Denmark

"The Civil Rights Movement" (2016)

In October 2016, twenty-four award winners from EUSTORY competitions met at a History Camp in Georgia. For this occasion they prepared posters about their projects and findings which were displayed in the National History Museum in Tbilisi.

My competition entry was about the struggle for African-American rights in past and present: From the Civil Rights Movements in the 1960s to the provocative lyrics of the rap group N.W.A and today‘s demonstrations organized by Black Lives Matter.

How did you decide on your topic?
I was interested in this inspirational fight for equality and also found Martin Luther King’s and Malcolm X’s different approaches and goals to be very fascinating. It is clearly still a very relevant topic today and that is why I wanted to find out what has changed formally since the 1960s and what has changed in reality.

How did you react when you came upon surprising points during your research?
The biggest difficulty was probably trying to estimate how big the change in society has been. Politically, Americans are now equal whatever their skin colour. However, it is much more difficult to measure if this formal equality also exists in society. We tried to get an idea of the situation by researching tendencies in society such as the recent demonstrations and police shootings, which seem to suggest that racial inequality is still a prevailing problem.

Take a closer look at Anna’s poster here.

For her project on the Civil Rights Movement, Anna was rewarded with the third prize in the Danish history competition.