The photos I took in the morning of my visit are in the order I saw the exhibits in the museum, because I thought they did a good job of making all this coherent. I'm rearranging those I took in the afternoon (I'll designate that section below) because I found the museum's order to be very confusing. They seemed to organize exhibits based mainly on geography - where something happened - rather than a timeline, which I thought would show how events in different places influenced those in other places. In fact, the museum didn't put a timeline anywhere, and I've had to piece it together from other sources. So this is my best take on their material.
I apologize now for the quality of some of the photos - I was still learning how to take pictures that weren't fuzzy, and you'll see I wasn't always successful. I'm showing my best attempt to make them legible.
This first section was my morning visit:
Origins of slavery in North America
Incitement to commit a crime - especially a crime against humanity - is in itself a crime (says the former lawyer).
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| the Triangle Trade I remember seeing this diagram 60 years ago in a textbook |
Again, very fuzzy photo, but with further detail about the Africans that were enslaved and why.
Why they were brought here
The comments I show with each exhibit are taken from other related exhibits at the museum.
By 1640, 20 years after the first enslaved Africans reached Jamestown, Virginia's exports of tobacco to England reached 1,500,000 pounds.
In 1850, the rice plantation of America's largest slaveholder, Joshua John Ward, was valued at $527,000, around $15,000,000 today. Its 1,092 enslaved laborers produced an average of 4,000,000 pounds of rice a year.
Between 1709 and 1807, 11,000,000 gallons of rum made by Rhode Island distilleries were exchanged for African slaves. In 1767, male slaves could be bought for 130 gallons, women for 110 gallons, and young girls for 80 gallons.
[Oops, another fuzzy one. Sorry. What this says is that Eli Whitney's cotton gin allowed lightning-fast separation of cotton from its seed, making cotton a far more viable product. More acreage planted needed more slaves to work it. New cloth-making factories in the Northern states and England spawned new machinery, fueling the Industrial Revolution. The slaves who made it possible got no reward for their labor.]
By the 1830s, the Americas produced more cotton than all other countries combined. In 1860, America exported 3,800,000 bales, or 1,520,000,000 pounds, to Europe. (These figures likely gave Southern states confidence in their ability to sustain a separate country when they seceded.)
On the cusp of the Civil War in 1860, the nation had nearly 4,000,000 slaves. Considered as property, they were worth more than $3 billion - roughly $10 trillion today.
As you saw earlier, the enslaved Africans fought back in every way they could find. One that is key to anyone who is kidnapped or otherwise wrenched from their home is hanging on to their sense of identity. For the Africans, this involved transplanting as much of their home culture as they could.Thanks to them, the American culture we enjoy today includes an array of African influences.
The legal history of Jim Crow
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| read this from the bottom up |
Living While Black Post-Civil War
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| mass migrations of African Americans in 4 waves after the Civil War |
This system only ended with WWII when African Americans migrated north to look for factory jobs.
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| extent of tenant farming |
Like sharecropping and tenant farming, convict leasing was another version of slavery - a loophole in the 13th Amendment that was intended to abolish it. This system of convict leasing likely played a role in the fact that our jails and prisons today have a population of African Americans that's far higher than their share of the overall population. |
| Becoming Educated While Black |
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| using music to express anguish |
Wealthy whites feared that poorer whites would unite with blacks and create a potent political and social force. They preempted this by instilling into society a theory of white supremacy. The poorer whites, many as uneducated as the blacks, didn't realize how much this worked against their own interests.
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| varied African American workers' unions |
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| the Scottsboro Boys illustrated the hazards of merely Existing While Black |
White terrorism enforced Jim Crow
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| some of the worst riots |
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| Which is hardest to look at: the headless corpses of innocent men or the grinning faces of the guilty ones? |
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| Trying To Vote While Black |
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| states with constitutions denying blacks the vote |
Various strategies for change
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| Marcus Garvey's strategy |
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| Booker T. Washington's strategy |
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| W.E.B. DuBois's strategy |
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| Malcolm X's strategy |
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| Nation of Islam |
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| still another approach |
Reaction to Brown v. Board of Education
Many whites wondered why blacks wanted to go to white schools. The math shown at left does a pretty good job of explaining.
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| white reaction to integration |
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| note this mother's point: "our universities," apparently forgetting those are supported with taxes collected from both whites and blacks |
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| This 2005 Harper's cover shows Norman Rockwell's 1964 painting that illustrated a situation from the 1960 desegregation crisis in New Orleans. The more things change, the more they stay the same. |
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| and still more from 2010 |
Of course, the museum had an enormous amount of additional material that offered greater detail for some of these topics, but this was about all my little pea-brain could handle in the morning. Still it gives an overview of the complexities of life for African Americans in the United States and the many avenues Caucasians can pursue in creating a more functional - let alone a more just - society.
