The legal history of the struggle for civil rights: the role of social movements in achieving racial equality in the United States

The article presents a retrospective analysis of the development of civil rights in the United States. Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United States of America has gone from a slave-owning state to a State with not only declared, but also actually embodied ideas of freedom and equality of all citizens. Social movements have played a major role in the process of asserting civil rights, allowing hundreds of thousands of African Americans, women, Latinos, and ordinary workers to be heard. However, despite the rights and freedoms enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, many social groups still face discrimination based on race, gender, and social status, and the struggle for equality causes acute social conflicts and becomes an urgent agenda in the American states of the 21^st century. The purpose of the work is to establish the role of social movements in the development of legislation on civil rights, to trace the historical relationship and mutual correlation of the formation and development of social movements and the modernization of social legislation, the legal consolidation of labor, political and economic rights. The methodology was based on the comparative historical method, which made it possible to draw up an objective picture of legal and social changes at various historical stages. The concrete legal method formed the basis for evaluating legally significant decisions taken in the field of securing civil rights, as well as the historical and genetic method used to determine the points of origin and development not only of civil rights legislation, but also of the legal culture associated with them. The result of the study was the conclusion that there is a direct correlation between the activities of active social groups and movements and the adoption of normative acts that enshrine the rights of individual social groups. The main ways to influence public opinion and the political will of existing public authorities that oppose the expansion of civil rights have become mass protests and public appearances in the media, challenging government policy in the courts, and creating judicial precedents. Having traced the historical path of the civil rights movements, the authors come to the conclusion about their dominant role in the process of evolution of social legislation and accelerating the transformation of public opinion.