The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867
First Colored Senator and Representatives: Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC), 1872
Black people in Memphis under attack, Harper's Weekly, 26 May 1866
Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, AME leader in Georgia.
Ida B. Wells
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Ida Bell Wells-Barnett was an American investigative journalist, educator, and early leader in the civil rights movement. She was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Wells dedicated her career to combating prejudice and violence, and advocating for African-American equality—especially that of women.
The Bolling–Gatewood House. The Wells family lived in a shack behind this house while enslaved by its owner, Spires Bolling.
The People's Grocery near Memphis, Tennessee, was a successful African-American cooperative. The 1892 lynchings of its owners led Wells to begin her investigations of lynching.
Attorney Ferdinand Lee Barnett (c. 1900). Wells married Barnett in 1895.