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Scholars typically assume that rights-based movements have generalizable impacts upon social inequalities; yet inequality reduction may be unequally distributed across space. By focusing on the American civil rights movement – a movement oriented toward achieving equal opportunity for people of color, especially Black Americans in the US South – this research evaluates whether reductions in racial inequality were contingent upon an active local movement presence or if all areas benefited equally. Census data from periods before and after the civil rights movement (1950 and 1980) are utilized to construct a measure of racial inequality change, focused upon high school graduation and management occupation employment rates. The presence of “the Big Four” civil rights organizations (the Congress of Racial Equality [CORE], the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], the Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]) in Southern counties helps to explain this change in racial inequality. Counties which had certain civil rights organizations were more likely to experience a greater reduction in racial inequality than counties that didn't have such organizations. Education equity improved in counties that were less Black, more urban, had HBCUs, and CORE or SNCC organizational presence.

Civic education in the US has historically centered the nation-state. This is often disempowering for marginalized students who exist outside the national narrative and political sphere.

This year-long ethnographic study considers what counts as civic education in the US Virgin Islands, a territory of the US. This paper draws on critical theory and critical pedagogy to understand ways teachers in a politically and culturally marginalized space can reimagine civic education. Classroom observations, interviews and curriculum content analysis are used as data.

The findings suggest that teachers centered the local by surfacing the unjust political relationship between the US and its territories and incorporating local history, civic engagement, resistance and culture to politically empower their students.

This research will contribute a deeper understanding of the possibilities for civic education to be empowering for those who are marginalized and often excluded from the national political arena.