Transcript Slide 1

"We who believe in freedom cannot
rest," — Ella Baker
Black Power
Challenging the Paradigm
 Lets discuss the origins of the tradition of
black protest
 Between 1865-1890, what were the
conditions under which former slaves
remade themselves as a free people?
 What aspirations did they articulate?
Black visions of freedom: Family
Life
 Reconstitution of the black family
 Mississippi Black Code
 http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/code.
html
Key features of Black Codes
1. Civil Rights:
 The Southern Black Codes defined the rights of freedmen.
had the right ‘to acquire, own and dispose of property; to
make contracts; to enjoy the fruits of their labor; to sue and
be sued; and to receive protection under the law in their
persons and property.” Also, for the first time, the law
recognized the marriages of black persons and the
legitimacy of their children.
2. Labor Contracts:
3. Vagrancy:
4. Apprenticeship:
http://www.hist.umn.edu/~sargent/1308/blacklaw.htm
Black Codes Project
 http://gse.uml.edu/rtt/tah/8/cds/cd2/docs/10
.pdf
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Black visions of freedom: Labor
 To have control over their labor
 The definition of work
 Conflicts over the meaning of work




Labor organization
Growers wanted gang-labor
Blacks wanted to organize in kin groups (squad system)
“The Compromise”: intermediate stage b/w slave gang labor
and family-based tenancy and sharecropping
Resistance
 Guiding question: In what ways did African
Americans resist the (political, economic,
and social) oppressive structures of the
post-war south?
“A bridge of bent backs and laboring muscle”: The
African American Family
 Nuclear family or “flexible household”
 A sharecropper’s wife
 Domestic tasks
 Cotton cultivation
 Withdrawal of black female wage-labor immediately after
emancipation
 “playing the lady”
 Withdrew from “full time” labor
 A sharecropper’s children
 A daughter’s aspirations
 Two key developments in the late 19th century black
southern society


Increasing literacy rates
Urban in-migration
Migration to the Urban South
 1870s-1890s - the migration to southern cities was gradual
 A gendered migration
 Laboring women
 After the civil war, living out (vs. living in) came to
predominate but laden with the trappings of slavery.
 Enforced deference
 “Betty May” phenomenon
 Resistance



Controlling their “time”
“service pan” vs “theft”
“informal power”
Subaltern resistance
 Women (more than male counterparts)
relied on verbal abuse, defiant language,
ritualized shaming
Collective organization: Community
Associations
 “Associations” and “Companies” of black laborers
who met, marched, and drilled (beg. 1865).
 Members adopted military titles, carried arms, and
were under the command of “captains.”
 Their existence challenged their status as a
marginalized and dependent community without
civil and political power.
 Used the organizations to express “organized
politics.”
Collective Organization: The Black
Church
 Even before the war ended, the black Methodist
and Baptist churches provided space for political
meetings (in union occupied cites)
 The rural “church”
 Lacked visible structure and denominational orientation
 They were the heart of the black community
 The “community center”
 They were political institutions
 Newspapers/proclamation read out loud
 No clear distinction between the secular and the
sacred -- the spiritual and the political
 Prominent place of black ministers in the community
Collective Organization: The School
 Sites of black initiative and empowerment
 Unlike churches, sites of interracial
cooperation
 Education was a family affair
 The school not just a place to learn the
three R’s; but, a place to learn about their
rights and the importance of voting.
Collective Organization: The Union
League
Est. in 1862/63 in the Northern states to rally support for the
Lincoln administration and war effort
 Committed “to protect, strengthen, and defend all loyal men
without regard to sect, condition, or race.”
 Embraced grassroots politics
 Once war ended continued educational projects (at first
among white Unionists)
 Began to attract blacks in larger cities (Richmond, Norfolk,
Savannah, Nashville)
 Establishment of Union League required at least 9 loyal
men--and they gained public speaking experience and
lessons in political organization
 Union Leagues spread rapidly (because of assoc. with Rep.
party and support for expansion of African American
civil/political rights)
 Local orientation--key
Organizing in Virginia
 The Lynchburg Virginian of last Friday says:The
propriety of holding a public meeting in regard to the
subject of labor is discussed on the streets. Some
persons are in favor of cutting loose at once and
unconditionally from the negroes, since they have
leagued themselves together against the whites:
…[they]… wish first to lay down the terms on which
the whites will continue to give them employment, viz:
That they withdraw themselves in hostility against the
Southern people; and others are anxious to
inaugurate prompt measures for the introduction of
labor from Europe. These are the subjects which it is
proposed to discuss and determine in a public
meeting. They are important and deserve grave
consideration. [Nov. 1867] (see
Collective Organization: Black
Emigrationism
 Emigrationism arose as one of several
strategies designed to create stable black
communites.
 Henry Adams est. 1874 the Colonization Council
 American Colonization Society, 1816
 Between 1865-1868, 2232 blacks emigrated
 Local organizations created (Liberia Exodus
Association of Pinesville Florida)
 1875-1880 -- peak of emigrationism
 The “movement” helped to sustain political activism
and offered another form of collective struggle needed
to fend off oppression and to create social/political
spaces for African American community life.
 Contested within black community (F. Douglass)

