This dissertation is an empirical study of the civil rights movement and of groups opposed to certain goals of the civil fights movement in San Francisco, California.

The study of the civil rights movement, based largely on interviews with civil rights activists, deals mainly with the causes and consequences of moderation and militancy in the movement. Chapter 2 reports on the structuring of attitudes along a moderate-militant dimension and examines explanations about the sources of militancy. Age, disaffiliation, and group norms were all strongly related to an individual’s moderate-militant stance. Militans were more likely than moderates to view their adversaries as holding views opposite their own and as holding extremist views. No relationship between an individual’s moderate-militant stance and his preference for "welfare" or "status" goals was found.

The study of the members of the groups opposed to some of the goals of the civil rights movement indicated that (1 ) the opposition to the movement was highly frag­mented and issue-specific;​ and (2) that attitudes on civil rights issues, while associated with rather stable psychological and political variables, were also related to cognitive factors that appear to be amenable to change.