This next section was my afternoon visit:
1940s fight against Jim Crow
One black soldier from Alabama illustrated a feeling of heightened awareness when he declared, “I spent four years in the Army to free a bunch of Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and I’m hanged if I’m going to let the Alabama version of the Germans kick me around when I get home. No sireebob! I went into the army a nigger; I’m coming out a man.”
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| JC = Jim Crow |
In 1947, to test whether states were enforcing the Court's ruling, a group of activists began what they called a Journey of Reconciliation.
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| some of the test riders |
What the riders found is that Virginia was abiding by the Court's ruling, but North Carolina was fighting against it. The riders encountered mob violence and arrests.
These riders didn't get interstate travel integrated, but they were among the earliest to use nonviolent direct action, inspiring the later Freedom Riders and other activists.
1950s fight against Jim Crow
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| black people being forced to stand while seats sit empty in the white section |
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| The 3rd black woman was Rosa Parks. See their photos below. They were all arrested in Montgomery. |
White Mississippians circled the wagons, told lies and perverted every fact of the case. The 2 defendants, who should have been convicted based on the evidence, were acquitted. One of them later confessed.
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| putting faces to names |
Rosa Parks was well known and well respected throughout the black community and had worked closely with other activists. Her arrest was a catalyst for action by the entire community.
The night Parks was arrested, Jo Ann Robinson, head of the Montgomery Women's Political Council (WPC) who had herself been thrown off a bus in 1949 for refusing to give up her seat, secretly used the mimeograph machine at her school to churn out flyers calling for a 1-day bus boycott.
E.D. Nixon, president of the local NAACP and long-time activist, got local ministers together to support the boycott, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who had recently moved to Montgomery from Georgia. It was scheduled for Monday, December 5th, the day Parks was to appear in court. Ministers were encouraged to inform their congregations, flyers were given to high school students, and the WPC members, themselves victims of bus segregation, spread the word.
Black riders made up about 75% of Montgomery's bus business. On Monday, 90% of black riders stayed off the buses. People were ecstatic with the success and decided to continue the boycott indefinitely; MLK was elected head of the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA).
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| The Women Who Walked |
To help with this problem, the MIA organized carpools.
The boycott wasn't originally intended to end segregation but instead to get fair and equitable treatment under the existing laws. But city and bus officials weren't willing to compromise, with some even joining the (white supremacist) Citizens' Council in defiance. In response, the MIA changed its aim to go after the underlying segregation.
The MIA filed a case in hopes of getting the US Supreme Court to rule on whether the state and local rules requiring segregated buses were constitutional. In February 1956, Browder v. Gayle was filed directly with the federal district court, bypassing state courts, because it was a question of the US Constitution.
While waiting for the case to be decided, the boycott continued. At first, black ministers opposed the boycott, wanting to avoid rocking the boat. Their thinking was probably that, despite the clear nonviolence of the boycott, it could result in violence by segregationists that would harm black people.E.D. Nixon was fiery in his rallying of the ministers:
Soon the churches became vital to the success of the boycott. They were used on weekdays for small strategy meetings and large inspirational mass meetings. On Sundays the congregations shared news about the boycott (before the days of social media). Church groups helped by raising money and resources to assist the boycotters.
But a few weeks after the Browder case was filed, a grand jury indicted 89 folks, including many local ministers, for violating a 1921 state law that barred conspiracies to interfere with lawful businesses. The preachers didn't wait to be arrested but instead turned themselves in. The only one who was actually tried was MLK (he was convicted); apparently the state ran out of impetus on trying the others.
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| "a rally of 10,000 Montgomery whites, February 10, 1956" Which is worse, the speaker's words or the number of people listening to them? |
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| presumably continuing the reign of terror that had enforced Jim Crow laws for years |
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| She wrote in support of the boycott. They burned this cross 7 months after the boycott ended. That last sentence is truly sad. |
It was an amazing victory in one way - through completely nonviolent means, an undertrodden segment of society had changed the law. In another way, though, things got worse - local whites reinforced segregation in other segments of society and doubled down on Jim Crow laws.
But the black community in Montgomery had shown that their circumstances could change and that they could effect that change, a lesson that was soon carried nationwide.
In other news during 1956, J. Edgar Hoover got the FBI involved in the civil rights movement, using means that should have forever been a stain on that organization. Since they were using them against black people, though, no one saw anything wrong.
