251 Figure 14-5. Martin Luther King (1968) by Ben Shahn. National Portrait Gallery. SCLC Fundraising Poster Depicting Martin Luther King, Jr.: Shortly after King’s death, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference used this poster—issued in an edition of 100— for a fundraising drive. The portrait was based on a drawing by Ben Shahn, commissioned for Time magazine’s March 19, 1965 cover. Time’s publisher noted that Shahn, “as famed in his own medium of protest as King is in his,” greatly admired the civil rights leader and felt that King had “moved more people by his oratory” than anyone else. After the artist’s friend Stefan Martin made a wood engraving based on the drawing, Shahn authorized its use in support of various causes. This 1968 poster included two additions to the portrait: the orange seal or artist’s “chop” that Shahn had made in Japan, incorporating the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and an excerpt from King’s famous “mountaintop” speech in the artist’s own distinctive lettering. Ku Klux Klan’s Use of Religion Similarly to the arguments used by earlier proponents of slavery, many segregationists used Christianity to justify racism and racial violence. The KKK remains the most illustrative example of this trend. A religious tone was present in the KKK’s activities from the beginning. Historian Brian Farmer estimates that during the period of the Second Klan (1915–1944), two-thirds of the national KKK lecturers were Protestant ministers. Religion was a major selling point for the organization. Klansmen embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white
252 supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of U.S. democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. The 1950s–’60s KKK drew on those earlier symbols and ideologies. Beginning in the 1950s, individual KKK groups in Birmingham, by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods, began to resist social change and blacks’ efforts to improve their lives. There were so many bombings in Birmingham of blacks’ homes by KKK groups in the 1950s that the city was sometimes referred to as “Bombingham.” During the tenure of Bull Connor as police commissioner in the city, KKK groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham, Connor gave KKK members 15 minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack. When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government established effective intervention. In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, KKK members forged alliances with governors’ administrations. In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of civil rights activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly against individuals. Continuing disfranchisement of African Americans across the south meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all white.
253 14.3: Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a U.S. clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American Civil Rights Movement. Overview Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 to April 4, 1968) was a U.S. clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his practice of nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. Later in his career, King’s message highlighted more radical social justice questions, which alienated many of his liberal allies. Figure 14-5. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; President Lyndon Johnson in background. By Yoichi Okamoto, Washington, DC, March 18, 1966 Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, National Archives and Records Administration. Early Life King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., and Alberta Williams King. Growing up in Atlanta, he attended Booker T. Washington High School. As a teenager, he was already known for his public speaking ability, joined the school’s
254 debate team, and became the youngest assistant manager of a newspaper delivery station for the Atlanta Journal at age 13. A precocious student, he skipped both the ninth and the twelfth grades of high school. It was during King’s junior year that Morehouse College announced it would accept any high school juniors who could pass its entrance exam. At that time, most of the students had abandoned their studies to participate in World War II. Because of this, the school became desperate to fill in classrooms. At age 15, King passed the exam and entered Morehouse. The summer before his last year at Morehouse, in 1947, an eighteen-year-old King made the choice to enter the ministry. In 1948, King graduated from Morehouse with a B.A. in sociology, and enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, from which he graduated with a B.Div. in 1951. In 1953, he married Coretta Scott on the lawn of her parents’ house in her hometown of Heiberger, Alabama. They became the parents of four children. During their marriage, King limited Coretta’s role in the Civil Rights Movement, expecting her to be a housewife and mother. In 1954, he became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and a year later, received his Ph.D. in systematic theology from Boston University. However, an academic inquiry concluded in October 1991 that portions of his dissertation had been plagiarized and he had acted improperly. National Prominence King’s first involvement in the Civil Rights Movement that attracted national attention was his leadership over the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. In 1957, King, Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and other civil rights activists founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The group was created to harness the moral authority and organizing power of black churches to conduct non-violent protests in pursuit of civil rights reform. King led the SCLC until his death. In December 1961, King and the SCLC became involved in the Albany Movement—a desegregation coalition formed in Albany, Georgia. The movement mobilized thousands of citizens for a broad-front nonviolent attack on every aspect of segregation within the city, and attracted nationwide attention. After nearly a year of intense activism with few tangible results, the movement began to deteriorate. King requested a halt to all demonstrations and a “Day of Penance” to promote nonviolence and maintain the moral high ground. Divisions within the black community and the canny, low-key response by local government defeated efforts. Though the Albany effort proved a key lesson in tactics for Dr. King and the national civil rights movement, the national media was highly critical of his role in the defeat, and the SCLC’s lack of results contributed to a growing gap between the organization and the more radical SNCC. After Albany, King sought to choose engagements for the SCLC in which he could control the circumstances, rather than entering into pre-existing situations. In April 1963, the SCLC initiated a campaign against racial segregation and economic injustice in Birmingham, Alabama. The campaign used nonviolent but intentionally confrontational tactics, developed in part by Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker. Black Americans in Birmingham, organizing with
255 the SCLC, occupied public spaces with marches and sit-ins, openly violating unjust laws. King was arrested and jailed early in the campaign—his 13th arrest of 29. From his cell, he composed the now-famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which responded to calls for him to discontinue his nonviolent protests and instead rely on the court system to bring about social change. King, representing the SCLC, was among the leaders of the “Big Six” civil rights organizations instrumental in the organization of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which took place on August 28, 1963. Originally, the march was conceived as a very public opportunity to dramatize the desperate condition of African Americans in the southern United States and present organizers’ concerns and grievances directly to the seat of power in the nation’s capital. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington, D.C.’s history. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech there electrified the crowd. On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolence. In the following years leading up to his death, he expanded his focus to include poverty and the Vietnam War—alienating many of his liberal allies, particularly with a 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam.” The speech reflected King’s evolving political advocacy in his later years. He frequently spoke of the need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the nation, and expressed his opposition to the war and his desire to see redistribution of resources to correct racial and economic injustice. He guarded his language in public to avoid being linked to communism by his enemies, but in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism. In 1968, King and the SCLC organized the “Poor People’s Campaign” to address issues of economic justice. King traveled the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an “economic bill of rights” for poor Americans. King and the SCLC called on the government to invest in rebuilding U.S. cities. The Poor People’s Campaign was controversial even within the Civil Rights Movement. Assassination and Legacy On March 29, 1968, King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of black sanitary public works employees, who had been on strike for 17 days, in an effort to attain higher wages and ensure fairer treatment. While standing on the second floor balcony of a motel, King was shot by escaped convict James Earl Ray. One hour later, King was pronounced dead at St Joseph’s hospital. King’s main legacy was securing progress on civil rights in the U.S. Just days after King’s assassination, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act, prohibited discrimination in housing and housing-related transactions on the basis of race, religion, or national origin (later expanded to include sex, familial status, and disability). This legislation was seen as a tribute to King’s struggle in his final
