A multitude of scholars have explored the connections between privacy and the gay and women’s rights movements. Few, if any, have seriously assessed the links between the Civil Rights movement and privacy or the links between privacy and 20th century social movements collectively. Accordingly, many legal scholars and historians argue that 20th century privacy developed as a response to concerns about the government’s implementation of behavioral prohibitions and use of invasive surveillance technologies. Yet, some scholars have observed the benefits of privacy for minorities. Professor Lisa Cook, an economic historian from Michigan State University, has “found that inventor-entrepreneurs who were negatively affected by consumers' racial prejudice, but who wished to operate in a racially diverse market, were able to do so because they could benefit from provisions for guarding sellers' anonymity.” In other words, black entrepreneurs embraced tactics of racial anonymity to sell their products. While privacy may seem a marginal gain in an era of movements that expanded equality for marginalized communities, it is argued here that privacy was foundational to these gains and the legal victories of these movements. Drawing from a wealth of court records, speeches, memoirs, and other sources, this work shows that, on pace with the development of invasive technologies, American privacy in the 20th century developed in response to burgeoning American social movements; and acknowledging the interconnected history of privacy and minorities could inspire innovative solutions to old problems.