Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2015, Vol. 1(1) 105–126 © American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/2332649214562473 sre.sagepub.com Race, Ethnicity, and Social Movements At the dawn of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) predicted the problem of the twentieth century would be the color line. The “color line” referred to a worldwide system of racial stratifica- tion where people socially defined as nonwhite were ruled, exploited, and colonized by people socially defined as white. By the twentieth century, much of Africa and major centers in Asia and South America had been colonized. In the United States, itself a site of ongoing practices of settler colonial- ism (Smith 2010), racial terror, Jim Crow, and other forms of oppression emerged in the “after-life of slavery” (Hartman 2008; Sexton 2010). Thus, during the twentieth century, the color line consti- tuted a structural divide on which local and global resources were unequally distributed. This essay seeks to shed light on ethnoracial social movements—particularly those mobiliza- tions taking place “in the wake” (Sharpe 2010) of global factors such as colonialism, racialized social 562473SRE XX X 10.1177/2332649214562473Sociology of Race and EthnicityFleming and Morris research-article 2014 1 Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY, USA 2 Departments of Sociology and African-American Studies, USA Corresponding Author: Crystal M. Fleming, Departments of Sociology and Africana Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4356, USA. Email: crystal.fleming@stonybrook.edu Theorizing Ethnic and Racial Movements in the Global Age: Lessons from the Civil Rights Movement Crystal M. Fleming 1 and Aldon Morris 2 Abstract In this essay, we reflect on the history and legacies of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and suggest avenues of future research of interest to scholars of ethnic and racial movements. First, we unpack how the Civil Rights Movement developed as a major movement utilizing both international and domestic influences. Second, we consider the central role of technology—including television and Internet communication technologies (ICTs)—in shaping contemporary ethnic and racial activism. In so doing, we aim to enhance scholarship on movements and efforts by those committed to challenging racial and ethnic disparities. Finally, we explore how the collective memories of past racial and ethnic struggles, including the Civil Rights Movement, are constructed. We argue that activists and their opposition have stakes in how past ethnoracial oppression and movements alike will be remembered and interpreted. Such memories and interpretations can serve as the basis for additional demands that activists make on power holders and influence actions of the powerful to resist such demands. Keywords social movements, anti-racism, colonialism, ethnic inequality, white supremacy, racism by guest on February 16, 2015 sre.sagepub.com Downloaded from