In 1870, the 15th Amendment granted Black American men the right to vote. Still, many white Americans, especially those in the South, were unhappy that people they'd once enslaved were now on a more-or-less equal playing field.

To marginalize Black people, keep them separate from white people and erase the progress they'd made during Reconstruction, " Jim Crow " laws were established in the South beginning in the late 19th century. Black people couldn't use the same public facilities as white people, live in many of the same towns or go to the same schools. Interracial marriage was illegal, and most Black people couldn't vote because they were unable to pass voter literacy tests.

Jim Crow laws weren't adopted in northern states; however, Black people still experienced discrimination at their jobs or when they tried to buy a house or get an education. To make matters worse, laws were passed in some states to limit voting rights for Black Americans.

Moreover, southern segregation gained ground in 1896 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Plessy v. Ferguson that facilities for Black and white people could be "separate but equal."

World War II and Civil Rights

Prior to World War II, most Black people worked as low-wage farmers, factory workers, domestics or servants. By the early 1940s, war-related work was booming, but most Black Americans weren't given better-paying jobs. They were also discouraged from joining the military.

After thousands of Black people threatened to march on Washington to demand equal employment rights, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. It opened national defense jobs and other government jobs to all Americans regardless of race, creed, color or national origin.

Black men and women served heroically in World War II, despite suffering segregation and discrimination during their deployment. The Tuskegee Airmen broke the racial barrier to become the first Black military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps and earned more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses. Yet many Black veterans were met with prejudice and scorn upon returning home. This was a stark contrast to why America had entered the war to begin with-to defend freedom and democracy in the world.

As the Cold War began, President Harry Truman initiated a civil rights agenda, and in 1948 issued Executive Order 9981 to end discrimination in the military. These events helped set the stage for grass-roots initiatives to enact racial equality legislation and incite the civil rights movement.

Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year-old woman named Rosa Parks found a seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus after work. Segregation laws at the time stated Black passengers must sit in designated seats at the back of the bus, and Parks complied.

When a white man got on the bus and couldn't find a seat in the white section at the front of the bus, the bus driver instructed Parks and three other Black passengers to give up their seats. Parks refused and was arrested.

As word of her arrest ignited outrage and support, Parks unwittingly became the "mother of the modern-day civil rights movement." Black community leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King Jr., a role which would place him front and center in the fight for civil rights.

Parks' courage incited the MIA to stage a boycott of the Montgomery bus system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days. On November 14, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled segregated seating was unconstitutional.

Little Rock Nine

In 1954, the civil rights movement gained momentum when the United States Supreme Court made segregation illegal in public schools in the case of Brown v. Board of Education. In 1957, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas asked for volunteers from all-Black high schools to attend the formerly segregated school.

On September 4, 1957, nine Black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, arrived at Central High School to begin classes but were instead met by the Arkansas National Guard (on order of Governor Orval Faubus) and a screaming, threatening mob. The Little Rock Nine tried again a couple of weeks later and made it inside, but had to be removed for their safety when violence ensued.

Finally, President Dwight D. Eisenhower intervened and ordered federal troops to escort the Little Rock Nine to and from classes at Central High. Still, the students faced continual harassment and prejudice.

Their efforts, however, brought much-needed attention to the issue of desegregation and fueled protests on both sides of the issue.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

Even though all Americans had gained the right to vote, many southern states made it difficult for Black citizens. They often required prospective voters of color to take literacy tests that were confusing, misleading and nearly impossible to pass.

Wanting to show a commitment to the civil rights movement and minimize racial tensions in the South, the Eisenhower administration pressured Congress to consider new civil rights legislation.

On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law, the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to prevent someone from voting. It also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

Sit-In at Woolworth's Lunch Counter

Despite making some gains, Black Americans still experienced blatant prejudice in their daily lives. On February 1, 1960, four college students took a stand against segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina when they refused to leave a Woolworth's lunch counter without being served.

Over the next several days, hundreds of people joined their cause in what became known as the Greensboro sit-ins. After some were arrested and charged with trespassing, protesters launched a boycott of all segregated lunch counters until the owners caved and the original four students were finally served at the Woolworth's lunch counter where they'd first stood their ground.

Their efforts spearheaded peaceful sit-ins and demonstrations in dozens of cities and helped launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to encourage all students to get involved in the civil rights movement. It also caught the eye of young college graduate Stokely Carmichael, who joined the SNCC during the Freedom Summer of 1964 to register Black voters in Mississippi. In 1966, Carmichael became the chair of the SNCC, giving his famous speech in which he originated the phrase "Black power."

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, 13 " Freedom Riders"-seven Black and six white activists-mounted a Greyhound bus in Washington, D.C., embarking on a bus tour of the American south to protest segregated bus terminals. They were testing the 1960 decision by the Supreme Court in Boynton v. Virginia that declared the segregation of interstate transportation facilities unconstitutional.

Facing violence from both police officers and white protesters, the Freedom Rides drew international attention. On Mother's Day 1961, the bus reached Anniston, Alabama, where a mob mounted the bus and threw a bomb into it. The Freedom Riders escaped the burning bus but were badly beaten. Photos of the bus engulfed in flames were widely circulated, and the group could not find a bus driver to take them further. U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (brother to President John F. Kennedy) negotiated with Alabama Governor John Patterson to find a suitable driver, and the Freedom Riders resumed their journey under police escort on May 20. But the officers left the group once they reached Montgomery, where a white mob brutally attacked the bus. Attorney General Kennedy responded to the riders-and a call from Martin Luther King Jr.-by sending federal marshals to Montgomery.

