In the 1950s and 1960s, the face of the African-American civil rights movement was groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Council of Federated Organizations, and the National Urban League – to name only a few. Today, modern civil rights movements for racial justice and equality have an online division. They include a younger generation of black bloggers and activists who collectively refer to themselves as the Afrospear.
African-American civil rights bloggers do not always receive the same amount of media coverage as other online activists. But they are an influential group nonetheless. For example, in 2006, when a group of black teenagers were charged with attempted murder for the beating of a white student in Jena, Louisiana, bloggers helped coordinate a protest that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators, and over a hundred thousand dollars in legal defense fees.
“As activists, we can be so much more effective now,” said Eddie Griffin in a Chicago Tribune article , a former Black Panther and now Afrospear member. “And we’ve learned some things over the years in the art of communication.”
African-American online activism is but one example of the different civil rights movements that now utilize the Web. Numerous groups have online presences, either to illustrate the history of the civil rights struggle in America, or to advocate for new reforms.