[Republican Vindicator, Nov 9 1866] Eleven hundred and sixty-five people of color
have applied to the American Colonization Society for passage to Liberia this fall.
They consist of families of men, women, and children, "some mechanics, some
farmers, most of them the better class of freedmen, who can read and write, and
are intelligent and religious." Here then is the opportunity for the true friends of
the colored people in this country to show their faith by their works. The American
Colonization Society offers to send these people to the home of their fathers, to
civilize and christianize Africa, and to secure their own future peace and
happiness.To furnish a comfortable passage and the customary support, houseroom, land, &c., to these people for the first six months after landing in Liberia,
sixty dollars per capita, or a total of forty thousand dollars are wanted. Who will
help to provide for bearing these people to Africa? There is a voice of Providence
in the cry of the descendants of Africa for help to reach their ancestral land which
the friends of the colored man, to whom God commits property, will not turn away
without the best of reasons. He can hope for but little, if anything, from those who
would keep him here, for purposes of discord and mischief --but to his best and
truest friends --he may turn with the hope that they will do all for him that they
can. If the Southern people were able they would be liberal in their aid to the
American Colonization Society. [see http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu]
Frederick Douglass and Richard T.
Greener on the Negro Exodus, 1879
 [As a strategy, however] it is a surrender, a premature,
disheartening surrender, since it would make freedom and free
institutions depend upon migration rather than protection; by
flight, rather than right . . . It leaves the whole question of equal
rights on the soil of the South open and still to be settled . . . it is
a confession of the utter unpracticability of equal rights and equal
protection in any State, where those rights may be struck down
by violence . . . The dissemination of this doctrine by the agents
of emigration, cannot but do the cause of equal rights much
harm. It lets the public mind down from the high ground of a great
national duty, to a miserable compromise, in which wrong
surrenders nothing and right everything . . . Does not one exodus
invite another, and in advocating one do we not sustain the
demand for another?
 http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1134.htm
In Response to Douglass:
 Richard T. Greener:While time has modified his [Douglass']
extreme views, and more recent events have blunted the edge of
his sarcasm, and while most of his objections are of the negative
rather than the positive order, against the methods and men who
seek to help the movement, rather than against the Exodus itself,
still the morale of his influence is in opposition . . . it may be said,
no favorer of migration claims it as the sole, proper or only
permanent remedy for the aggravated relation of landlord and
tenant at the South. It is approved as one remedy, thus far the
most salutary, in stopping lawlessness and exactions . . . .We
must organize societies, contribute our dimes, and form a
network of communication. between the South and every
principal point North and West. … working through our churches
and benevolent societies, would do more to develop our race
than all the philanthropic measures designed to aid us since the
war.
Creating Jim Crow: The Southern
Way of Life

Why race relations worsened in the late 1880s and 1890s is a hotly
contested question. Two key factors -

1 -- related to a fear among many southern whites that a new
generation of African Americans which had been born after the Civil
War and not been subjected to slavery would not defer to white
authority.
2 -- a reaction against the increasing economic independence of
southern blacks. From 1880 to 1900, black farm ownership
increased from 19.6 to 25.4 percent, while sharecropping, declined
from 54.4. to 37.9 percent.

 The evolution of the southern paradox: Public segregation and
private integration
 De jure segregation designed to limit political power of blacks
as a group, rather than to curtail personal contact between
the races.
A System of Racial Domination
 Economics
 Politics
 Social
Jim Crow
 Must help students understand that Jim
Crow was more than a series of strict antiblack laws. It was a way of life.
 List of typical Jim Crow laws



Barbers. No colored barber shall serve as a barber (to) white girls or
women (Georgia).
Blind Wards. The board of trustees shall...maintain a separate
building...on separate ground for the admission, care, instruction, and
support of all blind persons of the colored or black race (Louisiana).
Burial. The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any
colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white
persons (Georgia).
 See “What Was Jim Crow?” by Dr. David
Pilgrim at www.jimcrow.org
Jim Crow etiquette
 A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male
because it implied being socially equal.
Blacks and whites were not supposed to eat together. If they did eat
together, whites were to be served first, and some sort of partition was to
be placed between them.
Whites did not use courtesy titles of respect when referring to blacks, for
example, Mr., Mrs., Miss., Sir, or Ma'am. Instead, blacks were called by
their first names. Blacks had to use courtesy titles when referring to
whites, and were not allowed to call them by their first names.
If a black person rode in a car driven by a white person, the black person
sat in the back seat or the back of a truck.
White motorists had the right-of-way at all intersections.
Race and Place
"The Tripartite System of Racial Domination”
(Aldon
Morris, Author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement)
 1) Economics
 Job Discrimination
 Lack of Legal Protection
 Sharecropping and Debt Peonage
 2) Politics
 Disfranchisement and Political Intimidation
 http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote17
2.shtml LA Literacy Test
 3) Segregation
Sharecropping System – the dominate
form of labor relations
 What did black farmers want?
 What did white planters want?
 Cycle of debt