On May 24, 1961, a group of Freedom Riders reached Jackson, Mississippi. Though met with hundreds of supporters, the group was arrested for trespassing in a "whites-only" facility and sentenced to 30 days in jail. Attorneys for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) brought the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the convictions. Hundreds of new Freedom Riders were drawn to the cause, and the rides continued.

In the fall of 1961, under pressure from the Kennedy administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals

March on Washington

Arguably one of the most famous events of the civil rights movement took place on August 28, 1963: the March on Washington. It was organized and attended by civil rights leaders such as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 200,000 people of all races congregated in Washington, D. C. for the peaceful march with the main purpose of forcing civil rights legislation and establishing job equality for everyone. The highlight of the march was King's speech in which he continually stated, "I have a dream..."

King's " I Have a Dream" speech galvanized the national civil rights movement and became a slogan for equality and freedom.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964-legislation initiated by President John F. Kennedy before his assassination -into law on July 2 of that year.

King and other civil rights activists witnessed the signing. The law guaranteed equal employment for all, limited the use of voter literacy tests and allowed federal authorities to ensure public facilities were integrated.

Bloody Sunday

On March 7, 1965, the civil rights movement in Alabama took an especially violent turn as 600 peaceful demonstrators participated in the Selma to Montgomery march to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer and to encourage legislation to enforce the 15th amendment.

As the protesters neared the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were blocked by Alabama state and local police sent by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a vocal opponent of desegregation. Refusing to stand down, protesters moved forward and were viciously beaten and teargassed by police and dozens of protesters were hospitalized.

The entire incident was televised and became known as " Bloody Sunday." Some activists wanted to retaliate with violence, but King pushed for nonviolent protests and eventually gained federal protection for another march.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

When President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6, 1965, he took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 several steps further. The new law banned all voter literacy tests and provided federal examiners in certain voting jurisdictions.

It also allowed the attorney general to contest state and local poll taxes. As a result, poll taxes were later declared unconstitutional in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections in 1966.

Part of the Act was walked back decades later, in 2013, when a Supreme Court decision ruled that Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional, holding that the constraints placed on certain states and federal review of states' voting procedures were outdated.

Civil Rights Leaders Assassinated

The civil rights movement had tragic consequences for two of its leaders in the late 1960s. On February 21, 1965, former Nation of Islam leader and Organization of Afro-American Unity founder Malcolm X was assassinated at a rally.

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on his hotel room's balcony. Emotionally-charged looting and riots followed, putting even more pressure on the Johnson administration to push through additional civil rights laws.

Fair Housing Act of 1968

The Fair Housing Act became law on April 11, 1968, just days after King's assassination. It prevented housing discrimination based on race, sex, national origin and religion. It was also the last legislation enacted during the civil rights era.

The civil rights movement was an empowering yet precarious time for Black Americans. The efforts of civil rights activists and countless protesters of all races brought about legislation to end segregation, Black voter suppression and discriminatory employment and housing practices.

Sources

A Brief History of Jim Crow. Constitutional Rights Foundation.
Civil Rights Act of 1957. Civil Rights Digital Library.
Document for June 25th: Executive Order 8802: Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry. National Archives.
Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-In. African American Odyssey.
Little Rock School Desegregation (1957). The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute Stanford.
Rosa Marie Parks Biography. Rosa and Raymond Parks.
Selma, Alabama, (Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965). BlackPast.org.
The Civil Rights Movement (1919-1960s). National Humanities Center.
The Little Rock Nine. National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior: Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site.
Turning Point: World War II. Virginia Historical Society.

Photo Galleries

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Civil Rights Movement: Timeline, Key Events & Leaders | HISTORY

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The civil rights movement was a struggle for justice and equality for African Americans that took place mainly in the 1950s and 1960s. Among its leaders were Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, the Little Rock Nine, Rosa Parks and many others.

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The Greensboro sit-in was a civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young African American students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service. The sit-in movement soon spread to college towns throughout the South. Though many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, their actions made an immediate and lasting impact, forcing Woolworth's and other establishments to change their segregationist policies.

Greensboro Four

The Greensboro Four were four young Black men who staged the first sit-in at Greensboro: Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil. All four were students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College.

They were influenced by the nonviolent protest techniques practiced by Mohandas Gandhi, as well as the Freedom Rides organized by the Congress for Racial Equality ( CORE) in 1947, in which interracial activists rode across the South in buses to test a recent Supreme Court decision banning segregation in interstate bus travel.

The Greensboro Four, as they became known, had also been spurred to action by the brutal murder in 1955 of a young Black boy, Emmett Till, who had allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store.

Did you know? The former Woolworth's in Greensboro now houses the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, which features a restored version of the lunch counter where the Greensboro Four sat. Part of the original counter is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

Sit-In Begins

Blair, Richmond, McCain and McNeil planned their protest carefully, and enlisted the help of a local white businessman, Ralph Johns, to put their plan into action.

On February 1, 1960, the four students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro, where the official policy was to refuse service to anyone but whites. Denied service, the four young men refused to give up their seats.

Police arrived on the scene but were unable to take action due to the lack of provocation. By that time, Johns had already alerted the local media, who had arrived in full force to cover the events on television. The Greensboro Four stayed put until the store closed, then returned the next day with more students from local colleges.

Sit-Ins Spread Nationwide

By February 5, some 300 students had joined the protest at Woolworth's, paralyzing the lunch counter and other local businesses. Heavy television coverage of the Greensboro sit-ins sparked a sit-in movement that quickly spread to college towns throughout the South and into the North, as young Black and white people joined in various forms of peaceful protest against segregation in libraries, beaches, hotels and other establishments.

