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USA Civil Rights 1863-1981 – Source booklet

Contents page

Topic Page1863-1877 sources 21877-1917 6Inter-war period 10World War 2 12 1945-1980 19Booker T. Washington 26Marcus Garvey 32Montgomery Bus Boycott 35Brown Case 36JFK 40Martin Luther King 42Black Power 47

Source material 1863-1877

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. Abraham Lincoln (1862) quoted in Paterson, D, Civil Rights in the USA, 1863-1980 (2001), p26

The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery’.

William du Bois, writing in 1935 in his book Black Reconstruction¸ quoted in Paterson, David, Civil Rights in the USA, 1863-1980 (2001), p26

The first vote by Alfred R. Waud, Harper’s Weekly, 16 November 1867. This painting shows the key black voters, who, for the first time could exert black political power; the artisan with his tools, the successful town dweller and the soldier. Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p7

‘Emancipated Negroes Celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln’, from Le Monde Illustré, 21 March 1863

Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p4

My first master’s name was Captain Anthony…. He was not considered a rich slaveholder. He owned two or three farms and about thirty slaves. His farms and slaves were under the care of an overseer. The overseer’s name was Plummer. Mr. Plummer was a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster. He always went armed with a cowskin and a heavy cudgel. I have known him to cut and slash the women’s heads so horribly, that even master would enrage at his cruelty… Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder. It required extraordinary barbarity on the part of an overseer to affect him… He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of the day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her back till she was literally covered with blood. No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest.

Frederick Douglass, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, quoted in Paterson & Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA p21.

The Freedmen’s Bureau, from Harper’s Weekly, 25 July 1868. This was the desired image of the Freedmen’s Bureau as the active supporter of racial peace.Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p12

The Freedmen’s Bureau! – A Democratic campaign poster from 1866. Not everyone valued the efforts of the Bureau to integrate freed slaves into society. Note the stereotypical image of the central character, against the equally stereotypical white farmer and the supposed largesse of the Bureau.Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p12

‘This is a White Man’s Government’, from Harper’s Weekly, 5 September 1868. Here the newly freed slave is overwhelmed by the combined, but very different demands of (from left to right) an Irish immigrant (competition for unskilled work), a Confederate veteran (anxious to protect his Southern traditions) and a Wall Street financier (eager to make profits from manufacture and the railroad.

Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p12

The Dawes Act suffered from a defect basic to the democracy that spawned it. Nobody took much notice of what the Indians really wanted. The obverse of the glorious expansion west was that for the Indian, the American dream was a nightmare: oppression instead of democracy, poverty instead of prosperity, despair instead of hope, contraction instead of expansion, confinement instead of freedom.

Evans, H. The American Century: People, Power and Politics (2000) p7

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

From the American Declaration of Independence, 1776

Source material 1877-1917

As a race the [blacks] are altogether inferior to the whites. A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high place. I do not believe that the average Negro is as yet in any way fit to take care of himself and others. If he were, there would be no Negro race problem.Theodore Roosevelt before he became President

I believe it is the duty of the Negro – as the greater part of the race is already doing – to deport himself modestly in regard to political claims depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from the possessions of property, intelligence and high character for the full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an overnight gourdvine affair. Booker T. Washington in his autobiography ‘Up from Slavery’ (1901) - Quoted in Paterson & Willoughby , Civil Rights in the USA

Booker T. Washington was the greatest Negro leader since Frederick Douglass, and the most distinguished man, white or black who has come out of the South since the Civil War. On the other hand, in stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disenfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and the firmed establishment of color caste in this land. W. E. B. du Bois writing about Booker T. Washington on Washington’s death in 1915 - Quoted in Paterson & Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA

The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.Benjamin Tillman, Senator of South Carolina – commenting on Theodore Roosevelt’s dining with Booker T. Washington, 1901

Do you enjoy the same rights as the white people do in America…? Can you go into a restaurant where white people dine? Can you get a seat in the theatre where white dine? Can you get a seat in the theatre where white people sit? Is lynching…lawful proceeding in the democratic country.German propaganda directed at African-Americans during World War One – quoted in Sanders, Vivienne Race Relations in the USA 1863-1980

A handful of men, with no report of work accomplished, no one in the field to spread it, no plan of work laid out – no intelligent direction – meet and by their child’s play illustrated in their own doings the truth of the saying that Negroes have no capacity for organisation. Meanwhile a whole race is lynched, proscribed, intimidated, deprives of its political and civil rights, herded into boxes (by courtesy called separate cars) and we sit tamely by without using the only means – that of thorough organisation and earnest work to prevent it. No wonder the world at large spits upon us with impunity.Ida B Wells quoted in Race Relations in the USA by Vivienne Sanders p44

Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit out grievances to overshadow our opportunities. Booker T. Washington The Atlanta Compromise Speech quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p194

I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the Atlanta Exposition. I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed.

Yours very truly, Grover Cleveland

A letter from President Grover Cleveland to Booker T. Washington after the Atlanta Compromise Speech quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p197

The black men of America have a duty to perform, a duty stern and delicate, - a forward movement to oppose a part of the work of their greatest leader. So far as Mr. Washington preaches Thrift, Patience, and Industrial Training for the masses, we must hold up his hands and strive with him, rejoicing in his honors and glorifying in the strength of this Joshua called of God and of man to lead the headless host. But so far as Mr. Washington apologises for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds, - so far as he, the South, or the Nation, does this, - we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the right which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.From an essay written by WEB du Bois entitled ‘Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others’ written in 1903 – quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p207-208

Common school education should be free to all American children and compulsory. High school training should be adequately provided for all, and college training should be the monopoly of no class or race in any section of our common country. We believe that, in defense of our own institutions, the United States should aid common school education, particularly in the South, and we especially recommend concerned agitation to this end. We urge an increase in public high school facilities in the South, where the Negro-Americans are almost wholly without such provisions. We favour well-equipped trade and technical schools for the training of artisans, and the need of adequate and liberal endowment for a few institutions of higher education must be patent to sincere well-wishers of the race.From the Niagara Movement Declaration of Principles, 1905 – quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p210




1885 78 1901 1071886 71 1902 861887 80 1903 861888 95 1904 831889 95 1905 611890 90 1906 641891 121 1907 601892 155 1908 931893 154 1909 731894 134 1910 651895 112 1911 631896 80 1912 631897 122 1913 791898 102 1914 691899 84 1915 801900 107 1916 31

TOTAL 2,843

Lynchings of black men 1885-1916 - quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p213

A map of the six major transcontinental railroads in USATaken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p24

A map of the USA in the late nineteenth centuryTaken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p20

Source material – the inter-war years 1917-1941

It is the mission of all Negroes to have pride in their race. To think of race in the highest terms of human living. To think that God made the race perfect, that there is no-one better than you, that you have elements of human perfection and as such you must love yourselves. Love yourselves better than anyone else. All beauty is in you and not outside you, for God made you beautiful. Confine your affection, therefore, to your own race and God will bless you and men will honour you. Marcus Garvey, School of African Philosophy (1937), quoted in Paterson, D, Civil Rights in the USA, 1863-1980 (2001), p85

Today, there are a lot of people who think Garvey’s still alive. I was conducting radio interviews with some young Rastafarians, who look to Garvey as their prophet and realised they were quietly laughing behind me. One of them said ‘That man think Marcus Garvey dead’. They felt pity for me. I was uninformed. In black folk culture, there is no death for the righteous.Extract from a New Yorker article on the Marcus Garvey Centennial Exhibition in Harlem (1987).

