Civil Rights Movement - Essay Example

In one of history's most cruel ironies, the three amendments to the American Constitution which were to emancipate the blacks and give them all the rights and privileges of citizenship led to one hundred years of hardship and terror, led to newer and more devious ways of humiliation and segregation and created an institution, the Klan, that was responsible for the deaths and mutilation of thousands of Black Americans. The repercussions of Reconstruction however also instilled a deep and powerful consciousness in African Americans, leading to the Civil Rights Movement that spanned the years from 1955 to 1964. Which is not to imply that the Movement began then; it merely reached its zenith in that period. The struggle for the basic right to be recognized as a citizen - more, as a human being, - began really during the years of slavery as is evidenced by the case Dred Scott vs. Sandford in 1857. However, as an organized movement it did not gain momentum until the pre- World War 1 years, beginning in 1905 with the formation of the Niagara Movement. For years after that, the Movement was restricted to the battleground of the courts, with only a few incidents threatening to lead to mass action. It was not till 1955, with the brutal murder of fifteen year old Emmett Till, that the black community as a whole was galvanized into action and forced the Southern states to accept integration and obtained the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The division of the Movement into these broad stages; first a period of quiet but steady legal battles followed by the transition into dramatic but nonviolent mass action is very noticeable when one follows the timeline of events. The reasons for this, I think, go back into the years of slavery and Reconstruction and it is impossible to understand the motivations and ramifications of the movement spanning World War 1 to the eighties without delving into the conditions prior to this era. The years of slavery left the majority of blacks without education and this was followed by years of legalized segregation and Jim Crow laws in the South accompanied by almost continual harassment, torture and lynching of blacks. In the face of this savage resentment the majority of blacks adopted a "lay low" attitude. This was advocated by some of the most highly educated blacks of the time like Booker T. Washington, who believed that by passive acceptance of the segregation and taking up non threatening pursuits like farming they would slowly be able to persuade the White South to accept them. It seems likely that the blacks had not yet developed the mass consciousness that is necessary to fight a battle of the proportions it later took on. The lack of education and exposure was a huge barrier to overcome at first; without any experience of other worlds many blacks did not realize that life could be significantly better This would change with time, notably during the First World War. Another hurdle, infinitely more difficult to overcome, was the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson that legalized segregation of facilities as long as they were equal. This led to the widespread abuse of the ruling in the south with facilities for blacks definitely inferior. Legally, they had no leg to stand on I fighting racism. It hampered the Movement considerably during the years up to 1954. The development of the Movement was greatly helped by the Black Churches that were formed after segregation. The churches were more than a place for worship; they served as a political platform, as a social work organization. (Calhoun-Brown, A., 2000). It was here that they learned to survive as well as regained pride. The attitude of nonviolence that they brought to their protests later was probably a result of their church training. It was in 1905 that groups of people began to realize that the method of passive acceptance was getting them nowhere. W.E.B. DuBois, broke away from Washington and founded the Niagara Movement to fight for quality education and to end discrimination. The organization lost impetus after some time but it set the stage for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) in 1910. (Davis, R., n.d.). The NAACP has since then been instrumental in advancing the cause. It primarily fought for civil rights on a legal platform and published a magazine, The Crisis, which served as a social commentary. It fought numerous cases in the next couple of decades, all aimed at the eventual establishment of equality in every sphere. During World War 1, Black Americans were enlisted in the army. Even here they faced segregation and were rarely given positions of authority. It was during this time, though, that they began to realize that their treatment at home was not an inevitability. Battalions that fought alongside the French were treated as equals and awarded French military honours. (Wormser, R., n.d.) It changed the outlook of many; the war therefore probably played an important role in awakening consciousness in the blacks. The return home would not have been easy but the Harlem renaissance of 1917 through to the Thirties is