Some of the first sit-ins during the civil rights movement were organized by history teacher Clara Luper and the NAACP Youth Council in Oklahoma City in 1958. By the end of March 1960, the movement had spread to 55 cities in 13 states. Though many were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, national media coverage of the sit-ins brought increasing attention to the civil rights movement.

In response to the success of the sit-in movement, dining facilities across the South were being integrated by the summer of 1960. At the end of July, when many local college students were on summer vacation, the Greensboro Woolworth's quietly integrated its lunch counter. Four Black Woolworth's employees-Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones and Charles Best-were the first to be served.

SNCC

To capitalize on the momentum of the sit-in movement, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ( SNCC) was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina, in April 1960.

Over the next few years, SNCC served as one of the leading forces in the civil rights movement, organizing Freedom Rides through the South in 1961 and the historic March on Washington in 1963, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his seminal " I Have a Dream " speech.

SNCC worked alongside the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP) to push passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and would later mount an organized resistance to the Vietnam War.

As its members faced increased violence, however, SNCC became more militant, and by the late 1960s it was advocating the "Black Power" philosophy of Stokely Carmichael (SNCC's chairman from 1966-67) and his successor, H. Rap Brown. By the early 1970s, SNCC had lost much of its mainstream support and was effectively disbanded.

Greensboro Sit-In Impact

The Greensboro Sit-In was a critical turning point in Black history and American history, bringing the fight for civil rights to the national stage. Its use of nonviolence inspired the Freedom Riders and others to take up the cause of integration in the South, furthering the cause of equal rights in the United States.

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Greensboro Sit-In - Facts, Date & Definition | HISTORY

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The Greensboro Sit-in was a major civil rights protest that started in 1960, when young Black students staged a sit-in at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave after being denied service.

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Protest and Persist... abridged version...

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Protest and Persist... abridged version...

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Refusing to Stand for the National Anthem: Top 3 Pros and Cons

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Article about the pros and cons of refusing to stand for the National Anthem.

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National Anthem Protests - Pros and Cons - ProCon.org

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Pros and cons of protesting during the national anthem - trend in the NFL started by Colin Kaepernick that has spread to other sports

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OWS - Dessert, American Style - Oct 2011

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Protest movements, Past and Present...

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National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell issued a 1 minute and 21 second apology on 5 June, following several years of debate within the NFL as well as among fans, Donald Trump and countless pundits who criticised Colin Kaepernick and other players' silent protests against police brutality.

Mr Goodell's message came nearly two weeks after the police killing of George Floyd, whose Memorial Day death and the killings of other black Americans have galvanised global protests against police violence and racism.

But in the commissioner's message, Kaepernick - the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who protested police brutality against black Americans by taking a knee during the national anthem - was notably absent.

"We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong," the commissioner said. "We, the National Football League, believe Black Lives Matter. ... The protests around the country are emblematic of the centuries of silence, inequality and oppression of black players, coaches, fans and staff. We are listening."

A wave of players in the NFL and in other sports followed Kaepernick's example, morphing into a direct resistance against the president after he condemned it. The NFL responded by announcing that teams would be fined if their players continued to do so.

But the move to take a knee during the national anthem before kick-off - or stand with arms locked in silent protest - follows in a long tradition of sports stars standing up for human rights, despite pressure from fans and public figures telling athletes to "stick to sports".

When did this all start?

Taking a knee has a larger legacy within the Civil Rights Movement. A famous photograph captured Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights marchers kneeling in prayer in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

The photo was taken after the arrests of dozens of demonstrators amid three nonviolent protest marches fighting for voting rights for black Americans, ultimately leading to the landmark passage of the Voting Rights Act.

On "Bloody Sunday" on 7 March 1965, as hundreds of marchers prepared to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met by state troopers and deputised white residents, who brutally attacked dozens of marchers.

By 2016, America was reeling from the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, among other black Americans killed by police.

Many of their deaths were captured on video and broadcast on social media, igniting a mass movement to condemn police violence.

NFL players weren't typically on the field for "The Star-Spangled Banner" until 2009. Between 2011 and 2014, the US Department of Defence gave the NFL millions of dollars to promote patriotic displays, including on-field flag ceremonies and tributes to veterans. Soon on-field anthem ceremonies became expected pregame rituals.

Kaepernick first protested at the start of the 2016 season on 26 August, but his quiet demonstrations were not immediately noticed. At that point, he simply sat on benches.

On 1 September, he transitioned to taking a knee in protest instead, following advice from Retired Army Green Beret Nate Boyer, who suggested kneeling during the ceremony would be more respectful towards veterans.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour," Kaepernick said in a press conference after first sitting out during the anthem. "To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

Several other players joined Kaepernick's protest against criticism from football fans, and he had the support of then-president Barack Obama.

Commissioner Goodell, however, said he didn't "necessarily agree" with his method of protest.

Kaepernick played his final NFL game on 1 January 2017. Many players continued to kneel.

Mr Trump has frequently criticised kneeling during the anthem by framing Kaepernick's protest as disrespect for US troops without addressing the reasons for the protest in the first place.

In 2016, Kaepernick responded by saying: "He always says make America great again. Well, America has never been great for people of colour. That's something that needs to be addressed. Let's make America great for the first time."

Mr Trump became a catalyst for the protest in September when he said during a campaign rally in Alabama that he wished that NFL players would be fired for kneeling during the national anthem.

"Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b**** off the field right now, out, he's fired. He's fired,'" Mr Trump said.

"You know, some owner is going to do that. He's going to say, 'That guy that disrespects our flag, he's fired.' And that owner, they don't know it [but] they'll be the most popular person in this country."

Nike made Kaepernick the face of a campaign ("Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything") in September 2018, prompting debate over his protests and boycotts against the company.

Who protested?