Boastful, egotistic, tyrannical, intolerant… gifted at self-advertisement… promising ever, but never fulfilling… a lover of pomp, tawdry, finery, and garish display… a sheer opportunist and a demagogic charlatan.Asa Philip Randolph’s magazine The Messenger on Marcus Garvey. Quoted in Sanders, Vivienne and Farmer, Alan - An Introduction to American History, 1860-1990, (2002) p166

I asked, ‘Where is the black man’s government? Where is his King and his Kingdom? Where is his President, his country and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?’ I could not find them; and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them’. Marcus Garvey. Quoted in Sanders, Vivienne and Farmer, Alan - An Introduction to American History, 1860-1990, (2002) p166

The most important contribution of the Roosevelt Administration to the age-old colour-line problem in America has been its doctrine that Negroes are a part of the country and must be considered in any programme for the country as a whole… For the first time in their lives, government has taken on meaning and substance for the Negro masses.Assessment of Roosevelt, from Crisis (the NAACP newspaper), 1940. Quoted in Sanders, Vivienne and Farmer, Alan - An Introduction to American History, 1860-1990, (2002) p171

1. A vote for every Negro man and woman on the same terms as for white men and women.2. An equal chance to acquire the kind of an education that will enable the Negro everywhere wisely to use this vote.3. A fair trial in the courts for all crimes of which he is accused, by judges in whose election he has participated without discrimination because of race.4. A right to sit upon the jury which passes judgement upon him. 5. Defense against lynching and burning at the hands of mobs.6. Equal service on railroad and other public carriers. This to mean sleeping car service, dining car service, Pullman service, at the same cost and upon the same terms as other passengers.7. Equal right to the use of public parks, libraries and other community services for which he is taxed.8. An equal chance for a livelihood in the public and private employment.9. The abolition of color-hyphenation and the substitution of “straight Americanism”. From The Task for the Future – A Program for 1919 – (NAACP)

Looking forward a century or two, we can see an economic and political death struggle for the survival of the different race groups. Many of our present-day national centres will have become over-crowded with vast surplus populations. The fight for bread and position will be keen and severe. The weaker and unprepared group is bound to go under. That is why, visionaries as we are in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, we are fighting for the founding of a negro nation in Africa, so that there will be no clash between black and white and that each race will have a separate existence and civilisation all its own without courting suspicion and hatred or eyeing each other with jealousy and rivalry within the borders of the same country. White men who have struggled for and built up their countries and their own civilizations are not disposed to hand them over to the Negro or any other race without let or hindrance. It would be unreasonable to expect this. Hence any vain assumption on the part of the negro to imagine that he will one day become President of the Nation, Governor of the State, or Mayor of the city in the countries of white men, is like waiting on the devil and his angels to take up their residence in the Realm on High and direct there the affairs of Paradise.From Marcus Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy’ quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p259-260

Source material – World War 2

United We Win, a poster from 1943. This was the picture that the government wanted of an integrated and committed society.

When I got my first pay cheque, I’d never seen that much money before, not even in a bank, because I’d never been in a bank too much. At Lockheed Aircraft, I worked with a big strong white girl from a cotton farm in Arkansas. We learned that we could open up to each other and get along. She learned that Negroes were people, too, and I saw her as a person also. We both gained form it. Had it not been for the war, I don’t think blacks would be in the position they are in now. Some people would never have left the South. They would have had nothing to move for. The war changed my life. Sybil Lewis, an African-American woman, compares life in a wartime factory with her pre-war life as a housemaid in Oklahoma.Quoted in Chris Rowe, USA, 1890-1945 (2008) p138

Well, I worked up through the ranks. I went in as a private and soon became corporal, and then staff sergeant and first sergeant. It was well segregated. The first trouble I really had was in London. We were getting ready for war. The people in England was trying to show their appreciation towards us black servicemen. My commander was from Mississippi, and he didn’t want his black boys fraternising with white girls in the area. He denied our permission and we couldn’t go.Taken from - Chafe, Gavins and Korstadt (eds), Remembering Jim Crow (2001)

When I heard about it I said I’d be damned if I’d wear the same patch they did. After that first day when we saw how they fought I changed my mind. They’re just like any of the other boys to us.Platoon Sergeant from South Carolina – quoted in Klinker, P.A The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (2002) p190

The Double V campaign poster from World War 2

Attitudes of White Soldiers towards Serving with Black Units during World War 2

White Officers (%)

White NCOs (%)

Initial feelings about serving with black units

Relatively unfavourable Relatively favourable No answer

64

33

3

64

35

1

Feelings after serving with black units

Still the same More favourable Less favourable No answer

16

77

0

7

21

77

0

2

Opinions of black combat performance

Not well at all No so well Fairly well Very well Undecided

0

0

16

84

0

0

1

17

81

1

From Morris J. MacGregor & Bernard C. Nalty, Black Soldiers in World War II, vol 5 of Blacks in the United States Armed Forces Basic Documents (1977) pp514-515

We don’t want Negroes and we won’t work with Negroes. This is a white man’s job. Put the Negroes back where they belong.A strike leader speaks to cheering white workers after the FEPC ordered the Philadelphia Transportation Company to accept blacks. Quoted in Klinker, P, The Unsteady March – The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America (2002) p191

We were shipped overseas. On board, blacks had their quarters and the whites had theirs. We didn’t associate with one another: Different mess halls, different everything… We stayed in Wales, getting ready for the invasion [of Normandy in 1944]. Black soldiers and white soldiers could not go to the same town. The ordinary British were absolutely amazed, looking at these two armies. I guess they hadn’t thought about their two armies, too; the colonial and the regular. But they were chagrined by this racial situation, which they’d never seen. White soldiers would say, ‘Don’t have anything to do with those niggers. They have tails, they howl at night’, all kinds of funny stories. Very often if we got into fights, the British guys and gals would be on our side. Timuel Black lived in Detroit and joined the army in 1943. He and his fellow Northern blacks felt a little superior to less well-educated Southern blacks serving with them. Quoted in S. Terkel, The Good War (1984) p279

This social mobility raised awareness of race and gender discrimination. The biggest CIO union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), had to deal with several ‘hate strikes’ by white workers in Detroit. There were similar problems in other industries, such as transport and steel. The federal government made some rather tame efforts to deal with the problem by setting up the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Some CIO unions attempted to limit discrimination against African-American and female workers. From Chris Rowe, USA, 1890-1945 (2008) p136

In June 1941, on the eve of another war, Randolph organised a great protest march on Washington by 100,000 African-Americans, demanding that the president issue an executive order to ban racial discrimination in the armed forces and defence industries. This was an idea ahead of its time. Protest marches were to become regular occurrences in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but they were seen as radical in 1941, even by other Afircan-American leaders. President Roosevelt was strongly opposed to making any concessions to that kind of pressure, but Randolph stood firm. He issued Executive Order 8802 stating that ‘There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defence industries or government because of race, creed or colour, or national origin. Employers and labour unions have a duty to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defence industries.From Chris Rowe, USA, 1980-1945 (2008) p138

And yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the impact of the war on the willingness of Americans to confront the nation’s ‘race problem’. For the war did not simply inspire those who believed in racial equality to reconsider the nation’s customs and institutions. It also inspired those who did not defend white supremacy with renewed ardour. Among white Americans, and among white Southerners in particular, there were many who considered the war not a challenge [but] rather a confirmation of their commitment to preserving the old racial order. To them democracy meant their right to order their society as they pleased and to sustain the customs and institutions they had always known… World War II changed America’s racial geography economically, spatially, and ideologically. It ensured that the system of segregation and oppression that had enjoyed a dismal stability for more than half a century would never be entirely stable again. But it ensured, too, that the defenders of that system would confront the new challenges to it with a continued and even strengthened commitment. Alan Brinkley ‘The Legacies of World War II’ in R. Griffith and P. Baker (eds) Major Problems in American History since 1945 (2001) p31-32

Coming at a moment that was kindled with opportunities for economic betterment and social mobility; Executive Order 8802 fanned the rising flame of black militancy and initiated a chain of events that would eventually end segregation once and for all, and open up a new era for African-Americans.D. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, (1999) p768

This social mobility raised awareness of race and gender discrimination. The biggest CIO union, the United Auto Workers (UAW), had to deal with several ‘hate strikes’ by white workers in Detroit. There were similar problems in other industries, such as transport and steel. The federal government made some rather tame efforts to deal with the problem by setting up the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). Some CIO unions attempted to limit discrimination against African-American and female workers. From Chris Rowe, USA, 1890-1945 (2008) p136

The outcome of the war, however, proved a massive disappointment. The government refused to abandon racial segregation in the forces, and was even reluctant to send black troops into battle. Roosevelt did nothing to challenge the mass disenfranchisement of black voters in the South. And although the president ordered an end to discrimination in the defence industries, white workers stubbornly resisted the recruitment and promotion of blacks. When a shipyard in Alabama, under government pressure, employed a dozen black welders, thousands of white welders rioted. From Fairclough, Adam, Better Day Coming: Civil Rights in America in the 20th Century taken from the BBC website.