256 years to combat residential discrimination in the United States. King’s legacy in the United States, and internationally, continues to be that of a human rights icon. Influences and Political Stances As a Christian minister, King’s main influence was the Christian gospels, which he would almost always quote in his religious meetings, speeches at church, and in public discourses. Veteran African American civil rights activist Bayard Rustin was King’s first regular adviser on nonviolence. King was also advised by white activists Harris Wofford and Glenn Smiley. Rustin and Smiley came from the Christian pacifist tradition, and Wofford and Rustin both studied Gandhi’s teachings. In 1959, King, inspired by Gandhi’s success with non-violent activism, visited Gandhi’s birthplace in India. This trip profoundly affected King, deepening his understanding of non-violent resistance and reinforcing his commitment to the U.S. struggle for civil rights. As the leader of the SCLC, King maintained a policy of not publicly endorsing a U.S. political party or candidate. King did praise Senator Paul Douglas (D-Ill.) as being the “greatest of all senators” because of his fierce advocacy for civil rights causes over the years, but critiqued both parties’ performances on promoting racial equality. He supported the ideals of democratic socialism, although he was reluctant to speak directly of this support because of the anticommunist sentiment arising throughout the U.S. at the time, and the association of socialism with communism. King believed that capitalism could not adequately provide the basic necessities of many Americans, particularly the African American community. 14.4: Women of the Civil Rights Movement While their names all too often go unrecognized, many women were an integral part of the advancements made during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Among many others, key leaders of the movement included Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, Dorothy Height, and Viola Liuzzo. Fannie Lou Hamer Fannie Lou Hamer was an American voting rights activist, civil rights leader, and philanthropist. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
257 On August 31 of 1962, Hamer traveled on a rented bus with other activists to Indianola, Mississippi, to register to vote. In what would become a signature trait of Hamer’s activist career, she began singing Christian hymns, such as “Go Tell It on the Mountain” and “This Little Light of Mine”, to the group in order to bolster their resolve. The hymns also reflected Hamer’s belief that the civil rights struggle was a deeply spiritual one. That same day, upon Hamer’s return to her plantation, she was fired by her boss, who had warned her against trying to register to vote. Mississippi Freedom Summer On June 9, 1963, Hamer was arrested on false charges along with other activists and nearly beaten to death by police in the cell. Though the incident had profound physical and psychological effects, Hamer returned to Mississippi to organize voter registration drives, including the “Freedom Ballot Campaign,” a mock election, in 1963, and the Freedom Summer initiative in 1964. She was known to the volunteers of Freedom Summer — most of whom were young, white, and from northern states — as a motherly figure who believed that the civil rights effort should be multi-racial in nature. In addition to her Northern guests, Hamer played host to Tuskegee University student activists Sammy Younge Jr. and Wendell Paris. Younge and Paris grew to become profound activists and organizers under Hamer’s tutelage. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or “Freedom Democrats” for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi’s all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention, which failed to represent all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair. The Freedom Democrats’ efforts drew national attention to the plight of blacks in Mississippi and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for reelection. Their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention’s decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states’ electoral votes. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as “that illiterate woman.”
258 Figure 14-6. Fannie Lou Hamer, 1964: Fannie Lou Hamer was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964, and later became the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Library of Congress. In 1964 and 1965 Hamer ran for Congress, but failed to win. Hamer continued to work on other projects, including grassroots-level Head Start programs, the Freedom Farm Cooperative in Sunflower County, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. Hamer died of complications from hypertension and breast cancer on March 14, 1977, aged 59. Her tombstone is engraved with one of her famous quotes: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Ella Baker Grassroots civil rights activist Ella Baker was a largely behind-the-scenes organizer whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders and mentored many emerging activists of the time, such as Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Rosa Parks, and Bob Moses. She was a critic of professionalized, charismatic leadership and a promoter of grassroots organizing and radical democracy. Baker instead pushed for a “participatory democracy” that built on the grassroots campaigns of active citizens instead of deferring to the leadership of educated elites and experts. As a result of her actions and direct organizing of students on campus at Shaw University, in April of 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed to carry the battle forward. During the summer of 1964, Baker worked together with Hamer and Robert Parris Moses to formally organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party as an alternative to the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party.
259 Figure 14-7. Ella Baker: Ella Baker was an integral activist in the Civil Rights movement, championing the idea of participatory democracy. Image source unknown. Daisy Bates Daisy Bates was an American civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. In 1952, Daisy Bates was elected president of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP branches. She became President of the Arkansas Conference of NAACP Branches in 1952 at the age of 38. She remained active and was on the National Board of the NAACP until 1970. Due to her position in NAACP, Bates’ life was threatened much of time. In this role, Bates became deeply involved in the issue of desegregation in education. Bates and her husband published a local black newspaper, the Arkansas State Press, which publicized violations of the Supreme Court’s desegregation rulings. The plan for desegregating the schools of Little Rock was to be implemented in three phases, starting first with the senior and junior high schools; then, only after the successful integration of senior and junior schools, the elementary schools would be integrated. After two years and still no progress, a suit was filed against the Little Rock School District in 1956. The court ordered the School Board to integrate the schools as of September 1957. As the leader of NAACP branch in Arkansas, Bates guided and advised the nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine, who were to integrate the previously all-white Little Rock Central High School in 1957. The students’ attempts to enroll provoked a confrontation with Governor Orval Faubus, who called the National Guard to prevent their entry. The guard only let the white students enter the gate; meanwhile, white mobs gathered to harass and threaten the black students. Bates used her organizational skills to plan a way for the nine students to get into Central High, speaking with parents and using ministers to escort the children. Nevertheless, the chaos at Central High School caused superintendent Virgil Blossom to dismiss school that first day of desegregation, and the crowds dispersed. U.S. President Dwight D.
