Alva Review-Courier -

Few people would dispute that the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was perhaps the most significant domestic event in U.S. history in the last half of the 20th century.

Among other things, the laws that came out of the movement granted voting rights to millions of Americans who did not have them, outlawed to some extent discrimination in the workplace, and ended segregation in public schools and many other facilities.

Besides expanding the voting rolls by millions of people, the civil rights movement also had (and continues to have) a huge – though often unseen and underestimated – impact on U.S. political history. Certainly, without the civil rights movement we would not yet have had our first black president.

But there is much more to the story than that. In order to understand it, we have to examine some aspects of American history in the decades preceding the civil rights movement.

The movement was, of course, all about racial groups – specifically Caucasians and African Americans. To be sure, there are other races in the United States, and the benefits of the movement are seen by those races, too.

Moreover, women of all races also began advocating for more rights – sparking a vibrant women's rights movement that continues to this day.

The racial divide between Caucasians and African Americans in this country dates back to the early 1600s. The first Africans in the British colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619.

Contrary to what many history books assert, these first Africans were not slaves. They were indentured servants who worked for several years and then were set free and given land grants. Some of them eventually became prosperous farmers.

But then the British colonists decided to enslave Africans for life – not just for a period of years. Slavery, of course, became a major political issue in the colonies and later in the United States.

We will look at some of the racial aspects of American politics (and learn what the title of this article means) next week.