A Model for the World: The Movement's Global Influence

The US civil rights movement borrowed from abroad and inspired others in turn. King and Bayard Rustin studied Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent campaigns in India, and King visited India in 1959.

In the United States, the movement's methods shaped campaigns by Mexican American farmworkers, including the Delano grape strike begun in 1965 by Filipino American workers and joined by the union of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, as well as later movements for women's and disability rights, such as the 1977 sit-in that won enforcement of rules banning disability discrimination. In 1965 Australian students led by Charles Perkins, an Aboriginal activist, toured rural towns in a 'Freedom Ride' modelled on the American one.

In Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, founded in 1967, adopted marches and the song 'We Shall Overcome' to protest discrimination in housing, jobs and voting. These connections show how ideas, tactics and songs travel across borders.