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McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement

Lee Sustar via Socialist Worker

“By most accounts, the civil rights movement began in 1954, created by the U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in the public schools.

Yet the anticommunist witch-hunts of the previous years had an enormous negative impact on the struggle. This reality tends to be ignored by those who want to downplay the role of the left in the fight for Black rights–and because of the participation of many “liberal” civil rights leaders in the witch-hunt.”

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McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement

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  • A Black man with very light skin, a grey mustache, and short grey wavy hair sits in front of a colorful background facing the photographer while looking down and to the viewer's left.

    Lesson Plan

    Walter White: Advocate in Changing Times

    This lesson explores the complexity of former NAACP president Walter White’s public views during the Cold War Era and reveals some of the divisions within the civil rights movement as McCarthyism intensified.

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