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Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968
No other book about the civil rights movement captures the drama and impact of the black struggle for equality better than Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1968. Two of the most respected scholars of African-American history, Steven F. Lawson and Charles M. Payne, examine the individuals who made the movement a success, both at the highest level of government and in the grassroots trenches. Designed specifically for college and university courses in American history, this is the best introduction available to the glory and agony of these turbulent times. Carefully chosen primary documents augment each essay giving students the opportunity to interpret the historical record themselves and engage in meaningful discussion. In this revised and updated edition, Lawson and Payne have included additional analysis on the legacy of Martin Luther King and added important new documents.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionSchool
240 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1998
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August 5, 2007payne = <3
spent hours outside a coffee shop taking notes about queer theory in relation to the civil rights movement, it was an amazing afternoon
spent hours outside a coffee shop taking notes about queer theory in relation to the civil rights movement, it was an amazing afternoon
January 16, 2018
This is an abbreviated review. The full text of this review is available here: http://www.librarything.com/work/3014...
"Of course, Washington alone cannot supply all the answers. As was the case during the civil rights movement, African Americans must mobilize to achieve their won freedom. The federal government made racial reform possible, but Blacks in the South made it necessary. Had they not mobilized their neighbors, opened their churches to stage protests and sustained the spirits of the demonstrators, and rallied the faithful to provoke a response from the federal government, far less would have been made. Thus, the real heroes of the civil rights struggle were the Black foot soldiers and their white allies who directly put their lives on the line in the face of often overwhelming odds against them. Federal officials were not heroes, for they usually calculated the political consequences of their actions too closely. Yet if not heroes, they proved essential for allowing the truly courageous to succeed." (p. 42)
Lawson argues that national leadership was essential for the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Key actors included the Presidency, the Supreme Court, Black national leadership provided by people like MLK and black organizations (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC). Finding the origins of the Movement in WWII, Lawson describes the initial steps toward first class African-American citizenship in "President Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II." Under the threat of a March on Washington from A. Philip Randolph, FDR issued an executive order to desegregate war industry and to set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC). The Supreme Court ruled in 1944 in Smith v Allwright that all-white primary was unconstitutional. This set the pattern for future Civil Rights action at the national level. Presidential action prodded by African-American organizations, the work of the federal government, along with Supreme Court rulings.
With FDR's death, Harry Truman assumed the Presidency and continued the slow movement toward first class citizenship for African Americans. In "The Postwar South and President Harry S. Truman," Lawson explains that Truman was personally repelled by anti-black violence in the South and moved to set up the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which issued a report in 1947 entitled "To Secure These Rights." In this report we see the liberal agenda for civil rights for the next two decades:
Desegregation of the Armed Forces, interstate transportation, and government employment
Cessation of federal aid to segregated institutions
Measures to challenge lynching and voting discrimination
Legislation to resurrect the FEPC
The creation of a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice
Establishment of a permanent Civil Rights Commission
White Southern resistance in the Senate killed most of Truman's legislative proposals, but he did issue an executive order to desegregate the armed forces.
"The Impact of the Cold War" was to expose the US to criticism abroad for failing to live up to its own principles. In the context of a "Red Scare" in which ideas deemed controversial were suspect, Southern whites accused those advocating African-American equality of "subversion" and attempted to smear them. The defeat of CIO unionizing attempts by exactly these tactics ensured that the labor union would be consigned to the periphery of the Civil Rights Movement. Even the NAACP, which expelled all of its communist members, was "red baited."
In "The Supreme Court and School Desegregation," Lawson describes how the agitation by NAACP lawyers for equality of education lead through a number of court cases to the Brown decision in 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for the majority, declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" dead in education and ordered communities to desegregate their school systems with "all due speed." This ruling provoked "Massive Resistance" from White Southerners, who issued a Southern Manifesto in Congress. IN Mississippi, the brutal murder of Emmett Till was a highly visible symbol of this resistance. His murders were acquitted by an all-white jury.
