The Civil Rights Movement
Description
Designed for use in a wide range of curricula, The Civil Rights Movement: A Documentary Reader presents an in-depth exploration of the multiple facets and layers of the movement, providing a wide range of primary sources, commentary, and perspectives. Focusing on documents, this volume offers students concise yet comprehensive analysis of the civil rights movement by covering both well-known and relatively unfamiliar texts. Through these, students will develop a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of the origins of the movement, its pivotal years during the 1950s and 1960s, and its legacy that extends to the present day.
Part of the Uncovering the Past series on American history, this documentary reader enables students to critically engage with primary sources that highlight the important themes, issues, and figures of the movement. The text offers a unique dual approach to the subject, addressing the opinions and actions of the federal government and national civil rights organizations, as well as the views and struggles of civil rights activists at the local level. An engaging and thought-provoking introduction to the subject, this volume:
* Explores the civil rights movement and the African American experience within their wider political, economic, legal, social, and cultural contexts
* Renews and expands the primary source approach to the civil rights movement
* Incorporates the latest historiographical trends including the "long" civil rights movement and intersectional issues
* Offers authoritative commentary which places the material in appropriate context
* Presents clear, accessible writing and a coherent chronological framework
Written by one of the leading experts in the field, The Civil Rights Movement: A Documentary Reader is an ideal resource for courses on the subject, as well as classes on race and ethnicity, the 1960s, African American history, the Black Power and economic justice movements, and many other related areas of study.
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Person
Dr. John A. Kirk is the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Joel E. Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA. He was previously a Professor of US History at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and is author and editor of several books including the award-winning Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 19401970.
Content
Series Editors' Preface xii
Acknowledgments xiv
Introduction xvi
Chapter 1 Origins of the Civil Rights Movement 1
1.1 New York Amsterdam Star-News, "Bus Boycott Ends in Victory," 1941 1
1.2 A. Philip Randolph, "Call to Negro America to March on Washington for Jobs and Equal Participation in National Defense," 1941 3
1.3 James Farmer Recalls the Congress of Racial Equality's Chicago Sit-In in 1942 6
1.4 US Supreme Court, Smith v. Allwright, 1944 8
1.5 Annie L. McPheeters Interview on Grassroots Voter Registration in Atlanta in the 1930s and 1940s 11
1.6 Fifth Pan-African Congress, Declaration to the Colonial Workers, Farmers and Intellectuals, 1945 14
1.7 Journey of Reconciliation, 1947 15
1.8 President's Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure These Rights, 1947 17
1.9 President Harry S. Truman, Executive Order 9981, 1948 22
1.10 Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote, 1948 24
1.11 States' Rights Democratic Party, Platform of the States' Rights Democratic Party, 1948 26
1.12 Congressman Jacob K. Javits, Press Release on Segregation and Discrimination in the Armed Forces, 1950 28
1.13 The Crusader, "Boycott of City Bus Company in Baton Rouge Forces End of Absolute Jimcrow," 1953 30
1.14 Dorothy Height Recalls Her Work with the National Council of Negro Women from the 1930s to the 1950s 31
Chapter 2 Brown v. Board of Education and Massive Resistance, 1954-6 35
2.1 US Supreme Court, McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 1950 35
2.2 United States, Brief as Amicus Curiae, Brown v. Board of Education, 1952 38
2.3 US Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education, 1954 40
2.4 Arkansas State Press, "After the Court's Decision - Now What?" 1954 42
2.5 US Supreme Court, Brown v. Board of Education, 1955 44
2.6 Chicago Defender, "Blood on Their Hands ... An Editorial," [Emmett Till] 1955 46
2.7 R.B. Patterson, "Organization of a Local Citizens' Council," 1955 48
2.8 Southern US Congressmen, "Declaration of Constitutional Principles," 1956 49
Chapter 3 The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955-7 55
3.1 Rosa Parks Recalls Her Role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 55
3.2 Fred D. Gray Recalls His Role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 57
3.3 E.D. Nixon Recalls His Role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 58
3.4 Jo Ann Robinson Recalls Her Role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 60