“fixing the books”
“settlin’ time”
Debt peonage
Credit system
Vagrancy laws
Convict lease system
Involuntary servitude
Sharecropper Contract, 1882
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/sharecropper.pdf
http://chnm.gmu.edu/acpstah/unitdocs/unit6/lesson3/mapcontractquestions.pdf
To every one applying to rent land upon shares, the following conditions must be
read, and agreed to.
To every 30 and 35 acres, I agree to furnish the team, plow, and farming
implements . . . The croppers are to have half of the cotton, corn, and fodder (and peas
and pumpkins and potatoes if any are planted) if the following conditions are complied
with, but-if not-they are to have only two-fifths (2/5) . . . All must work under my
direction.
. . . No cropper is to work off the plantation when there is any work to be done on
the land he has rented, or when his work is needed by me or other croppers.
. . . Every cropper must feed or have fed, the team he works, Saturday nights,
Sundays, and every morning before going to work, beginning to feed his team (morning,
noon, and night every day in the week) on the day he rents and feeding it to including the
31st day of December. ...for every time he so fails he must pay me five cents.
The sale of every cropper's part of the cotton to be made by me when and where I
choose to sell, and after deducting all they owe me and all sums that I may be responsible
for on their accounts, to pay them their half of the net proceeds. Work of every
description, particularly the work on fences and ditches, to be done to my satisfaction,
and must be done over until I am satisfied that it is done as it should be.
SOURCE: Grimes Family Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill, in Robert D. Marcus and David Burner, eds., America Firsthand
(1992), pp. 306—308.
Sharecropping:
Continuity or Change?
http://www.uwec.edu/geography/Ivogeler/w188/planta3.htm
Sharecropping in Virginia
 http://www.mcps.org/ss/5thgrade/ShareCro
pTN.pdf
The Politics
of Jim Crow
 Disfranchisement, Violence, and Political
Intimidation
Disfranchisement
 Disfranchisement was a two part process
Disfranchisement I: Literacy Requirements
 Poll Taxes, Grandfather Clauses, and AllWhite Primaries.
 Disfanchisment Laws had to be carefully
crafted to avoid 15th amendment, they could
not explicitly use race as a barrier to voting
Escape clauses


designed so that poor and illiterate whites could still qualify to vote.
(1) Understanding clause



Literacy and educational requirements
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_02/Vote172.shtml LA Literacy
Test
Grandfather clause

Could not vote if grandfather could not have voted prior to 1867
Disfranchisement II: The KKK and the Politics
and Culture of Lynching
 KKK and other related groups using violence to suppress
black political action
 Violence justified by the threat of miscegenation.

“'Without Sanctuary': Artifacts of Lynching in America” see
www.npr.org
The Culture of Violence and Intimidation

Chain Gangs
Convict Lease System
Taken from the third chapter of "The Reason why the
colored American is not in the World's Columbian
Exposition," published in 1893




… the convicts are leased out to work for railway contractors, mining
companies and those who farm large plantations. These companies assume
charge of the convicts, work them as cheap labor and pay the states a
handsome revenue for their labor…
..[The] reason our race furnishes so large a share of the convicts is that the
judges, juries and other officials of the courts are white men who share
these prejudices. They also make the laws. It is wholly in their power to
extend clemency to white criminals and mete severe punishment to black
criminals for the same or lesser crimes. The Negro criminals are mostly
ignorant, poor and friendless. Possessing neither money to employ lawyers
nor influential friends, they are sentenced in large numbers to long terms of
imprisonment for petty crimes.
…Every Negro so sentenced not only means able-bodied men to swell the
state's number of slaves, but every Negro so convicted is thereby
disfranchised.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fredouconlea.html
Jackson Weekly Clarion, printed in 1887 the inspection report
of the state prison in Mississippi:

"We found [in the hospital section] twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately
brought there off the farms and railroads, many of them with consumption and other
incurable diseases, and all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and
brutal treatment. Most of them have their backs cut in great wales, scars and blisters,
some with the skin pealing off in pieces as the result of severe beatings.
Their feet and hands in some instances show signs of frostbite, and all of them with the
stamp of manhood almost blotted out of their faces.... They are lying there dying, some
of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through
their skin, many complaining for the want of food.... We actually saw live vermin
crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and
stiff with filth.
As a fair sample of this system, on January 6, 1887, 204 convicts were leased to
McDonald up to June 6, 1887, and during this six months 20 died, and 19 were
discharged and escaped and 23 were returned to the walls disabled and sick, many of
whom have since died."
http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm
Why the convict lease system?
 no black crime spree
 Southern governments wanted to control the
black population.
 The system used by the planter class and
industrialist to intimidate black sharecroppers and
provide workers for the South’s growing industry.
 The system reaffirmed white feelings of racial
superiority
 Helped maintained racial hierarchy of southern
society.
Other Helpful Websites:
 http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/
 Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,”
“Lynching and Riots,” and “Jim Crow Stories.”
The lesson plans and activities are also useful.
THE ULTIMATE ACT -- LYNCHING
 Billie Holiday's Song "Strange Fruit“ Lesson Plan
 http://www.teachervision.fen.com/lesson-plans/lesson-4839.html
 “Strange Fruit”
 http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html
 Site includes review of film “Strange Fruit” and history of the song.
Audio clip of song also available online.
 Lyrics:
 Southern trees bear strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the
root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit
hanging from the poplar trees. Pastoral scene of the gallant south, The
bulging eyes and the twisted mouth, Scent of magnolias, sweet and
fresh, Then the sudden smell of burning flesh. Here is fruit for the
crows to pluck, For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun
to rot, for the trees to drop, Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Other Helpful Websites:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/


http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/97/crow/crowhome.
html



Especially see sections on “Jim Crow Laws,” “Lynching and Riots,” and
“Jim Crow Stories.” The lesson plans and activities are also useful.
“From Jim Crow To Linda Brown: A Retrospective of the AfricanAmerican Experience from 1897 to 1953”
A mini-unit that allows students to explore to what extent the African
American experience was "separate but equal."
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpedu/lessons/98/robinson/intro.ht
ml