evidence that they did not lose their cultural pride. The development of Black art, literature and music in this interlude was in its way a movement of its own. The South also realized what an eye-opener the war might have been and renewed its efforts to push the blacks back into submission and garner sympathy from the North. In 1915, a film, The Birth of a Nation was released which portrayed blacks in the vilest possible light. Though the NAACP tried (unsuccessfully) to have the film banned it severely damaged race relations. Race riots broke out, one of the most famous being the Red Summer of 1919, wherein there were nation wide incidents of violence against blacks. The Tulsa Riots in 1920 were another incident caused by newspaper reports of doubtful accuracy. Notably, though the riots caused the deaths of hundreds of blacks not a single white person was arrested. The NAACP fought several cases in the next few decades. Some, like Moore vs. Dempsey 1922, where twelve men were sentenced to death for causing the deaths of white men who were attacking their church, secured the right to due process as stated in the fourteenth Amendment. Others like Gaines vs. Canada in 1938 were attempts to relieve the appalling facilities available to blacks within the framework of the segregation laws. Lloyd Gaines was a black man who was denied admission to the Law School of the University of Mississippi. Charles Houston, a NAACP lawyer argued that the state had to provide blacks with a college of equal academic excellence or fund his education outside the state. The Supreme Court agreed. It was a step forward; education was a way out and everyone knew it. Once exposed to new ideas, change is almost always inevitable. The Great Depression in the 1930s temporarily set back the cause as white men, hungry and unemployed took to the jobs normally reserved for blacks and resorted to unfair practices to deprive them of work. Things came to a head in 1941 when tired of the lack of jobs and the harassment, Philip Randolph threatened to start a march to Washington. As news of the march spread and thousands of blacks prepared themselves for it, President Roosevelt became threatened and forestalled it by promising to establish a Fair Employment Practices Committee. With the advent of World War 2 many blacks signed up for service. Here again, the easy acceptance by the Europeans opened their eyes to the injustices at home. The War had the result of teaching the masses of blacks who had not had the education or experience to understand the gross criminality of their treatment in the south. On their return, segregation was pushed to its legal limits and beyond. But now there were many more who were ready to fight. In Smith vs. Allwright, Smith who was refused the right to vote in the Texas Primary, won a Supreme Court ruling in his favor. Again, in Morgan vs. Virginia, Ms. Morgan, who was ordered to sit in the back of an interstate bus from Virginia to Maryland, won a Supreme Court ruling against segregation in interstate transport facilities. The movement was helped by the involvement of more fair-minded white people like Harry Truman supporting them openly. The greatest triumph of the NAACP came in 1954 with Brown vs., Board of Education, Topeka. In this landmark ruling the Supreme Court overturned the Plessy ruling by declaring that segregation was "inherently unequal" and damaging to the psyche and development of black children. The case was led by the Brown family, whose daughter, Linda, was refused entrance to the closer white school and asked to travel much farther to an all- black one. However, four other families were involved in this case. (http://findlaw.com) This marked the transition to mass action. The ruling opened up new avenues to the blacks. Earlier, they had not even had the law completely with them. Now that they were vindicated, they could fight the racist mentality with far more confidence out in the open. They didn't have to wait long. In 1955, Emmett Till was savagely beaten, shot and tossed into a river for daring to flirt with a white woman. To the outrage of the nation, his killers were acquitted on the basis that the prosecution had failed to adequately establish that it was indeed the body of the teenager that was found. Two weeks later, the magazine Look published a confession. This forced the community to see that though legally they were in the right, they still had to force the implementation of the Court rulings and compel the South to comply with integration. It started with Rosa Parks, the same year, when she refused to yield her seat to whites in a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The action started a peaceful protest called the Montgomery Bus Boycott which lasted an entire year. There were many other protests and attempts to implement integration that were met by fierce opposition by the South. In 1957 nine black students were enrolled by the Little Rock Central High School Board as a result of the Brown ruling. The Governor of Arkansas himself tried to stop them as a result of which Eisenhower had to send in federal troops to ensure their safety.(www.eisenhower.archives.gov). Schools all over the South were closed down rather than integrate and white students sent to private academies. Thirteen states signed the Southern Manifesto in 1956 in protest of Brown.(www.strom.clemson.edu/strom/manifesto). It was a sign of desperation; the South could no longer repress the blacks. There were many other incidents, like the Greensboro Sit-ins in 1960, where four black students staged a peaceful sit-in at the lunch counter at the Greensboro Woolworths when they were refused service while white people were present. They sparked off innumerable such sit ins. Many peaceful protests were met with violence: the Freedom Riders who tried to enforce the 1946 ruling (Morgan vs. Virginia) were attacked and firebombed, and the Selma to Montgomery Marches in 1965 were faced with tear gas and bullwhips. Throughout this there were always exhortations for non violence on the part of the blacks by their leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. It was partly this attitude that gave their movement such strength. Another impetus to their struggle was given by the slow involvement of the Presidents of the country. At first there had been either no help or active obstacles by several presidents like Rutherford Hayes, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Hoover who were more interested in appeasing the whites. F.D. Roosevelt helped by establishing the FEPC, but it is widely agreed that it was his wife Eleanor who was more active in her support for the black movement. However, with Truman, though he was at first neutral, things began to improve. Horrified by the brutalities being committed in the south, he finally openly lent his support for the movement in 1947. Dwight Eisenhower was politically silent on the issue but made appointments that were of import; the appointment of Earl Warren to Chief Justice of Supreme Court in 1953 paved the way for many rulings that were in favour of black rights and led to the pivotal Brown ruling. Eisenhower also used federal power to enforce Little Rock and implemented the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which was to ensure that voting rights were not denied to anyone on the basis of race. Though Kennedy was openly sympathetic and lobbied for the passing of bills to protect black rights, it was not till after his death that his efforts were realized by L.B. Johnson who implemented the Civil Rights Act in 1964 to abolish discrimination in public places and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 which outlawed the earlier discriminatory voting laws. As the seventies progressed, the Civil Rights Movement expanded and went down other by-ways. After the Acts of 1964 and 1965, legally at least, the Movement for black rights was over. It took on new dimensions, looking at women's rights, minority rights and homosexuality. Affirmative Action was a program that aimed for the implementation of rules to equalize education and employment for women and minority groups. The Equal Rights Amendment in 1972 which would have had a large impact on furthering civil rights for women failed to be ratified, but in the case Roe vs. Wade decided in 1973, a step forward was taken when a woman's right to privacy won over the fetal right to life. All these cases have had backlashes and created debates of various types that have lasted throughout the Eighties and Nineties. The movement slowed and lost pace but there was an emergence of a new theme which has lasted till date; Black Power, which was far more radical. Started by the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) which has its roots in the Sixties, it advocates the ownership and management of Black organizations solely by blacks on the basis that white people cannot really understand their culture and anyway has no longer a part to play in their development. (Carmichael Stokely,2006).In a way, the movement therefore seems to have come full circle, from a struggle to destroy segregation to the rebuilding of another type of segregation altogether, a sort of reverse segregation. REFERENCES Bolton, C.C., (2000), "Mississippi's School Equalization Program, 1945-1954:" A Last Gasp to Try to Maintain a Segregated Educational System.", The Journal of Southern History, Vol.66, No.4, pp 781-814 . . Calhoun- Brown, A. (2000), "Upon this Rock: The Black Church, Nonviolence and the Civil Rights Movement", PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol33, No.2, pp 168-174. Carmichael, S., "NCC Position Paper: The Basis of Black Power", The Sixties Project, http://lists.village.virginia.edu/sixties. Retrieved, April 13, 2006. Davis,R., "From Terror to Triumph", www.jimcrowhistory.org/history. Retrieved April 11, 2006 Kaczorowski, R., (1987), "To begin the Nation Anew: Congress, Citizenship and Civil Rights after the Civil War", The American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No.1, pp 45-68. Wormser, R., n.d." U.S. in world war 1", www.pbs.org. Retrieved April 11, 2006. . Little Rock School integration Crisis.(www.eisenhower.archives.gov).,retrieved April 13, 2006. Southern Manifesto,.(www.strom.clemson.edu/strom/manifesto Retrieved April 15 2006. Read More