Also in the 1950s (clearly a busier decade than many people knew) was a series of bombings in Birmingham - at least 50 between 1947 and 1965. The city's nickname became Bombingham. Three churches and a Jewish temple were targeted between Christmas 1956 and June 1958, along with the homes of activists and integration supporters.
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| photo of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, outside his bombed home in Birmingham - known for having said, "The Lord knew I lived in a hard town so He gave me a hard head." |
The founder of non-violence in civil disobedience:
Selections from Gandhi's 19 rules of non-violent resistance:
Harbor no anger. Suffer the anger of the opponent. Never retaliate to assaults or punishment. Voluntarily submit to arrest or confiscation of your own property. If you are a trustee of property, defend that property (non-violently) from confiscation with your life. Do not insult the opponent. As a prisoner behave courteously and obey prison regulations (except any that are contrary to self-respect.
Non-violence is a weapon of the strong.
An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.Mohandas Gandhi [the above are shown in museum exhibits]
MLK had already seen, with the Montgomery bus boycott, that non-violent resistance could work.
His trip to India in 1959 confirmed his belief in its usefulness to bring about change in the lives of black people.
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1960s fight against Jim Crow
Standing up by sitting down - Student sit-ins - 1960
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| this photo fascinates me - what is that woman thinking? |
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| The Greensboro Four who provided the catalyst on Feb. 1, 1960 |
Once the students in Greensboro got the ball rolling, Nashville was next:
Next came Atlanta:
The Civil Rights Movement was a bewildering collection of acronyms for those on the outside. You've already seen above the MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association), the NAACP, COAHR (Committee on Appeal for Human Rights) and, at right, SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee).
Also active at this time were the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and CORE (Congress on Racial Equality), which was founded in Chicago in 1942 by an interracial group dedicated to using nonviolence to end segregation.
And here's another acronym - Howard University's NAG (Nonviolent Action Group).
Stepping up the protests - Jail, No Bail - 1961
The Jail, No Bail tactic was certainly a punishment for the protesters who, after all, hadn't broken any laws except those imposed by Jim Crow. But it also put a strain on government resources while it denied them the bail revenue to pay for them.
But it kept activists cooped up, unable to organize further protests or go to their jobs or classes, and it rarely changed the minds of segregationists. It gradually became used primarily as a technique of last resort. In early 1961, though, it was a galvanizing innovation.
Stepping up the Protests - Freedom Rides - 1961
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| Freedom Ride stages 1 & 2 |
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| stages 3 & 4 |
In Rock Hill, both black and white riders were attacked by segregationists when they tried to enter the bus station's white waiting room. Police intervened on the side of the riders.
In Atlanta, MLK publicly praised the riders but privately warned them he'd heard rumors that the Klan planned to attack them in Alabama. They boarded the bus anyway.
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| stage 5 |
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| stage 6 |
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| stage 7 |
When the riders tried to continue their journey, no bus driver would agree to drive them. CORE finally decided to stop the rides, and the riders flew to New Orleans.
When the SNCC chapter in Nashville heard the news, John Lewis and Diane Nash organized another group to take over the Freedom Rides.
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| member of white mob kicking press photographer |
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| blaming the victim |
The Freedom Rides continued and, in fact, intensified. People joined in from all over the country, most riding to Montgomery where they continued the Jail, No Bail policy.
Stepping up the Protests - Route 40 Project - 1961
A factor Washington decision-makers had been leaving out of their calculations regarding response to the Civil Rights Movement was foreign diplomats. Many of them were from African nations and had dark skins. They traveled between the United Nations in New York City and their embassies in Washington, DC, typically along Route 40. Along the road they were treated in the same debased way American black people were treated. This made them unhappy, which was embarrassing to the Kennedy administration.
The administration first planned to penalize places that refused service to black foreigners, until they suddenly realized black Americans would see the double injustice in this. For a clear description of this project and its striking success, check this link. https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/route-40-project
Stepping up the Protests - Mississippi's efforts - 1961-1963
Mississippi civil rights activists worked under a severe handicap: white violence against blacks was more extreme there than in any other state, leaving blacks at all social levels fearful of even stepping out of the imposed order.
In the Delta, they formed Citizens' Councils and fired and evicted supporters of the civil rights movement.
In Jackson, lawmakers created the Mississippi State Sovereignty Committee to spy on activists and feed information to the police and to Citizens' Councils. And it wasn't long before the Klan became active again.
In the face of this powerful opposition, activists like Medgar and Myrtle Evers of the NAACP continued to fight against racial injustice.
