The question of movement origin (like the Cha-Jua/Lang argument about movement demise) has particular relevance for how historians define a period, distinguish the black freedom movement of this era from other periods of black resistance, and the interrelated nature of civil rights to the black power movement. Within this debate lies the larger question - at what point does the modern black freedom movement mark the beginning boundaries of a period? On what basis do we define the origin of the black freedom struggle (civil rights and black power) within this period? And why or on what basis should a timeline be set or changed? This essay seeks to address these questions by positioning a middle path between the two discourses, and arguing that both sides offer useful indicators for setting the period. The discussion centers on period origin, incorporates sociological movement theories, and seeks to authenticate long historian arguments for an expanded freedom movement era. In effect, it establishes a much needed, justifiable specific date selection. The result is a black freedom movement grounded on a distinctive form of activism, which emerges from the internal, intellectual, and social transformations within the black community, as well as the impact of similar struggles internationally. This era’s embrace of a new ideological approach to activism via non-violent civil disobedience, and important areas of continuity exampled by black women’s activism around networking/community organization and activism, clearly place the freedom movement before the classical timeline, but after the 1930s, and in the World War II years.

This commentary is dedicated to an analysis and historical overview of the civil and women's rights movements in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. First, we will look at the historical narrative, emphasizing major path dependent issues, events, and personalities that have shaped these two movements. Then, we must engage in comparison-contrast analysis of the two movements in order to showcase their confluences and divergences. Finally, we will provide a brief summation of our activities in this analysis.

This article offers an exploration of what it meant to move under " cramped conditions " for African Americans and their compatriots during an era of often violent racial discrimination and segregation in the 1950s and 1960s in the USA. As the example of the Freedom Rides shows, these conditions included both moments of closure and entrapment determined by the rule of law as well as acts of resistance resulting from a century-long legacy of resistances. Particularly, I try to understand the complex " constellations of mobility " as a fragile entanglement of the politics of movement, representations of movement, and the embodied practices of movement. This paper proposes an approach to mobility that takes both historical forms of mobilities and immobilities seriously. On the one hand, my analysis relates to regulatory power and technologies used by state and non-state actors in order to retain white privilege over issues of mobility during the period preceding and accompanying the Freedom Rides. On the other hand, I argue along the lines of " mobility as resistance " by showing the strategies used to transgress written and unwritten laws and normative standards of the Jim Crow era.