The Civil Rights Movements and Its Symbols - Research Paper Example

?Introduction People behave differently in groups than as individuals. The group feels differently, acts in a peculiar way and has its own feelings and emotions. Collective behavior is seldom planned and is produced out of unstructured social situations. However, a collective action becomes a social movement when it is unified and lasting. The primary conditions for a social movement include a distinctive perspective and ideology, a strong sense of solidarity and idealism, and an orientation towards action. A social movement is generally meant to solve a social problem, remove unrest and create social reform. It is a collective effort of the people to bring changes through new organizations and values in the existing social order. A movement is born when people are not satisfied with the prevalent social condition, and are able to substitute other new conditions of their choice. Thus, a social movement aims at bringing social change, as well as a social reform. A collective identity is a perception which may be visualized directly, or created by external influences. It can be conveyed in cultural materials such as symbols and clothing. However, all materials in culture do not suggest collective identity. The exact psychological mechanism behind individuals sorting out and combining multiple causes of identity is not well known. A collective identity can be defined as “individual’s cognitive, moral and emotional connection with a broader community” (Polleta & Jasper, 2001). Social movements can be broadly categorized into general, specific and expressive social movements. In general social movements, there are no fixed objectives and leadership, and social coordination merely found. It is an effort to satisfy certain vague and unclear societal wishes such as freedom of women, tenants demand for proprietary rights, and student share in political affairs. Comparatively, the various key features of specific movements include clear leadership, objective ideology, social organization, planning, fixed responsibilities and action. The reform movements and revolutions belong to this type of movement. In expressive movements, the struggle of the members is not for change in social life, but they act to express and ease their tensions. For instance, people express their tension through fads and fashion in religious movements. When a large number of people follow a fad or a fashion, they release their tension by these behaviors (Anderson & Taylor, 2007). Any social movement requires certain media to further its cause. Among various elements which contribute to the success of a social movement such as economic resources, organization, tactics and extent of public support, media attention is the most critical of all. The complex and greater details of a social movement often become hard to be expressed and explained, and are instead exhibited through symbols. As Machiavelli (1997) stated that “men are moved more by appearances than by the reality of things”, symbols are signs or instruments of thought aimed at conveying a free and universal meaning through certain media. Symbols are important to social movements and are used by movement leaders to strategically press forward their objectives. It is also critical for a movement to highlight only positive symbols and avoiding the problematic ones (Rotherham, 2009). Individuals in a society are biological and neurological beings having the ability to act or perform, and can be differentiated on basis of their symbol-using behavior. They are fully capable of creating, using, and misusing symbols (LittleJohn & Foss, 2008). The people never stick to the same conditions of life forever. They want change in it, as old condition does not fulfill the purpose of new social ways of living. Every society across the world has varying social mobility depending upon its cultural conditions. Education, technology, urbanization, and rejecting of old patterns and adopting modern ones are among the causes of social mobility. Individuals in a group are always defining themselves and differences among them according to their distinct surroundings. These group boundaries are conceptual, symbolic and let people examine the objects, other people, practices, time and space in relation to prevailing social differences. People struggle over and move toward a shared meaning of reality after analyzing symbolic boundaries. The material culture tends to reflects and express the actions and intentions of groups in a society. The usage, manipulation and negotiation of symbols comprise a central part of strategies between interacting groups. Some groups are usually successful in imposing their own dominant culture as superior as and better than those of poorer classes. Political issues are framed due to impact of collective identity and mechanism of social boundaries formation, which often leads to a social movement (Lamont & Molnar, 2002). The civil rights movement was comprised of several small and large movements, representing a long struggle for equality of African-Americans in United States, which not only secured civil rights and equality for black community, but also reshaped the preexistent concept of citizenship and responsibility of administration to protect civil liberties (Civil Rights Movement, 2012). The dubious voting in 1876 led to the end of reconstruction era. The take over of political power over again by white leadership in the south of the region resulted in intimidation and violence against African-Americans. The African-Americans community was efficiently disfranchised in South region during 1890 to 1908, and situation became stagnant till the passage of civil rights legislation in 1960s (Office of History and Preservation, 2008). Black community was not allowed to actively participate, and elect leaders to stand for