Police crackdowns on picketers was swift. Either the Jail, No Bail idea hadn't been heard of here or there was some other reason it was never used - but many protests were stalled before they started due to lack of available bail funds.
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| this 1961 protest (at right) was a couple of months after the Greensboro sit-ins |
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| arrested for reading in a whites only library |
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| Students Demonstrate for Voting Rights, McComb MS |
High school students marched on City Hall on September 25, 1961, to protest the murder of local leader Herbert Lee and the arrest of 16-year-old Brenda Travis for her activism. Mass arrests followed. But the movement stalled as SNCC activists left McComb temporarily. The lesson about movement organizing was clear: whites would respond just as violently to direct action as they would to voter registration.
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| Tougaloo professor John Salter and students Joan Trumpauer and Anne Moody (l to r) sit in at Woolworth's in Jackson MS, May 28, 1963 |
In December 1962, 4 Tougaloo College students sat in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Jackson. Professor John Salter and his wife Eldri joined them. When they were arrested, the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council started a boycott of Capitol Street businesses.
At a second sit-in the following May, whites beat the student activists. Undaunted, the students launched direct action protests across the city.
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| Police brandishing electric cattle prods stop Roy Wilkins and Medgar Evers from picketing the Jackson Woolworth's, June 2, 1963 |
Ten days after the photo above was taken, Medgar Evers was assassinated.
Back in Birmingham - Spring 1963
In 1962, local college students started a year-long series of staggered boycotts of downtown businesses, which ultimately reduced the revenue of these businesses by 40%. In retaliation the city refused to pay its half of a program to feed the needy, many of whom were black. The response in the black community to the city's response was increased motivation to continue their work for civil rights.
If he'd been working for the activists, Birmingham Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor couldn't have done a more effective job of ensuring integration would be made law. His inhumane methods of repressing protests turned the entire nation against the segregationists.
When some business owners tried to win back business from the boycotters by taking down signs saying "white only" and "colored only," Bull promised them they'd lose their business licenses unless they complied with the segregation ordinances.
MLK's famous letter from Birmingham jail is a remarkable document. Remarkable in and of itself, but also remarkable because he had no reference books to consult or even much paper to write on. Friends smuggled in scraps of paper for him and smuggled his letter back out again. It's worth taking the time to read in its entirety, and can be found at this link. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Letter-Birmingham
By the end of April, the number of people willing to take part in protests had dwindled to a handful. The press began to leave town, so publicity was drying up.
Given the ebbing energies of the adults, local children decided it was their turn.
Children's Crusade - May 2-10, 1963
On Thursday, May 2nd, 1,500 schoolchildren skipped classes, almost shutting down the schools in order to march. The next day another 1,000 marched, but this time Bull Connor apparently thought he'd cure them of their activism. His men met the children with police dogs and fire hoses.
Whatever people might have felt around the country regarding mistreatment of peaceful adults exercising their constitutional right to picket and protest segregation, apparently Bull Connor and his men were nearly alone in thinking they could also mistreat children.
TV and newspapers showed photos of children being attacked with fire hoses and dogs - and everyone was outraged.
The children continued to march daily for a week until business leaders finally agreed to desegregate businesses and free all the thousands of children who had been arrested during the marches and housed at the state fair grounds.
A week later, however, the school board expelled all the students who were involved with the demonstrations, causing trouble for the seniors who were unable to receive a high school diploma. It took a federal court of appeals to overturn the board's decision.
George Wallace's Stand In The Schoolhouse Door - June 11, 1963
When Wallace was inaugurated as governor, he promised, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." In June 1963, he saw a chance for political theater in fulfilling his promise.
Although Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954, the Univ. of Alabama in Tuscaloosa had always been able to find a way to disqualify any black students who applied for admission. In early June a federal judge ordered the school to admit 3 blacks who had applied. On June 11, the students filled out preregistration forms at the court house and went on to the college auditorium to complete the process. Wallace had already taken a stance blocking the doorway, complete with podium. JFK had sent Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach with some federal marshals to run interference for the students, figuring (rightly) he would be needed. When Katzenbach told Wallace to move out of the way, Wallace embarked on a speech about states' rights.
Katzenbach called JFK who issued Executive Order 11111 (which had already been written, just in case), federalizing the Alabama National Guard. Four hours later, the Guard showed up and got Wallace to remove himself, allowing the students to finish registering.
