Post-Civil War America,

      In post-Civil War America, the years between 1890 and 1920 were the nadir of Black life: three decades of lynching, Jim Crow, and a renewed Ku Klux Klan, with little positive change in sight. Yet by the 1950s and 1960s, the United States was undergoing a Black political revolution. What explains the direction and intensity of Black political activism in the 1950s and 1960s? In this essay, you will discuss the dynamics of Black political and social power as you understand them. It will be your job to consider the various ways Black political activism could be expressed (Christian non-violence, civil rights, black power, legal activism, labor politics, etc.) and the way they interacted with the most important features of time (immigration, internal migration, the depression, the New Deal, demographic change, the Cold War, and much else). There is no way a good essay can cover all these elements. There is no good interpretation which will give equal weight to them all. You have to form your own ideas and arguments, with a focus on the specific features you find most persuasive and interesting. It’s perfectly reasonable to admit that many features contributed to the rise of these movements; nevertheless, for the purpose of the paper, you should focus your thesis on a few features of particular interest.