Well, airplanes flying close to land and sea, everybody flying but a Negro like me.

Uncle Sam says, 'Your place is on the ground; when I fly my airplanes, don't want no Negro 'round.'

The same thing for the Navy when ships goes to sea, all they got is a mess boy's job for me.

Uncle Sam says, 'Keep on your apron, son; you know I ain't going to let you shoot my big Navy gun.'

Got my long government letter, it’s my time to go, when I got to the Army, found the same old Jim Crow.

Uncle Sam says, 'Two camps for black and white.' But when trouble starts, we'll all be in that same big fight.

If you ask me I think democracy is fine, I mean democracy without a color line.

Uncle Sam says, 'We'll live the American way.' Let's get together and kill Jim Crow today.

“Uncle Sam Says”

Recorded in 1941

Josh White. Recorded in 1941

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/movies/music_life_18.html

When I got my first pay cheque, I’d never seen that much money before, not even in a bank, because I’d never been in a bank too much. At Lockheed Aircraft, I worked with a big strong white girl from a cotton

farm in Arkansas. We learned that we could open up to each other and get along. She learned that Negroes were people, too, and I saw her as a person also. We both gained form it. Had it not been for the war, I

don’t think blacks would be in the position they are in now. Some people would never have left the South. They would have had nothing to move for. The war changed my life.

Sybil Lewis, an African-American woman, compares life in a wartime factory with her pre-war life as a housemaid in Oklahoma.

Quoted in Chris Rowe, USA, 1890-1945 (2008) p138

“Truman’s stomach “turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Missouri and beaten. Whatever my inclinations as a native Missouri might

have been, as President I know this is bad. I shall fight to end evils like this…I am not asking for social equality, because no such things exist, but I am asking for equality of opportunity for all human

beings….when a mayor and a City Marshal can take a Negro Sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up, and put out one of his eyes, and nothing is done about it by State Authorities, something is radically

wrong with the system.”

From ‘Returning black servicemen in 1946’ President Truman

Vivienne Sanders, “Race Relations in the USA, 1863-1980”. Published in 2006

http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe40s/movies/music_life_18.html

“... 16 members of the executive board of the Hotel Front Service Employees union, Local 144, offered blood to the Red Cross. The twelve members of the board who are white were bled by Red Cross

physicians, but the four Negro members were told their blood could not be used. In explanation of this policy the doctor told the workers that he had been given instructions by superiors that the Army and Navy

had requested the Red Cross not to accept the blood of Negroes...

“Apparently wrought up by the attitude of the Red Cross, A. Philip Randolph declared that ‘this expression of race discrimination on the part of the Red Cross is a serious blow to its world-wide prestige and

profession as an agency of mercy and humanity. Refusal of the blood of a citizen by the Red Cross or any governmental agency on the account of color, creed or nationality is subtle advocacy of one of the most vicious and dangerous doctrines which has ever plagued the human race, namely, racial superiority, the

cult and curse of Hitler and Hitlerism, Japanese and Italian fascism.”

The Chicago Defender, Jan 24, 1942.

And yet it would be a mistake to exaggerate the impact of the war on the willingness of Americans to confront the nation’s ‘race problem’. For the war did not simply inspire those who believed in racial

equality to reconsider the nation’s customs and institutions. It also inspired those who did not defend white supremacy with renewed ardour. Among white Americans, and among white Southerners in

particular, there were many who considered the war not a challenge [but] rather a confirmation of their commitment to preserving the old racial order. To them democracy meant their right to order their society as they pleased and to sustain the customs and institutions they had always known… World War II changed

America’s racial geography economically, spatially, and ideologically. It ensured that the system of segregation and oppression that had enjoyed a dismal stability for more than half a century would never be entirely stable again. But it ensured, too, that the defenders of that system would confront the new

challenges to it with a continued and even strengthened commitment.

Alan Brinkley ‘The Legacies of World War II’ in R. Griffith and P. Baker (eds) Major Problems in American History since 1945 (2001) p31-32

In June 1941, on the eve of another war, Randolph organised a great protest march on Washington by 100,000 African-Americans, demanding that the president issue an executive order to ban racial

discrimination in the armed forces and defence industries. This was an idea ahead of its time. Protest marches were to become regular occurrences in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but they were

seen as radical in 1941, even by other African-American leaders. President Roosevelt was strongly opposed to making any concessions to that kind of pressure, but Randolph stood firm. He issued Executive Order

8802 stating that ‘There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defence industries or government because of race, creed or colour, or national origin. Employers and labour unions have a duty

to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defence industries.From Chris Rowe, USA, 1980-1945 (2008) p138

Coming at a moment that was kindled with opportunities for economic betterment and social mobility; Executive Order 8802 fanned the rising flame of black militancy and initiated a chain of events that would

eventually end segregation once and for all, and open up a new era for African-Americans.

D. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, (1999) p768

Source material – 1945-1980

The Negro of 1956 who stands on his own two feet is not a new Negro; he is the grandson or the great grandson of the men who hated slavery. By his own hands, through his own struggles, in his own organised groups – of churches, fraternal societies, the NAACP and others – he has fought his way to the place where he now stands.Roy Wilkins (he was jealous of King’s increasing prominence and keen to emphasise the importance of the NAACP – opposed to King’s non-violent action)

King’s colleagues felt that he was taking too many bows and enjoying them… he was forgetting that victory… had been the result of collective thought and collective action.A friend of Martin Luther King

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one-day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed – we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.I have a dream that one-day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.I have a dream that my four little children will one-day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!I have a dream that one-day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists… little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!Let freedom ring… When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last’. Martin Luther King – I have a dream speech, Washington - 28 August 1963.

Southern Black Voter Registration, 1940-1952

Year Estimated Number % of Eligible Blacks1940 250,000 5

1947 595,000 121952 1,008,614 20

From Donald R. Matthews and James W. Prothro, Negroes and the New Southern Politics (1966) – p17

Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don’t pretend to understand.Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird – spoken by the character Atticus – Chapter 9

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it – whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird – spoken by the character Atticus – Chapter 23

Voter registrations in the South – taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p242

Poverty statistics 1959-1990 taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p247

Twice before in American history the nation has found it necessary to review the state of its civil rights… It is our profound conviction that we have come to a time for a third re-examination of the situation, and a sustained drive ahead. Our reason for believing this are those of conscience, of self-interest, and of survival in a threatening world. Or to put it in another way, we have a moral reason, an economic reason, and an international reason for believing that the time for action is now… Our foreign policy is designed to make the United States an enormous positive influence for peace and prosperity throughout the world… But our domestic civil rights shortcomings are a serious obstacle… The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us or our record.From the report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights

To separate Negro children… solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in ways unlikely ever to be undone… We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’.Supreme Court Ruling by Chief Justice Earl Warren – Brown v Board of Education, Topeka (1954)

Rosa Parks sitting on a bus after the boycott had ended in 1956 – taken from Google Images.

