What themes did the champions of civil rights use in their appeal?

The primary theme of the Civil Rights movement was that blacks, in specific, and minorities, in general, were human beings, no different, no better or worse, than whites. As human beings -- called on to die in times of war, called on to pay taxes, called on to do various other services -- they deserved equal social and political rights as whites. The argument was that skin color was not a disability, that it made a person neither better or worse than someone with a lighter or darker pigment.