Fight for Civil Rights

 

 

Rockport History Book Club

The Fight for Civil Rights

Wednesday, September 29, 2021

Elizabeth Eckford goes to school, Little Rock, 1957

Wednesday, September 29, 2021. The Fight for Civil Rights. America began with the fight for Civil Rights for colonists and the fight continues for groups of Americans.  Pick a group – what are they fighting for, what’s their strategy, are they gaining or losing ground and why? [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]

 

Troy Jackson, Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. 249 pp.

             This is the story of a man who set out to become a disciple of Jesus Christ as a Black Baptist Preacher and became a world-class leader in the fight for racial equality.

             When you read about the desperation of white men, fearful of being brought down to “equality” with African Americans in segregated Alabama in 1956, it’s hard to feel that we’ve made any progress in 65 years.

             Here we are in 2021, and millions of white Americans are still determined to show their superiority over Blacks. The idea of racial equality seems terrifying to them.

             Author Troy Jackson tells the story of Martin Luther King¹, Jr., born in 1929 as the son and grandson of African American Baptist preachers in Atlanta.

             Martin Luther King Jr. started out in his father’s footsteps. He was a preacher, and he went to great efforts to be the best preacher.  He started his education at Morehouse College, a historic Black college in Atlanta, then went to Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he began to build on the ideas of Mahatma Gandhi and non-violence. Then he went to Boston University where he developed further, picking up the idea of systematic theology and rejecting ideas of God as merely an abstraction. There he met Coretta Scott whose studies were bringing her to an appreciation of socialism.

            Returning home to Atlanta, he often preached at his father’s church, the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Then he was selected to take over the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

             Montgomery is where the movement to achieve racial equality for Black people found Martin Luther King, Jr. 

             Earl Warren’s Supreme Court made the historic decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education in 1954 which overturned “separate but equal” and decided that it was time—long past time--- for segregation to end in United States public schools.

             I grew up in southeastern Texas, and I can tell you that southern whites thought the world had ended with this decision.

             However, for me, it seemed right, because I was in my first year at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD and we were integrated, although there were only five Black midshipmen in my class of 1100 men.

             The next year, a little African American seamstress named Rosa Parks boarded a city bus in Montgomery AL and sat down. When asked to move so that a white person could sit down, she refused. She was arrested, and a group of Blacks decided that it was time to make a stand, and they organized a temporary boycott of Montgomery busses.  Most of the usual riders were African American.

             The movement picked up steam.  Martin Luther King, Jr. had come to town and he was asked to help with the boycott, which meant finding ways for Montgomery’s Blacks to get to work without buses. It was a boycott that stretched on for a year. It became a cause that found Martin, and he provided the leadership needed to make it work. 

            Martin might have lived a life as a very good preacher, but the urgency of the boycott found him, and made him a nationally known figure. Four days after Rosa Parks was arrested Martin spoke to nearly 5000 gathered in a Montgomery church, saying,

             “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong.  If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.  If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie.  Love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

             Montgomery brought King into the civil rights movement, and he was part of the direct action to achieve results.  While it was successful in gaining national attention for King and the movement, after he left, and the boycott ended, little changed for Blacks in Montgomery.

             King from this point on would never engage in direct action again. From Montgomery he would operate on the national, and sometimes, the international stage, primarily providing his extraordinary oratorical skills to achieve progress.         

            When you think of some of King’s speeches, like his “I have a dream” speech, and of course his “If we are wrong” speech, and maybe Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, or Franklin Roosevelt’s fireside talks during World War II, or Kennedy’s “Ask not” speech, can you recall men or women in recent times who have appeared before you, on television or in person, who have affected you?

             Has anyone appeared before you to make you want to do something good for your country?

 Note 1: The name on his original birth certificate — filed April 12, 1934, five years after King was born — was not Martin. Nor was it Luther. In fact, for the first years of his life, he was Michael King. And it wasn’t until he was 28 that, on July 23, 1957, his birth certificate was revised.

The name Michael was crossed out, next to which someone printed carefully in black ink: “Martin Luther, Jr.”

 

-end-

 

HISTORY BOOK CLU B TOPICS FOR 2021

 

Karen women in Myanmar

 

Wednesday, October 27, 2021. Mass Refugee movements in History. Movements of a large number from one nation to another can and have changed the face of the earth. Read about any era on this topic or read about the phenomenon as a whole. Consider the movement of Arab nationals today into Europe, or the pre-historic migration of peoples from Siberia to North America. Or perhaps Irish victims of the potato famine coming to America and Canada in the 1840s. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

                                                                K. Moran, New York Times

Wednesday, December 1, 2021. [Moved back one week to avoid conflict with Thanksgiving.] Is the American Empire in retreat? Roman troops met their match in German forests and Parthian deserts, and there was decay at home, and suddenly, the Roman Empire was gone. America saw the limits of empire as helicopters lifted escapees from the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975, and then again in a dramatic exodus from Kabul in 2021. We keep learning that our military power can destroy but it cannot build.  China is growing and aiming at world-wide supremacy, and Russia is straining to recover its super-power. At home there are signs of decay, as our democracy is challenged, millions resist cures for a pandemic and our spirit is tested. Is this the twilight of American ascendance? [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

There will be no later meeting in December.

2022

Women defense workers, World War II

Wednesday, January 26, 2022. World War II at Home.  World War II raged from the jungles of Burma to the steppes of Russia, all over the world.  But this is a look at the Home Front, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Fireside Chats to children collecting tin cans and lead toothpaste tubes, paper and even jars of grease for “The War Effort”. It includes the movement of many thousands of Black Americans from menial jobs in the South to better paying jobs in the North, working in defense plants.  Millions of women also joined the work force as men went to fight overseas. Also, how Hollywood helped with patriotic films and propaganda cartoons, as well as War Bond drives. [Proposed by Cindy Grove].

Landing of Pedro Cabral in future Brazil, 1500. Painting by Oscar da Silva, 1922.

Wednesday, February 23, 2022. South America has a rich history, from Incas and other indigenous peoples to colonization by Spanish, Portuguese, and other European nations, onward to monarchy in Argentina, slavery, and struggling democracies. It’s the history of Machu Pichu, exploration and exploitation of the Amazon, Simon Bolivar, Pedro Cabral, Juan Peron, Hugo Chavez, Augusto Pinochet, The Falklands War, Shining Path.  Select any period, any nation or group, and let us learn together. [Proposed by Sam Coulbourn]

 

Wednesday, March 30, 2022.  Reconstruction, 1865-77 Abraham Lincoln had a clear picture of what should be done after the end of the War Between the States, but his assassination meant that Andrew Johnson, the Democrat who succeeded him, would be President. Read about this dangerous, murderous time in our history as we sought to regain the 11 Confederate States in the Union.  Read about the growth of white supremacist organizations, and the different ways that America handled the end of slavery, and welcoming (?) millions of newly freed Africans to America.  [Proposed by Mary Beth Smith]

Wednesday, April 27, 2022.  [Proposed by you?]

Wednesday, May 25, 2022.  [Proposed by you?]

Wednesday, June 29, 2022.  [Proposed by you?]

Wednesday, July 27, 2022.  [Proposed by you?]