He was the redeemer of the soul of America. He taught the nation that “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” if followed to their ultimate conclusion, would only end in a totally blind and toothless society. He discovered that the most potent force for revolution and reform in America is non-violence.Ralph Abernathy, speaking at a commemoration service for Martin Luther King on 15 January 1969 – quoted in De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p237

Non-violence as it grows from Judaic-Christian traditions seeks a social order of justice permeated by love… Through non-violence, courage displaces fear; love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice; hope ends despair. Peace dominates war; faith reconciles doubt. Mutual regard cancels enmity. Justice for all overthrows injustice. The redemptive community supersedes systems of gross social immorality.The newly formed SNCC’s Statement of Purpose, 1960, outlining the rationale for non-violence.Taken from De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p237

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed’ according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words, ‘Wait!’. It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. The ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’… The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter… One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage,

and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Martin Luther King explains his reasons for non-violent action to white clergy who had criticised his actions in Birmingham in April 1963.King was writing from jail. He was put in solitary confinement and wrote the letter, which had to be smuggled out, on the margins of newspapers and toilet paper. As well as describing the daily humiliations that black Americans face because of their colour he explained the rationale for non-violent action. From Martin Luther King, Why We Can’t Wait (1984)

We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black… black Americans are propertyless people in a country where property is valued above all… this country does not function by morality, love or non-violence, but by power. With power the masses could make or participate in making the decisions which govern their destinies, and thus create basic change in their day to day lives.As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against ‘black supremacy’, ‘black nationalism’, ‘racism in reverse’, and start facing reality. The reality is that this nation from top to bottom, is racist; that racism is not primarily a problem of ‘human relations’, but of an exploitation maintained – either actively or through silence – by the society as a whole. Stokely Carmichael explaining Black Power in the New York Review of Books, 22 September 1966. He explains that no organisation so far has spoken for militant blacks; those frustrated by the violent reaction to their civil rights protests. Now the SNCC has a slogan which whites might loathe, but black people could respond to.Quoted in De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray, 2005) p243

We must gain BLACK POWER here in America… We must take over the political and economic systems where we are in the majority in the heart of every major city in the country as well as in the rural areas. We must create our own black culture to erase the lies the white man has fed our minds from the day we were born… Malcolm X was the first black man from the ghetto in America to make a real attempt to get the white man’s fist off the black man. He recognised the true dignity of man – without the white society prejudices about status, education and background that we all must purge from our minds… The most beautiful thing that Malcolm X taught us is that once a black man discovers for himself a pride in his blackness, he can throw off the shackles of mental slavery and become a MAN in the truest sense of the word.Chicago Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee leaflet, 1967 – taken from Johnson, M.P. Reading the American Past p213.

When the forces demanded and the mood permitted for once an activist, human-hearted man had his hands on the levers of power… [LBJ] was there when we and the nation needed him, and oh my God, do I wish he was here now.A civil rights leader speaking at the time of Johnson’s death in January 1974 quoted in W. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey, (1999) p244.

Lyndon Johnson was the greatest champion Americans of color had in the White House during the twentieth century… He was the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed, the restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed it, the redeemer of the promises made to them by America. He….codified compassion, the president who wrote at a least a measure of justice into the statute books by which America is governed.Robert Caro, the author of a detailed three part biography of Johnson – taken from Caro, R, ‘The Compassion of Lyndon Johnson’, in New Yorker, 1 April 2002.

We did reading and writing, but didn’t go beyond that. And I guess that was part of segregation. And, to see other white kids that could play baseball and things like that we were denied. That was a little hard for us back then.Taken from Chafe, Gavins & Korstadt, Remembering Jim Crow (2001)

My theory was that if we mounted a strong non-violent movement, the opposition would surely do something to attract the media, and in turn induce national sympathy and attention to the everyday segregated circumstance of a person living in the Deep South.Taken from Hampton, Fayer & Flynn, Voices of Freedom (1990)

For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’… This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’. We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied’.An extract from Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail criticising liberals who urged black people to show patience

I dig Malcolm the best. He’s the only one that makes any sense for my money. I’m too busy making a buck to join a movement. But those black Muslims, whatever you call them, make more sense than the NAACP and all the rest of them put together. They’re for their own people and that Malcolm ain’t afraid to tell the FBI or the cops where to get off. You don’t see him pussyfootin’ around the whites like he’s scared of them.A New York taxi driver gives his views on Malcolm XTaken from Green, J, Black Power (2005)

And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who… has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy. And the generation that’s coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it.Malcolm X speaking in his ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, 1964Taken from American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)

I don’t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts. In fact, I’m a ‘Black Nationalist Freedom Fighter’… So today, though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism… The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community… The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone… The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community. Malcolm X describes Black Nationalism in his ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, 1964Taken from American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)

I have never seen such a remarkable personality in my life. I’ve met prime ministers, I’ve met presidents, I’ve spoken to Nelson Mandela. He was clear in his bearing and his certainty of language – one of the finest political leaders of all time.British Civil Rights Campaigner and journalist Darcus Howe recalls meeting Malcolm X during his visit to TrinidadTaken from the Channel 4 Website.

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/


Too often the goal ‘integration’ has been based on a complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a decent house or education Negros must move into a white neighbourhood. This reinforces the idea that ‘white’ is automatically better and that ‘black’ is by definition inferior. It allows the nation to focus on a handful of Negro children who get into white schools, and to ignore the 94 per cent who are left behind. Such situations will not change until Negros have political power – to control their own schools.Stokely Carmichael speaks to members of the SNCC in 1966Quoted in Green, J, Black Power (2005)

1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities’ education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

2. We want completely free healthcare for all black and oppressed people.3. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color,

all oppressed people inside the United States.4. We want an immediate end to wars of aggression.5. We want full employment for our people.6. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black community.7. We want decent housing, fir for the shelter of human beings.8. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American

society.9. We want freedom for all blacks and oppressed people now held in US Federal, state, county, city

and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.

The Black Panthers Ten-Point Programme, published 15 October 1966Taken from: Foner & Carson, The Black Panthers Speak (2002)

This victory took decades to cultivate. It could not have happened in an earlier America; certainly not before 1954, when the wall of legal segregation kept us divided, ignorant and fearful. Think of the black veterans coming home from the second world war, successfully demanding the integration of the armed forces. Or the 1954 Brown v Board of Education case that finally ended centuries of legal segregation. Or Rosa Parks in 1955 refusing to go to the back of the bus. Or Dr King emerging to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Or the Little Rock Nine breaking through the walls of school segregation in 1957. Or Dr King rallying millions on the steps of Washington DC, demanding jobs and healthcare, a “dream” for all America in 1963, which led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Or the Voting Rights Act in 1965. My rainbow presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 were a link in this unbroken chain. Hands that once picked cotton now pick presidents. It’s a new day and a new way for America.Jesse Jackson on the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the USA January 2009Taken from The Observer, Sunday 18 January 2009

Booker T. Washington

As a race the [blacks] are altogether inferior to the whites. A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high place. I do not believe that the average Negro is as yet in any way fit to take care of himself and others. If he were, there would be no Negro race problem.Theodore Roosevelt before he became President

I believe it is the duty of the Negro – as the greater part of the race is already doing – to deport himself modestly in regard to political claims depending upon the slow but sure influences that proceed from the possessions of property, intelligence and high character for the full recognition of his political rights. I think that the according of the full exercise of political rights is going to be a matter of natural, slow growth, not an overnight gourdvine affair. Booker T. Washington in his autobiography ‘Up from Slavery’ (1901) - Quoted in Paterson & Willoughby , Civil Rights in the USA

Booker T. Washington was the greatest Negro leader since Frederick Douglass, and the most distinguished man, white or black who has come out of the South since the Civil War. On the other hand, in stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disenfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and the firmed establishment of color caste in this land. W. E. B. du Bois writing about Booker T. Washington on Washington’s death in 1915 - Quoted in Paterson & Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA

The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again.Benjamin Tillman, Senator of South Carolina – commenting on Theodore Roosevelt’s dining with Booker T. Washington, 1901

A handful of men, with no report of work accomplished, no one in the field to spread it, no plan of work laid out – no intelligent direction – meet and by their child’s play illustrated in their own doings the truth of the saying that Negroes have no capacity for organisation. Meanwhile a whole race is lynched, proscribed, intimidated, deprives of its political and civil rights, herded into boxes (by courtesy called separate cars) and we sit tamely by without using the only means – that of thorough organisation and earnest work to prevent it. No wonder the world at large spits upon us with impunity.Ida B Wells quoted in Race Relations in the USA by Vivienne Sanders p44


I thank you for sending me a copy of your address delivered at the Atlanta Exposition. I thank you with much enthusiasm for making the address. I have read it with intense interest, and I think the Exposition would be fully justified if it did not do more than furnish the opportunity for its delivery. Your words cannot fail to delight and encourage all who wish well for your race; and if our coloured fellow-citizens do not from your utterances gather new hope and form new determinations to gain every valuable advantage offered them by their citizenship, it will be strange indeed.