JFK kept the Guard in place for some time afterward because a huge number of KKK members showed up in the area. Wallace objected; JFK said he'd be glad to step out of the picture if Wallace would guarantee he'd keep the peace. Wallace refused, preferring to posture about federal overreach than to confront the Klan. JFK expanded his order to use the Guard across the state to help other black students register at other colleges.
Oddly, that executive order has never been rescinded.
Gov. Wallace believed that states had a right to segregate African Americans and he resented "interference" from the US government. When bombings of A.D. King's house and the Gaston motel sparked riots, Pres. Kennedy sent 3,000 troops to Birmingham. Wallace was furious: in his view, Kennedy's action violated the US Constitution.
One hundred years after the Civil War, a northern president was once again pitted against a southern governor in a struggle to decide the fate of African Americans. As in the earlier conflict, whoever embraced the cause of black freedom would eventually win the war.
March on Washington - August 28, 1963
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| the inspiration |
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| the background |
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| reassuring whites worried about black riots (though rioters were almost always white segregationists) |
(The following is the text from the exhibit partly shown at left.)The broader coalition behind the march came together after JFK announced his civil rights bill, which many considered not strong enough. "The President's proposals represent so moderate an approach that if it is weakened or eliminated, the remainder will be little more than sugar water," said NAACP leader Roy Wilkins.
Kennedy thought the march was a bad idea, especially since its demands were critical of his policies and legislative proposals. He asked leaders to call off the protest. They refused. So he endorsed it, believing his stamp of approval would mute criticism.
Kennedy's endorsement tested the coalition's strength, requiring partners like John Lewis of SNCC to refrain from criticizing the president's poor civil rights record. The coalition held, but legitimate criticism of the administration was silenced.
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| What the media told Americans is "my, how peaceful they are" instead of "these folks have a point, they're serious and we should all pay attention." |
Bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church - Sept. 15, 1963
In Birmingham, just over 4 months after the Children's Crusade, KKK members set a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church that exploded on a Sunday morning. It killed 4 young teenage girls - one that was 13 years old and 3 that were 14. Chaos ensued throughout Birmingham, with both white and black men and boys attacking each other. During this chaos, 2 black boys were killed - a 16-year-old was shot in the back by white police, and a 13-year-old riding on a bike was shot by a 16-year-old white boy.
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| the victims of that day |
Before 1963 President Kennedy had done little to ensure black voting rights and almost nothing to protect civil rights workers. But the Birmingham campaign forced him to deal with the civil rights movement. He was appalled by the mass arrests of children and disgusted by the police violence. And he was embarrassed that his international friends and foes had watched it all unfold.
After the bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church, however, and in the wake of Governor Wallace's defiant "stand in the schoolhouse door," Kennedy announced that he was sending Congress a sweeping civil rights bill that would outlaw segregation. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," he said. "It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities."
It was a dramatic change in policy. But for Birmingham, Kennedy may not have proposed the Civil Rights Act, enacted in 1964 after his assassination.
A result of the assassination of JFK, November 22, 1963
JFK had proposed civil rights legislation in 1963, but it had been filibustered in the Senate.
JFK's assassination changed the political picture. LBJ made another push to get the bill through Congress, and the House passed it in Feb. 1964. When sent to the Senate, Southern senators once again filibustered it for the best part of 2 months. At that point, 2 Republicans and 2 Democrats introduced a slightly watered-down version that provided less government enforcement authority. That bill swung enough votes to end the filibuster, and the Senate passed the compromise version. The House-Senate Conference Committee adopted this version, both houses of Congress passed it, and LBJ signed it July 2, 1964.
It was by no means perfect, and many states continued to find ways around it, or ignore it entirely. But the new law provided a solid basis for court cases that were brought to do the enforcement the government wasn't providing. And there were loopholes; for instance, the new law prohibited discrimination in voter registration requirements but still allowed "literacy tests." It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make citizenship the sole requirement for voting. Nonetheless, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was landmark legislation and a big step forward in achieving equal rights for all races.
Freedom Summer - 1964
Oddly enough, probably the best explanation of what Freedom Summer was about is from Wisconsin. I suggest you read the article at this link https://www.wisconsinhistory.org before you look at the photos I took at the National Civil Rights Museum. The link provides some clarity and context that are missing from my unclear photos.
To start with, it wasn't called Freedom Summer back then; it was called the Mississippi Summer Project. This project grew out of some mock votes that black organizations held in late 1963. Many people still believed black people didn't vote because they weren't smart enough or weren't interested in politics. When many thousands of black people voted in the election held parallel to the official election they were barred from, it blew holes in those myths. Black groups, especially SNCC, started planning a campaign to register voters.