A political gradualist by temperament, "President Dwight D. Eisenhower" refused to enforce the Brown decision with any real conviction. He was not inclined to push a measure that he knew would inflame the South. Instead he advocated Black voting rights, which he believed would solve many of the problems Blacks faced. "The Montgomery Bus Boycott," which occurred from December of 1955 to November of 1956 brought the Supreme Court to uphold the illegality of government-sponsored bus segregation -- and it brought to national prominence a 26 year old minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. As the director of the Montgomery Improvement Association, King made his first foray into the national limelight.
"The Civil Rights Act of 1957" emerged as a limited compromise effort which had the support of Lyndon B Johnson in the Senate. Focusing on voting rights and steering clear of the inflammatory school desegregation issue, it established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and the federal Civil Rights Commission, yet it did not call for federal registrars to ensure voting rights in the South.
Despite his attempts to avoid a showdown between federal and state authority in the South, Ike would have to face a direct challenge to Presidential authority in 1957 "Little Rock." Resisting a federal court order to allow black students to attend Central High School, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus activated the Arkansas National Guard to prevent 9 students from entering the school Under pressure from Eisenhower, the National Guard withdrew and the situation disintegrated into anarchy. Only then did Ike send in the 101st Airborne Division. The federal government would act, but only when there was no other way to maintain public order in a manner consistent with federal law. "Martin Luther King, Jr." formed the SCLC in the same year as the political arm of the African-American Church in the South. Advocating direct action in non-violent opposition to Jim Crow, SCLC efforts bore little fruit in the 1950s.
The 1960s began with "Student Activism" at its center. Four students at UNC Greensboro held a sit in a the local Woolworth's lunch counter. The protest drew national attention and out of it grew a nation-wide sit in movement. Around the success of this movement, student activists formed SNCC. As Lawson points out, the leadership of Ella Baker was crucial to the formation of this group and it was the success this group had in convincing Reverend King to put himself on the line by attempting to be served in an Atlanta restaurant that drew national attention to his imprisonment. During the last days of the election of 1960, the Kennedy's intervention on behalf of King lead to his release and helped swing the black vote into the Kennedy camp. Kennedy won the presidency with a 1 % margin and the "suitcase full of votes" that Daddy King delivered on election day in gratitude for this kindness were crucial in composing that margin.
Despite this key swing vote, "The Kennedy Administration" proved reticent during its first two years to pursue a vigorous course on Civil Rights. With Bobby Kennedy at Justice, the Kennedy's pursued a course of submitting local suits to challenge violations of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Yet the Kennedys' efforts to use the court system to foster Black voting rights was undermined by their own appointment of racist segregationist judges to federal benches in the South. Intimidated by the political power of key Southern Congressmen, Kennedy took two years to issue the executive order which he had claimed during the campaign would illuminate discrimination in federally funded housing "by the stroke of a pen."
The 1961 "Freedom Rides" took place within a Cold War context that explains, though does not excuse, the timidity with which the Kennedy administration acted to enforce the desegregation ruling of the Supreme Court for interstate transportation. To provoke the government to act, CORE sent 13 black and white riders on busses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. Insisting on eating where they pleased in bus terminals and riding in integrated fashion, the CORE riders provoked the wrath of Southern racists. In Alabama, the riders were attacked and one of the buses firebombed on Mother's Day. Robert Kenned negotiated furiously with Governor John Patterson in Alabama as Jack Kennedy prepared to meet with Nikita Khrushchev. On the verge of sending in federal forces the Kennedys wavered, fearing the public spectacle this would create. Not until one of the administration's own Justice Department staff was badly beaten in Montgomery, did the Kennedys send in federal marshals. Convinced that they had made their point in Alabama, Robert Kennedy became fed up with the "Freedom Riders" when they insisted on continuing on to Mississippi. Goaded to further action he finally agreed to have the ICC issue regulations to implement the court's ruling. The lesson of the "Freedom Rides" was that the federal government could be moved to act through non-violent protest.
