American History Atlas

Social Movements and Reform

Campaigns for abolition, suffrage, labor rights, civil rights, sovereignty, and more.

41 entries, in chronological order

Before European ColonizationBefore 1492

Six Nations chiefs at Brantford explaining their wampum belts in 1871

c. 1450s (disputed)–presentInstitution

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy

The League of the Iroquois — a union of nations governed by the Great Law of Peace

Colonial America1607–1763

Loren Mozley’s 1936 mural of the Pueblo Revolt

Aug 10 – Sep 21, 1680Event

The Pueblo Revolt

Pueblo nations unite to drive Spanish colonizers out of New Mexico, 1680

Illustration of a religious camp meeting

1730s – 1770sMovement

The First Great Awakening

A wave of evangelical revivals across the colonies, 1730s–1770s

The Early Republic1789–1828

Portrait of Tecumseh

c. 1768–1813Person

Tecumseh

Shawnee leader who built a confederacy of Native nations

Expansion and Sectional Conflict1828–1860

Frontispiece of the abolitionist book A Tribute for the Negro

1775–1865Movement

Abolitionism

The movement to end slavery in the United States

Photograph of Sojourner Truth

c. 1797–1883Person

Sojourner Truth

Abolitionist and women’s rights speaker who escaped slavery in New York

Daguerreotype of John Brown with his hand raised

1800–1859Person

John Brown

Abolitionist who led the 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry

Photograph of Elizabeth Cady Stanton

1815–1902Person

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Philosopher and strategist of the women’s rights movement

Photograph of Frederick Douglass

1818–1895Person

Frederick Douglass

Escaped slave, orator, editor, and the foremost Black leader of the nineteenth century

Photograph of Harriet Tubman seated

c. 1822–1913Person

Harriet Tubman

Freedom seeker, Underground Railroad conductor, Union scout

The Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, where the 1848 convention met, now part of Women’s Rights National Historical Park

Jul 19–20, 1848Event

The Seneca Falls Convention

The first women’s rights convention, July 1848

Charles T. Webber’s 1893 painting The Underground Railroad, showing freedom seekers arriving by wagon at a farmhouse in winter

Movement

The Underground Railroad

The secret network of freedom seekers and those who helped them escape slavery

Industrialization and the Gilded Age1877–1900

Photograph of Susan B. Anthony

1820–1906Person

Susan B. Anthony

Organizer and public face of the woman suffrage movement

Photograph of Sitting Bull

c. 1831–1890Person

Sitting Bull

Hunkpapa Lakota leader who refused the reservation

Portrait photograph of Ida B. Wells

1862–1931Person

Ida B. Wells

Journalist who exposed lynching and fought for civil rights and suffrage

Strikers at the start of the 1912 Lawrence textile strike

1877–1935Movement

The Labor Movement

Workers organize for wages, hours, and a voice on the job

Harper’s Weekly engraving of the Haymarket bombing

May 4, 1886Event

The Haymarket Affair

A bomb at a Chicago labor rally, May 4, 1886

Judge magazine cartoon of William Jennings Bryan in 1896

1890–1896Movement

Populism and the People’s Party

The farmers’ revolt of the 1890s

Strikers outside the Arcade Building in Pullman, Illinois

May 11, 1894 – Jul 1894Event

The Pullman Strike

A national railroad boycott crushed by federal troops, 1894

The Progressive Era and World War I1900–1920

Illustration of suffrage activism in New York City

Jul 19, 1848 – Aug 18, 1920Movement

The Woman Suffrage Movement

Seventy-two years of struggle for women’s right to vote, 1848–1920

Photograph of W. E. B. Du Bois

1868 (disputed)–1963Person

W. E. B. Du Bois

Scholar, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP

Jacob Riis’s photograph of Bandits’ Roost, an alley on Mulberry Street in New York

c. 1890s – c. 1920Movement

Progressivism

Reformers confront the problems of industrial America, c. 1890s–1920

Map of Black urban population changes during the Great Migration

c. 1910s – c. 1970sMovement

The Great Migration

Millions of Black Southerners move North and West, 1910s–1970

The Twenties and the Great Depression1920–1939

Photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt

1884–1962Person

Eleanor Roosevelt

First lady, reformer, and champion of human rights

Portrait of the poet Langston Hughes, photographed by Carl Van Vechten in 1936

1922–1935Movement

The Harlem Renaissance

A flowering of Black literature, art, and music in 1920s New York

World War II and the Early Cold War1939–1960

Civil rights demonstrators at a segregated public beach in Fort Lauderdale

1954–1968Movement

The Civil Rights Movement

The mass struggle against segregation and disfranchisement, 1950s–1960s

Civil Rights and Social Transformation1954–1980

Photograph of Rosa Parks

1913–2005Person

Rosa Parks

Activist whose arrest sparked the Montgomery bus boycott

Photograph of Malcolm X

1925–1965Person

Malcolm X

Black nationalist leader and critic of nonviolence

Photograph of Cesar Chavez

1927–1993Person

Cesar Chavez

Labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers

Photograph of Martin Luther King Jr.

1929–1968Person

Martin Luther King Jr.

Minister and leader of the nonviolent civil rights movement

Portrait photograph of Muhammad Ali in 1967

1942–2016Person

Muhammad Ali

Three-time heavyweight champion who gave up his title rather than fight in Vietnam

Marchers at the first Christopher Street Liberation Day in New York, 1970

c. 1950s–presentMovement

LGBTQ+ Rights Movement

From homophile organizing to gay liberation and marriage equality

Rosa Parks being fingerprinted after her arrest during the Montgomery bus boycott

Dec 5, 1955 – Dec 20, 1956Event

Montgomery Bus Boycott

The thirteen-month protest that launched the modern civil rights movement

Members of the Little Rock Nine with New York mayor Robert F. Wagner

Sep 4–25, 1957Event

The Little Rock Nine

The desegregation of Central High School, 1957

Flag of Indians of All Tribes, the group that occupied Alcatraz

1961–1973Movement

Red Power and the American Indian Movement

Native activism for sovereignty and self-determination, 1960s–1970s

President Kennedy signing the Equal Pay Act with members of the American Association of University Women

1961–1982Movement

Second-Wave Feminism

The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s

The whole Earth photographed from space by the Apollo 17 crew

1962 – c. 1973Movement

The Environmental Movement

From Silent Spring to Earth Day and the EPA

Farm workers on strike in Delano, California, October 1965

1962–1975Movement

The Farm Workers Movement

The Delano grape strike, the boycott, and the United Farm Workers

Martin Luther King Jr. among the crowd at the March on Washington

Aug 28, 1963Event

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

The 1963 march where King delivered “I Have a Dream”

Marchers on the Selma to Montgomery march

Mar 7–25, 1965Event

Selma to Montgomery Marches

“Bloody Sunday” and the march for voting rights, 1965

The window of the Stonewall Inn during Pride weekend, 2016

Jun 28, 1969Event

Stonewall Uprising

The 1969 protests that ignited the gay liberation movement