3.5 Martin Luther King, Jr, "Holt Street Baptist Church Speech," 1955 61
3.6 US Supreme Court, Browder v. Gayle, 1956 64
3.7 Chicago Defender, "Bus Boycotts in 3 Cities," 1956 65
3.8 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Constitution and By-Laws, 1957 68
3.9 Martin Luther King, Jr, "Give Us the Ballot," 1957 69
Chapter 4 The Little Rock Crisis and Desegregation in Education, 1957-62 73
4.1 Gov. Orval E. Faubus, Televised Speech, 1957 73
4.2 Ira Wilmer "Will" Counts, Jr, Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan, 1957 75
4.3 Daisy Bates Recalls Events at Central High School in 1957 76
4.4 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Executive Order 10730, 1957 79
4.5 Larry Lubenow Recalls Interviewing Louis Armstrong aboutEvents in Little Rock in 1957 81
4.6 US Supreme Court, Cooper v. Aaron, 1958 83
4.7 Ruby Bridges Recalls School Desegregation in New Orleans in 1960 89
4.8 James Meredith Recalls Entering the University of Mississippi in 1962 92
Chapter 5 The Sit-Ins and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960 95
5.1 Greensboro News and Record, The Greensboro Four, 1960 95
5.2 Kenneth T. Andrews and Michael Biggs, Map Showing Sit-Ins in the American South, February through April 1960 96
5.3 St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Members Picketing outside Woolworth's for Integrated Lunch Counters, 1960 97
5.4 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement of Purpose, 1960 99
5.5 Ella J. Baker, "Bigger than a Hamburger," 1960 100
5.6 Robert P. Moses, "Letter from a Mississippi Jail Cell," 1961 102
Chapter 6 The Freedom Rides and the Congress of Racial Equality, 1961 105
6.1 US Supreme Court, Boynton v. Virginia, 1960 105
6.2 Associated Press, Freedom Riders by Burned-Out Bus, 1961 109
6.3 James Peck Recalls Freedom Riders Being Beaten in Birmingham, Alabama in 1961 110
6.4 Diane Nash Recalls the Nashville Students' Involvement in the Freedom Rides in 1961 111
6.5 John Seigenthaler Recalls Events in Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama in 1961 114
6.6 John Lewis Recalls the Bus Journey from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi in 1961 116
6.7 The Code of Federal Regulations of the United States of America, Title 49, 1963 117
Chapter 7 Albany, Birmingham, and the March on Washington, 1961-3 121
7.1 Laurie Pritchett Recalls Civil Rights Demonstrations in Albany, Georgia in 1961 and 1962 121
7.2 Freedom Singers, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around," 1962 125
7.3 Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, "Birmingham: People in Motion" on Civil Rights Demonstrations in 1962 and 1963 127
7.4 Martin Luther King, Jr, "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," 1963 129
7.5 Afro Newspaper/Gado, African-American Protesters Being Attacked by Police Dog in a Street during Segregation Demonstrations, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963 131
7.6 Michael Ochs, Black Children are Attacked by Firefighters with High-Powered Water Hoses during a Protest Against Segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963 133
7.7 President John F. Kennedy, "Report to the American People on Civil Rights," 1963 133
7.8 John Lewis's Original Text of His March on Washington Speech, 1963 138
7.9 Lillian Foscue, "Dead and Injured Taken to Hospital," 1963 140
Chapter 8 The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Freedom Summer, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, 1964 145
8.1 US Congress, Civil Rights Act of 1964 145
8.2 Nina Simone, "Mississippi Goddam," 1964 150
8.3 Charles McLaurin, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Field Report, 1964 153
8.4 Liz Fusco, "The Mississippi Freedom Schools: Deeper than Politics," 1964 155
8.5 Medical Committee for Human Rights, Press Release, 1964 157
8.6 FBI Flyer on Disappearance of Civil Rights Workers Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner, 1964 159
8.7 Fannie Lou Hamer Testimony before Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention, 1964 161
Chapter 9 The Selma Campaign and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 165
9.1 William C. Sullivan (Anonymous), Letter to Martin Luther King, Jr, 1964 165
9.2 Martin Luther King, Jr, "Letter from a Selma, Alabama, Jail," 1965 167
9.3 John Lewis Recalls the Events of "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 168
9.4 Sheyann Webb Recalls the Events of "Bloody Sunday" in 1965 170
9.5 Associated Press, An Officer Accosts an Unconscious Woman as Mounted Police Officers Attack Civil Rights Marchers in Selma, Alabama, 1965 172
9.6 President Lyndon B. Johnson Addresses Congress on Voting Rights, 1965 173
9.7 US Congress, Voting Rights Act of 1965 176
Chapter 10 The Civil Rights Movement outside the South, 1965-75 181
10.1 Bayard Rustin, "From Protest to Politics," 1965 181