"The Albany, Georgia, Campaign" of 1961-1962 produced few results for the civil rights movement. Initiated as a challenge to the state's segregation laws, foot soldiers of the movement (as well as Martin Luther King, Jr.) were jailed. Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, however, did not brutalize the black protesters in the kind of public way that Bull Connor would later in Birmingham. The segregationist federal judge in Georgia (appointed by Kennedy) issued injunctions against the marches. The Kennedy administration remained largely silent, managing to keep this a "local" matter. The Albany Movement went nowhere. King seems to have learned the lesson from this movement that a clear-cut confrontation was necessary to draw in the national limelight and force the federal government's hand. Frustrated with FBI inaction, King made the mistake of criticizing the bureau in the press. (This had the unfortunate effect of making King an enemy of the FBI. From this point on, J Edgar Hoover considered King an enemy and worked behind the scenes to damage him -- going so far as delivering evidence of King's extramarital affairs to his wife Coretta. Later, when the FBI learned of threats to King's life they remained silent.)
"Voter Registration" was the Kennedy Administration's preferred method of encouraging civil rights. To this end they supported the creation of the Voter Education Project (VEP), a non-profit organization in Atlanta which was established to extend voting rights to disfranchised Blacks in the South. NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC all joined VEP with tacit assurances that the Kennedy's would extend federal protection to support the voting rights they were encouraging. The Kennedys reacted in a highly legalistic manner to flagrant abuses by local law enforcement. In places like the rural McComb, Mississippi local sheriffs and police denied the franchise to Blacks, using violent intimidation tactics on local blacks and civil rights workers. Federal protection was not forthcoming until the NAACP succeeded in getting James Meredith admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962. Governor Ross Barnett's political maneuvering to delay Meredith's registration that Fall enabled the total breakdown of law and order. This time marshals provide unequal to the task of maintaining order, and the Kennedys sent in federal troops. Ole Miss brought in the power of the law behind the civil rights movement because it lead to the breakdown of public order and thereby exceeded the Kennedy administration's threshold for political pain. This was a valuable lesson.
In April and May of 1963, King turned his focus on "Birmingham." Here was a foe that would be just stupid enough to unleash the full force of racial hatred on the movement if provoked. And that is exactly what Eugene "Bull" Connor did, turning police dogs and fire hoses on peaceful marchers while the national news media captured the horror for the television audience. It was especially appalling when children who marched were attacked by police dogs. Under the intense limelight of public scrutiny, the Justice Department negotiated the desegregation of restaurants and increased Black employment opportunities. Yet the level of racial hatred stirred in the process lead to the firebombing of a Birmingham Church, were four black girls were killed.
The impact of this growing public violence seems to have moved the Kennedys to act more decisively. Governor George Wallace's symbolic stand in the door at the University of Alabama did not stop the administration from securing the registration of black students through the presence of federal marshals. Appearing on television on the night of June 11, 1963, for the first time JFK cast first class citizenship for African Americans as a "moral" issue. Hours later, Medgar Evars was gunned down by a sniper outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Kennedy then submitted bill to congress that would become the "The 1964 Civil Rights Act." Though he held back on proposing the creation of an EEOC, it was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. With this bill in the Congress, A. Philip Randolph of the NAACP reinitiated his plan for the march on Washington. This time, after furious negotiations with the Kennedy administration, the march took place on August 28 at which MLK delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. When JFK was killed on November 22, the bill was stalled in Congress.
