civil liberties, esp those of status equality between races or groups
We can never get civil rights in America until our human rights are first restored — Malcolm X
Civil rights are the basic freedoms and opportunities an individual can receive from society balanced with the needs of society as a whole (unlike human rights, which are vested in an individual as his or her intrinsic right). By mutual agreement they are enshrined in law. Those who disobey the law cannot exercise them. Successive struggles for civil rights in the 20th cent. have borne great leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King — Helena Kennedy