Sepia Features
The long, ongoing campaign for civil rights sometimes takes the form of stirring speeches and moral suasion. The fight can generate new laws which, if not always initially effective or even enforced, will need revisiting as late as nearly 100 years after passage. Then there’s organizing—mobilizing the people to peaceful protest, with that protest often targeting the purse strings of those in power. And, sometimes, the struggle means radical action, rebellion.
These methods and more took the stage in the 1800s. The century is largely fixed in many imaginations as the Civil War and the tepid, short-lived efforts of Reconstruction. Yet, the period boasts events before and after the war that show the struggle to be a continuous push beginning at the very turn of the 19th century.
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