It remained for the former "Master of the Senate," Lyndon Baines Johnson, to secure passage of the Civil Rights Bill -- a task which he took up with the full power of his new office. As the President maneuvered to enact this legacy of the final months of the Kennedy Presidency, civil rights workers organized COFO and sent 600-700 white college students from middle class backgrounds in the north to run freedom schools and voter registration drives in the state of Mississippi in what became known as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The legacy of "President Lyndon B. Johnson and Freedom Summer" is a mixed one. Knowing that the violence against blacks in the South largely went unnoticed, CORE reasoned that violence directed at white college kids would bring the nation's attention to Mississippi. This is did. The very beginning of the Freedom Summer was marked by the murder of three activists (James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman) by the Klan. LBJ directed the FBI to investigate the killings and as a result the FBI infiltrated and damaged the Klan severely in Mississippi. But another result of the Freedom Summer was less positive for the Johnson agenda. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) grew out of the summer and mounted a challenge to the white Democratic delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, NJ. Johnson used the FBI to eavesdrop on the MFDP at Atlantic City and using the knowledge gained thereby was able to broker a compromise that did not alienate the Southern white delegates. MFDP delegate's testimony, especially from Fannie Lou Hamer, was damaging to LBJ's image and established a pattern of confrontation between the left of the civil rights movement and the liberalism of LBJ that would be repeated in various ways over the next several years.
In discussing "Selma and the 1965 Voting Rights Act," Lawson shows how the march from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965 allowed King and his movement to bring national attention to the issues of black disfranchisement. Attacked by a mob along the way, the marchers were forced to regroup and attempt the march again. When Governor George Wallace failed to protect the marchers, LBJ sent in federal troops. In the midst of this struggle a white housewife from Detroit (Vila Liuzzo) was shot and killed. Johnson went on national television to announce his voting rights bill. Bringing all of the power of his office to bear he secured the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which had an immediate impact on voting by striking down literacy tests and moving the Justice Department to challenge the poll tax in the courts. The Act even allowed the Justice Department to send in federal registrars to ensure that blacks could register. The 1965 Voting Rights Act inaugurated a new phase in the African American "Run for Freedom," which began in the midst of WWII and extends until today. Using the power of the ballot, African Americans began to turn increasingly to the ballot to put representatives in congress (Tennessee, Texas and Georgia) and mayors in city halls (Atlanta, Birmingham and New Orleans).
1965 also saw the increasing polarization of the African American community in its reaction to "Black Power" advocates in CORE and SNCC. While the President worked for change with conservative Black groups like the National Urban League (NUL) and the NAACP, Black Power advocates like SNCC's Stoakley Carmichael urged separatist strategies for Black empowerment. SNCC and CORE broke with Johnson over his stand on the MFDP and increasingly on the issue of the war in Vietnam. Though King was not an advocate of "Black Power," he too moved further to the left as he moved north to bring his non-violent protest movement to bear in marches against the conditions in the slums of Chicago. In "President Johnson Pushes Racial Moderation," Lawson explains how LBJ maneuvered to strengthen the moderate forces in the Civil Rights Movement by undermining the power of left leaning and more radical elements. Once again Mississippi took center stage as LBJ worked with Senator John Stennis (who coincidently supported LBJ on Vietnam) to get Head Start funding moved from the MFDP-supported Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) to the more moderate and interracial Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP). Thus did the War on Poverty become a vehicle for liberal support of racial integration over Black Power calls for separatism and nationalism.
"Race Riots" were met by "Federal Repression." With the pressure of black power advocates focusing increasingly on the economic (as opposed to political) forces at work in the north, race riots broke out in Detroit and Newark in 1967. Federal troops were sent in to restore order. The Kerner Commission issued a report blaming white racism for the riots, and LBJ -- hurt by the ingratitude of the people he had done so much to help -- let loose the forces of the FBI in COINTELPRO to infiltrate and destroy the "Black Power" movement. King too was subject to increasing surveillance and smear campaigns by the FBI, with J. Edger Hoover's enmity having grown ever stronger since the criticism of the bureau by king during the Albany Movement.