“Jackie Steals Home”
Students read two documents relating to Jackie Robinson's breaking of
the racial barrier in professional baseball and through the readings
explore racism in the United States, both in and out of sports.
African-American Responses I: Uplifting
the race through education



Between 1892 and 1894 black women’s clubs were established throughout the country
Dedicated to instilling racial pride

improving the social and moral conditions in the African American community.

founded settlement houses for migrant women, orphanages, day nurseries, kindergartens, evening schools for
adults, clinics, and homes for the aged.
“Negro women should be trained to teach in order to uplift the masses”

Created schools:



The emphasis on “industrial education” fell in line with Booker T. Washington’s Philosophy


advocated the abolition of sexism and racism, actively supported voting rights for all including women, and
promoted the anti-lynching crusade.
Booker T. Washington


Club women believed in his philosophy of self help, mutual aid and racial pride and industrial education
Club women disagreed with him on issues of equal political and social rights.


Nannie Helen Burroughs (National Training School for Girls in DC)
Mary McLeod Bethune
The Atlanta Compromise Speech of 1895 (see http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
The Washington-DuBois Debate

“Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” published within The Souls of Black Folk (1903) (see
http://historymatters.gmu.edu for document)
Education
 1880s, Tennessee
College Glee Club
 1900s, Women
students
Excerpt of “The Niagara Movement
Declaration of Principles” (1905)




Protest: We refuse to allow the impression to remain that the Negro-American assents
to inferiority, is submissive under oppression and apologetic before insults. Through
helplessness we may submit, but the voice of protest of ten million Americans must
never cease to assail the ears of their fellows, so long as America is unjust.
Color-Line: Any discrimination based simply on race or color is barbarous, we care not
how hallowed it be by custom, expediency or prejudice. Differences made on account
of ignorance, immorality, or disease are legitimate methods of fighting evil, and against
them we have no word of protest; but discriminations based simply and solely on
physical peculiarities, place of birth, color of skin, are relics of that unreasoning human
savagery of which the world is and ought to be thoroughly ashamed.
"Jim Crow" Cars: We protest against the "Jim Crow" car, since its effect is and
must be to make us pay first-class fare for third-class accommodations, render
us open to insults and discomfort and to crucify wantonly our manhood,
womanhood and self-respect.
Soldiers: We regret that this nation has never seen fit adequately to reward the black
soldiers who, in its five wars, have defended their country with their blood, and yet
have been systematically denied the promotions which their abilities deserve. And we
regard as unjust, the exclusion of black boys from the military and naval training
schools.
African-American Responses II: The
Culture of Resistance

Wearing the Mask of Segregation






Paul Laurence Dunbar's (1872-1906) poem "We Wear the Mask" (1896)
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
“Behind the veil” (Du Bois)
“Politics of Respectability” (Higginbotham)
African American Responses III:
Collective Protest

Complex factor: WWI



W.E. B. Dubois “Returning Soldiers” May 1919
“We are returning from war! The Crisis and tens of thousands of black
men were drafted into a great struggle. For bleeding France and what
she means and has meant and will mean to us and humanity and
against the threat of German race arrogance, we fought gladly and to
the last drop of blood; for America and her highest ideals, we fought in
far-off hope; for the dominant southern oligarchy entrenched in
Washington, we fought in bitter resignation. For the America that
represents and gloats in lynching, disfranchisement, caste, brutality
and devilish insult—for this, in the hateful upturning and mixing of
things, we were forced by vindictive fate to fight also.
But today we return! We return from the slavery of uniform which the
world's madness demanded us to don to the freedom of civil garb. We
stand again to look America squarely in the face and call a spade a
spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all its better souls have
done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.”



Red Summer
“If We Must Die” (1919) Claude McKay
If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
African American Responses IV:
Migration
 Albert Alex Smith,
"They Have Ears But
They Hear Not," The
Crisis, XXI (November,
1920), p. 17.
The Great Migration
For more sources about Migration North
see
 http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/la
nding.cfm
 Great Migration lesson plan -http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/content/2247
The Music of the Great Migration
 http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom/def
migration.html
 Harlem Music lesson Plan-http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/content/2258
 Harlem childrens games lesson plan http://artsedge.kennedycenter.org/content/2249
The Great Migration
 The migration stimulated a national movement for
civil rights
 Many Americans began to realize that
segregation and discrimination were no
longer uniquely Southern problems.
 The rise of black ghettos in northern and western
cities compounded the problems of segregation
and discrimination and
 Allowed for the flowering of African-American
cultural movements such as the Harlem
Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.
 www.nextext.com (Langston Hughes and J. W. Johnson)
CHICAGO DEFENDER
 NEGRO WOMAN FROZEN TO DEATH MONDAY
Harriet Tolbert, an aged Negro woman, was frozen to death in her home at
18 Garibaldi Street early Monday morning during the severe cold
[Atlanta (Ga.) Constitution, dated Feb. 6).
If you can freeze to death in the North and be free, why freeze to death in
the South and be a slave, where your mother, sister, and daughter are
raped and burned at stake, where your father, brother and son are
treated with contempt and hung to a pole, riddled with bullets at the
least mention that he does not like the way he has been treated?
Come North then, all of you folks, both good and bad. If you don't behave
yourself up here, the jails will certainly make you wish you had. For
the hard working man there is plenty of work—if you really want it. The
Defender says come.
 QUESTION:

What reasons are given by the Defender to support the statement that the
black southerners were better off in the North?
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/
Great Migration – The birth of a cultural
revolution
 http://www.pbs.org/th
eblues/classroom/def
migration.html THE
BLUES
 Migration Series
 (Jacob Lawrence)
See http://www.pbs.org/gointochicago/
(section “Art and Poetry) for complete
the poem, images, and other resources.
The Rise of the “New Negro”
 “Enter the New Negro” by Alain Locke
http://etext.virginia.edu/harlem/LocEnteT.html
MASS PROTEST
The Silent Protest parade organized by Harlem religious and civic leaders
and the NAACP, 1917
The New York Age reported on the march:
 They marched without uttering one word or making a single
gesticulation and protested in respectful silence against the reign of
mob law, segregation, "Jim Crowism" and many other indignities to
which the race is unnecessarily subjected in the United States.
Declaration of Rights of the Negro
Peoples of the World, 1920








We complain:
I. That nowhere in the world, with few exceptions, are black men accorded equal treatment with
white men, although in the same situation and circumstances, but, on the contrary, are discriminated
against and denied the common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and
color.
We are not willingly accepted as guests in the public hotels and inns of the world for no other reason
than our race and color.
II. In certain parts of the United States of America our race is denied the right of public trial accorded
to other races when accused of crime, but are lynched and burned by mobs, and such brutal and
inhuman treatment is even practiced upon our women.
III. That European nations have parcelled out among themselves and taken possession of nearly all
of the continent of Africa, and the natives are compelled to surrender their lands to aliens and are
treated in most instances like slaves.
IV. In the southern portion of the United States of America, although citizens under the Federal
Constitution, and in some states almost equal to the whites in population and are qualified land
owners and taxpayers, we are, nevertheless, denied all voice in the making and administration of
the laws and are taxed without representation by the state governments, and at the same time
compelled to do military service in defense of the country.
V. On the public conveyances and common carriers in the Southern portion of the United States we
are jim-crowed and compelled to accept separate and inferior accommodations and made to pay the
same fare charged for first-class accommodations, and our families are often humiliated and
insulted by drunken white men who habitually pass through the jim-crow cars going to the smoking
car.
VI. The physicians of our race are denied the right to attend their patients while in the public
hospitals of the cities and states where they reside in certain parts of the United States. Our children
are forced to attend inferior separate schools for shorter terms than white children, and the public
school funds are unequally divided between the white and colored schools.
VII. We are discriminated against and denied an equal chance to earn wages for the support of our
families, and in many instances are refused admission into labor unions, and nearly everywhere are
paid smaller wages than white men….
Between the Wars
 “Direct Action during the Depression contrasted sharply
both quantitatively and qualitatively with the history of such
tactics during the entire preceding century” A. Meier and E.
Rudwick
 Increase in Black Political Awareness
 Newspaper circulation doubled
 NAACP membership increased
 Increased militancy
 Marcus Garvey – UNIA
 “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” (1929-1941)
 Harlem Riot- 1935
Madam C. J. Walker: Philanthropy and
Civil Rights
Advocate for Racial Uplift

Chief among the recipients of Walker’s philanthropy were the NAACP, the YWCA and AfricanAmerican schools.
May 10, 1919.
Mme. C. J. Walker
108 West 136th Street,
New York City.
Dear Madame Walker:
All of us have been deeply concerned over your illness. We missed you at the National Conference on Lynching, knowing
how much pleasure you would take in what proved to be a splendid Conference.
The announcement by Mrs. Talbert at Carnegie Hall on Monday night of your most generous gift, the largest the
Association has ever received, produced a tremendous effect upon the whole audience and was received with great
applause. Immediately another gift of $1,000 was made, which I feel sure we would not have received had not yours
preceded it. This came from Mr. Scott Bond of Arkansas.
At the meeting at Ethical Culture Hall on Tuesday night it was my privilege to make announcements at the close. The first
announcement I made was of your gift, then of Mr. Bond's, after which from the audience an additional $3,400 was
pledged, the greater part of it coming from colored people. I know our branches and individuals subscribing and
pledging were inspired to do so as much by your contribution as by the inspiration of the gathering itself.
Mr. Storey asked me to express to you his personal gratification that the work we are doing appealed to you so much as
to compel you to contribute as you have done.
I hereby acknowledge the receipt of your check for $1,000. Mrs. Talbert informed us that the $4,000 additional would be
payable on demand up to January 1, 1920.
Sincerely yours.
Secretary. [NAACP]
Source: Document 2: Mr. Storey's Secretary to Mrs. C. J. Walker, 10 May 1919, NAACP Papers, Part 7: The AntiLynching Campaign, 1912-1955, Series B: Anti-Lynching Legislative and Publicity Files, 1916-1955, Library of
Congress (Microfilm, Reel 1, Frame 284).
World War II and the Rise of AfricanAmerican Protest Politics

Double V Campaign


“Regarding the Double V Campaign see
http://www.yurasko.net/vv/index.html
Regional “direct action” campaigns (strikes, demonstrations, boycotts)


“Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” (1929-1941)
Sit-ins by Howard Univ. students (1943-1944

A. Philip Randolph

The president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a
primarily black union.
March 1941, Randolph proposed a new civil rights strategy: a
massive march on Washington D. C.
Three demands:




The immediate end to segregation and discrimination in federal government hiring.
An end to segregation of the armed forces.
Government support for an end to discrimination and segregation in all American
employment.
Randolph on MASS PROTEST
 “Power and pressure are at the foundation
of the march of social justice and
reform…power and pressure do not reside
in the few…they lie in and flow from the
masses…Hence, Negro America must
bring its power and pressure to bear upon
the…Federal Government to exact their
rights in National Defense employment and
the armed forces of the country.”
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) on MASS
PROTEST
 Est. 1942 on the University of Chicago campus.
 The creation of CORE marked the beginning of a
mass movement for civil rights.
 CORE PHILOSOPHY
 Interracial founders committed to Gandian techniques
of “nonviolent direct action”
 Their tactics provided an important example for later
civil rights activists.
Brown and Beyond: Rising Expectations,
1953-1959
1.
2.
3.
Harry T. Moore
Emmett Till
Montgomery Bus Boycott
Harry T. Moore



Murdered in their FLA. home when a bomb was exploded under their
bedroom on Christmas evening, 1951, their 25th wedding anniversary. It
was the first killing of a prominent civil rights leader.
Harry T. Moore, fought to equalize educational opportunities for blacks in
the 1930s and 1940s (http://www.pbs.org/harrymoore/)
Excerpt from: EBONY (April 1952) “THE BOMB HEARD AROUND THE
WORLD”
Repercussions from Florida blast make it most explosive since Hiroshima atom
bomb. The world quickly took note. In Asia and Africa, Moore's slaying in a nation
that called itself the world's greatest democracy became front page news.
Newspapars in France and Brazil, in Israel and the Philippines editorialized about
the death of Moore. In the world forum of the United Nations, Russia's Foreign
Minister Andrei Vishinsky was quick to throw the Moore murder in the faces of
American delegates - including one Negro delegate, Channing Tobias. Behind the
iron curtain, the Communists had a field day with dispatches from the Russian
Tass news agency with details of the Moore slaying. America's foremost delegate
to the UN, Eleanor Roosevelt, admitted: "That kind of violent incident will be
spread all over every country in the world and the harm it will do us among the
people of the world is untold." Over decent America a pall of shame settled. More
sermons were preached, more resolutions adopted and more protest telegrams
and letters sent about the Moore killing than about any other racial event in the
decade.
Emmett Till (1941-1955)
 “Emmett Till and the Impact of Images” see www.npr.org
 Site contains various relevant web resources, including Jet
Magazine photos.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/
 Great site for documents and images
regarding Emmett Till’s murder.
See “Reactions in Writing.”
See also http://www.studsterkel.org/race.php
for interview with Mamie Mobley.
Who are these Women?
 March 2, 1955
1955
December 1,
Montgomery Bus Boycott
 Challenging Segregation on the Buses (pre-Montgomery)
 Buses as “Contested Terrain”
 Black Voices
 Ringing the bell

Mary Louis Smith, Claudette Colvin – Who were they?



http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/montgomery_bus_boycott.htm
Montgomery Bus Boycott—Organizing Strategies and Challenges
Activity at http://civilrightsteaching.org/lessonshandouts/handouts.htm
Jo Ann Robinson – Who was she?



Women's Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery, Alabama
May 1954 precursor
INTERVIEW:
http://library.wustl.edu/units/spec/filmandmedia/pdfs/ROBINSONJO%20ANN.pdf
Student Activism and the Emergence of a Mass
Movement, 1960-1965
 Focus: College students developed new strategies
and revitalized old ones that help to escalate the
civil rights struggle and broaden its base. Their
tactics included sit-ins, freedom rides, jail-ins,
boycotts, voter registration drives, and marches.
 Goal: To help students understand how/why the
involvement of college students brought
transformed the movement.
Freedom Songs of the Civil Rights
Movement
 Websites
Sweet Chariot: The Story of the Spirituals
http://ctl.du.edu/spirituals/Freedom/civil.cfm
MUSIC OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA, 1954-1968
http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit53/
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
http://www.folkways.si.edu/
Search for “Sing For Freedom: The Story of the Civil Rights
Movement Through Its Songs” and “Voices of the Civil Rights
Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960-1966.” There
are audio clips for both CDs available online.
Sit-ins
 Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-in (1960)
 “Bigger Than a Hamburger” and “A Conference on the Sitins” [see handout]
 Consider the following statement by journalist Louis
Lomax, "They [the sit-ins] were proof that the Negro
leadership class, epitomized by the NAACP, was no longer
the prime mover in the Negro's social revolt. The
demonstrations have shifted the desegregation battles
from the courtroom to the marketplace.“
 See “Greensboro Sit-ins: Launch of a Civil Rights
Movement” at http://www.sitins.com/index.shtml. Site
contains photographs, documents, and audio clips from
Greensboro participants and civil rights leaders.
Ella J. Baker (June, 1960)
“Bigger than a Hamburger”




