Over the course of this semester we have learnt to which degree social movements often time unmentioned in the books of history have shaped the policies and laws that we so enjoy today. Stammers investigates in Social Rights and Human Movements the absence of the history of social movements as sites of emergence for ideas and norms in most narratives on the origins of human rights. Often time’s human rights get accredited to the workings of the UN and the cofounding governments. Thus, human rights have been integrated into the bureaucratic process and mechanisms of international governments, leading to the loss of something tangible that made human rights an issue of the people and was viewed and treated as such. In retrospect the inception of these new institutions have placed human rights in the hands of the elites rather than civil society and as such robbed human rights from its original from; a substance and content of protest movements undergoing struggle. Martin Luther King Jr. equally voiced such concerns in his Birmingham Jail Letters saying: “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” …show more content…
Social movements of the 1950’s and 1960’s have had a permanent positive impact on the social equity and wellbeing of all citizens in the 21st century. Even more the United States is a country that has afforded rights to communalized groups as a result of social movements as an instrument of change and progress. There have been several social movements during the 20th and 21th centuries that helped to create justice for those in the movement and change outside the movement. “The Civil Rights Movement was predicated upon the fact that African Americans were not afforded rights due to their race” (Johnson). Therefore, housing discrimination and employee abuse went through the roof. As a result of the movement the U.S. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act officially seeks to ban employment and housing discrimination based on race, gender, religion, disabilities and national origin. Other examples include the Women’s Liberation Movement seeking to change the social and political landscape for how women were treated in the workplace. Until today “Equal pay for equal work” is considered one of the most memorable slogans of its time as well as the movement. Due to the persistence of the movement, the Equal Pay Act was signed