SNCC recruited thousands of students from northern colleges assuming, rightly as it turned out, that the violent resistance white Mississippians would respond with would become widely known. With northern white students being victims of racist attacks for helping black voters, SNCC and others reasoned the world would be more likely to pay attention to the plight of black Mississippians.
Spectacular proof of that came almost at the beginning in June 1964: 3 volunteers (2 of them white) were arrested, beaten, kidnapped and disappeared; their bodies were discovered buried in a berm 6 weeks later, after Attorney General Robt. Kennedy reluctantly authorized an FBI search. Even I, at age 13 in the sheltered world I grew up in, remember hearing about this. It definitely focused the national radar on the hazards of blacks trying to register to vote.
1964 was a presidential election year. The Mississippi Democratic Party was completely segregated - i.e. whites only - not even an attempt at separate but equal. So black Mississippians formed their own political party (the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) and elected their own slate of candidates.
The photo above left illustrates the door-to-door nature of the work of these volunteers. It also reminds me of the reluctance the volunteers faced - many people refused to register because of fear of violent reprisals, of which there were many. Reprisals included: people losing their jobs and being evicted from their homes, 80 of the volunteers were beaten with 4 critically wounded and 7 more killed, 37 churches and 40 homes and businesses were bombed or burned, more than a thousand were arrested. This was all in one state, all in one summer.1964 Democratic Convention
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| demonstrates why LBJ won in 1964 with one of the largest shares of the popular vote in US history |
Selma Voting Rights Campaign
Both the Wisconsin article ( linked above) and this Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/Freedom-Summer mention the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as one of the eventual results of the summer's activities. But in my mind, that act was almost the direct result of the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. Of course, it had roots some years before, but the real impetus began building in late 1964.
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| Does this give you chills? It does me. |
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| County Sheriff Jim Clark on integration: "Never." |
Unlike Birmingham ...
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| January 15, 1965 |
The death of Jimmie Lee Jackson as catalyst
All these factors - continuing violence by white supremacists, continuing inability to register to vote, failure by Democrats to work with black elected representatives, and so much more - all this was a growing pile of tinder. The spark that lit the fire was the death of a man named Jimmie Lee Jackson.
In February 1965, an activist named James Orange was arrested and jailed in Marion, less than 30 miles from Selma, for "contributing to the delinquency of minors" (he enlisted some young people to help register black voters). Because of fears he might be lynched, a protest march was held in Marion.
It was the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson - an unarmed man protecting his mother and grandfather from the violence of state troopers - that sparked the March from Selma to Montgomery.
Bloody Sunday - The First March - March 7, 1965
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| at the front of the marchers: Rev. Hosea Williams & SNCC organizer John Lewis (currently a member of Congress from Georgia) |
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| Amelia Boynton (see above) beaten unconscious - this was a front page photo worldwide |
Tuesday Turnaround - The Second March - March 9, 1965
Judge Johnson had scheduled a hearing on the motion (to protect marchers from police brutality) later in the week, and MLK believed he'd rule in the protesters' favor; MLK figured violating the restraining order would anger the judge enough to risk that ruling. On the other hand, protesters were going to hold a march with or without MLK, so he decided to join them, but to stop the march at the bridge, complying with the restraining order. It worked, but it severely lessened MLK's authority in the eyes of the other protesters.
Meanwhile, the judge had been waiting on LBJ to commit to enforcing his order, once he'd made it. LBJ delayed, seeing the potential for a state's rights argument; instead he tried to convince Wallace either to protect the marchers himself or to give LBJ permission to do it. After much delay, LBJ realized Wallace wasn't going to do either one so he federalized the Alabama National Guard to escort the marchers from Selma to Montgomery. With that decision, the judge allowed the march to proceed.
Two days after the quote above, LBJ addressed Congress, telling them he had a voting rights act ready to send them, urging them to pass it without delay. LBJ's speech was unprecedented - strong support by a US president for civil rights for blacks. There's a transcript at this link. https://www.pbs.org/lbj-overcome
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| excerpts from LBJ's speech |
The March from Selma to Montgomery - The Third March - March 21, 1965
Black people had still not been able to reach Gov. Wallace, to protest the violence against peaceful demonstrators and to insist on help in achieving the ability to vote. With the images of Bloody Sunday to stir them, thousands of people came from around the country to join the 3rd march. There were 3,200 people who left the Brown AME Church in Selma on Sunday, March 21st. It took them 5 days to walk the 51 miles.
The judge had ruled the marchers could use the public highway but, because the stretch through Lowndes County was only 2 lanes wide, he limited the crowd to only 300 for that section. Where the road widened again at the Montgomery County border, additional marchers joined in. And when they gathered in front of the state capitol, 25,000 people heard MLK give his famous "How long? ... Not long, because no lie can live forever." speech.
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| people watching along the route |
Voting Rights Act of 1965
Largely due to the appalling events of Bloody Sunday, white Americans were finally able to accept the idea that black Americans had been forcibly kept from voting and that this was wrong. LBJ proposed his voting rights bill in March and, with remarkable speed, Congress passed it by August. One might have thought such legislation wasn't needed, given that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution authorized the right of black Americans to vote. But as soon as they could, many states had tacked on poll taxes and literacy requirements and multiple other impediments, all intended to undermine the 15th Amendment. The Voting Rights Act stopped almost all of those - with overwhelming bipartisan support: the vote was 328-74 in the House and 79-18 in the Senate. On August 6, 1965, LBJ signed it into law.
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| The grey lines show the number of black voters in each state in 1960; the gold lines show the number in 1966, one year after passage of the Voting Rights Act. |
Social and cultural influences
The voting rights campaign didn't exist in a vacuum. Many programs and movements both grew out of and encouraged the push for voting rights.
Political repression
Black Power
1964 - Deacons for Defense and Justice
1966 - Black Panther Party
Fair Housing
Housing opportunities, or the lack of them, illustrate how that worked.
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| It might be inevitable that someone who'd grown up with the name Martin Luther would eventually do the equivalent of nailing 95 theses on the church's door. |
But to me, this quote illustrates his ability to keep his eye on the ball, one of the basics of leadership.
Cultural expression
Economic Opportunity
In 1962, a branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference called Operation Breadbasket was organized in various parts of the US. Its primary goal was to improve the economic conditions of black communities throughout the US. Its primary method of achieving this goal was what they called "selective buying," in essence a boycott of businesses that failed to hire blacks or purchase goods and services from black businesses. Some of these campaigns were quite successful, but the program encountered problems from within. For example, in Chicago where the office was run by a young Jesse Jackson, the group pressured businesses to donate money to the cause. By 1971, these internal stresses ended the program.
Vietnam War
In the early and mid-1960s many blacks didn't want to oppose the Vietnam War in gratitude to LBJ for pushing through the civil rights legislation. That didn't stop MLK from telling a journalist during the March from Selma that it looked like the US government could spend millions helping South Vietnamese but not a penny to protect the rights of blacks in the US South.
But as time went on, all Americans were seeing nightly news photos and TV coverage showing the violence of the war American soldiers were fighting. Added to that was the growing awareness of the racial inequities of the draft, first instituted in 1965.
Wealthy and middle-income whites were increasingly able to avoid being drafted by paying doctors to grant medical deferments or by paying to stay in school. By 1967, just 2 years after the draft was initiated, it had already become so unfair that, although 63% of whites were eligible for the draft compared with 29% of blacks, 64% of the eligible blacks were actually conscripted for service, compared with 31% of the eligible whites.
Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike - Feb. - Apr. 1968
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| overview |
The sanitation workers in Memphis weren't treated much better than the garbage they picked up: e.g. no overtime, no sick leave, no breaks, no uniforms, constant risk of being fired on petty pretexts, no place to shelter from the rain. It was this last condition that had caused the death of 2 workers in 1964 - they had taken refuge from the rain in the back of the garbage truck and were accidentally crushed to death by malfunctioning equipment.
In 1963, workers had attempted to strike but the effort wasn't well organized, and 33 were fired. In 1964, a local of AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) was formed but the city refused to recognize or deal with it. In 1966, workers tried again to strike but there was no community support, so it failed.
Now, here they were in 1968 and 2 more men were crushed to death in the same way as those in 1964 because the city had refused to replace the defective equipment. The city also refused to compensate the workers' families. This time around, the world was a different place than it had been only 4 years earlier. This time workers were furious and wanted to take action, but they needed an organizing force.
On February 12th, 1,375 Public Works employees stayed home from work and continued to stay home. In the next three days, 10,000 tons of trash piled up and the mayor started hiring (white) strikebreakers.
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| Words to live by. |
By Feb. 18th, the international president of AFSCME went to Memphis to help negotiate a settlement of the strike. The Memphis mayor, however, continued to refuse to recognize the union, claiming they only wanted to take money from the hard-working Memphis workers and that he (the mayor) had an obligation to protect them from the union officials. Local leaders thought that position sounded a lot like the paternalism of slavery and said the workers were men, not children, who were capable of making their own decisions.
