Since the 19th century, organizations have formed to fight for civil rights. These activists have been advocates for racial minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and poor peop
…le. Their demands have ranged from voting rights to economic opportunity. Here is an overview of the history of civil rights groups in the United States.Since the beginning of slavery in the United States, there have been abolitionists opposed to the practice. Following the Civil War, constitutional amendments were passed banning slavery and granting citizenship to African-Americans. However, institutionalized racism continued. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded in 1909, has filed lawsuits, conducted public education, and organized workers in the battle for civil rights. Various groups sponsored sit-ins, boycotts, and other activities during the 1950s and 1960s. One of them, the Montgomery Improvement Association, staged the famous bus boycott in that Alabama city. Significant national groups have included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which employed nonviolent methods in opposing segregation; and the Congress of Racial Equality, which has sponsored voter-registration drives, freedom rides, sit-ins, and picketing.The struggle for women's suffrage, the right to vote, in the United States began in the 1820s with multiple reform groups in several states. A conference in Seneca Falls, N.Y., in 1848 is considered the birth of the women's rights movement. In 1869, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed. In 1890, it merged with the American Woman Suffrage Association to continue the fight for voting rights. Some states began allowing women to cast ballots in the 1890s, eventually leading to suffrage on the national level. Among the groups that were influential in this effort were the National Association of Colored Women, a collection of more than 100 black women's clubs, founded in 1896; and the National Woman's Trade Union League, formed in 1903 to advocate for better wages and working conditions. Today, the largest group of feminist activists in the United States is the National Organization for Women. Founded in 1966, it has grown to include more than 500,000 contributing members. The battle for women's rights has been extended to economic opportunities and other issues.Many groups have been formed to organize low-income people and advocate on their behalf. The Poor People's Campaign has been fighting for economic justice and basic human needs since 1968. The Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, founded in 1998, is a coalition of organizations focused on issues like food, health, housing, and living wages. Other important groups include CARE, formed in 1945 to help with education, economic development, and clean water; Oxfam International, established in England in 1942, which now provides education, disaster relief, and minority-rights advocacy in 14 countries; and Food for the Poor, a nonprofit, church-based organization that sponsors food, sanitation, education, and other programs in Latin America.Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered (GLBT) people also have formed organizations to battle for civil rights. The first group, the Society for Human Rights, was founded in 1924 in Chicago. The Mattachine Society became the first national gay-rights group in 1951. It was followed 5 years later by the Daughters of Bilitis, the initial nationwide organization of lesbians. The first group advocating for transgendered people, the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, came into existence in 1966 in San Francisco. The largest GLBT group, the Human Rights Campaign, has grown to include 1.5 million members and supporters since it was founded in 1980. The organization sponsors a range of grassroots activities designed to change attitudes and policies.The promise of the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal" left out many members of the new nation known as the United States of America. Women, minorities, and men who did not own property were denied voting rights and economic equality. Laws began to change when these sectors of society, and their supporters, formed civil rights groups. The successes of these organizations have changed history.Racial minorities made up more than one-quarter of the U.S. population in 2010. The largest non-Anglo group, African-Americans, was 12.6 percent of the total. (MORE) 
