People's History: Civil Rights (Passive Resistance), 1948-64 (Chap 17)
Martin Luther King, early 1960sWe Shall Overcome, Morehouse College Choir
Tantum Ergo
Mozart's Requiem in D Minor
We Shall Overcome, Greater Saint Stephen Choir
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Summary Though blacks were guaranteed their liberty, for ninety years they sought equality, with goals accomplished most successfully by common folks resisting passively. Chapter "The South had never known me." In the poetry of people "waiting, hot, and coiled" the agony of being black was eloquently told. "Jim Crowed" to death, called 'nigger,' 'darky,' ready to explode with anger and frustration. Strange that sympathy would come from communists -- they challenged liberty disguised by racist thought. So Truman's Civil Rights committee - all the world observing - set its sights on betterment (morality and '48 election pressure taking turns to motivate). With Brown against the Board of Education came the end of "separate but equal." Yet the shame was that desegregation, in reality, did not occur. It wasn't a celebrity who changed the world, but Rosa Parks, who kept her seat. The boycott of the buses was a great defeat for business. Blacks were resolute. They "walked with God" for many months, with some arrested (very odd!) for urging friends to walk. And racist violence ensued, with churches bombed, a vulgar consequence of black audacity. The home of Reverend King was bombed. But King himself insisted everything depended on nonviolence and sacrifice, and Christian passiveness. His laudable advice was followed for awhile. Four men, a Woolworth's store refusing service, sit-ins start to underscore the sheer injustice. Many thousands thrown in jail. With "freedom riders" on the buses, thugs assail the peaceful groups. And blacks are still in poverty. "So what's your name?" the person of authority demands. "It's FREEDOM," says the boy. A world aware and watching, Congress forced to listen, to declare by law in '57, '60, '64 our civil rights, our voting rights; to fight the war on poverty, to follow King's inspiring dream. But violence pervades the South, and it would seem to never end -- the Baptist Church in Birmingham, four children killed by bombs; and drunken racists ram the car of advocates in Mississippi, beat and torture three young men, and kill them. Bittersweet the victories for civil rights: our government, while passing laws, is otherwise indifferent. |