Some football teams chose not to come out onto the field at all after Mr Trump's comments, while other teams allowed their players to protest at their own discretion.

In addition to most, if not all, of the NFL teams seeing some players protesting the weekend after Mr Trump's remarks, baseball and basketball players also joined in.

Notably, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady called Mr Trump's comments "divisive" and locked arms with his teammates during his game following the president's remarks.

How did Black Lives Matter protests change the NFL?

Ahead of an uncertain season disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic and propelled by the urgency of nationwide protests, it's difficult to say.

In 2018, NFL owners unanimously approved a national anthem policy requiring players to stand if they are on the field during the performance of the song.

But its status is unclear, and it hasn't been enforced over the last two seasons.

Under the rule, players have the option to remain in the locker room during the anthem if they prefer. If a player or other employee of a team kneels or sits during the anthem, the teams themselves are fined. The teams then have the option to fine the individual players or personnel for the infraction.

The vote was unanimous, but the owner of the San Francisco 49ers - the team Kaepernick played for when he started the protest - abstained from the vote.

Kaepernick's kneeling protest also has a grim resonance following the death of Mr Floyd.

Widespread footage of now-former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin shows him digging his knee into the back of Mr Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes as he struggled to breathe.

At protests around the world, demonstrators have kneeled to echo Kaepernick's protest. Many police officers and elected officials have joined them.

Black NFL players issued a viral message following Mr Floyd's death to demand NFL officials condemn systemic racism, admit that the league has "wrongfully silenced" peaceful protests among players, and say that "Black Lives Matter."

"We will not be silenced," players say in the message. "We assert our right to peacefully protest."

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, among several NFL players who disagreed with kneeling during the anthem as a sign of protest, faced a wave of backlash after he said he will "never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country."

Several other Saints players posted messages urging Brees to reconsider his statements.

He later apologised to his teammates and fans, saying: "I realise this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities."

His initial comments drew support from Mr Trump, who said Brees "should not have taken back his original stance on honouring our magnificent American Flag."

But in his statement aimed directly at the president, the quarterback said: "I completely missed the mark ... We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial [and] prison reform. We are at a critical juncture in our nation's history! If not now, then when?

In a pair of tweets, the president said: "OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high ... We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag - NO KNEELING!"

But is it abnormal for sports stars to make their political opinions known during events?

No. There is a rich history of American sports stars highlighting injustice in their country.

American Olympians John Carlos and Tommie Smith made headlines across the world in 1968, months after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, when they raised their gloved fists as a black power salute on the podium after winning in that year's summer games. Their iconic protest brought them death threats, and they were expelled from the games. Smith later said: "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."

Muhammad Ali is perhaps one of the best known American athletes to take a major political stand. The boxing champion refused to be drafted into the Vietnam War - a refusal which involved jailtime. He did so on the basis of his faith, he said, but did note the cruel irony of asking black men to fight in Vietnam for a country that has treated them as subhuman.

NBA stars have also worn their support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

What happened to Kaepernick?

Kaepernick is still not currently with any NFL team, though he held an open workout with the NFL in November 2019, stirring speculation that he was being groomed for a return to the league.

While he's been off the field, he has remained busy with charity work and as a prominent civil rights activist. In his NFL career, he made a $1 million pledge to charitable organisations.

He also co-founded Know Your Rights Camp, an organisation that holds free seminars to young people. His organisation also created a Covid-19 relief fund.

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All you need to know about why NFL players are taking a knee and where it came from

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National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell issued a 1 minute and 21 second apology on 5 June, following several years of debate within the NFL as well as among fans, Donald Trump and countless pundits who criticised Colin Kaepernick and other players' silent protests against police brutality.

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Amid the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements, bus tours with illegal immigrants and nuns and jailed activists in Russia, what constitutes a successful protest?

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Debate.org is a dynamic social community where you can voice your opinion on today's hottest issues.

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Protesting won't change anything.
Will you agree or disagree?
Get ready with the pros and cons...

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How can citizens keep societies open, free, and fair? What can one person really do? Sometimes it feels hopeless. When looking at the political situation across Europe (and, honestly, across the globe) it's easy to feel powerless and despondent. It can seem like society is sleepwalking into the abyss, with politics today being driven by hatred and anger.

What about taking to the streets and marching? We had a comment from Paul, who is sceptical of the power of citizens to protest. In fact, he believes that "marching and protesting is a complete waste of time". He argues that:

[Marching and protesting] physically achieves nothing and is usually only done by unemployed attention seekers with too much spare time on their hands. If people have a justified complaint there are better ways of trying to address things without walking down the street ranting and annoying everyone.

Harsh words from Paul, but is he right to be so cynical? To get a response, we spoke to Lorenzo Marsili, co-founder and Director of European Alternatives, an organisation working to empower citizens, civil society, and social movements across Europe. What would he say?

What Paul is saying is factually untrue. Historically, as well as in the recent past, some very important political changes have been the direct outcome of citizen protests and citizen activism. Today, we are witnessing the probable collapse of the TTIP negotiations between the EU and the US, and this is a direct result of the large-scale mass democratic mobilisation of the citizens of Europe against it. The same thing happened a few years ago when it came to the ACTA treaty...

Secondly, protests serve to reshuffle the political offer that one is faced with at the moment of voting at the ballot box. Without a strong bottom-up movement, we are going to continue to be faced with these false binary options: Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump; the regime of Erdoğan versus the military coup; the Europe of the status quo, economic injustice, and lack of democracy versus the nationalist, xenophobic option.