Yours very truly, Grover Cleveland

A letter from President Grover Cleveland to Booker T. Washington after the Atlanta Compromise Speech quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p197






1885 78 1901 1071886 71 1902 861887 80 1903 861888 95 1904 831889 95 1905 611890 90 1906 641891 121 1907 601892 155 1908 931893 154 1909 731894 134 1910 65

1895 112 1911 631896 80 1912 631897 122 1913 791898 102 1914 691899 84 1915 801900 107 1916 31

TOTAL 2,843

Lynchings of black men 1885-1916 - quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p213

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races... In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro's tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.The Souls of Black Folk s- Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others, by W.E.B. Du Bois http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/BTWdubois.htm

Booker T. Washington was the greatest Negro leader since Frederick Douglass, and the most distinguished man, white or black who has come out of the South since the Civil War. On the other hand, in stern justice, we must lay on the soul of this man, a heavy responsibility for the consummation of Negro disenfranchisement, the decline of the Negro college and the firmed establishment of the color caste in this land.W.E.B du Bois writing about Booker T.Washington on Washington’s death in 1915- Quoted in Patterson and Willoughby, Civil Rights in the USA

The Cleveland Journal – 10 October 1908 – Volume 06, Issue No 33, Page 04 -

http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/BTWdubois.htm

Cleveland Advocate

"Tuskegee" and its Principal

Volume: 02Issue Number: 11Page Number: 04Date: 07/24/1915

"Despite his conservatism, however, Washington never renounced the ultimate goal of equality. He advocated a tactical retreat in order to prepare the way for a strategic advance." Pg 63. Of Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2001- Adam Fairclough 2001

Booker T. Washington’s achievements are controversial. Some black’s thought of him as ‘Uncle Tom’ humiliatingly begging for aid from influential whites, and keeping blacks ‘down’ by his emphasis on vocational training and by his refusal to demand a speedy end to segregation and disfranchisement. One black journalist called him ‘the greatest white man’s nigger in the world’. However, Booker T.Washington’s ‘accomodationist’ philosophy was probably realistic. From the collected works of Langston Hughes: Essays on Art, Race, Politics and World Affairs v.89 pg 513

Washington’s Tuskegee gave many blacks vocational education. This increased their self-confidence and economic opportunities. In the ghettos of the North, Washington’s National Urban League helped blacks to find jobs, promoted better health care and education, and tried to prevent delinquency.

Booker T. Washington’s achievements are controversial. Some blacks though him as ‘Uncle Tom’, humiliatingly begging for aid from influential whites, and keeping blacks ‘down’ by his emphasis on vocational training and by his refusal to demand a speedy end to segregation and disfranchisement. One black journalist called him ‘the greatest white man’s nigger in the world’. However, Booker T. Washington’s ‘accomodationist’ philosophy was probably realistic.

From Farmers & Sanders An Introduction to American History 1860-1990 p161

Historical and contemporary judgments affirm that Washington was in reality “a great accommodator”. But to create Tuskegee in Alabama in that era he could hardly have been otherwise. He did create Tuskegee - a splendid achievement – but, in so doing, was in turn almost forced to create of himself an image of national leadership.

From the Collected Works of Langston Hughes: Essays on Art, Race, Politics and World Affairs v. 9 (The Collected Works of Langston Hughes) p513

Washington was dominated by purpose, not power. That Tuskegee became an exemplary institution, single out as a distinctive black college, and was the result of careful management and hard work.

From Virginia Lantz Denton Booker T. Washington and the adult education movement.

Washington bartered off quality collegiate training for generations of black leaders for the upbuilding of Tuskegee and his own reputation.

From Robert Sherer, Subordination or Liberation? The development and conflicting theories of black education in 19th Century Alabama (1977)

Booker T. Washington provided a different approach to Black Nationalism. Washington served a new class of people. "The Wizard of Tuskegee" sought to train the middle class and elite to teach, guide, and lead the African American masses. He also helped construct an African American society seeking ways to deal with a new question, segregation.

Henry McNeal Turner versus the Tuskegee Machine: Black Leadership in the Nineteenth Century

Journal article by Gregory Mixon; The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 79, 1994

Marcus Garvey – source focus

It is the mission of all Negroes to have pride in their race. To think of race in the highest terms of human living. To think that God made the race perfect, that there is no-one better than you, that you have elements of human perfection and as such you must love yourselves. Love yourselves better than anyone else. All beauty is in you and not outside you, for God made you beautiful. Confine your affection, therefore, to your own race and God will bless you and men will honour you. Marcus Garvey, School of African Philosophy (1937), quoted in Paterson, D, Civil Rights in the USA, 1863-1980 (2001), p85

Today, there are a lot of people who think Garvey’s still alive. I was conducting radio interviews with some young Rastafarians, who look to Garvey as their prophet and realised they were quietly laughing behind me. One of them said ‘That man think Marcus Garvey dead’. They felt pity for me. I was uninformed. In black folk culture, there is no death for the righteous.Extract from a New Yorker article on the Marcus Garvey Centennial Exhibition in Harlem (1987).

Boastful, egotistic, tyrannical, intolerant… gifted at self-advertisement… promising ever, but never fulfilling… a lover of pomp, tawdry, finery, and garish display… a sheer opportunist and a demagogic charlatan.Asa Philip Randolph’s magazine The Messenger on Marcus Garvey. Quoted in Sanders, Vivienne and Farmer, Alan - An Introduction to American History, 1860-1990, (2002) p166

I asked, ‘Where is the black man’s government? Where is his King and his Kingdom? Where is his President, his country and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?’ I could not find them; and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them’. Marcus Garvey. Quoted in Sanders, Vivienne and Farmer, Alan - An Introduction to American History, 1860-1990, (2002) p166

Looking forward a century or two, we can see an economic and political death struggle for the survival of the different race groups. Many of our present-day national centres will have become over-crowded with vast surplus populations. The fight for bread and position will be keen and severe. The weaker and unprepared group is bound to go under. That is why, visionaries as we are in the Universal Negro Improvement Association, we are fighting for the founding of a negro nation in Africa, so that there will be no clash between black and white and that each race will have a separate existence and civilisation all its own without courting suspicion and hatred or eyeing each other with jealousy and rivalry within the borders of the same country. White men who have struggled for and built up their countries and their own civilizations are not disposed to hand them over to the Negro or any other race without let or hindrance. It would be unreasonable to expect this. Hence any vain assumption on the part of the negro to imagine that he will one day become President of the Nation, Governor of the State, or Mayor of the city in the countries of white men, is like waiting on the devil and his angels to take up their residence in the Realm on High and direct there the affairs of Paradise.From Marcus Garvey, “The Negro’s Greatest Enemy’ quoted in Frazier, Thomas (ed) Afro-American History – Primary Sources p259-260

Source material – Montgomery Bus Boycott

Stride Towards Freedom:The Montgomery Story by MLK (Preface pxxx)

Since Montgomery, a gallant bus protest has been conducted in Tallahassee, and efforts to integrate buses have spread to many other Southern communities. Negroes throughout the South have begun to take up in earnest their right to register and vote. Little Rock has occurred, and Negro children have walked with fortitude through the ranks of white students – often hostile and jeering – at Central High School. How much the Montgomery movement helped to give strength and new courage to Negroes elsewhere, and how much Montgomery and Little Rock and Tallahassee were all results of the same causes, is a matter for future historians. Whatever the final estimate, it is already clear that Montgomery was a part of something much larger than itself.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott was highly significant. It inspired Northern bi-racial support and further black action. In particular, it inspired Martin Luther King to establish a new organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). SCLC was to prove exceptionally effective in the South at a time when NAACP was being persecuted there. It was far harder for whites to persecute a black Christian organisation than to persecute the NAACP. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was that, unlike the Little Rock crisis, this was primarily the achievement of black people. True, they had depended upon a Supreme Court ruling against segregated buses. However, in the year before that ruling was given, blacks had shown that they could initiate and sustain successful protests in a dignified and morally justifiable fashion.

Farmer, Alan & Sanders, Vivienne An introduction to American History 1860-1990 (2002) p178

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers… If we don’t stop helping these African flesh eaters, we will soon wake up and find Reverend King in the White House.

Extract from a White Citizens Council leaflet, printed in Montgomery during the 1955 boycott.

I just happened to be here… If Martin Luther King had never been born this movement would have taken place… there comes a time when time itself is ready for change. That time has come in Montgomery, and I had nothing to do with it.

Martin Luther King

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in downtown Montgomery, Alabama. It was to be the most famous bus ride in American history, a bus ride that would spark civil rights protests across the American South and propel Parks to iconic status as the “mother of the civil rights movement”.