"Of course, Washington alone cannot supply all the answers. As was the case during the civil rights movement, African Americans must mobilize to achieve their won freedom. The federal government made racial reform possible, but Blacks in the South made it necessary. Had they not mobilized their neighbors, opened their churches to stage protests and sustained the spirits of the demonstrators, and rallied the faithful to provoke a response from the federal government, far less would have been made. Thus, the real heroes of the civil rights struggle were the Black foot soldiers and their white allies who directly put their lives on the line in the face of often overwhelming odds against them. Federal officials were not heroes, for they usually calculated the political consequences of their actions too closely. Yet if not heroes, they proved essential for allowing the truly courageous to succeed." (p. 42)
Lawson argues that national leadership was essential for the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Key actors included the Presidency, the Supreme Court, Black national leadership provided by people like MLK and black organizations (NAACP, SCLC, SNCC). Finding the origins of the Movement in WWII, Lawson describes the initial steps toward first class African-American citizenship in "President Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II." Under the threat of a March on Washington from A. Philip Randolph, FDR issued an executive order to desegregate war industry and to set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC). The Supreme Court ruled in 1944 in Smith v Allwright that all-white primary was unconstitutional. This set the pattern for future Civil Rights action at the national level. Presidential action prodded by African-American organizations, the work of the federal government, along with Supreme Court rulings.
With FDR's death, Harry Truman assumed the Presidency and continued the slow movement toward first class citizenship for African Americans. In "The Postwar South and President Harry S. Truman," Lawson explains that Truman was personally repelled by anti-black violence in the South and moved to set up the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which issued a report in 1947 entitled "To Secure These Rights." In this report we see the liberal agenda for civil rights for the next two decades:
Desegregation of the Armed Forces, interstate transportation, and government employment
Cessation of federal aid to segregated institutions
Measures to challenge lynching and voting discrimination
Legislation to resurrect the FEPC
The creation of a Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice
Establishment of a permanent Civil Rights Commission
White Southern resistance in the Senate killed most of Truman's legislative proposals, but he did issue an executive order to desegregate the armed forces.
"The Impact of the Cold War" was to expose the US to criticism abroad for failing to live up to its own principles. In the context of a "Red Scare" in which ideas deemed controversial were suspect, Southern whites accused those advocating African-American equality of "subversion" and attempted to smear them. The defeat of CIO unionizing attempts by exactly these tactics ensured that the labor union would be consigned to the periphery of the Civil Rights Movement. Even the NAACP, which expelled all of its communist members, was "red baited."
In "The Supreme Court and School Desegregation," Lawson describes how the agitation by NAACP lawyers for equality of education lead through a number of court cases to the Brown decision in 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren, speaking for the majority, declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" dead in education and ordered communities to desegregate their school systems with "all due speed." This ruling provoked "Massive Resistance" from White Southerners, who issued a Southern Manifesto in Congress. IN Mississippi, the brutal murder of Emmett Till was a highly visible symbol of this resistance. His murders were acquitted by an all-white jury.
A political gradualist by temperament, "President Dwight D. Eisenhower" refused to enforce the Brown decision with any real conviction. He was not inclined to push a measure that he knew would inflame the South. Instead he advocated Black voting rights, which he believed would solve many of the problems Blacks faced. "The Montgomery Bus Boycott," which occurred from December of 1955 to November of 1956 brought the Supreme Court to uphold the illegality of government-sponsored bus segregation -- and it brought to national prominence a 26 year old minister named Martin Luther King, Jr. As the director of the Montgomery Improvement Association, King made his first foray into the national limelight.
"The Civil Rights Act of 1957" emerged as a limited compromise effort which had the support of Lyndon B Johnson in the Senate. Focusing on voting rights and steering clear of the inflammatory school desegregation issue, it established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and the federal Civil Rights Commission, yet it did not call for federal registrars to ensure voting rights in the South.