The rise of populist power, through protests, activism and participation, is also the precondition - as we have seen in Spain - for new political options which then run for office, and then offer new alternatives for citizens at the ballot box. There is no contradiction between participatory or activist democracy and representative democracy. On the contrary, direct participation and activism of citizens, including through protest movements on the street, is a prerequisite for a representative democracy that functions and addresses the concerns of citizens.

We also had a comment from Mariateresa from Italy, who says she's very worried by the radicalisation of politics in Europe. She is concerned that this trend will lead to a close-minded, extremist establishment taking hold. But is there anything that she, as a citizen, can do? How can citizens keep societies free, open, and fair?

How would Lorenzo Marsili respond to Mariateresa?

[Citizens] need to make sure there is a third space, a third alternative to the false dichotomy of a failed establishment on the one hand, and the nationalist response on the other. We need to come up with a new political, civil society, and citizen-led vision of what a united, fair, and just Europe looks like. That vision will be very different from the Europe that we have today. And that vision is one of the most important antidotes to the rise of far-right.

Is marching and protesting a complete waste of time? How can citizens keep societies open, free, and fair? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below, and we'll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!

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Is marching and protesting a complete waste of time? - Debating Europe

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How can citizens keep societies open, free, and fair? What can one person really do? Sometimes it feels hopeless. When looking at the political situation across Europe (and, honestly, across the globe) it's easy to feel powerless and despondent. It can seem like society is sleepwalking into the abyss, with politics today being driven by hatred and anger.

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2. How to Talk About Protests in English

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The word history comes from the Greek word historía which means "to learn or know by inquiry." In the pieces that follow, we encourage you to probe, dispute, dig deeper - inquire. History is not static. It's fluid. It changes and grows and becomes richer and more complex when any individual interacts with it.

Knowledge of history is empowering. An event is but the furthest ripple of an ever-expanding wave that may have started eddying outward hundreds of years ago. One who "sees" history is able to harness the power of that wave's entire journey.

Finally, the best history has at its foundation a story. A printer challenges a King and so is laid the foundation of the first amendment; a New Jersey miner finds gold in California and sets off a torrent of movement westward; a woman going home from work does not relinquish her seat and a Civil Rights movement explodes.

These stories all help to ask the question, "What is an American?" You'll help to answer that question.

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The word history comes from the Greek word historía which means "to learn or know by inquiry." In the pieces that follow, we encourage you to probe, dispute, dig deeper - inquire. History is not static. It's fluid. It changes and grows and becomes richer and more complex when any individual interacts with it.

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PhotoQuest / Getty Images

The Boston Tea Party is something of a misnomer, as while it did indeed feature tea, it was definitely not a party. On a cold evening of December 1773, protesters gathered in Boston Harbor to reject the latest shipment of tea from the East India Company. They were speaking out against the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company to sell its tea at reduced cost, thus giving the British government-controlled company an effective monopoly. As the story goes, the colonists stormed the ships as they pulled into the harbor and chucked some 46 tons of tea overboard.

The real issue at hand, of course, was the colonists' lack of representation in the British Parliament. That night, their cries reverberated near and far, and helped spur a movement that would see the states gain their independence from Mother England in just a few years' time.

See pictures of the 21st century Tea Party protests.

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Top 10 American Protest Movements - TIME

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The Boston Tea Party is something of a misnomer, as while it did indeed feature tea, it was definitely not a party. On a cold evening of December 1773, protesters gathered in Boston Harbor to reject the latest shipment of tea from the East India Company.

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Last month, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden had a public conversation about democracy, transparency, whistleblowing and more. In the course of it, Snowden - who was of course Skyping in from Moscow - said that without Ellsberg's example he would not have done what he did to expose the extent to which the NSA was spying on millions of ordinary people. It was an extraordinary declaration. It meant that the consequences of Ellsberg's release of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971 were not limited to the impact on a presidency and a war in the 1970s. The consequences were not limited to people alive at that moment. His act was to have an impact on people decades later - Snowden was born 12 years after Ellsberg risked his future for the sake of his principles. Actions often ripple far beyond their immediate objective, and remembering this is reason to live by principle and act in hope that what you do matters, even when results are unlikely to be immediate or obvious.

The most important effects are often the most indirect. I sometimes wonder when I'm at a mass march like the Women's March a month ago whether the reason it matters is because some unknown young person is going to find her purpose in life that will only be evident to the rest of us when she changes the world in 20 years, when she becomes a great liberator.

I began talking about hope in 2003, in the bleak days after the war in Iraq was launched. Fourteen years later, I use the term hope because it navigates a way forward between the false certainties of optimism and of pessimism, and the complacency or passivity that goes with both. Optimism assumes that all will go well without our effort; pessimism assumes it's all irredeemable; both let us stay home and do nothing. Hope for me has meant a sense that the future is unpredictable, and that we don't actually know what will happen, but know we may be able write it ourselves.

Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It's informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we may play in it. Hope looks forward, but it draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not being the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us.

We are complex creatures. Hope and anguish can coexist within us and in our movements and analyses. There's a scene in the new movie about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, in which Robert Kennedy predicts, in 1968, that in 40 years there will be a black president. It's an astonishing prophecy since four decades later Barack Obama wins the presidential election, but Baldwin jeers at it because the way Kennedy has presented it does not acknowledge that even the most magnificent pie in the sky might comfort white people who don't like racism but doesn't wash away the pain and indignation of black people suffering that racism in the here and now. Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, early on described the movement's mission as "rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams". The vision of a better future doesn't have to deny the crimes and sufferings of the present; it matters because of that horror.