From The Times – The Obituary of Rosa Parks who died on 24 October 2005 aged 92.

But Montgomery was an important start. With its church-based mass mobilisation, its black ministerial leadership, its cultivation of the idea of non-violence, and its projection of Martin Luther King, Jr, onto the national stage, the Montgomery bus boycott provided the blueprint for what would follow. Not least, it proved that segregation could be overcome by black action, a fact that inspired many others. “Somewhere in the universe”, Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver later wrote, “a gear in the machinery had shifted”.

From BBC History Magazine, The Boycott that Inspired the Dream – December 2005

Source 6

Rosa Parks sitting on a bus after the boycott had ended in 1956 – taken from Google Images.

1. Not all white people are opposed to integrated buses…2. The whole bus is now for the use of all people. Take a vacant seat.3. Pray for guidance and commit yourself to complete non-violence in word and action as you enter

the bus.4. …In all things observe ordinary rules of courtesy and good behaviour.5. Remember that this is a victory for Negroes alone, but for all Montgomery and the South. Do

not boast! Do not brag!6. Be quiet but friendly; proud but not arrogant; joyous but not boisterous.

An extract from Martin Luther King’s advice to black Montgomery citizens returning to travelling on buses after the boycott.Taken from Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958)

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amidst the piercing chill of an Alpine November… we are not here advocating violence…we are Christian people… The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest… And if we are united, we can get many of the things that we not only desire but which we justly deserve… We are not afraid of what we are doing, because we are doing it within the law… We, the disinherited of this land, we who have been oppressed so long are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality…when the history books are written in the future, somebody will have to say ‘There lived a race of people, black people…who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights…they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization.Martin Luther King, 5 December 1955 – quoted in Carson, C Eyes on the Prize (1991) p49-50

He [the driver] got off the bus and came back shortly. A few minutes later, two policemen got on the bus, and they approached me and asked if the driver had asked me to stand up, and I said yes, and they wanted to know why I didn’t. I told them I didn’t think I should have to stand up… They placed me under arrest then and had me to get in the police car, and I was taken to jail.Rosa Parks, interviewed by Howell Raines for the book My Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (1977)Taken from www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

According to legend, on December 1 1955, a weary black woman in Montgomery, Alabama, sat in the “for whites only” front section of a bus and started the civil rights movement. Rosa Lee Parks, who has died aged 92, never stopped explaining that this was not really what happened. Nonetheless she continued to be presented as a simple soul with tired feet – a condescending misinterpretation of a woman who was an experienced and respected campaigner for civil rights…

On December 20 [1956], the Supreme Court supported the decision of a lower court and federal injunctions were served on the bus company officials to end segregation. Montgomery’s buses were integrated on December 21 1956.

A great victory had been won. But Parks was sacked form her tailoring job and, in 1957 left Montgomery for Detroit, following harassment. Rowbotham, Sheila in The Guardian, 26 October 2005 Taken from www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/

The Montgomery bus boycott itself did not change the segregation laws. Rather, the NAACP’s court case Browder v Gayle ended in a US Supreme Court ruling that made the segregation of buses illegal. The case started in April 1955 when Aurelia Browder was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white person. Browder appealed against her conviction and with the support of the NAACP the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. On 20 December 1956 the court outlawed segregation of buses. Bunce & Gallagher, Pursing Life and Liberty: Equality in the USA 1945-1968 (2009) p36

Nine months before the Montgomery bus boycott, [Claudette] Colvin, then aged 15, refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. The NAACP considered using her case to protest the segregation of transport. However, in the months following her arrest, Colvin, who was not married, became pregnant. Consequently, it was felt that she was not an appropriate figurehead for the protest.Bunce & Gallagher, Pursing Life and Liberty: Equality in the USA 1945-1968 (2009) p36

The Brown Case

The very first day I was chased away by men carrying ropes, men from the white segregationist mob who threatened to kill me.

The second time I went to Central High School, I was also frightened because I could see this huge mob gathered directly across the street from the school as I entered the side door. I couldn't help wondering what would become of me. By noon, I had to be secreted out because the mob was overrunning the school — rushing towards us, rushing past the policemen, who were throwing down their badges and some of them were joining the mob. It was a mess.’

Melba Pattilo Beals speaking about her experience at little rock. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=4799

To separate Negro children… solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in ways unlikely ever to be undone… We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal’.

Supreme Court Ruling by Chief Justice Earl Warren – Brown v Board of Education, Topeka (1954)

We regard the decisions of the Supreme Court in the school cases as a clear abuse of judicial power … Every one of the 26 States that had any substantial racial differences among its people, either approved the operation of segregated schools already in existence or subsequently established such schools by action of the same law-making body which considered the 14th Amendment. As admitted by the Supreme Court in the public school case (Brown v. Board of Education), the doctrine of separate but equal schools "apparently originated in Roberts v. City of Boston (1849), upholding school segregation against attack as being violative of a State constitutional guarantee of equality." This constitutional doctrine began in the North, not in the South, and it was followed not only in Massachusetts,

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but in Connecticut, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other northern states until they, exercising their rights as states through the constitutional processes of local self-government, changed their school systems.

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/marshall/manifesto.html

Daily News (Jackson, Mississippi)"Bloodstains On White Marble Steps"

May 18, 1954

. . . Human blood may stain Southern soil in many places because of this decision but the dark red stains of that blood will be on the marble steps of the United States Supreme Court building.

White and Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation leads to mixed marriages and mixed marriages lead to mongrelization of the human race.

http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/reaction.html

Times (New York)"All God's Chillun"

May 18, 1954

. . . It is true, of course, that the court is not talking of that sort of "equality" which produces interracial marriages. It is not talking of a social system at all. It is talking of a system of human rights which is foreshadowed in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which stated "that all men are created equal." Mr. Jefferson and the others who were responsible for the Declaration did not intend to say that all men are equally intelligent, equally good or equal in height or weight. They meant to say that all men were, and ought to be, equal before the law. If men are equal, children are equal, too. There is an even greater necessity in the case of children, whose opportunities to advance themselves and to be useful to the community may be lost if they do not have the right to be educated.

No one can deny that the mingling of the races in the schools of the seventeen states which have required segregation and the three states which have permitted it will create problems. The folkways in southern communities will have to be adapted to new conditions if white and Negro children, together with white and Negro teachers, are to enjoy not only equal facilities but the same facilities in the same schools.

. . . The highest court in the land, the guardian of our national conscience, has reaffirmed its faith-and the undying American faith-in the equality of all men and all children before the law.

http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/reaction.html

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/marshall/manifesto.html

Letter to John F. Kennedy

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In response to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation, white segregationists throughout the South created the White Citizens’ Councils (WCC). These local groups typically drew a more middle and upper class membership than the Ku Klux Klan and, in addition to using violence and intimidation to counter civil rights goals, they sought to economically and socially oppress blacks. Martin Luther King faced WCC attacks as soon as the Montgomery bus boycott, began and was a target of these groups throughout his career.

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_white_citizens_councils_wcc/

The decision in Brown v. Board of Education came in two parts. First, the justices considered whether segregation was constitutional. The Brown I decision determined that it was not, but there still remained the tricky question about how to end segregation. On this question, the Court heard arguments during the following term.

1. In 1955, the Supreme Court of the United States determined that segregation should be ended as soon as possible, but the Court also recognized that it would be difficult for communities to deal with the change and that there were many institutional, political, and social circumstances to be worked out. The Court struggled with how to phrase the order to desegregate schools and what kind of time frames should be attached to the order. The NAACP advocated for schools to be desegregated "forthwith," which implies a quick timetable. However, Justice Warren adopted the advice of Justice Frankfurter and chose other language. … The Court's recommendation that schools should desegregate "with all deliberate speed" had enormous consequences for the speed of desegregation.

http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/desegregation.html

‘Blacks in Montgomery, Alabama, offered an alternative approach to ending segregation: direct action. In December 1955, led by Rev Martin Luther King, Jr, blacks instigated a 382-day boycott of city buses that eventually led to court-ordered desegregation. But Marshall was unconvinced by such tactics. ‘All that walking for nothing,’ he complained, ‘when they could have taken their case to the courts without the need for a boycott.’ He was right in his observation that the courts had resolved the dispute. Yet he failed to grasp the growing importance of emboldened black community activism.