260 Eisenhower intervened by federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and dispatching the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure that the court orders were enforced. The troops maintained order, and desegregation proceeded. In the 1958-59 school year, however, public schools in Little Rock were closed in another attempt to roll back desegregation. That period is known as “The Lost Year” in Arkansas. Dorothy Height Dorothy Irene Height was an American administrator, educator, and civil rights and women’s rights activist specifically focused on the issues of African-American women, including unemployment, illiteracy, and voter awareness. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957-1997, and she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi,” which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding. Height was also a founding member of the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Height encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African-American women to positions in government. In the mid-1960s, she wrote a column called “A Woman’s Word” for the weekly African-American newspaper the New York Amsterdam News. Height served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. In 1974, she was named the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published the Belmont Report, a response to the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study and an international ethical touchstone for researchers to this day. In 1990, Height, along with 15 other African Americans, formed the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom.
261 Figure 14-8. Dr. Dorothy Height: Height was the president of the National Council of Negro Women from 1957-1997. Image source unknown. Viola Liuzzo Viola Liuzzo was a Unitarian Universalist civil rights activist from Michigan. In March of 1965, Liuzzo, then a housewife and mother of 5 with a history of local activism, heeded the call of Martin Luther King, Jr. and traveled from Detroit, Michigan to Selma, Alabama in the wake of the Bloody Sunday attempt at marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Liuzzo participated as a white ally in the successful Selma to Montgomery marches and helped with coordination and logistics. Driving back from a trip shuttling fellow activists to the Montgomery airport, she was shot dead by members of the Ku Klux Klan. She was 39 years old. In addition to other honors, Liuzzo’s name is today inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama created by Maya Lin. 14.5: Sit-In and Freedom Rides Sit-ins and Freedom Rides were nonviolent civil rights actions used to challenge segregation and racial discrimination. Sit-Ins During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, students and other activists would “sit-in” at whites-only locations. In the first sit-ins, students would sit at whites-only lunch counters and refuse to leave until they had been served. Using this strategy of nonviolent resistance, the movement spread across the South. Local authorities often used brutal force and violence to physically remove and restrain the activists. Greensboro Sit-Ins The Greensboro sit-ins were a series of nonviolent protests that led to the Woolworth’s department store chain reversing its policy of racial segregation in the southern United States. While these were not the first sit-ins, they were instrumental in increasing national awareness at a crucial period in U.S. history. This series of sit-ins started at the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s store. On February 1, 1960, four students from the Agricultural and Technical College of North Carolina—Ezell Blair, Jr., Joseph McNeil, David Richmond, and Franklin McCain—sat down at the segregated lunch counter to protest Woolworth’s policy of excluding African Americans. They had specifically chosen Woolworth’s because it was a national chain, and was therefore
262 believed to be especially vulnerable to negative publicity. Following store policy, the lunch counter staff refused to serve the African American men at the “whites only” counter, and the store’s manager asked them to leave. On the second day of the sit-ins, more than twenty African-American students who had been recruited from other campus groups came to the store to join the sit-in. The lunch counter staff continued to refuse service. On the fourth day of the sit-ins, more than 300 people took part. Hostile whites responded with threats and taunted the students by pouring sugar and ketchup on their heads. Organizers agreed to spread the sitin protests to include the lunch counter at Greensboro’s Kress store. As early as one week after the Greensboro sit-in had begun, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own sit-ins. Demonstrations spread to towns near Greensboro, including Winston-Salem, Durham, Raleigh, and Charlotte. The sit-ins also spread to out-of-state towns such as Lexington, Kentucky, and Richmond, Virginia. Nashville’s Sit-Ins The Nashville sit-ins, which lasted from February 13 to May 10, 1960, were part of a nonviolent direct action campaign to end racial segregation at lunch counters in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The first large-scale organized sit-in in Nashville occurred on Saturday, February 13. At about 12:30 pm, 124 students, most of whom were black, walked into the downtown Woolworths, S. H. Kress, and McClellan stores and asked to be served at the lunch counters. After the staff refused to serve them, they sat in the stores for two hours and then left without incident.