Despite his attempts to avoid a showdown between federal and state authority in the South, Ike would have to face a direct challenge to Presidential authority in 1957 "Little Rock." Resisting a federal court order to allow black students to attend Central High School, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus activated the Arkansas National Guard to prevent 9 students from entering the school Under pressure from Eisenhower, the National Guard withdrew and the situation disintegrated into anarchy. Only then did Ike send in the 101st Airborne Division. The federal government would act, but only when there was no other way to maintain public order in a manner consistent with federal law. "Martin Luther King, Jr." formed the SCLC in the same year as the political arm of the African-American Church in the South. Advocating direct action in non-violent opposition to Jim Crow, SCLC efforts bore little fruit in the 1950s.
The 1960s began with "Student Activism" at its center. Four students at UNC Greensboro held a sit in a the local Woolworth's lunch counter. The protest drew national attention and out of it grew a nation-wide sit in movement. Around the success of this movement, student activists formed SNCC. As Lawson points out, the leadership of Ella Baker was crucial to the formation of this group and it was the success this group had in convincing Reverend King to put himself on the line by attempting to be served in an Atlanta restaurant that drew national attention to his imprisonment. During the last days of the election of 1960, the Kennedy's intervention on behalf of King lead to his release and helped swing the black vote into the Kennedy camp. Kennedy won the presidency with a 1 % margin and the "suitcase full of votes" that Daddy King delivered on election day in gratitude for this kindness were crucial in composing that margin.
Despite this key swing vote, "The Kennedy Administration" proved reticent during its first two years to pursue a vigorous course on Civil Rights. With Bobby Kennedy at Justice, the Kennedy's pursued a course of submitting local suits to challenge violations of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. Yet the Kennedys' efforts to use the court system to foster Black voting rights was undermined by their own appointment of racist segregationist judges to federal benches in the South. Intimidated by the political power of key Southern Congressmen, Kennedy took two years to issue the executive order which he had claimed during the campaign would illuminate discrimination in federally funded housing "by the stroke of a pen."
The 1961 "Freedom Rides" took place within a Cold War context that explains, though does not excuse, the timidity with which the Kennedy administration acted to enforce the desegregation ruling of the Supreme Court for interstate transportation. To provoke the government to act, CORE sent 13 black and white riders on busses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. Insisting on eating where they pleased in bus terminals and riding in integrated fashion, the CORE riders provoked the wrath of Southern racists. In Alabama, the riders were attacked and one of the buses firebombed on Mother's Day. Robert Kenned negotiated furiously with Governor John Patterson in Alabama as Jack Kennedy prepared to meet with Nikita Khrushchev. On the verge of sending in federal forces the Kennedys wavered, fearing the public spectacle this would create. Not until one of the administration's own Justice Department staff was badly beaten in Montgomery, did the Kennedys send in federal marshals. Convinced that they had made their point in Alabama, Robert Kennedy became fed up with the "Freedom Riders" when they insisted on continuing on to Mississippi. Goaded to further action he finally agreed to have the ICC issue regulations to implement the court's ruling. The lesson of the "Freedom Rides" was that the federal government could be moved to act through non-violent protest.
"The Albany, Georgia, Campaign" of 1961-1962 produced few results for the civil rights movement. Initiated as a challenge to the state's segregation laws, foot soldiers of the movement (as well as Martin Luther King, Jr.) were jailed. Albany police chief Laurie Pritchett, however, did not brutalize the black protesters in the kind of public way that Bull Connor would later in Birmingham. The segregationist federal judge in Georgia (appointed by Kennedy) issued injunctions against the marches. The Kennedy administration remained largely silent, managing to keep this a "local" matter. The Albany Movement went nowhere. King seems to have learned the lesson from this movement that a clear-cut confrontation was necessary to draw in the national limelight and force the federal government's hand. Frustrated with FBI inaction, King made the mistake of criticizing the bureau in the press. (This had the unfortunate effect of making King an enemy of the FBI. From this point on, J Edgar Hoover considered King an enemy and worked behind the scenes to damage him -- going so far as delivering evidence of King's extramarital affairs to his wife Coretta. Later, when the FBI learned of threats to King's life they remained silent.)