John A Kirk (May 2004) Brown, Black and White

http://www.landmarkcases.org/brown/desegregation.html

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_white_citizens_councils_wcc/

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_montgomery_bus_boycott_1955_1956/

http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_brown_v_board_of_education_of_topeka_kansas_347_us_483_1954_349_us_294_1955/

With a brisk, nontechnical and unexpectedly unanimous opinion running only ten pages, Chief Justice Earl Warren ignited a legal and social revolution in race relations and constitutionalism. “Brown was the beginning,” Alexander M. Bickel later wrote—the beginning not only of substantive changes in the American social structure but also in the nature and expectations of how the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution.

http://www.answers.com/topic/brown-versus-board-of-education

John F. Kennedy

‘I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. When Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.’ Civil Rights Announcement, 1963 [INTERNET] Available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/jfk-civilrights/

Speech by John F. Kennedy

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/jfk-civilrights/

http://www.answers.com/topic/brown-versus-board-of-education

http://www.answers.com/topic/substantive

http://www.answers.com/topic/alexander-bickel

http://www.answers.com/topic/earl-warren

22 June 1963, Civil Rights Leaders meet with the Vice President, Attorney General, and other officials. White House. Photograph by Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and

Museum, Boston.

In 144 school districts in 11 Southern and border States, desegregation was carried out for the first time this month in an orderly and peaceful manner. Parents, students, citizens, school officials, and public officials of these areas met their responsibilities in a dignified, law-abiding way. It wasn't necessary for the Federal Government to become involved in any of those States. Desegregation in the Schools of Alabama, 1963 [INTERNET] Available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/jfk-desegregation/

Speech from John F. Kennedy

Across the nation, more than 70 percent of African Americans voted for Kennedy, and these votes provided the winning edge in several key states. When President Kennedy took office in January 1961, African Americans had high expectations for the new administration. But Kennedy's narrow election victory and small working margin in Congress left him cautious. He was reluctant to lose southern support for legislation on many fronts by pushing too hard on civil rights legislation. Instead, he appointed unprecedented numbers of African Americans to high-level positions in the administration and strengthened the Civil Rights Commission. He spoke out in favor of school desegregation, praised a number of cities for integrating their schools, and put Vice President Lyndon Johnson in charge of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Attorney General Robert Kennedy turned his attention to voting rights, initiating five times the number of suits brought during the previous administration . (Presidential Library and Museum, 2011) John F Kennedy – Civil Rights Movement [INTERNET] Available at http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx

http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights-Movement.aspx

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/jfk-desegregation/

President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination of all kinds based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also provides the federal government with the powers to enforce desegregation. (Pearson Educational, 2000-2012) Civil Rights Timeline [INTERNET] Available at http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

The leadership of Martin Luther King

Out of this conviction, history records the marches in Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago and other cities. He gave people an ethical and moral way to engage in activities designed to perfect social change without bloodshed and violence; and when violence did erupt it was that which is potential in any protest which aims to uproot deeply entrenched wrongs. No reasonable person would deny that the activities and the personality of Martin Luther King Jr. contributed largely to the success of the student sit-in movements in abolishing segregation in downtown establishments; and that his activities contributed mightily to the passage of the Civil Rights legislation of 1964 and 1965.Dr. Benjamin E Mays’ Eulogy given at the funeral of Martin Luther King at Morehouse College, 9 April 1968.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/civilrightstimeline1.html

The front cover of Time Magazine – 3 January 1964. Martin Luther King had been named Time Magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’. Taken from Google Images.

My friends, we are certainly very happy to see each of you out this evening. We are here this evening for serious business. [Audience: Yes]. We are here in a general sense because first and foremost we are American citizens, [Yeah. That’s right] We are here also because of our love for democracy, [Yes] and because of our deep-seated belief that democracy transformed from paper to thick action [Yes] is the greatest form of government on earth. [That’s right]Martin Luther King speaking at a meeting of the MIA at Holt Street Baptist Church, 5 December 1955 in Montgomery, AlabamaTaken from www.mlkonline.net/mia.html

King came to dominate the mass meetings; many regarded him with something like awe. “When King comes in… you can hear a pin drop,” one observer noted. “He walks in, so calm and quiet, almost like a little boy.” When he spoke, the effect was extraordinary. A visitor from Fisk University was struck, in particular, by the adulation he received from women (who often comprised a majority of the mass meetings). Typical remarks were “He’s next to Jesus himself.” “We sure are with him”. “He’s my darling.”

http://www.mlkonline.net/mia.html

“He’s right there by God.” King, for his part, came to realize that blacks wanted and needed a symbol with whom they could identify. Providentially, he had become that symbol, and it was a role he accepted”.Taken from Martin Luther King Jr by ADAM FAIRCLOUGH p27 (1995)

Destruction caused by the Chicago riots following Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 – this is all that remained of the west side business district.

I just happened to be here… If Martin Luther King had never been born this movement would have taken place… there comes a time when time itself is ready for change. That time has come in Montgomery, and I had nothing to do with it.Martin Luther King quoted in Sanders, V, Race Relations in the USA (2006) p126

Many people thought he was out of his mind when he led an army, not armed with guns or bricks or stones, 50,000 strong in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 and said to his followers: “Love your enemies, pray for them that curse and despitefully use you.” Some of us may have wondered about him when he led us without physical weapons in the battles of Albany, Georgia; St Augustine, Florida; and Danville, Virginia. And we knew something must have been wrong with him when defenceless we stood before Bull Connor in Birmingham facing vicious and hungry dogs, fire hoses and brutal policemen.

He was the redeemer of the soul of America. He taught the nation that “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”, if followed to its ultimate conclusion, would only end in a totally blind and toothless society. He discovered that the most potent force for revolution and reform in America is non-violence .He knew, as the eminent historian Arnold Toynbee has written, that if America is saved, it will be through the black man who can inject new dimensions of non-violence into the veins of our civilization.Ralph Abernathy, speech given at the Commemoration service for Martin Luther King, 15 January 1969. Taken from www.spartacus.school.net.co.uk/USAabernathy.htm

http://www.spartacus.school.net.co.uk/USAabernathy.htm

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one-day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed – we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.I have a dream that one-day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.I have a dream that my four little children will one-day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!I have a dream that one-day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists… little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!Let freedom ring… When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God’s children – black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics – will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last’. Martin Luther King – I have a dream speech, Washington - 28 August 1963.

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was ‘well-timed’ according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the words, ‘Wait!’. It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. The ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never’… The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter… One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage, and thusly, carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Martin Luther King explains his reasons for non-violent action to white clergy who had criticised his actions in Birmingham in April 1963.King was writing from jail. He was put in solitary confinement and wrote the letter, which had to be smuggled out, on the margins of newspapers and toilet paper. As well as describing the daily humiliations that black Americans face because of their colour he explained the rationale for non-violent action. From Martin Luther King, Why We Can’t Wait (1984)

…absolutely undone, and he looked at me and said, ‘You know, Bayard, I worked to get these people the right to eat hamburgers, and now I’ve got to do something…to help them get money to buy it’. I think it was the first time he really understood.Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King’s ex-communist friend, recalls Martin Luther King’s reaction to the Watts riots in 1965Quoted in Sander, V, Race Relations in the USA (2006), p140

Ella Baker, a former staff member of the SCLC and a founder member of SNCC, claimed that, ‘the movement made Martin, rather than Martin making the movement.’ It is clear that the Civil Rights movement, in its broadest scope, was already in existence before King became actively involved. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored (NAACP) had already won the landmark US Supreme Court decision, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. This took place a year before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Also, King played no part in the events surrounding Central High School, Arkansas in 1957, when seven African American students attempted to gain admission to an all-white school. Nor was King involved when black student James Meredith won admission to the all-white University of Mississippi in 1962. In fact, in the whole campaign to desegregate education, Martin Luther King played only a marginal role. King was only asked to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott because he was an outsider and had not been directly involved in Civil Rights activities in Montgomery. Murphy, Derrick, Martin Luther King and Civil Rights taken from Modern History Review (April 2004)

In the 1950s and 1960s, King became the most visible leader of intensifying black protest centred on direct action. But he was well aware that he was just one leader in a much larger movement, and not the movement itself. Rather, he viewed himself as a servant of the people.