263 Figure 14-9. Student sit-in leader Rodney Powell, standing, talks with two of his companions after the lunch counter at a Nashville Walgreens was closed on March 25, 1960, when the sitins started. (Photo: Jimmy Ellis / The Tennessean) Tensions mounted over the following week as sit-in demonstrations spread to other cities and race riots broke out in nearby Chattanooga. On February 27, the Nashville student activists held a fourth sit-in at the Woolworths, McClellan, and Walgreens stores. Crowds of white youths again gathered in the stores to taunt and harass the demonstrators. However, this time, police were not present. Eventually, several of the sit-in demonstrators were attacked by hecklers in the McClellan and Woolworths stores. Some were pulled from their seats and beaten, and one demonstrator was pushed down a flight of stairs. When police arrived, the white attackers fled and none were arrested. Police then ordered the demonstrators at all three locations to leave the stores. When the demonstrators refused to leave, they were arrested and loaded into police vehicles as onlookers applauded. Eighty-one students were arrested and charged with loitering and disorderly conduct. The arrests brought a surge of media coverage to the sit-in campaign, including national television news coverage, front page stories in both of Nashville’s daily newspapers, and an Associated Press story. The students generally viewed any media coverage as helpful to their cause, especially when it illustrated their commitment to nonviolence. After weeks of secret negotiations between merchants and protest leaders, an agreement was finally reached during the first week of May. According to the agreement, gradual desegregation of the lunch counters would be implemented. Nashville thus became the first major city in the South to begin desegregating its public facilities. The Movement Spreads The successful six-month-long Greensboro sit-in initiated the student phase of the African American civil rights movement and, within two months, the sit-in movement had spread to 54 cities in nine states. Within a year, more than 100 cities had desegregated at least some public accommodations in response to student-led demonstrations. The sit-ins inspired other forms of nonviolent protest intended to desegregate public spaces. “Sleep-ins” occupied motel lobbies, “read-ins” filled public libraries, and churches became the sites of “pray-ins.” Freedom Rides Students also took part in the 1961 “ freedom rides ” organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The intent of the African American and white volunteers who undertook these bus rides was to test enforcement of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Boynton v. Virginia (1960), which prohibited segregation on interstate transportation and to protest segregated waiting rooms in southern terminals. During Freedom Rides, activists traveled through the Deep South to integrate seating patterns
264 and desegregate bus terminals, including restrooms and water fountains, which proved to be a dangerous mission. From Washington to New Orleans The first Freedom Ride of the 1960s left Washington D.C. on May 4, 1961, and was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on May 17. Led by CORE Director James Farmer, 13 riders (seven black, six white) left Washington, DC, on Greyhound and Trailways buses. Their plan was to ride through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, ending in New Orleans, Louisiana where a civil rights rally was planned. Most of the Riders were from CORE and two were from SNCC; many were in their 40s and 50s. The freedom riders encountered little difficulty until they reached Rock Hill, South Carolina, where a mob severely beat John Lewis, a freedom rider who later became chairman of the SNCC. The danger increased as the riders continued through Georgia into Alabama, where one of the two buses was firebombed outside the town of Anniston. The second group continued to Birmingham, where the riders were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan as they attempted to disembark at the city bus station. The Birmingham, Alabama Police Commissioner Bull Connor and Police Sergeant Tom Cook (an avid Ku Klux Klan supporter) organized violence against the Freedom Riders with local Ku Klux Klan chapters. Freedom riders were stopped and beaten by mobs in Montgomery, leading to the dispatch of the Alabama National Guard to stop the violence. In response to the national and international attention brought on by the Freedom Rides, President Kennedy urged a “cooling off period” to avoid international embarrassment, which was ignored by riders. The remaining activists continued to Mississippi, where they were arrested when they attempted to desegregate the waiting rooms in the Jackson bus terminal. Impact of the Freedom Rides Despite being faced with severe violence, the freedom rides made an impact. In September of 1961, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) issued new policies that went into effect on November 1. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; “white” and “colored” signs came down in the terminals; racially segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms were consolidated; and the lunch counters began serving all customers, regardless of race. Freedom Summer and Voter Registration Jim Crow Barriers to Voting Some of the greatest violence during this era was aimed at those who attempted to register African Americans to vote. Though Freedom Summer failed to register many voters, it
265 significantly affected the course of the Civil Rights Movement. It helped break down decades of isolation and repression that were the foundation of the Jim Crow system. Before Freedom Summer, the national news media had paid little attention to the persecution of black voters in the Deep South and the dangers endured by black civil rights workers. When Mississippi ratified its constitution in 1890, the constitution had placed barriers to black voting with provisions such as poll taxes, residency requirements, and literacy tests. In the spring of 1962, SNCC began organizing voter registration in the Mississippi Delta area. Their efforts were met with fierce opposition from whites—arrests, beatings, shootings, arson, and murder. In addition, white employers fired blacks who tried to register to vote, and white landlords evicted them from their homes. Over the following years, the black voter registration campaign spread across the state. Selma SNCC had undertaken an ambitious voter registration program in Selma, Alabama, in 1963, but had made little headway. After local residents asked the SCLC for assistance, King came to Selma to lead several marches. On March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led a march of 600 people to walk from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. Only six blocks into the march, state troopers and local law enforcement, some mounted on horseback, attacked the peaceful demonstrators. The national broadcast of the lawmen attacking unresisting marchers provoked a national response. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 Eight days after the first march, President Johnson delivered a televised address to support the voting rights bill he had sent to Congress. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended poll taxes, literacy tests, and other subjective voter tests that contributed to the disenfranchisement of African Americans. The act authorized Federal supervision of voter registration in states and individual voting districts where such tests were being used. Johnson reportedly told associates of his concern that by signing the bill, he had lost the support of white southern Democrats for the foreseeable future. When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, only about 100 African Americans held elective office, all in northern states of the United States. By 1989, there were more than 7,200 African Americans in office, including more than 4,800 in the South. 14.6: Black Power Black Power emphasized racial pride, the creation of political and social institutions against oppression, and advancement of black collective interests.
266 Overview “Black Power” is a term used to refer to various ideologies associated with African Americans in the United States, emphasizing racial pride and the creation of black political and cultural institutions to nurture and promote black collective interests and advance black values. Black Power expresses a range of political goals, from defense against racial oppression to the establishment of social institutions and a self-sufficient economy. Background The episodes of violence that accompanied Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder were but the latest in a string of urban protests since the mid-1960s. Between 1964 and 1968, there were 329 protests in 257 cities across the nation. In 1965, a traffic stop set in motion a chain of events that culminated in violence in Watts, an African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles. Thousands of businesses were destroyed and by the time the violence ended, 34 people were dead, most of them African Americans killed by the Los Angeles police and the National Guard. Frustration and anger lay at the heart of these protests. Despite the programs of the Great Society, essentials such as good healthcare, job opportunities, and safe housing were abysmally lacking in urban African-American neighborhoods in cities throughout the country, including in the North and West, where discrimination was less overt but just as crippling. In the eyes of many protesters, the federal government either could not or would not end their suffering, and most existing civil rights groups and their leaders had been unable to achieve significant results toward racial justice and equality. Disillusioned, many African Americans turned to those with more radical ideas about how best to obtain equality and justice. Stokely Carmichael Within the chorus of voices calling for integration and legal equality were many that more stridently demanded empowerment and thus supported Black Power. Black Power meant a variety of things. One of the most famous users of the term was Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who later changed his name to Kwame Ture. For Carmichael, Black Power was the power of African Americans to unite as a political force and create their own institutions apart from white-dominated ones, an idea first suggested in the 1920s by political leader and orator Marcus Garvey. Like Garvey, Carmichael became an advocate of black separatism, arguing that African Americans should live apart from whites and solve their problems for themselves. In keeping with this philosophy, Carmichael expelled SNCC’s white members. In 1966, Carmichael began urging AfricanAmerican communities to confront the Ku Klux Klan armed and ready for battle; he felt it was the only way to ever rid the communities of the terror caused by the Klan. He left SNCC in 1967 and later joined the Black Panthers.
267 Malcolm X Long before Carmichael began to call for separatism, the Nation of Islam, founded in 1930, had advocated the same thing. In the 1960s, its most famous member was Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little. The Nation of Islam advocated the separation of white Americans and African Americans because of a belief that African Americans could not thrive in an atmosphere of white racism. In a 1963 interview, Malcolm X, discussing the teachings of the head of the Nation of Islam in America, Elijah Muhammad, referred to white people as “devils” more than a dozen times. Rejecting the nonviolent strategy of other civil rights activists, he maintained that violence in the face of violence was appropriate. In 1964, after a trip to Africa, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam to found the Organization of Afro-American Unity with the goal of achieving freedom, justice, and equality “by any means necessary.” His views regarding black-white relations changed somewhat thereafter, but he remained fiercely committed to the cause of African-American empowerment. On February 21, 1965, he was killed by members of the Nation of Islam. Stokely Carmichael later recalled that Malcolm X had provided an intellectual basis for Black Nationalism and given legitimacy to the use of violence in achieving the goals of Black Power. Differing Approaches This move toward Black Power and self-defense as a means of obtaining African-American civil rights marked a change from previous nonviolent actions. Martin Luther King, Jr. was not comfortable with the “Black Power” slogan, which sounded too much like black nationalism to him. SNCC activists, in the meantime, began embracing the “right to self-defense” in response to attacks from white authorities and disagreed with King for continuing to advocate nonviolence. When King was murdered in 1968, Stokely Carmichael stated that whites murdered the one person who would prevent rampant rioting, and that blacks would burn every major city to the ground. Racial riots broke out in the black community in cities from Boston to San Francisco following King’s death. As a result, the white population fled from many areas in these cities and city crews were often hesitant to enter affected areas, leaving blacks in dilapidated cities. The Black Power movement was given a stage on live, international television on October of 1968. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, while being awarded the gold and bronze medals at the 1968 Summer Olympics, donned human rights badges and each raised a black-gloved Black Power salute during their podium ceremony. Smith and Carlos were immediately ejected from the games by the United States Olympic Committee, and the International Olympic Committee would later issue a permanent lifetime ban for the two. The self-empowerment philosophy of Black Power influenced mainstream civil rights groups such as the National Economic Growth Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO), which sold bonds
268 and operated a clothing factory and construction company in New York, and the Opportunities Industrialization Center in Philadelphia, which provided job training and placement—by 1969, it had branches in seventy cities. Figure 14-10. Black Power salute. Image showing John Carlos and Tommie Smith raising their black, gloved fists in protest after receiving their Olympic medals. Wikipedia. The Black Power salute was a noted human rights protest and one of the most overtly political statements in the 110-year history of the modern Olympic Games. African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos performed their Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City while receiving their medals and were subsequently ejected from the games. The Black Panther Party Black Power was made most public by the Black Panther Party, which was founded by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California, in 1966. This group followed the ideology of Malcolm X using a “by-any-means necessary” approach to stopping inequality. Unlike Carmichael and the Nation of Islam, most Black Power advocates did not believe African Americans needed to separate themselves from white society. The Black Panther Party believed African Americans were as much the victims of capitalism as of white racism. Accordingly, the group espoused Marxist teachings and called for jobs, housing, and education, as well as protection from police brutality and exemption from military service in their Ten Point Program.
269 Their militant attitude and advocacy of armed self-defense attracted many young men but also led to many encounters with the police, which sometimes included arrests and even shootouts, such as those that took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Carbondale, Illinois. The organization’s official newspaper, The Black Panther, was first circulated in 1967. That same year, the Black Panther Party marched on the California State Capitol in Sacramento in protest of a selective ban on weapons. By 1968, the party had expanded into many cities throughout the United States. Peak membership was near 10,000 by 1969, and their newspaper had a circulation of 250,000. Gaining national prominence, the Black Panther Party became an icon of the counterculture of the 1960s. They instituted a variety of community social programs designed to alleviate poverty, improve healthcare among inner city black communities, and soften the Party’s public image. The Black Panther Party’s most widely known programs were its Free Breakfast for Children program and its armed citizens ‘ patrols of the streets of African-American neighborhoods to protect residents from police brutality. However, the group’s political goals were often overshadowed by their confrontational, militant, and violent tactics against police. Figure 14-11. Black Panther Party national chairman Bobby Seale (left) and defense minister Huey Newton. AP. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica. Impact of the Black Power Movement on African-American Identity White fear and racialized backlash to groups such as the Black Panthers led to a great deal of biased media coverage, and the Black Power movement gained a negative and militant reputation. Many people felt that this movement of “insurrection” would soon serve to cause
270 discord and disharmony through the entire country, even though discord and disharmony had existed for African Americans since their early subjugation in the Americas. Though Black Power at the most basic level refers to a political movement, Black Power was also part of a much larger process of cultural change. The 1960s composed a decade not only of Black Power but also of Black Pride. African- American abolitionist John S. Rock had coined the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” in 1858, but in the 1960s, it became an important part of efforts within the African- American community to raise self-esteem and encourage pride in African ancestry. Black Pride urged African Americans to reclaim their African heritage and, to promote group solidarity, to substitute African and African-inspired cultural practices, such as handshakes, hairstyles, and dress, for white practices. The movement uplifted the black community as a whole by cultivating feelings of racial solidarity, often in opposition to the world of white Americans—a world that had oppressed blacks for generations. Through the movement, blacks came to understand themselves and their culture by exploring and debating the question “who are we?” in order to establish unified and viable identities. The respect and attention accorded to African-American history and culture in both formal and informal settings today is largely a product of the movement for Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s.
271 READING MODULE 15: African Americans Post Civil Rights Movement Module 15 Overview At the end of Civil Rights, some have argued that America has moved into a Post-Racial time period. However, from the experiences within the African American community, although there have been some great success, there have be continuous struggles against inequity in education, poverty, and mass incarceration. With the first Black president of the United States, will our future make a shift and a change? Learning Outcomes This module addresses the following Course Learning Outcomes listed in the Syllabus for this course: • To provide students with a general understanding of the history of African Americans within the context of American History. • To motivate students to become interested and active in African American history by comparing current events with historical information.(1) Additional learning outcomes associated with this module are: • The student will be able to discuss the Post Civil Rights Era and African Americans in the different economic stratus. • The student will be able to describe the impact of police brutality, mass incarceration, and the murder of unarmed Black men. • The student will be able to analyze the gains and limitations of the Obama administration. Module Objectives Upon completion of this module, the student will be able to: Use primary historical resources to analyze the Post Civil Rights time period and the complexity it entails for African Americans living in the United States during the time period and today.
272 15.1: Continuing Challenges The civil rights movement for African Americans did not end with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. For the last fifty years, the African American community has faced challenges related to both past and current discrimination; progress on both fronts remains slow, uneven, and often frustrating. Legacies of the de jure segregation of the past remain in much of the United States. Many African Americans still live in predominantly black neighborhoods where their ancestors were forced by laws and housing covenants to live. Even those who live in the suburbs, once largely white, tend to live in suburbs that are mostly black. Some two million African American young people attend schools whose student body is composed almost entirely of students of color. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, efforts to tackle these problems were stymied by largescale public opposition, not just in the South but across the nation. Attempts to integrate public schools through the use of busing—transporting students from one segregated neighborhood to another to achieve more racially balanced schools—were particularly unpopular and helped contribute to “white flight” from cities to the suburbs. This white flight has created de facto segregation, a form of segregation that results from the choices of individuals to live in segregated communities without government action or support. Today, a lack of high-paying jobs in many urban areas, combined with persistent racism, has trapped many African Americans in poor neighborhoods. While the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created opportunities for members of the black middle class to advance economically and socially, and to live in the same neighborhoods as the white middle class did, their departure left many black neighborhoods mired in poverty and without the strong community ties that existed during the era of legal segregation. Many of these neighborhoods also suffered from high rates of crime and violence. Police also appear, consciously or subconsciously, to engage in racial profiling: singling out blacks (and Latinos) for greater attention than members of other racial and ethnic groups, as FBI director James B. Comey has admitted. When incidents of real or perceived injustice arise, as recently occurred after a series of deaths of young black men at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri; Staten Island, New York; and Baltimore, Maryland, many African Americans turn to the streets to protest because they believe that politicians—white and black alike—fail to pay sufficient attention to these problems.
273 The most serious concerns of the black community today appear to revolve around poverty resulting from the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. While the public mood may have shifted toward greater concern about economic inequality in the United States, substantial policy changes to immediately improve the economic standing of African Americans in general have not followed, that is, if government-based policies and solutions are the answer. The Obama administration recently proposed new rules under the Fair Housing Act that may, in time, lead to more integrated communities in the future. Meanwhile, grassroots movements to improve neighborhoods and local schools have taken root in many black communities across America, and perhaps in those movements is the hope for greater future progress. LICENSES AND ATTRIBUTIONS CC LICENSED CONTENT, SHARED PREVIOUSLY • American Government. Authored by: OpenStax. Provided by: OpenStax; Rice University. Located at: https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:Y1CfqFju@5/Preface (Links to an external site.). License: CC BY: Attribution (Links to an external site.). License Terms: Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/9e28f580-0d1b-4d72-8795-c48329947ac2@1. 15.2: The Obama Administration Introduction The Presidency of Barack Obama began on January 20, 2009, when he became the 44th President of the United States. Obama was a United States Senator from Illinois at the time of his victory over Arizona Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. Barack Obama is the first African-American president of the United States, as well as the first to be born in Hawaii. He was elected to a second term on November 6, 2012. Obama came to office during a global financial recession following the financial crisis of 2008. His major policy initiatives have included changes in tax policies, legislation to reform the United States health care industry, foreign policy initiatives, and the phasing out of the detention of prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In October of 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
274 Economic Policies Upon entering office, Obama planned to center his attention on handling the global financial crisis. Even before his inauguration, he lobbied Congress to pass an economic stimulus bill, which became the top priority during his first month in office. On February 17, 2009, Obama signed into law a $787 billion plan that included spending for health care, infrastructure, and education, as well as various tax breaks, incentives, and direct assistance to individuals. The tax provisions of the law reduced taxes for 98% of taxpayers, bringing tax rates to their lowest levels in 60 years. As part of the 2010 budget proposal, the Obama administration has proposed additional measures to attempt to stabilize the economy, including a $2–3 trillion measure aimed at stabilizing the financial system and freeing up credit. The program includes up to $1 trillion to buy toxic bank assets, an additional $1 trillion to expand a federal consumer loan program, and the $350 billion left in the Troubled Assets Relief Program. The plan also includes $50 billion intended to slow the wave of mortgage foreclosures. The 2011 budget includes a three-year freeze on discretionary spending, proposes several program cancellations, and raises taxes on high income earners to bring down deficits during the economic recovery. Health Care Once the economic stimulus bill was enacted, health care reform became Obama’s top domestic priority. On July 14, 2009, House Democratic leaders introduced a 1,000-page plan for overhauling the U.S. health care system, which Obama wanted Congress to approve by the end of the year. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the bill into law. Immediately following the bill’s passage, the House voted in favor of a reconciliation measure to make significant changes and corrections to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was passed by both houses with two minor alterations on March 25, 2010, and signed into law on March 30, 2010. The goals of this Act (which came to be know as Obamacare) were to provide all Americans with access to affordable health insurance, to require that everyone in the United States had some form of health insurance, and to lower the costs of healthcare. LGBTQ Rights On December 22, 2010, Obama signed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act. The “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of 1993 had prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the United States Armed Forces, and repealing this policy had been a key campaign promise Obama had made during the 2008 presidential campaign. During Barack Obama’s second term in office, courts began to counter efforts by conservatives to outlaw same-sex marriage. A series of decisions declared nine states’ prohibitions against same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court rejected an attempt to overturn a federal court ruling to that effect in California in June 2013. Shortly thereafter, the
275 Supreme Court also ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 was unconstitutional, because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These decisions seem to allow legal challenges in all the states that persist in trying to block same-sex unions. Foreign Policy In his first week in office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492 suspending all the ongoing proceedings of Guantanamo military commission and ordering the detention facility to be shut down within the year. He also signed Executive Order 13491, which required the Army Field Manual be used as a guide for interrogations of supposed terrorists and banned torture and other coercive techniques, such as waterboarding. Obama declared his plan for ending the Iraq War on February 27, 2009 in a speech at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina before an audience of Marines stationed there. According to the president, combat troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by August 2010, leaving a contingent of up to 50,000 servicepeople to continue advisory, training, and counterterrorism operations until as late as the end of 2011. In May of 2014, Obama announced that, for the most part, U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan were over. Although a residual force of 9,800 soldiers will remain to continue training the Afghan army, by 2016, all U.S. troops will have left the country, except for a small number to defend U.S. diplomatic posts. Starting with information received in July of 2010, intelligence developed by the CIA over the next several months determined what they believed to be the location of Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda and the person behind the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, in a large compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. On May 1, 2011, the U.S. initiated Operation Neptune’s Spear, resulting in the death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers, computer drives, and disks from the compound. Bin Laden’s body was identified through DNA testing and buried at sea several hours later.
276 Figure 15-1. U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune's Spear, a mission against Osama bin Laden, in one of the conference rooms of the Situation Room Figure 15-1. Obama and Biden await updates on bin Laden by Pete Souza Assassination of Osama Bin Laden: U.S. President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on Operation Neptune’s Spear, a mission against Osama bin Laden, in one of the conference rooms of the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011. 15.3: Racial Tensions and Black Lives Matter Originating in 2013 in response to police violence, the Black Lives Matter movement has raised awareness of institutionalized racism in the United States. The Rise of Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (BLM) is an activist movement originating in the African-American community that campaigns against violence and institutionalized racism toward black people in the United States. BLM regularly organizes protests around the deaths of black people in killings by law enforcement officers, as well as broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United States criminal justice system. The movement began in 2013 with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. Black Lives Matter became nationally recognized for its street demonstrations
277 following the 2014 police shooting deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City. Events 2012-Present Taryvon Martin and the Acquittal of George Zimmerman Trayvon Benjamin Martin was an African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who, at 17 years old, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, in Sanford, Florida. On the evening of February 26, 2012, Martin had gone to a convenience store and purchased candy and a canned drink. As Martin returned from the store, he walked through a neighborhood that had been victimized by robberies several times that year. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, spotted him and called the Sanford Police to report him for suspicious behavior. Moments later, Martin was shot in the chest. Zimmerman was not charged at the time of the shooting by the Sanford Police, who said that there was no evidence to refute his claim of self-defense and that Florida’s stand your ground law prohibited law-enforcement officials from arresting or charging him. After national media focused on the tragedy, Zimmerman was eventually charged and tried in Martin’s death. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of second-degree murder and of manslaughter in July 2013. Michael Brown and Ferguson Michael Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was shot and killed on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, by Darren Wilson, a 28-year-old white Ferguson police officer. The disputed circumstances of the shooting of the unarmed man sparked existing tensions in the predominantly black city, where protests and civil unrest erupted. The events received considerable attention in the U.S. and elsewhere, attracted protesters from outside the region, and sparked a vigorous debate in the United States about the relationship between law enforcement officers and African Americans, the militarization of the police, and the Use of Force Doctrine in Missouri and nationwide. Continued activism expanded the issues to include modern-day debtors prisons, for-profit policing, and school segregation. As the details of the original shooting emerged, police established curfews and deployed riot squads to maintain order. Peaceful protests were met with police militarization, and some areas of the city turned violent. The unrest continued on November 24, 2014, after a grand jury did not indict Officer Wilson. Eric Garner On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American man, was killed in Staten Island, New York City, after a New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer put him in what has been described as a chokehold for about 15 to 19 seconds while arresting him for allegedly selling cigarettes, which Garner had denied. The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office
278 attributed Garner’s death to a combination of a chokehold, compression of his chest, and poor health. NYPD policy prohibits the use of chokeholds, and video shows Garner repeatedly telling the officer “I can’t breathe” before he lost consciousness. The medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide. On December 3, 2014, the Richmond County grand jury decided not to indict Officer Pantaleo, who had performed the chokehold. On that day, the United States Department of Justice announced it would conduct an independent investigation. The event stirred public protests and rallies, with charges of police brutality made by protesters. By December 28, 2014, at least 50 demonstrations had been held nationwide specifically for Garner, while hundreds of demonstrations against general police brutality counted Garner as a focal point. On July 13, 2015, an out-of-court settlement was announced in which the City of New York would pay the Garner family $5.9 million. Freddie Gray and Baltimore Protests On April 12, 2015, Baltimore Police Department officers arrested Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African American resident of Baltimore, Maryland, for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade. Gray sustained heavy injuries to his neck and spine while in transport in a police vehicle and fell into a coma. On April 18, 2015, the residents of Baltimore protested in front of the Western district police station. Gray died the following day, April 19, 2015, a week after the arrest. On April 21, 2015, pending an investigation of the incident, six Baltimore police officers were suspended with pay. Further protests were organized after Gray’s death became public knowledge, amid the police department’s continuing inability to adequately or consistently explain the events following the arrest and the injuries. Spontaneous protests started after the funeral service, and civil unrest continued with at least 250 people arrested, at least 20 police officers injured, 285 to 350 businesses damaged, 60 structure fires, thousands of police and Maryland National Guard troops deployed, and a state of emergency declared in the city limits of Baltimore. On May 1, 2015, Gray’s death was ruled to be a homicide, and legal charges were issued against the six officers involved in the incident, including that of second-degree murder. The state of emergency was lifted on May 6. In September 2015, it was decided that there would be separate trials for the accused officers. The first trial against Officer William Porter ended in mistrial in December 2015. Officer Edward Nero subsequently opted for a bench trial and was found not guilty by Circuit Judge Barry William in May 2016. In June, Officer Caesar Goodson, who faced the most severe charges, was also acquitted by Williams by means of a bench trial. Organizing Against Violence The Black Lives Matter movement was co-founded by three black queer women who are active community organizers: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. BLM claims inspiration
279 from the African-American Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power movement, the 1980s Black feminist movement, Pan-Africanism, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Hip hop, LGBTQ social movements, and Occupy Wall Street. Garza, Cullors and Tometi met through “Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity” (BOLD), a national organization that trains community organizers. They began to question how they were going to respond to the devaluation of black lives after Zimmerman’s acquittal. Garza wrote a Facebook post titled “A Love Note to Black People” in which she wrote: “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.” Cullors replied: “#BlackLivesMatter.” Tometi then added her support, and Black Lives Matter was born as an online campaign. Figure 15-2. Alicia Garza: Alicia Garza, American activist and co-founder of Black Lives Matter is licensed CC BY 3.0. The Movement Moment - panel at CitizenUCon16 In August of 2014, BLM members organized their first in-person national protest in the form of a “Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride” to Ferguson, Missouri after the shooting of Michael Brown. More than 500 members descended upon Ferguson to participate in non-violent demonstrations. Of the many groups that descended on Ferguson, Black Lives Matter emerged as one of the best organized and most visible groups, becoming nationally recognized as symbolic of the emerging movement. The overall Black Lives Matter movement is a decentralized network and has no formal hierarchy or structure. Since the Ferguson protests, participants in the movement have demonstrated against the deaths of numerous other African Americans by police actions or while in police custody, including those of Tamir Rice, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Jonathan Ferrell, Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castille. In the summer of 2015, Black Lives Matter began
280 to publicly challenge politicians—including politicians in the 2016 United States presidential election—to state their positions on BLM issues. Common social media logo/profile/avatar for the formal Black Lives Matter organization: The Black Lives Matter movement was founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.
281 ATTRIBUTIONS Module Attributions (1) Content by Florida State College at Jacksonville is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 (2) The American Yawp is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 . (3) Park Ethnography Program African American Heritage and Ethnography by the National Park Service is in the Public Domain . (4) The American Revolution by the National Park Service is in the Public Domain . (5) U.S. History by The Independence Hall Association is licensed under CC-BY 4.0 (6) The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African: Written By Himself by Olaudah Equiano is in the Public Domain . (7) A Journal of a Voyage Made in the Hannibal of London by Thomas Phillips is in the Public Domain . (8) Prayer by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no known copyright restrictions. (9) Go Preach My Gospel by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no know copyright restrictions.
282 (10) Jesus, My God, I Know His Name by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no know copyright restrictions. (11) U.S. History by OpenStax is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (12) Boundless US History by Lumen Learning is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 (13) David Walker, Walker’s Appeal (Boston: David Walker, 1830) taken from http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html/en-en/menu.html is in the Public Domain . (14) A Memorial of William Lloyd Garrison from the City of Boston by Boston (Mass.) City Council is in the Public Domain . (15) “Felix” (Unknown) Slave Petition for Freedom (January 6. 1773) in The Appendix: or Some observations on the expediency of the petition of the Africans living in Boston… , by Lover of constitutional liberty is in the Public Domain . (16) Petition for freedom to the Massachusetts Council and the House of Representatives, January 1777 by Massachusetts Historical Societyis in the Public Domain . (17) Slow Drag Work Song by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no known copyright restrictions. (18) Long Hot Summer Day by John A. Lomax (Collector) has no known copyright restrictions.
283 (19) Sergeant A.M. Chandler of the 44th Mississippi Infantry Regiment, Co. F., and Silas Chandler, family slave, with Bowie knives, revolvers, pepper-box, shotgun, and canteen by Library of Congress is in the Public Domain . (20) Letters from Spotswood Rice are in the Public Domain. (21) Letter to President Lincoln by Hannah Johnson is in the Public Domain. (22) My Life in the South by Jacob Stroyer is in the Public Domain. (23) Letter to the Editor of the Christian Recorder (May 10. 1864) by George W. Hatton from the archives of Mother Bethel Church is in the Public Domain. (24) Black Residents of Nashville to the Union Convention by Unknown persons in Paying Freedom’s Price: A History of African Americans in the Civil War by Paul David Escott (pp 144- 146) is in the Public Domain. (25) “I Hope to Fall With My Face to the Foe” by Lewis Douglass is in the Public Domain . (26) Selections from the WPA interviews of formerly enslaved African Americans on Slavery from the Works Progress Administration is in the Public Domain. (27) Maryland Slave to the President by Annie Davis is in the Public Domain. (28) Selections from the WPA interviews of formerly enslaved African Americans on Being a Civil War Soldier from the Works Progress Administration is in the Public Domain .
284 (29) Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom by Louis Hughes is in the Public Domain. (30) Selections from the WPA interviews of formerly enslaved African Americans on Emancipation by the Works Progress Administration is in the Public Domain .