their wellbeing in legislature or local administration for over 60 years. The key distinctive characteristics of post-reconstruction era included disfranchisement, violence and intimidation, exploitation and abuse, and racial segregation. African Americans along with other racial minorities resisted legally and illegally for a long time, but there efforts bore no fruit (Beito, 2009). Later on, a series of events such as blacks winning international championships and concert at the Lincoln memorial by Marian Anderson were seen by blacks as profound symbols of their freedom. Many people, places and semiotics were employed by the civil rights movement during 1950s and 60s as symbols which rapidly triggered social mobility, and catalyzed reforms. This paper attempts to investigate various symbols used in the civil rights movement and their role in mobilization of movement. It also aims to assess the role of these symbols in shaping collective identity which helps to mobilize the group. Finally, the conclusion will summarize the key findings and suggest areas for further research. Theory From the early days of slavery till the passage of civil rights act, Frederick Douglas is considered one of the most notable and symbolic leaders of entire civil rights movement. As most slaves were uneducated and unaware of the civil rights at that time, they lacked leadership that can speak for their rights in the public. Douglass had somehow managed to read and write before he fled to New York City. His love for education and extensive readings helped him to developed oratory skills that were even uncommon in white men. Douglass effective use of the power of words in both his writings and speech enabled him to serve as role model and symbol for the deprived people of America. His firm dedication to concepts of equality facilitated him to be an influential leader of American slaves. During the civil war, Douglass was also actively involved in the recruitment of Northern Blacks for the Union Army. His uncompromising thoughts and abolitionist stance symbolized power, freedom and energy (PBS, 2012). In 1901, Booker T. Washington was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to dinner at the White House for discussing issues faced by blacks in the South. He was the first African-American ever invited to visit the White House. However, this move evoked considerable outrage from the Southern whites. They regarded President’s invitation to a black as a serious breach of racial etiquettes. A member of the United States Senate, Benjamin Tillman, even threatened open violence by saying that, “Now that Roosevelt has eaten with that nigger Washington, we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to get them back to their places.” On the other hand, Northern newspapers applauded and anticipated the invitation by the President. The uproar, mostly in south, was a clear indication of racial inequality for African-Americans. The invitation laid a foundation stone for the complete acceptance and integration of blacks in American life. Washington eating dinner with Roosevelt and his family at one table conveyed a clear message of social equality both to southerners and African-Americans. At the time when America was not ready to confront such issues, Roosevelt’s decision helped to further the cause of African-American communities. President Roosevelt’s dinner with Washington helped remarkably to symbolize the working relationship between the races (Marquis, 2010). Jesse Owens, an African American athlete from Oakville, Alabama, won four gold medals during the Summer Olympics in Berlin denying the Hitler’s philosophy of sacred Aryan supremacy. Another Alabama native and heavyweight champion, Joe Louis successfully defended his title by beating another German two years later in the New York City. These two events brought loud cheers to all Americans particularly blacks, suggesting that nationality matters more than color. In his eulogy for Louis, Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson in 1981 acknowledged that “with Joe Louis we had made it from guttermost to the uttermost, from slaveship to championship …he was the answer to the sincere prayers of the disinherited and dispossessed. Joe made everybody somebody…something on the inside said we ought to be free; something on the outside said we can be free.” Jesse and Joe were thus appreciated more than champions, and stood as symbols of the foundation of racial harmony (Levy, 1998). Lincoln memorial is considered to be one of the founding symbols for freedom and equality in the modern civil rights movement. In 1939, the African American contralto Marian Anderson was deprived of the chance to sing in Constitution Hall because she was colored. She instead sang to a crowd of over 75,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial. This concert made Lincoln Memorial not only a place to admire and remember a leader, but also as a symbol representing the struggle for freedom and equality of every citizen in the United States. The Lincoln Memorial thus became the site of several protests of historical significance. Later in August 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech to a crowd of 200,000 also including a good proportion of white people, which helped to provoke the true spirit of Civil Rights Movement in America. Many prominent figures such as Marlon Brando, Bob Dylan, Mahalia Jackson, Marian Anderson, and Odetta were also present and performed on the occasion (NPS, 2012). The events following refusal of Rosa Parks to relinquish her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery also had a profound impact on the entire black community. She was arrested, convicted of segregation laws violation and fined. The black community responded by boycotting the public transport system for almost 13 months and challenged their second-class status on the public bus system enforced by Jim Crow laws in the Supreme Court. By her reckless move risked with even physical harm, she successfully conveyed cruelty and humiliation contained in the segregation laws. These events also led to the transformation of a preacher named Martin Luther King Jr., then only 26, into a key civil rights activist and leader. In his 1958 book, Stride toward Freedom, Dr. King stated that, "Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer'". Parks’ act of civil disobedience became a founding symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The United States Congress later on also called her with some noteworthy titles such as "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement" (Shipp, 2005). Dr. Martin Luther King first attracted national attention as a strong civil rights activist and leader in 1955 when he was arrested because of leading a boycott against transportation system after refusal of Rosa Parks to relinquish her set to a white and her arrest in Montgomery, Alabama. He later utilized his exceptional oratorical, writing skills and personal courage in organizing peace protest, and huge public demonstrations to attract attention towards prevalent racial injustice. He successfully gained attraction in his famous speech ‘I have a dream’ at Lincoln Memorial attracting over 200,000 protestors, which eventually forced congress to enact the Civil Rights Act in 1964. He symbolized peaceful but devoted struggle for freedom, as he stated in his own words, “when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of 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 spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last’”. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of 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 spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” Though he was assassinated in 1968, he became a central icon in civil rights movement and his life and work symbolized peaceful pursuit of social justice and the rights of poor people. King was also awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Peace Prize (Mendes, 2002). Malcolm X has been regarded as one of the most influential African-American leaders who courageously advocated for the rights of blacks. In the beginning, he taught black supremacy and strongly advocated the separation of black and white Americans. He possessed a confrontational attitude toward objectives of the Civil Rights movement that worked for total integration. Although his beliefs changed during lifetime, he always advocated black self-determination, self defense, and human rights. As Malcolm X said himself that, “Early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise”, he met with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil right leaders for a broader coalition of black activist organizations to achieve social justice. According to him, “Human rights are something you were born with. Human rights are your God-given rights. Human rights are the rights that are recognized by all nations of this earth". He survived repeated attempts on life, but was at last assassinated in 1965 (Malcolm X Official, 2012). The Black Panther Party believed in use of violence for self defense, and was mostly non-collaborative with other Civil rights organizations due to its distinguished ten-point platform. In order to support its philosophy of defensive violence, the party selected panther as its symbol because it presents a powerful energetic imagery, and ties positive implications to the black color. The party aimed to address problems of poverty and economic weakness that had overwhelmed Afro-Americans in the urban settings. The panther symbolized empowerment of blacks through self-defense and education. Youth was often more fascinated to the Panthers compared to senior citizens, due to the energy, African style, and their annoyance with the dawdling tempo of change. Their major contribution to local communities, whose influence is still felt in today’s society, was the community survival programs such as a breakfast program for neglected black children, free ambulance service, and sickle-cell anemia examinations for African Americans. However, the Party’s influential iconography mostly scared the deprived communities. The party eventually collapsed due to internal conflicts and government interventions (Cooper et al., 2007). In days of slavery, the black woman was defenseless and exposed to the sexual desires of the masters, or other male slaves. The institution of slavery had masculinized slave women, who along with their rather biological role of breeding slaves, were also responsible for field work. The active role women played in the Civil Rights Movement was extension of resistance which began during the periods of slavery. Motherhood of a slave woman symbolized value as slave children were important economic assets. Motherhood was therefore sighted as a symbol of power in civil rights movement for the black woman because it allows her to pass on the values and skills to next generation for survival and for acquiring a proper place in the society. Black woman's exposure to gender and racial discrimination prior to the movement granted her the wish to inform her descendants about the social inequalities in the American society, so that her children would be prepared for a better survival. The race and gender disadvantage helped black women to carve positions for engagement in the Civil Rights Movement (Joseph, 2012). The peace symbol was originally created for symbolizing nuclear disarmament in British campaigns, but was later adopted by civil right marches to represent an active but non-violent struggle for freedom. Various fundamentalist groups tried their best to have the symbol banned as they criticized it as being a communist symbol having satanist associations. However, millions