"Voter Registration" was the Kennedy Administration's preferred method of encouraging civil rights. To this end they supported the creation of the Voter Education Project (VEP), a non-profit organization in Atlanta which was established to extend voting rights to disfranchised Blacks in the South. NAACP, CORE, SCLC, SNCC all joined VEP with tacit assurances that the Kennedy's would extend federal protection to support the voting rights they were encouraging. The Kennedys reacted in a highly legalistic manner to flagrant abuses by local law enforcement. In places like the rural McComb, Mississippi local sheriffs and police denied the franchise to Blacks, using violent intimidation tactics on local blacks and civil rights workers. Federal protection was not forthcoming until the NAACP succeeded in getting James Meredith admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962. Governor Ross Barnett's political maneuvering to delay Meredith's registration that Fall enabled the total breakdown of law and order. This time marshals provide unequal to the task of maintaining order, and the Kennedys sent in federal troops. Ole Miss brought in the power of the law behind the civil rights movement because it lead to the breakdown of public order and thereby exceeded the Kennedy administration's threshold for political pain. This was a valuable lesson.
In April and May of 1963, King turned his focus on "Birmingham." Here was a foe that would be just stupid enough to unleash the full force of racial hatred on the movement if provoked. And that is exactly what Eugene "Bull" Connor did, turning police dogs and fire hoses on peaceful marchers while the national news media captured the horror for the television audience. It was especially appalling when children who marched were attacked by police dogs. Under the intense limelight of public scrutiny, the Justice Department negotiated the desegregation of restaurants and increased Black employment opportunities. Yet the level of racial hatred stirred in the process lead to the firebombing of a Birmingham Church, were four black girls were killed.
The impact of this growing public violence seems to have moved the Kennedys to act more decisively. Governor George Wallace's symbolic stand in the door at the University of Alabama did not stop the administration from securing the registration of black students through the presence of federal marshals. Appearing on television on the night of June 11, 1963, for the first time JFK cast first class citizenship for African Americans as a "moral" issue. Hours later, Medgar Evars was gunned down by a sniper outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. Kennedy then submitted bill to congress that would become the "The 1964 Civil Rights Act." Though he held back on proposing the creation of an EEOC, it was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. With this bill in the Congress, A. Philip Randolph of the NAACP reinitiated his plan for the march on Washington. This time, after furious negotiations with the Kennedy administration, the march took place on August 28 at which MLK delivered his "I Have A Dream" speech. When JFK was killed on November 22, the bill was stalled in Congress.
It remained for the former "Master of the Senate," Lyndon Baines Johnson, to secure passage of the Civil Rights Bill -- a task which he took up with the full power of his new office. As the President maneuvered to enact this legacy of the final months of the Kennedy Presidency, civil rights workers organized COFO and sent 600-700 white college students from middle class backgrounds in the north to run freedom schools and voter registration drives in the state of Mississippi in what became known as the Mississippi Freedom Summer. The legacy of "President Lyndon B. Johnson and Freedom Summer" is a mixed one. Knowing that the violence against blacks in the South largely went unnoticed, CORE reasoned that violence directed at white college kids would bring the nation's attention to Mississippi. This is did. The very beginning of the Freedom Summer was marked by the murder of three activists (James Cheney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman) by the Klan. LBJ directed the FBI to investigate the killings and as a result the FBI infiltrated and damaged the Klan severely in Mississippi. But another result of the Freedom Summer was less positive for the Johnson agenda. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) grew out of the summer and mounted a challenge to the white Democratic delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, NJ. Johnson used the FBI to eavesdrop on the MFDP at Atlantic City and using the knowledge gained thereby was able to broker a compromise that did not alienate the Southern white delegates. MFDP delegate's testimony, especially from Fannie Lou Hamer, was damaging to LBJ's image and established a pattern of confrontation between the left of the civil rights movement and the liberalism of LBJ that would be repeated in various ways over the next several years.