Just two months to the day before his assassination, King delivered his own eulogy from his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. He told the congregation that he did not want to be aggrandises as a great leader at his funeral. All he wanted, he said, was to be remembered as someone who tried to love somebody, who tried to be right on the war question, who tried to feed the hungry, who tried to clothe the naked, who tried to serve humanity, and who gave his life trying to serve others. King said that he wanted to be remembered as a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness. It seems a fitting description of his life today as it did 40 years ago.Kirk, John A. A drum major for justice, taken from BBC History Magazine (April 2008)

There were many leaders in the civil rights struggle, but Martin Luther King was more than just the most conspicuous of them, and more than just an eloquent speaker. His non-violence inspired some support, but it also appealed vitally to neutrals in a way that negated more conservative voices. No one else matched his leadership of targeted, orchestrated campaigns that strengthened national political strategy. After 1965, he accepted the challenge of fighting ghetto poverty and American militarism and spurned the spoils of leadership to campaign for peace and justice. Made famous by a movement that carried him to fame, his noblest legacy is as the founder of movements still in their infancy.Ling, Peter J. Martin Luther King’s Style of Leadership taken from www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/martin_luther_king_01.shtml

In retrospect, the march was neither the sell-out denounced by Malcolm X nor the triumph celebrated in official narratives. It does not seem to have altered a single vote in Congress, though it is likely to have stiffened the spines of faint-hearts.

And certainly, without the movement of which the March was the visible apogee, Congress would never have enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965 – which together finally gave

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/martin_luther_king_01.shtml

force to the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, adopted immediately after the Civil War. But these acts were not sufficient to ensure equality, and King’s indictment of America’s undelivered promise still holds true today, as African-Americans struggle with the economic injustices that the forgotten demands of the march were meant to address.From Marqusee, M, Day of Dreams taken from BBC History Magazine (August 2003)

Increasingly pessimistic, King concluded he had overestimated the successes of 1955-65. He said the ‘vast majority’ of whites were racist, ‘hypocritical’, and had committed a kind of ‘psychological and spiritual genocide’ against blacks. King also felt he misunderestimated black rage. He was exasperated by militant black racists such as Stokely Carmichael. ‘Many people who would otherwise be ashamed of their anti-Negro feeling now have an excuse’. However, ‘Stokely is not the problem. The problem is white people and their attitude.’

Whites and blacks became increasingly critical of him. When he toured riot-stricken Cleveland, Ohio, black teenagers mocked and ignored him. He knew he had raised their hopes but failed to fulfil them. Many blacks thought him too moderate, an ‘Uncle Tom’, in awe of white authority figures. Many whites considered him an extremist. The Washington Post accused King of inciting anarchy because he had urged non-violent disruption of Washington DC to ‘create the crisis that will force the nation to look at the situation’. He called that ‘massive civil disobedience’.Sanders, V, Race Relations in the USA 1863-1980 (2006) p123

King admitted that the SCLC achieved little in the three years after Montgomery. Then the civil rights movement exploded into life again in February 1960. Initially, King had nothing to do with it. In Greensboro, North Carolina, four black students spontaneously refused to leave the all-white Woolworths cafeteria when asked. Other students took up and retained the seats, day after day, forcing the cafeteria to close. NAACP was unenthusiastic about helping the students and SCLC employee Ella Baker warned them not to let adults like King take over their protest.Sanders, V, Race Relations in the USA 1863-1980 (2006) p127-128

A diagram of the leadership of the civil rights movements taken from Sanders, V, Race Relations in the USA, 1863-1980 (2006) p146

Black Power Source Material

I dig Malcolm the best. He’s the only one that makes any sense for my money. I’m too busy making a buck to join a movement. But those black Muslims, whatever you call them, make more sense than the NAACP and all the rest of them put together. They’re for their own people and that Malcolm ain’t afraid to tell the FBI or the cops where to get off. You don’t see him pussyfootin’ around the whites like he’s scared of them.A New York taxi driver gives his views on Malcolm XTaken from Green, J, Black Power (2005)

And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, nor an American. I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who… has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy. And the generation that’s coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it.Malcolm X speaking in his ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, 1964Taken from American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)


I don’t believe in fighting today in any one front, but on all fronts. In fact, I’m a ‘Black Nationalist Freedom Fighter’… So today, though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism… The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community… The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone… The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community. Malcolm X describes Black Nationalism in his ‘The Ballot or the Bullet’ speech, 1964Taken from American Rhetoric: Top 100 Speeches (http://www.americanrhetoric.com)

I have never seen such a remarkable personality in my life. I’ve met prime ministers, I’ve met presidents, I’ve spoken to Nelson Mandela. He was clear in his bearing and his certainty of language – one of the finest political leaders of all time.British Civil Rights Campaigner and journalist Darcus Howe recalls meeting Malcolm X during his visit to TrinidadTaken from the Channel 4 Website.

Too often the goal ‘integration’ has been based on a complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a decent house or education Negros must move into a white neighbourhood. This reinforces the idea that ‘white’ is automatically better and that ‘black’ is by definition inferior. It allows the nation to focus on a handful of Negro children who get into white schools, and to ignore the 94 per cent who are left behind. Such situations will not change until Negros have political power – to control their own schools.Stokely Carmichael speaks to members of the SNCC in 1966Quoted in Green, J, Black Power (2005)

1. We want power to determine the destiny of our black and oppressed communities’ education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

2. We want completely free healthcare for all black and oppressed people.3. We want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people, other people of color,

all oppressed people inside the United States.4. We want an immediate end to wars of aggression.5. We want full employment for our people.6. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black community.7. We want decent housing, fir for the shelter of human beings.8. We want decent education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American

society.9. We want freedom for all blacks and oppressed people now held in US Federal, state, county, city

and military prisons and jails. We want trials by a jury of peers for all persons charged with so-called crimes under the laws of this country.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people’s community control of modern technology.

The Black Panthers Ten-Point Programme, published 15 October 1966Taken from: Foner & Carson, The Black Panthers Speak (2002)

We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black… black Americans are propertyless people in a country where property is valued above all… this


country does not function by morality, love or non-violence, but by power. With power the masses could make or participate in making the decisions which govern their destinies, and thus create basic change in their day to day lives.As for white America, perhaps it can stop crying out against ‘black supremacy’, ‘black nationalism’, ‘racism in reverse’, and start facing reality. The reality is that this nation from top to bottom, is racist; that racism is not primarily a problem of ‘human relations’, but of an exploitation maintained – either actively or through silence – by the society as a whole. Stokely Carmichael explaining Black Power in the New York Review of Books, 22 September 1966. He explains that no organisation so far has spoken for militant blacks; those frustrated by the violent reaction to their civil rights protests. Now the SNCC has a slogan which whites might loathe, but black people could respond to.Quoted in De Pennington, Joanna - Modern America: The USA, 1865 to the Present, (Hodder Murray,

2005) p243 “‘Faster, Higher, Stronger’ is the motto of the Olympic Games. ‘Angrier, nastier, uglier’ better describes the scene in Mexico City last week,” wrote Time Magazine in response to American sprinters Tommie Smith (1st place) and John Carlos (3rd place)’s black power salute. They stood in black socks to represent black poverty; Carlos wore beads to symbolize black lynchings; together they raised their black-gloved fists in a cry for black unity. They had used their wins in Mexico City’s 1968 Olympic Games to show their opposition to the continued oppression of blacks in the U.S.Photo of the Black Power Salute at the 1968 Olympics.Taken from

We must gain BLACK POWER here in America… We must take over the political and economic systems where we are in the majority in the heart of every major city in the country as well as in the rural

areas. We must create our own black culture to erase the lies the white man has fed our minds from the day we were born… Malcolm X was the first black man from the ghetto in America to make a real

attempt to get the white man’s fist off the black man. He recognised the true dignity of man – without the white society prejudices about status, education and background that we all must purge from our

minds… The most beautiful thing that Malcolm X taught us is that once a black man discovers for himself a pride in his blackness, he can throw off the shackles of mental slavery and become a MAN in

the truest sense of the word.Chicago Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee leaflet, 1967 – taken from Johnson, M.P.

Reading the American Past p213.

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