Optimism assumes all will go well without our effort; pessimism assumes it's all irredeemable; both let us do nothing

I have been moved and thrilled and amazed by the strength, breadth, depth and generosity of the resistance to the Trump administration and its agenda. I did not anticipate anything so bold, so pervasive, something that would include state governments, many government employees from governors and mayors to workers in many federal departments, small towns in red states, new organizations like the 6,000 chapters of Indivisible reportedly formed since the election, new and fortified immigrant-rights groups, religious groups, one of the biggest demonstrations in American history with the Women's March on 21 January, and so much more.

I've also been worried about whether it will endure. Newcomers often think that results are either immediate or they're nonexistent. That if you don't succeed straight away, you failed. Such a framework makes many give up and go back home when the momentum is building and victories are within reach. This is a dangerous mistake I've seen over and over. What follows is the defense of a complex calculus of change, instead of the simple arithmetic of short-term cause and effect.

There's a bookstore I love in Manhattan, the Housing Works bookshop, which I've gone to for years for a bite to eat and a superb selection of used books. Last October my friend Gavin Browning, who works at Columbia University but volunteers with Housing Works, reminded me what the name means. Housing Works is a spinoff of Act Up, the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, founded at the height of the Aids crisis, to push for access to experimental drugs, bring awareness to the direness of the epidemic, and not go gentle into that bad night of premature death.

What did Act Up do? The group of furious, fierce activists, many of them dangerously ill and dying, changed how we think about Aids. They pushed to speed up drug trials, deal with the many symptoms and complications of Aids together, pushed on policy, education, outreach, funding. They taught people with Aids and their allies in other countries how to fight the drug companies for affordable access to what they needed. And win.

Browning recently wrote: "At the start of the 1990s, New York City had less than 350 units of housing set aside for an estimated 13,000 homeless individuals living with HIV/Aids. In response, four members of the Act Up housing committee founded Housing Works in 1990." They still quietly provide a broad array of services, including housing, to HIV-positive people 27 years later. All I saw was a bookstore; I missed a lot. Act Up's work is not over, in any sense.

For many groups, movements and uprisings, there are spinoffs, daughters, domino effects, chain reactions, new models and examples and templates and toolboxes that emerge from the experiments, and every round of activism is an experiment whose results can be applied to other situations. To be hopeful, we need not only to embrace uncertainty but to be willing to know that the consequences may be immeasurable, may still be unfolding, may be as indirect as poor people on other continents getting access to medicine because activists in the USA stood up and refused to accept things as they were. Think of hope as a banner woven from those gossamer threads, from a sense of the interconnectedness of all things, of the lasting effect of the best actions, not only the worst. Of an indivisible world in which everything matters.

An old woman said at the outset of Occupy Wall Street "we're fighting for a society in which everyone is important", the most beautifully concise summary of what a compassionately radical, deeply democratic movement might aim to do. Occupy Wall Street was mocked and described as chaotic and ineffectual in its first weeks, and then when it spread nationwide and beyond, as failing or failed, by pundits who had simple metrics of what success should look like. The original occupation in lower Manhattan was broken up in November 2011, but many of the encampments inspired by it lasted far longer.

Occupy launched a movement against student debt and opportunistic for-profit colleges; it shed light on the pain and brutality of the financial collapse and the American debt-peonage system. It called out economic inequality in a new way. California passed a homeowner's bill of rights to push back at predatory lenders; a housing defense movement arose in the wake of Occupy that, house by house, protected many vulnerable homeowners. Each Occupy had its own engagement with local government and its own projects; a year ago people involved with local Occupies told me the thriving offshoots still make a difference. Occupy persists, but you have to learn to recognize the myriad forms in which it does so, none of which look much like Occupy Wall Street as a crowd in a square in lower Manhattan.

Similarly, I think it's a mistake to regard the gathering of tribes and activists at Standing Rock, North Dakota, as something we can measure by whether or not it defeats a pipeline. You could go past that to note that merely delaying completion beyond 1 January cost the investors a fortune, and that the tremendous movement that has generated widespread divestment and a lot of scrutiny of hitherto invisible corporations and environmental destruction makes building pipelines look like a riskier, potentially less profitable business.

Standing Rock was vaster than these practical things. At its height it was almost certainly the biggest political gathering of Native North Americans ever seen, said to be the first time all seven bands of the Lakota had come together since they defeated Custer at Little Bighorn in 1876, one that made an often-invisible tribe visible around the world. What unfolded there seemed as though it might not undo one pipeline but write a radical new chapter to a history of more than 500 years of colonial brutality, centuries of loss, dehumanization and dispossession. Thousands of veterans came to defend the encampment and help prevent the pipeline. In one momentous ceremony, many of the former soldiers knelt down to apologize and ask forgiveness for the US army's long role in oppressing Native Americans. Like the Native American occupation of Alcatraz Island at the end of the 1960s, Standing Rock has been a catalyst for a sense of power, pride, destiny. It is an affirmation of solidarity and interconnection, an education for people who didn't know much about native rights and wrongs, an affirmation for Native people who often remember history in passionate detail. It is a confirmation of the deep ties between the climate movement and indigenous rights that has played a huge role in stopping pipelines in and from Canada. It has inspired and informed young people who may have half a century or more of good work yet to do. It has been a beacon whose meaning stretches beyond that time and place.

To know history is to be able to see beyond the present, to remember the past gives you capacity to look forward as well, it's to see that everything changes and the most dramatic changes are often the most unforeseen. I want to go into one part of our history at greater length to explore these questions about consequences that go beyond simple cause and effect.

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A 'water protector' at Standing Rock, where thousands gathered to protest the Dakota Access pipeline and its threat to the Missouri river. Photograph: Pacific Press/Rex/Shutterstock

he 1970s anti-nuclear movement was a potent force in its time, now seldom remembered, though its influence is still with us. In her important new book Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism, LA Kauffman reports that the first significant action against nuclear power, in 1976, was inspired by an extraordinary protest the previous year in West Germany, which had forced the government to abandon plans to build a nuclear reactor. A group that called itself the Clamshell Alliance arose to oppose building a nuclear power plant in New Hampshire. Despite creative tactics, great movement building, and extensive media coverage against the Seabrook nuclear power plant in New Hampshire, the activists did not stop the plant.

