Race, Class, and the U.S. Civil Rights Movement: Intersections in Leadership, Strategy, and Contemporary Justice

This article examines how race and class operated together in shaping the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and considers what that relationship can teach contemporary racial and economic justice movements. Drawing on historical and sociological scholarship, the analysis focuses on three connected areas: the economic conditions surrounding racial exclusion, differences in class position and organizational strategy within the movement, and campaigns that linked civil rights to employment, wages, housing, and community resources. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Poor People’s Campaign, and Black Panther Party community programs show that racial equality was repeatedly tied to questions of economic power. The article argues that the movement is best understood not as a struggle against legal segregation alone, but as a broader contest over institutions that distributed political voice, material resources, and social status. This perspective also clarifies why contemporary racial justice movements continue to connect discrimination and state power with housing, employment, health, education, and other forms of economic inequality.