McCauley Lecture: Does Anybody Really Know When the Civil Rights Movement Began?

For the first time in public, Dr. Edward N. Maliskas makes the case that America’s Civil Rights Movement began in Washington County, Maryland. Maliskas begins by offering for the audience’s consideration a short list of commonly cited candidates for the honor of being the birthplace of the movement. To be sure, they are important milestones, but do they meet the academic criteria for what constitutes the inception of a social movement? Maliskas concludes that the only group sufficiently powerful and connected to begin the Movement did so with a large, passionate, and self-aware event held in Western Maryland in the early 1950s.