They did inspire a sister organization, the Abalone Alliance in central California, which used similar strategies to try to stop the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The groups protested against two particular nuclear power plants; those two plants opened anyway.

You can call that a failure, but Kauffman notes that it inspired people around the country to organize their own anti-nuclear groups, a movement that brought about the cancellation of more than 100 planned nuclear projects over several years and raised public awareness and changed public opinion about nuclear power. Then she gets into the really exciting part, writing that the Clamshell Alliance's "most striking legacy was in consolidating and promoting what became the dominant model for large-scale direct-action organizing for the next 40 years. It was picked up by ... the Pledge of Resistance, a nationwide network of groups organized against US policy in Central America" in the 1980s.

"Hundreds more employed it that fall in a civil disobedience action to protest the supreme court's anti-gay Bowers vs Hardwick sodomy decision," Kauffman continues. "The Aids activist group Act Up used a version of this model when it organized bold takeovers of the headquarters of the Food and Drug Administration in 1988 and the National Institutes of Health in 1990, to pressure both institution to take swifter action toward approving experimental Aids medication." And on into the current millennium. But what were the strategies and organizing principles they catalyzed?

The short answer is non-violent direct action, externally, and consensus decision-making process, internally. The former has a history that reaches around the world, the latter that stretches back to the early history of European dissidents in North America. That is, non-violence is a strategy articulated by Mohandas Gandhi, first used by residents of Indian descent to protest against discrimination in South Africa on 11 September 1906. The young lawyer's sense of possibility and power was expanded immediately afterward when he traveled to London to pursue his cause. Three days after he arrived, British women battling for the right to vote occupied the British parliament, and 11 were arrested, refused to pay their fines, and were sent to prison. They made a deep impression on Gandhi.

He wrote about them in a piece titled "Deeds Better than Words" quoting Jane Cobden, the sister of one of the arrestees, who said, "I shall never obey any law in the making of which I have had no hand; I will not accept the authority of the court executing those laws ..." Gandhi declared: "Today the whole country is laughing at them, and they have only a few people on their side. But undaunted, these women work on steadfast in their cause. They are bound to succeed and gain the franchise ..." And he saw that if they could win, so could the Indian citizens in British Africa fighting for their rights. In the same article (in 1906!) he prophesied: "When the time comes, India's bonds will snap of themselves." Ideas are contagious, emotions are contagious, hope is contagious, courage is contagious. When we embody those qualities, or their opposites, we convey them to others.

You do what you can. What you've done may do more than you can imagine for generations to come

That is to say, British suffragists, who won limited access to the vote for women in 1918, full access in 1928, played a part in inspiring an Indian man who 20 years later led the liberation of the Asian subcontinent from British rule. He, in turn, inspired a black man in the American south to study his ideas and their application. After a 1959 pilgrimage to India to meet with Gandhi's heirs, Martin Luther King wrote: "While the Montgomery boycott was going on, India's Gandhi was the guiding light of our technique of non-violent social change. We spoke of him often." Those techniques, further developed by the civil rights movement, were taken up around the world, including in the struggle against apartheid at one end of the African continent and to the Arab spring at the other.

Participation in the civil rights movement of the early 1960s shaped many lives. One of them is John Lewis, one of the first Freedom Riders, a young leader of the lunch counter sit-ins, a victim of a brutal beating that broke his skull on the Selma march. Lewis was one of the boldest in questioning Trump's legitimacy and he led dozens of other Democratic members of Congress in boycotting the inauguration. When the attack on Muslim refugees and immigrants began a week after Trump's inauguration, he showed up at the Atlanta airport.

That's a lot to take in. But let me put it this way. When those women were arrested in parliament, they were fighting for the right of British women to vote. They succeeded in liberating themselves. But they also passed along tactics, spirit and defiance. You can trace a lineage backward to the anti-slavery movement that inspired the American women's suffrage movement, forwardright up to John Lewis standing up for refugees and Muslims in the Atlanta airport this year. We are carried along by the heroines and heroes who came before and opened the doors of possibility and imagination.

My partner likes to quote a line of Michel Foucault: "People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does." You do what you can. What you've done may do more than you can imagine for generations to come. You plant a seed and a tree grows from it; will there be fruit, shade, habitat for birds, more seeds, a forest, wood to build a cradle or a house? You don't know. A tree can live much longer than you. So will an idea, and sometimes the changes that result from accepting that new idea about what is true, right, just remake the world. You do what you can do; you do your best; what what you do does is not up to you.

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Schoolchildren dress as Gandhi during celebrations to mark the 143rd anniversary of his birth. Photograph: Babu/Reuters

hat's a way to remember the legacy of the external practice of non-violent civil disobedience used by the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, as with the civil rights movement of the 1960s, which did so much to expand and refine the techniques.

As for the internal process: in Direct Action, Kauffman addresses the Clamshell Alliance's influences, quoting a participant named Ynestra King who said: "Certain forms that had been learned from feminism were just naturally introduced into the situation and a certain ethos of respect, which was reinforced by the Quaker tradition." Suki Rice and Elizabeth Boardman, early participants in the Clamshell Alliance, as Kauffman relates, were influenced by the Quakers, and they brought the Quaker practice of consensus decision-making to the new group: "The idea was to ensure that no one's voice was silenced, that there was no division between leaders and followers." The Quakers have been since the 17th century radical dissidents who opposed war, hierarchical structures and much else. An organizer named Joanne Sheehan said, "while non-violence training, doing actions in small groups, and agreeing to a set of non-violence guidelines were not new, it was new to blend them in combination with a commitment to consensus decision-making and a non-hierarchical structure." They were making a way of operating and organizing that spread throughout the progressive activist world.

