Myths and Truths: The Civil Rights Movement and African Americans on the Southern Tier of Upstate New York (Essay‪)‬

The Civil Rights Movement is commonly thought of as a southern movement to eradicate Jim Crow segregation, or as a "freedom Struggle" which broke down the barriers of a vicious southern racial caste system. Not until that movement reached beyond its southern confines and touched major northern and western urban centers did it dawn on the rest of the nation that the Civil Rights Movement was about the envisioning of a new America. (2) Aptly dubbed the "Second Reconstruction," the Civil Rights Movement has received much attention from the recent generation of historians, former participants in the movement, and the news media. What is particularly heartening has been the recognition of the impact that the movement had on all Americans. Thus scholars and writers such as Clayborne Carson, Aldon Morris, Taylor Branch, and Vincent Harding have brought into view the activities of the many courageous women and men who struggled to make America a racially harmonious and egalitarian society. These historians have also had their work amplified and even revised by other writers. (3)