The end of Civil Rights (1964–2025): An American obituary – Baptist News Global

Opinion Mark Wingfield | August 24, 2025
Its killers were many: A GOP-led gravediggers campaign determined to “make America great again” by undoing decades of progress; a U.S. Supreme Court that dismantled affirmative action, voting protections and reproductive rights; and state lawmakers who slashed funding for HBCUs, restricted access to the ballot and redrew districts to dilute Black voices.
Layered with punitive mandates, economic deductions and legal rollbacks, the current administration has presided over the slow suffocation of Civil Rights, lowering it into the ground while declaring victory for a vision of America rooted in exclusion. What once was a fragile but vital age of justice has become an obituary, written not in honor but in erasure.
Civil Rights in America was born with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its parents were the sweat and sacrifice of enslaved Africans’ grandchildren, the courage of Reconstruction’s visionaries, and the martyrs of the Civil Rights Movement.
Edmond W. Davis
For 60 short years, Civil Rights lived among us. It gave all Americans who were not white males a taste of what full citizenship might mean. Black Americans also experienced this as they led the effort regarding this national shift. It opened doors to the ballot box, public accommodations and educational opportunities. It inspired copycat protections for women, immigrants, LGBTQ people, veterans and the disabled.
But today, in 2025, Civil Rights is dead. It was starved by court decisions, suffocated by voter suppression and stabbed in the back by a nation eager to pretend racism has been solved.
Like Reconstruction before it, Civil Rights never had the chance to mature.
Let us remember the timeline:
That means Black Americans have spent 346 years in slavery or Jim Crow, and just 61 years with the illusion of equal citizenship. Freedom never was the foundation — only the exception.
Civil Rights was conceived for African Americans, yet its inheritance was divided among many: white women, military veterans, the disabled, LGBTQ, and other ethnic minorities (Latino/Hispanic, Asian, European, Arab).
For example, these advances sprang from the Black struggle but benefited many other:
Some things specifically benefited Black Americans:
“Civil Rights never was allowed to be Black America’s alone. Others claimed its benefits.”
Civil Rights never was allowed to be Black America’s alone. Others claimed its benefits, while African Americans still bear the heaviest chains of inequality and inequity. Outside of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the U.S. Constitution and the antilynching bill (2022), not many civil rights laws, codes, acts or bills were designed explicitly for African Americans. These laws were orchestrated to cover gender, nationality and sexual orientation.
Civil Rights was killed by neglect, stripped of oxygen by courts and buried under the weight of white denial.
The coroner’s report is clear: Civil Rights died of state-sanctioned neglect.
In death, we also must remember the brilliance of its life. Even under segregation, Black America built empires: Tulsa’s Black Wall Street, Durham’s Parrish Street, Little Rock’s 9th Street, Harlem, East Ninth Street in Junction City, Kan., and countless thriving enclaves between the 1890s and 1950s. Those communities created wealth, dignity and power that integration never delivered.
Today, Black household wealth remains a fraction of white wealth, and the American Dream for Black families feels more like a nightmare of debt, policing and disenfranchisement.
Reconstruction lasted 12 years. Civil Rights lived 60. Both were assassinated by the same hand: America’s refusal to let Black freedom be permanent.
Civil Rights is survived by its stepchildren — women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, disability rights and immigrant rights. But its true heirs, Black Americans, are left with nothing but mourning clothes and unpaid reparations.
There’s also evidence of Civil Rights’ stepchildren causing generations of harm to Black communities. Asians, Arabs, Latinos, Africans and other ethnic groups all come to black communities and establish lucrative businesses after receiving funds to get started. Most of these other groups, to obtain funding on paper, categorized themselves as “white” to get funding, and they do. People who come to America get funded quicker than Black Americans born here.
“Reconstruction lasted 12 years. Civil Rights lived 60.”
If this is indeed the death of Civil Rights, then what follows cannot be another funeral. It must be a resurrection — not of fragile legislation, but of durable power.
Civil Rights has been lowered into the ground. Yet history reminds us that even in one of America’s most preposterous chapters — when segregation itself was law — African Americans built schools, banks, businesses and entire self-sustaining ecosystems. Deprived of federal funding and bound by white-sanctioned governance, Black America still forged progress and dignity. That resilience remains our inheritance.
But let us be clear: Civil Rights in America never was solely about the human rights of African Americans. It was born from Black struggle yet rebranded for everyone else. Asians, Latinos, Arabs, Ukrainians, LGBTQ communities, and others have gained footholds through its framework, while Black equity remains underfunded, undervalued and overlooked.
The truth is painful: “Civil Rights” became a national theme only when it could be shared, diluted and made universal, but its origin was always a Black issue.
What stands before us now is not merely an obituary. It is the possibility of a rebirth — one authored unapologetically by Black America itself. Our fight lit the torch of freedom; our unity can keep it burning.

Edmond W. Davis is a social historian, speaker, collegiate professor, international journalist and former director of the Derek Olivier Research Institute. He is an expert on various historical and emotional intelligence topics. He’s globally known for his work as a researcher regarding the history of the Tuskegee Airmen and Airwomen. He’s the founder of America’s first and only National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest.