Race and The Tradition of Black Protest
Challenging the Paradigm
 Lets discuss the making of race and
slavery
 What are the origins of Black protest?
 Until the 1660s, slavery in VA legally illdefined
 “race” derived meaning from travel/scientific
literature
 Defacto enslavement of African by European
traders
 Black efforts to escape bondage
“Race” in the Old World
 Mid-15th Century—Turning Point
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Portuguese explorations down the West African Coast (beg. 1441)
1st time black Africans arrived directly by sea from Africa.
New Dynamic
Before—Black Africans were the Muslims’ slaves – the other’s other.
Since the war against Islam was a Holy War—no justification needed.
How did the Portuguese morally defend the enslavement of black
Africans?
 Argued their capture (and enslavement) part of just war to convert
heathens.
Institutional Endorsement of “just war”
– of African slavery
The first institutional endorsement of African slavery
occurred in 1452 –


The pope granted the King of Portugal (Afonso V) the right to reduce to
“perpetual slavery” all pagans, and other infidels and enemies of Christ” in
West Africa.
In 1454, The Pope issues another Bull granting Portugal the specific right to
conquer and enslave all people south of Cape Bojador. (Cape Bojador was
the most southerly European-known point on the coast of Africa. Until
one of Henry's expeditions, was pass it, in 1434.) (the famous Treaty of
Tordesillas between Spain and Portugal in 1494)

Taken together these papal bulls did more than just grant Portuguese
exclusive rights—they signaled to the rest of Christian Europe that the
enslavement of Saharan Africans was acceptable and encouraged.

All Europeans had the RIGHT to enslave Africans on the grounds that
theirs were “civilizing” missions.
English Adoption of Racial Ideas
While there were thousands of Africans in
Portugal and Spain around 1500, they were rare
elsewhere in Europe.
Why?--England’s geographic and social distance from
the contested borderlands of Christian Europe and the
lands of African rendered slavery far less important
than in Spain and Portugal.
 Only a few Englishmen profited from direct
exploitation of their African slaves prior to 1600
The English, the slave trade and
“the Negro”
 In 1550s England began direct involvement in transporting
Africans across the Atlantic – on a very small scale.
 But by the 1570s, conflict in Europe, led to a shift, from trade to
piracy.
 English privateers employed by Queen Elizabeth to plunder
Spanish and Portuguese ships in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic.
 Slave ships seized and reinforced English familiarity with African
slavery and the slave trade.
 Just as was the case with the Portuguese and Spanish, northern
Europeans recognized that “Negro” was synonymous with
enslaveable status.
 Thus, when the term Negro was applied by Northern Europeans to
Africans, it was another “double othering”
 An acceptance of the Iberian conflation of skin color and slave
status. Negroes—Africans—were the other’s other.
Why is the “race origins debate”
important?
 What is at stake is whether racism was an
“unthinking” result of economic and political
systems imposed by elites in the Americas, or
whether racism was a function of more deeply
entrenched ideas that were at the core of
Western society and culture.
The Barbados Example
 1627 -- settled, 10 “Negars” came with first
settlers
 by 1650- slavery inheritable
 Before SUGAR--Line between freedom and
slavery fluid
 Evidence of slaves suing for freedom, claiming
illegally held in bondage.
The making of race in the
Chesapeake
 “pioneer” blacks
 became Christian, spoke English, and learned English
law
 Used the two most important colonial institutionschurch and court house
 They were litigious people
 Strove to own their own land
 Blacks and whites grew/worked tobacco together
 Africans planted tobacco on small quarters usually
surrounded by whites
Making Race
 In the 1660s white servants outnumbered black
slaves by 5:1 (at least)
 In the 1670s began importing Africans directly from
Africa—the balance changed—black slaves
outnumbered white servants.
 Slave Codes
As Africans grew in numbers, threatened whites
passed laws to severely control the slave population.

Virginia, 1662 Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any
Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted
and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this
country shalbe held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother,
And that if any christian shall committ fornication with a negro man or woman,
hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act.
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Maryland, 1664 That whatsoever free-born [English] woman shall intermarry with
any slave. . . shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband;
and that all the issue of such free-born women, so married shall be slaves as
their fathers were.
 “African in America”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html

Virginia, 1667 Act III. Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that
are slaves by birth. . . should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted
that baptism does not alter the condition to the person as to his bondage or
freedom; masters freed from this doubt may more carefully propagate Christianity
by permitting slaves to be admitted to that sacrament.
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Virginia, 1682 Act I. It is enacted that all servants. . . which [sic] shall be imported
into this country either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North
Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries
are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian. . . and all
Indians, which shall be sold by our neighborign Indians, or any other trafficing
with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all
intents and purposes any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.
Making Blackness: From ethnicity to
Race
 Africans had to learn the significance of
“race.”
 Dual process -- the adoption of an identity
from forces without and within the enslaved
black community.
The Process
 The barracoon
 The Middle passage
 “The Seasoning”
 Resistance key
 The stratification of the black community key to
transition from ethnicity to race
The multiple meanings of Race
 Time and Place
 Virginia
 Lowcountry
 Louisiana
 Response to slavery differed
Race and Systems of Control after
Slavery
Creating Jim Crow: A System of
Racial Domination
 Economics
 Politics
 Social
Black Codes: Jim Crow precedent
1. Civil Rights:
 The Southern Black Codes defined the rights of freedmen.
had the right ‘to acquire, own and dispose of property; to
make contracts; to enjoy the fruits of their labor; to sue and
be sued; and to receive protection under the law in their
persons and property.” Also, for the first time, the law
recognized the marriages of black persons and the
legitimacy of their children.
2. Labor Contracts:
3. Vagrancy:
4. Apprenticeship:
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~sargent/1308/blacklaw.htm
Jim Crow
 Must help students understand that
Jim Crow was more than a series of
strict anti-black laws. It was a way of
life.
Jim Crow laws
 List of typical Jim Crow laws
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Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or
women (Georgia).
Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate
building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and
support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).
Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any
colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white
persons (Georgia).
 See “What Was Jim Crow?” by Dr. David
Pilgrim at www.jimcrow.org
Jim Crow etiquette
 A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male
because it implied being socially equal.
Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat
together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to
be placed between them.
Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for
example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by
their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to
whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person
sat in the back seat or the back of a truck.
White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Race and Place
"The Tripartite System of Racial Domination”
(Aldon
Morris, Author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement)
 1) Economics
 Job Discrimination
 Lack of Legal Protection
 Sharecropping and Debt Peonage
 2) Politics
 Disfranchisement and Political Intimidation
 http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote17
2.shtml LA Literacy Test
 3) Segregation
Sharecropping System – the dominate
form of labor relations
 What did black farmers want?
 What did white planters want?
 Cycle of debt
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“fixing the books”
“settlin’ time”
Debt peonage
Credit system
Vagrancy laws
Convict lease system
Involuntary servitude
Sharecropper Contract, 1882
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/sharecropper.pdf
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/mapcontractquestions.pdf
To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be
read, and agreed to.
To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow, and farming
implements . . . The croppers are to have half of the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas
and pumpkins and potatoes if any are planted) if the following conditions are complied
with, but-if not-they are to have only two-fifths (2/5) . . . All must work under my
direction.
. . . No cropper is to work off the plantation when there is any work to be done on
the land he has rented, or when his work is needed by me or other croppers.
. . . Every cropper must feed or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights,
Sundays, and every morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team (morning,
noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and feeding it to including the
31st day of December. ...for every time he so fails he must pay me five cents.
The sale of every cropper's part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I
choose to sell, and after deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may be responsible
for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Work of every
description, particularly the work on fences and ditches, to be done to my satisfaction,
and must be done over until I am satisfied that it is done as it should be.
SOURCE: Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, eds., America Firsthand
(1992), pp. 306—308.
Sharecropping:
Continuity or Change?
http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/planta3.htm
Sharecropping in Virginia
 http://www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/ShareCro
pTN.pdf
The Politics
of Jim Crow
 Disfranchisement, Violence, and Political
Intimidation
Disfranchisement
 Disfranchisement was a two part process
Disfranchisement I: Literacy Requirements
 Poll Taxes, Grandfather Clauses, and AllWhite Primaries.
 Disfanchisment Laws had to be carefully
crafted to avoid 15th amendment, they could
not explicitly use race as a barrier to voting
Escape clauses
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designed so that poor and illiterate whites could still qualify to vote.
(1) Understanding clause
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Literacy and educational requirements
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote172.shtml LA Literacy
Test
Grandfather clause

Could not vote if grandfather could not have voted prior to 1867
Disfranchisement II: The KKK and the Politics
and Culture of Lynching
 KKK and other related groups using violence to suppress
black political action
 Violence justified by the threat of miscegenation.

“'Without Sanctuary': Artifacts of Lynching in America” see
www.npr.org
The Culture of Violence and Intimidation

Chain Gangs
Convict Lease System
Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why the
colored American is not in the World's Columbian
Exposition," published in 1893
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… the convicts are leased out to work for railway contractors, mining
companies and those who farm large plantations. These companies assume
charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay the states a
handsome revenue for their labor…
..[The] reason our race furnishes so large a share of the convicts is that the
judges, juries and other officials of the courts are white men who share
these prejudices. They also make the laws. It is wholly in their power to
extend clemency to white criminals and mete severe punishment to black
criminals for the same or lesser crimes. The Negro criminals are mostly
ignorant, poor and friendless. Possessing neither money to employ lawyers
nor influential friends, they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms of
imprisonment for petty crimes.
…Every Negro so sentenced not only means able-bodied men to swell the
state's number of slaves, but every Negro so convicted is thereby
disfranchised.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fredouconlea.html
Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the inspection report
of the state prison in Mississippi:
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"We found [in the hospital section] twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately
brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other
incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and
brutal treatment. Most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters,
some with the skin pealing off in pieces as the result of severe beatings.
Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frostbite, and all of them with the
stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces.... They are lying there dying, some
of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through
their skin, many complaining for the want of food.... We actually saw live vermin
crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and
stiff with filth.
As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, 204 convicts were leased to
McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during this six months 20 died, and 19 were
discharged and escaped and 23 were returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of
whom have since died."
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm
Why the convict lease system?
 no black crime spree
 Southern governments wanted to control the
black population.
 The system used by the planter class and
industrialist to intimidate black sharecroppers and
provide workers for the South’s growing industry.
 The system reaffirmed white feelings of racial
superiority
 Helped maintained racial hierarchy of southern
society.
Other Helpful Websites:
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/
 Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,”
“Lynching and Riots,” and “Jim Crow Stories.”
The lesson plans and activities are also useful.
THE ULTIMATE ACT -- LYNCHING
 Billie Holiday's Song "Strange Fruit“ Lesson Plan
 http://www.teachervision.fen.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4839.html
 “Strange Fruit”
 http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html
 Site includes review of film “Strange Fruit” and history of the song.
Audio clip of song also available online.
 Lyrics:
 Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the
root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit
hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The
bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and
fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the
crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun
to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Other Helpful Websites:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/


http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/97/crow/crowhome.
html

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Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,” “Lynching and Riots,” and
“Jim Crow Stories.” The lesson plans and activities are also useful.
“From Jim Crow To Linda Brown: A Retrospective of the AfricanAmerican Experience from 1897 to 1953”
A mini-unit that allows students to explore to what extent the African
American experience was "separate but equal."
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/98/robinson/intro.ht
ml


“Jackie Steals Home”
Students read two documents relating to Jackie Robinson's breaking of
the racial barrier in professional baseball and through the readings
explore racism in the United States, both in and out of sports.
African-American Responses I:
Accommodation and Agitation

Booker T. Washington
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The Washington-DuBois Debate
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
The Niagara Movement was organized in 1905 by W.E.B. DuBois, William
Monroe Trotter, Ida Wells Barnett, and other middle-class but militant Black
intellectuals. It was a repudiation of the conservative and stifling leadership of
Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Machine. (see “The Niagara Movement
Declaration of Principles” at http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1152.htm )
NAACP


“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” published within The Souls of Black
Folk (1903) (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
Niagara Movement (see next slide)


The Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895 (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for
document)
The NAACP was formed in 1909 through the merger of two organizations: the
Niagara Movement and the National Negro Conference.
Challenges against Segregated Transportation (see “All the Women were
White”)
Excerpt of “The Niagara Movement
Declaration of Principles” (1905)
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Protest: We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents
to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults. Through
helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must
never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust.
Color-Line: Any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarous, we care not
how hallowed it be by custom, expediency or prejudice. Differences made on account
of ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against
them we have no word of protest; but discriminations based simply and solely on
physical peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human
savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed.
"Jim Crow" Cars: We protest against the "Jim Crow" car, since its effect is and
must be to make us pay first-class fare for third-class accommodations, render
us open to insults and discomfort and to crucify wantonly our manhood,
womanhood and self-respect.
Soldiers: We regret that this nation has never seen fit adequately to reward the black
soldiers who, in its five wars, have defended their country with their blood, and yet
have been systematically denied the promotions which their abilities deserve. And we
regard as unjust, the exclusion of black boys from the military and naval training
schools.
African-American Responses II: The
Culture of Resistance

Wearing the Mask of Segregation
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Paul Laurence Dunbar's (1872-1906) poem "We Wear the Mask" (1896)
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
“Behind the veil” (Du Bois)
“Politics of Respectability” (Higginbotham)
African American Responses III:
Collective Protest

Complex factor: WWI

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
W.E. B. Dubois “Returning Soldiers” May 1919
“We are returning from war! The Crisis and tens of thousands of black
men were drafted into a great struggle. For bleeding France and what
she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and
against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to
the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in
far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in
Washington, we fought in bitter resignation. For the America that
represents and gloats in lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality
and devilish insult—for this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of
things, we were forced by vindictive fate to fight also.
But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the
world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We
stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a
spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have
done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.”



Red Summer
“If We Must Die” (1919) Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
The Great Migration
 The migration stimulated a national movement for
civil rights
 Many Americans began to realize that
segregation and discrimination were no
longer uniquely Southern problems.
 The rise of black ghettos in northern and western
cities compounded the problems of segregation
and discrimination and
 Allowed for the flowering of African-American
cultural movements such as the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.
 www.nextext.com (Langston Hughes and J. W. Johnson)
Great Migration: Part I

One Way Ticket (Langston
Hughes)

I pick up my life,
And take it with me,
And I put it down in
Chicago, Detroit,
Buffalo, Scranton,
Any place that is
North and East,
And not Dixie.
I pick up my life
And take it on the train,
To Los Angeles, Bakersfield,
Seattle, Oakland, Salt Lake
Any place that is
North and West,
And not South.

 Migration Series
 (Jacob Lawrence)
See http://www.pbs.org/gointochicago/
(section “Art and Poetry) for complete
the poem, images, and other resources.
Great Migration: Part II
 http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/def
migration.html THE BLUES
Between the Wars
 “Direct Action during the Depression contrasted sharply
both quantitatively and qualitatively with the history of such
tactics during the entire preceding century” A. Meier and E.
Rudwick
 Increase in Black Political Awareness
 Newspaper circulation doubled
 NAACP membership increased
 Increased militancy
 Marcus Garvey – UNIA
 “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” (1929-1941)
 Harlem Riot- 1935
The ARTS: Rising Black Militancy
 Langston Hughes (1931) “Tired”
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two—
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
 Richard Wright (1940) Native Son
 Paul Robeson
Theme 2: From Resistance to a Social
Movement (pre-Brown)
 Focus: The early twentieth-century civil rights
efforts of African American – with particular
attention on individual acts and local organization
such as church groups, and national
organizations (i.e. NAACP , NUL and CORE).
 Goal: Help students understand that long before
the African American struggle for rights became a
mass movement, local resistance in black
communities took many forms.
World War II and the Rise of AfricanAmerican Protest Politics
A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington
Movement
 The president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters, a primarily black union, was A.
Philip Randolph (1889-1979).
 March 1941, Randolph proposed a new civil
rights strategy: a massive march on Washington
D. C.
 Three demands:



The immediate end to segregation and discrimination in federal
government hiring.
An end to segregation of the armed forces.
Government support for an end to discrimination and segregation
in all American employment.
MASS PROTEST
 “Power and pressure are at the foundation
of the march of social justice and
reform…power and pressure do not reside
in the few…they lie in and flow from the
masses…Hence, Negro America must
bring its power and pressure to bear upon
the…Federal Government to exact their
rights in National Defense employment and
the armed forces of the country.” Randolph
Protest Politics
 Double V Campaign

 “Regarding the Double V
Campaign see
http://www.yurasko.net/v
v/index.html
Regional “direct action”
campaigns (strikes,
demonstrations, boycotts)


 Riots
 The Detroit Race Riot of
1943
“Don’t Buy Where You
Can’t Work” (1929-1941)
Sit-ins by Howard Univ.
students (1943-1944
 The Zoot Suiters


“The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare”
http://invention.smithsonian.org/cen
terpieces/whole_cloth/frame6.html
“Zoot Suit Riots” at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/zoot
/eng_tguide/
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
 Est. 1942 on the University of Chicago campus.
 The creation of CORE marked the beginning of a
mass movement for civil rights.
 CORE PHILOSOPHY
 Interracial founders committed to Gandian techniques
of “nonviolent direct action”
 Their tactics provided an important example for later
civil rights activists.
From Individual Resistance to Collective
Protest
 Rising expectations of blacks
 Challenging Segregation on the Buses
(pre-Montgomery)
 Buses as “Contested Terrain”
 Black Voices
 Ringing the bell
Theme 3: Brown and Beyond: Rising
Expectations, 1953-1959
1.
Brown v. Board of Education (Brown I and Brown II)
http://www.teachersdomain.org/special/civil/preview/
A free digital library of multimedia resources for classroom
and independent study, captures the voices, images,
demonstrations, and resistance that defined the Civil Rights
Movement through interview segments filmed for "Eyes on
the Prize," primary source materials and oral histories from
the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, and archival video and
audio segments from "American Experience," "Frontline,"
"People's Century," and other WGBH productions.
2.
3.
4.
Emmett Till
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Central High School, Little Rock, Arkansas
Emmett Till (1941-1955)
 “Emmett Till and the Impact of Images” see www.npr.org
 Site contains various relevant web resources, including Jet
Magazine photos.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/

Great site for documents and images regarding Emmett Till’s murder.
See “Reactions in Writing.”
Who are these Women?
 March 2, 1955
1955
December 1,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
 Mary Louis Smith, Claudette Colvin – Who were they?
 http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/montgomery_bus_boyco
tt.htm
 Montgomery Bus Boycott—Organizing Strategies and
Challenges Activity at
http://civilrightsteaching.org/lessonshandouts/handouts.htm
 Jo Ann Robinson – Who was she?
 Women's Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery, Alabama
 May 1954 precursor
 INTERVIEW:
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedia/pdfs/ROBIN
SON-JO%20ANN.pdf
Theme 4: Student Activism and the Emergence
of a Mass Movement, 1960-1965
 Focus: College students developed new strategies
and revitalized old ones that help to escalate the
civil rights struggle and broaden its base. Their
tactics included sit-ins, freedom rides, jail-ins,
boycotts, voter registration drives, and marches.
 Goal: To help students understand how/why the
involvement of college students brought
transformed the movement.
Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights
Movement
 Websites
Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals
http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm
MUSIC OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, 1954-1968
http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit53/
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
http://www.folkways.si.edu/
Search for “Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights
Movement Through Its Songs” and “Voices of the Civil Rights
Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966.” There
are audio clips for both CDs available online.
Sit-ins
 Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in (1960)
 “Bigger Than a Hamburger” and “A Conference on the Sitins” [see handout]
 Consider the following statement by journalist Louis
Lomax, "They [the sit-ins] were proof that the Negro
leadership class, epitomized by the NAACP, was no longer
the prime mover in the Negro's social revolt. The
demonstrations have shifted the desegregation battles
from the courtroom to the marketplace.“
 See “Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights
Movement” at http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml. Site
contains photographs, documents, and audio clips from
Greensboro participants and civil rights leaders.
Ella J. Baker (June, 1960)
“Bigger than a Hamburger”




The Student Leadership Conference made it
crystal clear that current sit-ins and other
demonstrations are concerned with
something much bigger than a hamburger or
even a giant-sized Coke.
Whatever may be the difference in approach
to their goal, the Negro and white students,
North and South, are seeking to rid America
of the scourge of racial segregation and
discrimination - not only at lunch counters,
but in every aspect of life….
By and large, this feeling that they have a
destined date with freedom, was not limited
to a drive for personal freedom, or even
freedom for the Negro in the South.
Repeatedly it was emphasized that the
movement was concerned with the moral
implications of racial discrimination for the
"whole world" and the "Human Race."
This universality of approach was linked with
a perceptive recognition that "it is important
to keep the movement democratic and to
avoid struggles for personal leadership."


It was further evident that desire for
supportive cooperation from adult
leaders and the adult community was
also tempered by apprehension that
adults might try to "capture" the
student movement. The students
showed willingness to be met on the
basis of equality, but were intolerant of
anything that smacked of manipulation
or domination.
This inclination toward group-centered
leadership, rather than toward a
leader-centered group pattern of
organization, was refreshing indeed to
those of the older group who bear the
scars of the battle, the frustrations and
the disillusionment that come when
the prophetic leader turns out to have
heavy feet of clay….
Ella Baker
 SNCC
 Ella Baker
 1940s (NAACP);1950s (SCLC); 1960s (SNCC)
 “Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She
wanted to help the new student activists and organized
a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of
the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was
born.”
 Different leadership style than MLK
 Baker believed in “group centered leadership” vs
“leadership-centered group”
A Movement in Transition: SNCC
 SNCC went through three stages.
 First: 1960 to 1963 (Sit-ins and Freedom Rides)
 Second: 1963 to 1964 (Freedom Summer) A time of transition
which sparked a reconsideration of nonviolence
 Nearly 1,000 volunteers worked in Mississippi that
summer. During those months, 6 people, were killed, 80
beaten, 35 churches burned, and 30 other buildings bombed.
 Third: 1965 to 1967. A trip to Africa by several SNCC leaders,
discussions with and about Malcolm X, and growing alienation
between blacks and whites inside SNCC was capped by the
Watts riot in August, 1965. The following June, "Black Power"
became SNCC's battle cry in a march led by James Meredith
in Mississippi.
Freedom Rides
Define: The Freedom Riders left Washington DC on May 4,
1961. They were scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on
May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision.
The Freedom Riders never made it to New Orleans.
Significance: They forced the Kennedy administration to take a
stand on civil rights, which was the intent of the Freedom
Ride in the first place. In addition, the Interstate Commerce
Commission, at the request of Robert Kennedy, outlawed
segregation in interstate bus travel in a ruling, more specific
than the original Supreme Court mandate, that took effect
in September 1961.
Website:
African American Odyssey-Library of Congress
See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aointro.html
especially the “Civil Rights Era” section.
Birmingham:
“Project C” ('Confrontation Birmingham' )
New campaign in Birmingham.
Goal: to activate the black community and to force complete desegregation of all the
city's facilities.
“Birmingham Manifesto’
King issued the 'Birmingham Manifesto' stating that all facilities in downtown
department stores must desegregated, that blacks must be hired in local business and
industry, and that a bi racial committee must be set up to implement further
desegregation.
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail”
Written in response to a letter in the local paper, the Birmingham News by eight white
Alabama clergymen. The clergymen stated that the demonstrations by "impatient"
"outsiders" was "unwise and untimely". They thought that the civil rights movement
should wait and give Birmingham citizens a chance to reform their city on their own.
MLK “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation
to say, “Wait.” …comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no
longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sirs, you can understand
our legitimate and unavoidable impatience
For more information about the letter, listen to the following NPR radio report:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010305.me.14.ram
ALABAMA CENTENNIAL, by Naomi Long
Madgett


They said, "Wait." Well, I
waited.
For a hundred years I waited
In cotton fields, kitchens,
balconies,
In bread lines, at back doors, on
chain gangs,
In stinking "colored" toilets
And crowded ghettos,
Outside of schools and voting
booths.
And some said, "Later."
And some said, "Never!" Then a
new wind blew, and a new voice
Rode its wings with quiet
urgency,
Strong, determined, sure.
"No," it said. "Not 'never,' not
'later."
Not even 'soon.'
Now.
Walk!"



And I walked the streets of
Montgomery
Until a link in the chain of
patient acquiescence broke.
Then again: Sit down!
And I sat down at the counters
of Greensboro.
Ride! And I rode the bus for
freedom.
Kneel! And I went down on my
knees in prayer and faith.
March! And I'll march until the
last chain falls
Singing, "We shall overcome."
Not all the dogs and hoses in
Birmingham
Nor all the clubs and guns in
Selma
Can turn this tide.
Not all the jails can hold these
young black faces
From their destiny of manhood,
Birmingham: cont…
On Sept. 15, 1963, the all-Black Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church was bombed. Sunday school was in session.
 Handout:
 “Ballad of Birmingham”
 Websites:
 http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/lesson.plans/0
5/02/church.bombing/ Includes Lesson Plan
Ballad of Birmingham





"Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?"
"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."
"But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free."
"No, baby, no, you may not
go,
For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children's choir."



She has combed and brushed her
night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small
brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know that her
child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of
Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and
brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
NINA SIMONE
 Mississippi Goddam! Nina Simone, 1963
 Nina Simone wrote "Mississippi Goddam"
after the bombing of a Baptist church in
Alabama killed four children
 Four Women
Birmingham:
Significance of events in Birmingham
1. Signaled a profound change in the direct-action campaigns in the South.
As Bayard Rustin put it in 1963:
For the black people of this nation; Birmingham became the moment of truth. The struggle from now
on will be fought in a different context... For the first time, every black man, woman and child,
regardless of station, has been brought into the struggle. Unlike the period of the Montgomery
boycott... the response to Birmingham has been immediate and spontaneous. Before Birmingham,
the great struggles had been waged for specific, limited goals. The Freedom Rides sought to
establish the right to eat while traveling; the sit-ins sought to win the right to eat in local restaurants;
the Meredith case centered on a single Negro's right to enter a state university. The Montgomery
boycott, although it involved fifty thousand people in a year-long sacrificial struggle, was limited to
attaining the right to ride the city buses with dignity and respect. The black people now reject token,
limited or gradual approaches. The package deal is the new demand.
2. Birmingham moved Kennedy to action.
Announced that a new Civil Rights Bill would be presented to Congress on June I9th
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/johnfkennedycivilrights.htm Site includes transcript and
audio of JFK’s June 11, 1963 speech.
Freedom Summer




Mississippi -- summer of 1964
Successes: The Mississippi project established fifty
Freedom Schools to carry on community organizing.
Failures: It registered only twelve hundred Afro-Americans
and the Democratic National Convention refused to seat
the protest slate of delegates elected through the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic party.
Significance: The events of Freedom Summer deepened
the division between those in the civil rights movement
who still believed in integration and nonviolence and
others, especially young Afro-Americans, who now
doubted whether racial equality was achievable by
peaceful means.
Freedom Summer
 A group of student volunteers waiting
for
buses to take them to Mississippi (1964)
MISSISSIPPI—FREEDOM SUMMER
 The Mississippi Summer Project had
three goals:
 registering voters,
 operating Freedom Schools,
 and organizing the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party (MFDP) precincts.
Freedom Schools
 Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1964
 Volunteer Jim Nance, a minister, heading
into the Black community to do voter
registration canvassing.
The Student Voice
 SNCC Newsletters at Civil Rights
Movement Veterans (
http://www.crmvet.org/)
The Legacy of Freedom Summer
 "What [the Summer Project] achieved more
than anything else, I think, it exposed the
system—from top to bottom," Dave Dennis,
the Mississippi Director of the Congress of
Racial Equality in 1964.
Theme 5: The Militant Years, 1966-68
 Focus: The changing face of the civil rights
movement.
 Goal: Help students understand why the
expectations created by the civil rights
movement met with frustration in the mid1960s and how their disappointment and
frustration aroused a new urgency among
black civil rights activist.
Black Power
 June 1966
 March against Fear in Mississippi.
 James Meredith, in 1962 became the first black to
attend the University of Mississippi.
 http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom
 S. Carmichael--June 16: "I ain't going to jail
no more." …"What we gonna start saying
now is `black power.'"
Stokely Carmichael “What We Want”
September 22, 1966
“One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up until now there has been no
national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people
in the urban ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice
was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone
between them and angry young blacks. None of its so-called leaders could go into a
rioting community and be listened to. . .
For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got
shot. They were saying to the country, ‘Look, you guys are supposed to be nice guys
and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do - why do you beat us up, why
don’t you give us what we ask, why don’t you straighten yourselves out?’ After years of
this, we are at almost the same point - because we demonstrated from a position of
weakness. We cannot be expected any longer to march and have our heads broken in
order to say to whites: ‘come on, you’re nice guys.’ For you are not nice guys. We
have found you out. . . .
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to
their questions about it. We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have
two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this twosided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men. Any program to end
racism must address itself to that double reality. . . .
For racism to die, a totally different America must be born…..”
Black Panthers
 October 1966 (H. Newton & B. Seale)
 BP Ten Point Program
(www.blackpanther.org).

Rethinking Schools
website
Handouts
 “From Black Consciousness to Black
Power”
 “ The Founding of the Black Panther Party”
A NEW KING
 Have students identify the ways in which Martin
Luther King, Jr. is portrayed in the mass media,
and specifically, which of his ideas are
communicated to the public.
 Have students read and discuss a range of King’s
ideas almost completely unknown to most of the
public today.
 Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King Jr.'s
Radical Vision
http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/lesson
plans/mlk2/index.html
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the War


“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to
Break Silence” By Rev. Martin
Luther King 4 April 1967
http://www.hartfordhwp.com/archives/45a/058.html
or
http://www.americanrhetoric.co
m/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksil
So I was increasingly compelled to
see the war as an enemy of the poor
and to attack it as such. Perhaps the
more tragic recognition of reality took
place when it became clear to me that
the war was doing far more than
devastating the hopes of the poor at
home. It was sending their sons and
their brothers and their husbands to
fight and to die in extraordinarily high
proportions relative to the rest of the
population. We were taking the black
young men who had been crippled by
our society and sending them eight
thousand miles away to guarantee
liberties in Southeast Asia which they
had not found in southwest Georgia
and East Harlem. So we have been
repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of
watching Negro and white boys on TV
screens as they kill and die together
for a nation that has been unable to
seat them together in the same
schools. So we watch them in brutal
solidarity burning the huts of a poor
village, but we realize that they would
never live on the same block in
Helpful Websites:
 http://www.brothermalcolm.net
 This a research site devoted to information on Malcolm
X. It contains a chronology of his life, and extensive
bibliography site, information on his family life, a
webliography, and a study guide.
 http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
 October 1966 Black Panther Party
Platform and Program “What We Want
What We Believe”
 http://www.bobbyseale.com/phototour/
 Very little text, but excellent photographs.
Please note this presentation is for workshop
purposes only.
Please address all source inquiries to the
presenter: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott