While 2018 marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) in Northern Ireland, it also marks the fiftieth anniversary of the civil rights movement and the protests of 1968. One of the key innovations of the Agreement is that it makes issues of rights central to the broader consociational framework, with the entirety of section 6 devoted to ‘Rights, Safeguards and Equality of opportunity.’ Sarah Campbell considers the civil rights movement’s reputational trajectory since 1998, questioning why this is so, and why it is so ripe for appropriation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 21, 2024