The Student Leadership Conference made it
crystal clear that current sit-ins and other
demonstrations are concerned with
something much bigger than a hamburger or
even a giant-sized Coke.
Whatever may be the difference in approach
to their goal, the Negro and white students,
North and South, are seeking to rid America
of the scourge of racial segregation and
discrimination - not only at lunch counters,
but in every aspect of life….
By and large, this feeling that they have a
destined date with freedom, was not limited
to a drive for personal freedom, or even
freedom for the Negro in the South.
Repeatedly it was emphasized that the
movement was concerned with the moral
implications of racial discrimination for the
"whole world" and the "Human Race."
This universality of approach was linked with
a perceptive recognition that "it is important
to keep the movement democratic and to
avoid struggles for personal leadership."


It was further evident that desire for
supportive cooperation from adult
leaders and the adult community was
also tempered by apprehension that
adults might try to "capture" the
student movement. The students
showed willingness to be met on the
basis of equality, but were intolerant of
anything that smacked of manipulation
or domination.
This inclination toward group-centered
leadership, rather than toward a
leader-centered group pattern of
organization, was refreshing indeed to
those of the older group who bear the
scars of the battle, the frustrations and
the disillusionment that come when
the prophetic leader turns out to have
heavy feet of clay….
Ella Baker
 SNCC
 Ella Baker
 1940s (NAACP);1950s (SCLC); 1960s (SNCC)
 “Baker left the SCLC after the Greensboro sit-ins. She
wanted to help the new student activists and organized
a meeting at Shaw University for the student leaders of
the sit-ins in April 1960. From that meeting SNCC was
born.”
 Different leadership style than MLK
 Baker believed in “group centered leadership” vs
“leadership-centered group”
A Movement in Transition: SNCC
 SNCC went through three stages.
 First: 1960 to 1963 (Sit-ins and Freedom Rides)
 Second: 1963 to 1964 (Freedom Summer) A time of transition
which sparked a reconsideration of nonviolence
 Nearly 1,000 volunteers worked in Mississippi that
summer. During those months, 6 people, were killed, 80
beaten, 35 churches burned, and 30 other buildings bombed.
 Third: 1965 to 1967. A trip to Africa by several SNCC leaders,
discussions with and about Malcolm X, and growing alienation
between blacks and whites inside SNCC was capped by the
Watts riot in August, 1965. The following June, "Black Power"
became SNCC's battle cry in a march led by James Meredith
in Mississippi.
Freedom Rides
Define: The Freedom Riders left Washington DC on May 4,
1961. They were scheduled to arrive in New Orleans on
May 17, the seventh anniversary of the Brown decision.
The Freedom Riders never made it to New Orleans.
Significance: They forced the Kennedy administration to take a
stand on civil rights, which was the intent of the Freedom
Ride in the first place. In addition, the Interstate Commerce
Commission, at the request of Robert Kennedy, outlawed
segregation in interstate bus travel in a ruling, more specific
than the original Supreme Court mandate, that took effect
in September 1961.
Website:
African American Odyssey-Library of Congress
See http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aointro.html
especially the “Civil Rights Era” section.
Birmingham:
“Project C” ('Confrontation Birmingham' )
New campaign in Birmingham.
Goal: to activate the black community and to force complete desegregation of all the
city's facilities.
“Birmingham Manifesto’
King issued the 'Birmingham Manifesto' stating that all facilities in downtown
department stores must desegregated, that blacks must be hired in local business and
industry, and that a bi racial committee must be set up to implement further
desegregation.
“Letter from Birmingham City Jail”
Written in response to a letter in the local paper, the Birmingham News by eight white
Alabama clergymen. The clergymen stated that the demonstrations by "impatient"
"outsiders" was "unwise and untimely". They thought that the civil rights movement
should wait and give Birmingham citizens a chance to reform their city on their own.
MLK “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation
to say, “Wait.” …comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no
longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sirs, you can understand
our legitimate and unavoidable impatience
For more information about the letter, listen to the following NPR radio report:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/me/20010305.me.14.ram
ALABAMA CENTENNIAL, by Naomi Long
Madgett


They said, "Wait." Well, I
waited.
For a hundred years I waited
In cotton fields, kitchens,
balconies,
In bread lines, at back doors, on
chain gangs,
In stinking "colored" toilets
And crowded ghettos,
Outside of schools and voting
booths.
And some said, "Later."
And some said, "Never!" Then a
new wind blew, and a new voice
Rode its wings with quiet
urgency,
Strong, determined, sure.
"No," it said. "Not 'never,' not
'later."
Not even 'soon.'
Now.
Walk!"