There are terrible stories about how diseases like Aids jump species and mutate. There are also ideas and tactics that jump communities and mutate, to our benefit. There is an evil term, collateral damage, for the people who die unintentionally: the civilians, non-participants, etc. Maybe what I am proposing here is an idea of collateral benefit.

Ideas are contagious, hope is contagious, courage is contagious. When we embody those qualities we convey them to others

What we call democracy is often a majority rule that leaves the minority, even 49.9% of the people - or more if it's a three-way vote - out in the cold. Consensus leaves no one out. After Clamshell, it jumped into radical politics and reshaped them, making them more generously inclusive and egalitarian. And it's been honed and refined and used by nearly every movement I've been a part of or witnessed, from the anti-nuclear actions at the Nevada test site in the 1980s and 1990s to the organization of the shutdown of the World Trade Organization in late 1999, a victory against neoliberalism that changed the fate of the world, to Occupy Wall Street in 2011 and after.

So what did the Clamshell Alliance achieve? Everything but its putative goal. Tools to change the world, over and over. There are crimes against humanity, crimes against nature, and other forms of destruction that we need to stop as rapidly as possible, and the endeavors to do so are under way. They are informed by these earlier activists, equipped with the tools they developed. But the efforts against these things can have a longer legacy, if we learn to recognize collateral benefits and indirect effects.

If you are a member of civil society, if you demonstrate and call your representatives and donate to human rights campaigns, you will see politicians and judges and the powerful take or be given credit for the changes you effected, sometimes after resisting and opposing them. You will have to believe in your own power and impact anyway. You will have to keep in mind that many of our greatest victories are what doesn't happen: what isn't built or destroyed, deregulated or legitimized, passed into law or tolerated in the culture. Things disappear because of our efforts and we forget they were there, which is a way to forget we tried and won.

Even losing can be part of the process: as the bills to abolish slavery in the British empire failed over and over again, the ideas behind them spread, until 27 years after the first bill was introduced, a version finally passed. You will have to remember that the media usually likes to tell simple, direct stories in which if a court rules or an elective body passes a law, that action reflects the actors' own beneficence or insight or evolution. They will seldom go further to explore how that perspective was shaped by the nameless and unsung, by the people whose actions built up a new world or worldview the way that innumerable corals build a reef.

The only power adequate to stop the Trump administration is civil society, which is the great majority of us when we remember our power and come together. And even if we remember, even if we exert all the pressure we're capable of, even if the administration collapses immediately, or the president resigns or is impeached or melts into a puddle of corruption, our work will only have begun.

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International Women's Day 2017. 'Actions often ripple far beyond their immediate objective, even when results are unlikely to be immediate or obvious.' Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

That job begins with opposing the Trump administration but will not end until we have made deep systemic changes and recommitted ourselves, not just as a revolution, because revolutions don't last, but as a civil society with values of equality, democracy, inclusion, full participation, a radical e pluribus unum plus compassion. As has often been noted, the Republican revolution that allowed them to take over so many state houses and take power far beyond their numbers came partly from corporate cash, but partly from the willingness to do the slow, plodding, patient work of building and maintaining power from the ground up and being in it for the long run. And partly from telling stories that, though often deeply distorting the facts and forces at play, were compelling. This work is always, first and last, storytelling work, or what some of my friends call "the battle of the story". Building, remembering, retelling, celebrating our own stories is part of our work.

I want to see this glorious resistance have a long game, one that includes re-enfranchising the many millions, perhaps tens of millions of people of color, poor people, and students disenfranchised by many means: the Crosscheck program, voter ID laws that proceed from the falsehood that voter fraud is a serious problem that affects election outcomes, the laws taking voting rights in most states from those convicted of felonies. I am encouraged to see many idealistic activists bent on reforming the Democratic party, and a new level of participation inside and outside electoral politics. Reports say that the offices of elected officials are swamped with calls and emails as never before.

This will only matter if it's sustained. To sustain it, people have to believe that the myriad small, incremental actions matter. That they matter even when the consequences aren't immediate or obvious. They must remember that often when you fail at your immediate objective - to block a nominee or a pipeline or to pass a bill - that even then you may have changed the whole framework in ways that make broader change inevitable. You may change the story or the rules, give tools, templates or encouragement to future activists, and make it possible for those around you to persist in their efforts.

To believe it matters - well, we can't see the future. We have the past. Which gives us patterns, models, parallels, principles and resources, and stories of heroism, brilliance, persistence, and the deep joy to be found in doing the work that matters. With those in our pockets, we can seize the possibilities and begin to make hopes into actualities.

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Protest and persist: why giving up hope is not an option

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Last month, Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden had a public conversation about democracy, transparency, whistleblowing and more. In the course of it, Snowden - who was of course Skyping in from Moscow - said that without Ellsberg's example he would not have done what he did to expose the extent to which the NSA was spying on millions of ordinary people.

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Thanksgiving from a different perspective...

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Thanksgiving from a different perspective...

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1. Thanksgiving from a Native American perspective

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Corrigé CO Type Bac - Thanksgiving from a traditional point of view

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Corrigé CO Type Bac - Thanksgiving from a traditional point of view

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0. Corrigé CO Type Bac - Thanksgiving - Script + Vocab

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Thanksgiving from a traditional point of view

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Thanksgiving from a traditional point of view

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What you already know...

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