By Feb. 21st, the workers had started gathering at the union hall every morning and marching to downtown's Clayborn Temple (a Presbyterian church). The police found those marches infuriating because there were so many marchers, none of whom seemed intimidated by the police presence, and no clear grounds for dispersing them: the police couldn't put the blacks in their place as they were used to.
This police riot on February 23rd was the result of the police's built-up tension and resentment. One of Memphis's leading (white) newspapers not only refused to print the workers' side of the story, but instead insisted the riot had been caused by "outside agitators." The paper claimed the city could take pride in the restraint the police had used: they didn't shoot anybody.
On Feb. 24th, a civil rights leader named Rev. James Lawson told the workers, "At the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person. You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity."
Finally, on March 18th, MLK came to town. He'd been immersed in organizing the Poor People's Campaign, and his staff worried that going to Memphis would detract from that work. But MLK wanted to support the sanitation workers.
That evening he spoke to a crowd of 25,000, the largest indoor event to that point in the civil rights movement. He told them, "You are demonstrating that we can stick together. You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one black person suffers, if one black person is down, we are all down."
He promised to come back to lead a protest march.
These folks started using violence, giving police a motive to attack. The police used the same methods that police are still using on protesters today: tear gas, nightsticks (today's weapons are more sophisticated), and guns. A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed.
Deeply disturbed by the violence, MLK called off the march and agreed to come back to Memphis for another attempt to march.
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| "I Am A Man" challenged the practice of whites that called black men "boys" to assert superiority. The slogan was an assertion of their dignity as human beings. |
MLK's plane came in late because of a bomb threat, and the weather in Memphis that night was miserable. MLK was exhausted but agreed to address the gathered crowd.
That speech has become known as his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. In it he addressed his own mortality, recalling the very close attempt to assassinate him back in 1958. He said the doctor who treated him then told him the knife had cut so close to his aorta that just a sneeze would have killed him. MLK, a gifted orator, used that phrase "if I had sneezed" several times to remind the crowd of the events and achievements they'd witnessed so far: the sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the march from Selma to Montgomery, the March on Washington.
Toward the end, he said, "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that right now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."
The next march was planned for later in the week.
On April 4th, the day after that speech, while getting ready to go to dinner, he was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he always stayed in Memphis - it was one of the few in town that allowed black people to stay.
Coretta Scott King was afraid that her husband's assassination would discourage the movement and wanted people to continue fighting for civil rights. At great risk to her own safety, she insisted on leading the march along with her young children. They were at the head of an estimated 40,000 people who marched in silence.
MLK was buried the next day in Atlanta with 300,000 mourners in attendance. He was 39.
Perhaps hoping that MLK's death would end the push for rights for the sanitation workers, the mayor continued to refuse to negotiate with them. Many, including the US Attorney General, urged him to settle in hopes of preventing further protests and violence that were occurring around the country, but he refused them all.
Finally LBJ sent the Undersecretary of Labor to Memphis to help with negotiations and pressured city officials to get a quick settlement. It still took until April 16th before an agreement was reached. The workers won a wage increase, the ability to be promoted (promotions were previously denied), recognition of their union, improved benefits, a procedure to settle grievances, city-issued uniforms (no small matter when they had to manhandle nasty trash cans), and an end to job discrimination.
It wasn't everything they wanted but it was a big step forward. However, city officials were apparently slow learners: the workers still had to threaten another strike a year later to get the agreement enforced.
LBJ, by then a lame duck president, tried to continue civil rights progress but was mired in the Vietnam War. The war cost a lot of money that could otherwise have gone to these programs and was anyway becoming wildly unpopular. There have, of course, been gains in promoting civil rights since then, but that was the end of an organized and wide-spread movement.
On a personal note, I wrote almost all of this post before recent events triggered by continuing prejudice by whites against blacks. And in reviewing this post before publication, I've been struck over and over with the parallels between the past and current events.
In the past, there were decades of attempts to have the ordinary civil rights that white Americans take for granted apply to black Americans as well. And it took some horrific incidents (e.g. dogs and fire hoses used against children in Birmingham, fire hoses and tear gas and weapons used against peaceful marchers in Selma) to win broad public support for them. That support resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Fifty years later, we've had decades of (often) unconscious prejudice displayed in all facets of American life, but most fatally in policing methods. And it's taken several horrific incidents that we've seen with our own eyes via social media (the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery at the hands of officially sanctioned vigilantes and of George Floyd at the knee of a police officer) to awaken broad public awareness of how blind white America has been. I don't know how many concrete results will come or how long the awareness will last, but I have hope.
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