In discussing "Selma and the 1965 Voting Rights Act," Lawson shows how the march from Selma to Montgomery in March of 1965 allowed King and his movement to bring national attention to the issues of black disfranchisement. Attacked by a mob along the way, the marchers were forced to regroup and attempt the march again. When Governor George Wallace failed to protect the marchers, LBJ sent in federal troops. In the midst of this struggle a white housewife from Detroit (Vila Liuzzo) was shot and killed. Johnson went on national television to announce his voting rights bill. Bringing all of the power of his office to bear he secured the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which had an immediate impact on voting by striking down literacy tests and moving the Justice Department to challenge the poll tax in the courts. The Act even allowed the Justice Department to send in federal registrars to ensure that blacks could register. The 1965 Voting Rights Act inaugurated a new phase in the African American "Run for Freedom," which began in the midst of WWII and extends until today. Using the power of the ballot, African Americans began to turn increasingly to the ballot to put representatives in congress (Tennessee, Texas and Georgia) and mayors in city halls (Atlanta, Birmingham and New Orleans).
1965 also saw the increasing polarization of the African American community in its reaction to "Black Power" advocates in CORE and SNCC. While the President worked for change with conservative Black groups like the National Urban League (NUL) and the NAACP, Black Power advocates like SNCC's Stoakley Carmichael urged separatist strategies for Black empowerment. SNCC and CORE broke with Johnson over his stand on the MFDP and increasingly on the issue of the war in Vietnam. Though King was not an advocate of "Black Power," he too moved further to the left as he moved north to bring his non-violent protest movement to bear in marches against the conditions in the slums of Chicago. In "President Johnson Pushes Racial Moderation," Lawson explains how LBJ maneuvered to strengthen the moderate forces in the Civil Rights Movement by undermining the power of left leaning and more radical elements. Once again Mississippi took center stage as LBJ worked with Senator John Stennis (who coincidently supported LBJ on Vietnam) to get Head Start funding moved from the MFDP-supported Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) to the more moderate and interracial Mississippi Action for Progress (MAP). Thus did the War on Poverty become a vehicle for liberal support of racial integration over Black Power calls for separatism and nationalism.
"Race Riots" were met by "Federal Repression." With the pressure of black power advocates focusing increasingly on the economic (as opposed to political) forces at work in the north, race riots broke out in Detroit and Newark in 1967. Federal troops were sent in to restore order. The Kerner Commission issued a report blaming white racism for the riots, and LBJ -- hurt by the ingratitude of the people he had done so much to help -- let loose the forces of the FBI in COINTELPRO to infiltrate and destroy the "Black Power" movement. King too was subject to increasing surveillance and smear campaigns by the FBI, with J. Edger Hoover's enmity having grown ever stronger since the criticism of the bureau by king during the Albany Movement.
Read
September 30, 2015A basic introduction to the civil rights movement and some of the key historiographical debates over it. Some editions include primary documents/texts.
August 8, 2017
I appreciated the completing narratives of what the civil right movement was. I learned more details than I already knew. The book is relatively short, so this certainly isn't an exhaustive text about the intricacies of the movement. But I found it readable, and am happy I finished it. The primary source documents are particularly good.
January 25, 2009
GOOD NARRATIVE OF THOSE WHO WALKED THE NONVIOLENT WALK.
THERE SHOILD BE A BOOK SHELF FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS!!!
THERE SHOILD BE A BOOK SHELF FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN WRITERS!!!
January 7, 2012
Two views of the civil rights movement - one top down one bottom up. Very brief in the telling with interesting support documents. I would have liked more depth.
February 19, 2015
Good book. Chosen by Mrs Deborah Russell, at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro!
February 11, 2018
One of the best way to preserve the legacy of the civil rights movement is to read a wide range of primary sources from the era.
With well-selected documents (letters, speeches, posters, interviews, hearings), this book would make for a wonderful text for classroom study.
With well-selected documents (letters, speeches, posters, interviews, hearings), this book would make for a wonderful text for classroom study.
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