The Media Coverage of the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s Case Study: Selma Marches

Abstract

The African Americans previously suffered a lot from bad situations, segregation and discrimination. All these led to the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement between the 1950s and 1960s, which aimed to free the blacks and guarantee full rights and equality between the two races. This Movement depended more on the media, to publicize their demands and to make the whites in the North aware of what was happening to the blacks in the South. Hence, this research focuses on the period between the 1960s to examine the media coverage during the Civil Rights Movement and especially the Selma March. It aims to enhance the role technological communication has had on society, with an emphasis on the role played by television and newspapers on political and social changes. Indeed, the printed and visual media at that time were in fact the ones that were able to unite the minds of two races making people realize that America could be a country of solidarity where there would be neither white superiority nor black inferiority.