of protestors accepted it as a symbol to erase the sharp and bitter lines drawn between patriotism and dissent. This symbol helped Dr. King portray his own image of peace and encourage only non-violent protests (Westcott, 2008). One of the notable means to portray symbols was the cheap and easily made pins. The imprinted symbols included slogans like FREEDOM NOW and WE SHALL OVERCOME as well as graphical representations such as a clenched black fist. Though wearing a movement pin had severe consequences those days, African Americans used them to show defiance, courage, and commitment to the cause (Orr, 1965). The fist symbol was commonly used in 1960s on pins, posters, pamphlets, flags, etc. The clenched black fist was a symbol of solidarity, defiance, power and support, and was extensively used by the Black Panther Party (Cushing, 2006). As language precedes thought, people are able to conceptualize the world by means of certain language. It enables people to communicate ideas and experiences about an object or a situation, which may not be present. The attitudes, ideas and values of each generation can be passed on to the succeeding generation by means of language. Even the existence of culture for human society is possible due to the development and use of common language among the people. It is nature of culture which directs social change. Language such as marks and symbols expressed in speech and writing, are used as primary tools for creation and expression of cultural meaning. In other words, cultural meanings are symbolic characters and allow people to compare and contrast various methods by which different cultures are structured. Symbols discussed in the paper are a great source of information for people interested in exploring ethnographic and cultural background of today’s American society. Civil rights symbols were associated with the African American communities from an ethnographic point of view and varying material culture offered chief means for differentiation of its different social forms in the civil rights movement. All of the symbolic characters discussed before and others also reflect the all-powerful influence which the White race had over blacks. The use of semiotics by civil rights activist ensured strong social organization among derived groups distributed throughout the country. In most of the cases, when display of symbols on pins, clothes, flags, posters and fliers in the public even had severe repercussions associated with it, many Afro-Americans did not hesitate to adopt them. Their sacrifices in this regard were themselves symbolic and encouraging for their fellow cohorts. For instance, the refusal of Rosa Parks to observe discriminatory transportation laws despite knowing the consequences and her subsequent arrest and conviction provoked the emotional response of the entire black race. Some of the symbols such as Black Panther and clenched black fist demonstrated energy and power of the black people. Some represented violent protest in self defense like Black Panther, while other preached solidarity and unity such as the fist and the Lincoln memorial. Dr. Martin Luther King and the freedom sign were both the symbols of peace, struggle, racial harmony and freedom. Most of the graphical symbols imprinted on pins and badges were effectively narrating the entire correlation of slavery to the constitutional and social inequalities, leading to a revolutionary war, and eventual revival in the civil rights movement. These symbols were appreciated and readily adapted by blacks across America because of the shared feelings, conditions and values toward unjust systems. These systems thus laid foundations for rapid construction of distinct collective identity of the disadvantaged Afro-American people, and effectively mobilized them to claim their civil rights. Conclusion The society seeks its continuity and existence according to the prevalent environmental conditions. People have descended down from generation to generation with addition of new ideas and objects. The cultural change brought in the attitudes and behavior of the people due to inequalities eventually becomes a social change. Symbols color our perception of the world. They may also convey stereotypes related to race and mobilize social change as analyzed in civil rights movement case in the paper. The various symbols adopted and perceived by the movement, whether a person, place or semiotics, indicated a distinct perspective and ideology. They were intended to create a strong sense of solidarity and idealism among the black people, serving the purpose successfully. Symbols representing peace such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Peace logo were appreciated more than violent symbolism because of the already deprived and rather neglected socioeconomic conditions of the poor black community. Symbols thus played a central role in new social organization and values in the pre-existing social structure, giving collective identity to the group of people sharing common internal as well as external conditions. Further improvements in defining the diversity and cultural interdependence will also help the minority ethnographic communities and groups to draw benefits from knowledge of mutual cultural heritage. These symbols are of great historic importance in several ways as they represent historical events and are also connected to ethnic identity of African American communities and must be preserved. References Andersen, M. L. & Taylor, H. F. (2007). Sociology: Understanding a Diverse Society. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Beito, D. T. & Beito, L. R. (2009). Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard's Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 99-100. Civil rights movement. (2012). The History Channel website. 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