What Did the Civil Rights Movement Do? Civics Question 112

The civil rights movement fought to end racial discrimination.

Question 112 asks what the civil rights movement did. There is one accepted answer: it fought to end racial discrimination. Say that sentence and stop. You do not need names, dates, or the title of any law. The movement itself ran through the 1950s and the 1960s.

What the Movement Did

For most of the century after the Civil War, laws in many states kept Black Americans apart from white Americans in schools, buses, restaurants, hotels, and voting booths. Those laws were called segregation.

People fought them in the open and in court. They refused to ride segregated buses, sat at lunch counters that would not serve them, registered voters in states where that was dangerous work, and marched in large numbers. Much of it was done without violence, on purpose, while the country watched.

In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that separate public schools for Black and white children were unconstitutional. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, which banned discrimination in public places and in hiring, and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, which put federal power behind the right to vote.

Why the Officer Asks This

This question and question 113 come as a pair. This one asks what the movement did, and question 113 asks what Martin Luther King, Jr. is famous for.

It also closes a thread that runs through the test. The 15th Amendment gave Black men the vote in 1870, and the movement is how that promise was finally enforced.

How to Remember It

The answer is built out of two words: racial discrimination. Discrimination means treating people differently because of who they are. Racial names the reason, and the movement fought to end it.

The name of the movement carries the other half. Civil rights are the rights every citizen holds, and the movement was the fight to hand those rights to citizens who had been denied them.

Common Ways People Get This Wrong

Some applicants answer with a person’s name. Question 113 is the one that asks for a person.

Others answer that the movement won the vote for Black Americans. Voting was part of it, and the accepted answer is broader than that: it fought to end racial discrimination.

What to Say on Test Day

Say “it fought to end racial discrimination.” Then stop.

You do not need a year, a law, or a leader. One sentence is the answer.