Civil rights

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King in Washington DC, where he delivered his famous 'I Have A Dream' speech to a quarter of a million civil rights supporters in Washington DC in August 1963. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Mourning Martin Luther King Jr: the life and legacy of the civil rights leader

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after her arrest

Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat: what happened next?

Charlotta Bass (centre) was a newspaper publisher, activist and would-be US vice president, who fought against racial discrimination and social injustice. She's seen here with presidential running mate Vincent Hallinan (to Charlotta’s right) and singer and actor-turned-activist Paul Robeson

Charlotta Bass: the first woman of colour to run for US vice president

Emmett Till funeral

American spotlight: how today’s protests echo historical outrage

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King

The civil rights movement: everything you wanted to know

Black rights activist Malcolm X

Malcolm X: Activism, assassination and how he predicted his own death

Rosa Parks rides an integrated bus

From Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King: the boycott that inspired the dream

Josephine Baker lounges on a tiger skin around the time she starred in La Revue Nègre

Jospehine Baker: the hidden depths of Jazz Age icon

Four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina, hold the first sit-in (Corbis.)

Timeline: the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Malcolm X chats with Eric Abrahams – the Oxford Union president who vowed to “fill the room with blacks” – before giving his famous address on 3 December 1964. (Getty)

Malcolm X in Oxford: Black power amid dreaming spires