And I walked the streets of
Montgomery
Until a link in the chain of
patient acquiescence broke.
Then again: Sit down!
And I sat down at the counters
of Greensboro.
Ride! And I rode the bus for
freedom.
Kneel! And I went down on my
knees in prayer and faith.
March! And I'll march until the
last chain falls
Singing, "We shall overcome."
Not all the dogs and hoses in
Birmingham
Nor all the clubs and guns in
Selma
Can turn this tide.
Not all the jails can hold these
young black faces
From their destiny of manhood,
Birmingham: cont…
On Sept. 15, 1963, the all-Black Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church was bombed. Sunday school was in session.
 Handout:
 “Ballad of Birmingham”
 Websites:
 http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2001/fyi/lesson.plans/0
5/02/church.bombing/ Includes Lesson Plan
Ballad of Birmingham





"Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?"
"No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren't good for a little child."
"But, mother, I won't be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free."
"No, baby, no, you may not
go,
For I fear those guns will fire.

But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children's choir."



She has combed and brushed her
night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small
brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know that her
child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of
Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and
brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
"O, here's the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?"
Freedom Summer




Mississippi -- summer of 1964
Successes: The Mississippi project established fifty
Freedom Schools to carry on community organizing.
Failures: It registered only twelve hundred Afro-Americans
and the Democratic National Convention refused to seat
the protest slate of delegates elected through the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic party.
Significance: The events of Freedom Summer deepened
the division between those in the civil rights movement
who still believed in integration and nonviolence and
others, especially young Afro-Americans, who now
doubted whether racial equality was achievable by
peaceful means.
The Legacy of Freedom Summer
 "What [the Summer Project] achieved more
than anything else, I think, it exposed the
system—from top to bottom," Dave Dennis,
the Mississippi Director of the Congress of
Racial Equality in 1964.
The Militant Years, 1966-68
 Focus: The changing face of the civil rights
movement.
 Goal: Help students understand why the
expectations created by the civil rights
movement met with frustration in the mid1960s and how their disappointment and
frustration aroused a new urgency among
black civil rights activist.
A NEW KING
 Have students identify the ways in which Martin
Luther King, Jr. is portrayed in the mass media,
and specifically, which of his ideas are
communicated to the public.
 Have students read and discuss a range of King’s
ideas almost completely unknown to most of the
public today.
 Hidden in Plain Sight: Martin Luther King Jr.'s
Radical Vision
http://urbandreams.ousd.k12.ca.us/lesson
plans/mlk2/index.html
In his own words…





ON NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION
Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963:
The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will
inevitably open the door to negotiation…
…My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without
determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups
seldom give up their privileges voluntarily…We know through painful experience that freedom is
never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
THE NEXT STAGE OF NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION: MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Dec. 1967, Published posthumously in King’s The Trumpet of Conscience 1968:
The dispossessed of this nation – the poor, both white and Negro – live in a cruelly unjust society.
They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of … their fellow citizens,
but against the structures which the society is refusing to take means … to lift the load of poverty…
… Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level to correspond to heightened black impatience
and stiffened white resistance. This higher level is mass civil disobedience. There must be more
than a statement to the larger society, there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some
key point. That interruption must not, however be clandestine or surreptitious. It must be open and,
above all, conducted by large masses without violence. If the jails are filled to thwart it, its meaning
will become even clearer…
…The storm is rising against the privileged minority of the earth, from which there is no shelter in
isolation or armament. The storm will not abate until a just distribution of the fruits of the earth
enables men everywhere to live in dignity and human decency. The American Negro … may be the
vanguard of a prolonged struggle that may change the shape of the world, as billions of deprived
shake and transform the earth in the quest for life, freedom and justice.
Black Power
 June 1966
 March against Fear in Mississippi.
 James Meredith, in 1962 became the first black to
attend the University of Mississippi.
 http://www.pbs.org/theblues/classroom
 S. Carmichael--June 16: "I ain't going to jail
no more." …"What we gonna start saying
now is `black power.'"
Stokely Carmichael “What We Want”
September 22, 1966
“One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up until now there has been no
national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people
in the urban ghetto. There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice
was adapted to an audience of liberal whites. It served as a sort of buffer zone
between them and angry young blacks. None of its so-called leaders could go into a
rioting community and be listened to. . .
For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got
shot. They were saying to the country, ‘Look, you guys are supposed to be nice guys
and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do - why do you beat us up, why
don’t you give us what we ask, why don’t you straighten yourselves out?’ After years of
this, we are at almost the same point - because we demonstrated from a position of
weakness. We cannot be expected any longer to march and have our heads broken in
order to say to whites: ‘come on, you’re nice guys.’ For you are not nice guys. We
have found you out. . . .
Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to
their questions about it. We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have
two problems: they are poor and they are black. All other problems arise from this twosided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men. Any program to end
racism must address itself to that double reality. . . .
For racism to die, a totally different America must be born…..”
Black Panthers
 October 1966 (H. Newton & B. Seale)
 BP Ten Point Program
(www.blackpanther.org).

Rethinking Schools
website
Helpful Websites:
 http://www.brothermalcolm.net
 This a research site devoted to information on Malcolm
X. It contains a chronology of his life, and extensive
bibliography site, information on his family life, a
webliography, and a study guide.
 http://www.blackpanther.org/TenPoint.htm
 October 1966 Black Panther Party
Platform and Program “What We Want
What We Believe”
 http://www.bobbyseale.com/phototour/
 Very little text, but excellent photographs.
Please note this presentation is for workshop
purposes only.
Please address all source inquiries to the
presenter: Wendi N. Manuel-Scott