Two ways that civil rights movements in the United States after World War II continued pre-war fights for inclusion were through attention to public institutions and to voting in regard to both race and gender.

Access to schools became a focal point in the fight for equal access to public institutions in the 1950s. A turning point for this issue was the landmark United States Supreme Court 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ruled against the “separate but equal” concept. Before 1940, however, numerous cases had highlighted unequal treatment of Black Americans; these cases were often handled by the Legal Department of the NAACP. In the 1936 Murray v. Maryland case, Thurgood Marshall successfully argued against racial discrimination by the University of Maryland Law School.

The 1869 passage of the Fifteenth Amendment confirmed Black men’s right to vote but still denied that right to all women. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, recognized women’s right to vote. Numerous obstacles to voting remained, however, such as the poll tax, which was abolished in 1964 under the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.

Since World War II ended, there has been siginificant activity by groups who have been excluded from opportunities and/or rights to achieve recognition and protection for those opportunities and rights. Opposition to these civil rights movements has often been couched in terms of "real Americans" and false claims of "outside agitators." Support or opposition to these movements was not along party lines initially, but became increasingly so from the 1970s onward. Why? In what ways can these movements be seen as fighting against oligarchy and for democracy?

These types of civil rights movements can be seen as fighting against oligarchy and in support of democracy because they are advocating for a more inclusive society. In theory, democracy means that all people have some say in how a nation is ruled. In practice, of course, this does not always happen. For example, systemic racism runs deep in the United States government, so people of color do not have the same level of say in how things are run. Civil rights movements that advocate for better representation of marginalized groups are trying to make the US more democratic and to avoid an oligarchy, a government in which only a small group of people have control.

Support for such movements is increasingly along party lines because US politics has been becoming increasingly polarized since the 1970s. It is risky for politicians to go against their party on a civil rights issue because it can jeopardize their influence. For instance, it is unlikely that a long-time far-right politician would suddenly support a pro-immigration civil rights movement, as this might make his party think he is becoming liberal.