Civil rights movement: In the narrow construction, the U.S. movement to end segregation, beginning with the student lunch-counter sit-ins in the 1950s and ending with the passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. In broader construction, the ongoing human rights and liberation movements for full civil rights for African Americans and other racial, ethnic, religious, gender, ability, life-style and other minorities. One of the characteristics of this latter sense is widespread disagreement on what to include in the movement (or exclude from it).