10.2 Chicago Defender, "Long, Hot Summer Hits Los Angeles," 1965 183
10.3 Whitney M. Young, Jr, "The High Cost of Discrimination," 1965 185
10.4 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, A Proposal for the Development of a Nonviolent Action Movement for the Greater Chicago Area, 1966 187
10.5 Douglas Robinson, "2 Rights Rallies Set Near Chicago," 1966 189
10.6 Associated Press, A Policeman Searches Black Suspects as Buildings are Burned during Unrest Following a Police Operation in Detroit, Michigan, 1967 191
10.7 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968 192
10.8 Ruth Batson Interview on Busing in Boston in the Mid-1970s 200
10.9 Louise Day Hicks, Letter to Congressman John Joseph Moakley, 1975 203
Chapter 11 Black Power, 1966 206
11.1 Robert F. Williams, Negroes with Guns, 1962 206
11.2 Malcolm X, "Message to the Grassroots," 1963 208
11.3 John Hulett Interview on the Founding of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (Black Panther Party) in Alabama in 1965 211
11.4 Stokely Carmichael, "What We Want," 1966 214
11.5 Black Panther Party, Platform and Program, 1966 217
11.6 Larry Neal, "The Black Arts Movement," 1968 221
11.7 Frances Beale, "Double Jeopardy: To be Black and Female," 1969 224
11.8 Angela Davis, An Autobiography, 1974 227
Chapter 12 Vietnam, Economic Justice, and the Poor People's Campaign, 1967-8 231
12.1 Robert E. Holcomb Interview on Vietnam War Experiences in the 1960s 231
12.2 Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Statement on Vietnam, 1966 233
12.3 Martin Luther King, Jr, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," 1967 236
12.4 US Congress, Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 238
12.5 George Wiley, "Proposal for the Establishment of an Anti-Poverty Action Center," 1966 240
12.6 Richard L. Copley, I Am a Man, 1968 241
12.7 Dr. Sybil C. Mitchell, "The Invaders: The Real Story" on Memphis Demonstrations in 1968 243
12.8 Ralph David Abernathy Recalls the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 245
12.9 Associated Press, Aerial View of Resurrection City, 1968 248
Chapter 13 Affirmative Action, 1960s-1980s 251
13.1 President John F. Kennedy, Executive Order 10925, 1961 251
13.2 US Congress, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 1964 253
13.3 President Lyndon B. Johnson, "To Fulfill These Rights," 1965 257
13.4 Arthur A. Fletcher, "Revised Philadelphia Plan," 1969 265
13.5 Diane Nilsen Walcott, "Blacks in the 1970's: Did They Scale the Job Ladder?" 267
13.6 US Supreme Court, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 1978 270
13.7 US Supreme Court, Firefighters Local Union No. 1784 v. Stotts, 1984 271
Chapter 14 Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement 277
14.1 The Young Lords Organization, 13 Point Program and Platform, 1969 277
14.2 Lacey Fosburgh, "Thousands of Homosexuals hold a Protest Rally in Central Park," 1970 281
14.3 The Combahee River Collective, The Combahee River Collective Statement, 1977 283
14.4 President Ronald Reagan, "Remarks on Signing the Bill Making the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr, a National Holiday," 1983 286
14.5 Nelson Mandela, "Atlanta Address on Civil Rights," 1990 288
14.6 Benjamin Chavis, Jr, "Foreword" Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots, 1999 291
14.7 Congressman John Lewis Supports Renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, 2006 294
14.8 Justice Stephen Breyer Dissenting Opinion in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al., 2007 296
14.9 Joe Raedle, Barack Obama Declares Victory in Presidential Election, 2008 301
14.10 Children's Defense Fund, Cradle to Prison PipelineR Campaign, 2009 302
14.11 US Supreme Court, Shelby County v. Holder, 2013 306
14.12 US Supreme Court, Fisher v. University of Texas, 2016 308
14.13 Janelle Jones, "The Racial Wealth Gap," 2017 311
14.14 Black Lives Matter, What We Believe, n.d. 312
Index 316
Introduction
What is the civil rights movement? To those historians who first asked that question, the answer was relatively straightforward: Martin Luther King, Jr was the civil rights movement and the civil rights movement was Martin Luther King, Jr. Early histories of the civil rights movement were therefore biographies of its talismanic figurehead that focused on his activism during the 1950s and 1960s. Starting in the year of his death in 1968, for two decades King cast a long shadow over the civil rights movement's history. This King-centered period of attention crested in the mid-1980s. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into law a Martin Luther King, Jr national holiday, celebrated on the third Monday in January each year. The first observance of the holiday was in 1986. King was the first black American to be honored in this way and the recognition, which followed a concerted grassroots campaign to exert political pressure to achieve it, cemented his position in American historical folklore. Around the same time, the publication of three landmark books provided an exhaustive chronicling of King's life and the organization he led, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC): David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (William Morrow, 1986), Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr (University of Georgia Press, 1987), and Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-63 (Simon and Schuster, 1988). Branch subsequently wrote another two hefty volumes: Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (Simon and Schuster, 1998) and At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (Simon and Schuster, 2006). The books written by Garrow, Fairclough, and Branch remain among the defining works written about King and his movement leadership. Garrow's book and Branch's first book both won Pulitzer Prizes. The television series Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years 1954-1965, created and executive produced by Henry Hampton at the film company Blackside, Inc., first aired in 1987. The series is still considered one of the best multipart documentaries about the civil rights movement. Although not quite as intently focused on King's leadership, and incorporating a wider array of movement voices, nevertheless the chronology of the series identified the years in which King was prominent as being the movement's halcyon days.
The initial King-centered focus in telling the story of the civil rights movement established narrative conventions that still profoundly shape popular conceptions of civil rights history today. The concentration on one individual leader has created the impression of a "top-down" movement in which a few, namely King and other national civil rights leaders, influenced and led the many rank and file participants. King's interaction with presidents and other prominent national political leaders reinforced the notion that the civil rights movement's focus was exclusively about winning national legislation and changing laws. In this rendition, King's life and death frame the chronology of the movement. King rose to prominence through his local leadership in the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott from 1955 to 1956 and died from an assassin's bullet in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. Indeed, many early accounts created an even shorter "Montgomery to Selma" movement narrative, beginning with King's bus boycott leadership and ending with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the latter in part a result of King's and the SCLC's campaign for the vote in Selma, Alabama. It was this timeframe that the first series of Eyes on the Prize adopted. The books by Garrow, Fairclough, and Branch did extend the "Montgomery to Selma" narrative to a "Montgomery to Memphis" narrative covering the entire length of King's life. In doing so, they began to draw attention to the more complex challenges in addressing structural and institutional racism that King and the movement faced after 1965, which did not fit quite as comfortably with the more triumphalist "Montgomery to Selma" narrative that ended with the successful passage of civil rights legislation.
Beginning in earnest in the 1980s, a second wave of civil rights studies emerged that challenged many of the basic assumptions found in King-centered studies. These new studies were rooted in community-based approaches to the civil rights movement from a "bottom-up" perspective that viewed events mainly through the lens of local and state level activists. Initially, many of these studies focused on communities that were national flashpoints in the "Montgomery to Memphis" narrative and relocated those nationally known events within the context of local and state struggles. As the number of community studies proliferated, they gradually moved beyond the familiar locales of civil rights activism and explored an extensive and expansive story of black struggles for freedom and equality nationwide. Collectively, these community studies have reshaped our understanding of the civil rights movement, and the locus of civil rights studies has increasingly moved away from national legislation, and national figures and organizations, to local concerns, local leadership, and community organizations and institutions. Community studies revealed that although sometimes there were overlapping agendas between national and local activists, at other times they were quite different from one another, and sometimes even directly at odds with each other. The move to examine communities beyond those that King and the SCLC engaged with in the 1950s and 1960s signaled the vibrancy and extent of local civil rights organizing that stretched well beyond King, the SCLC, and their immediate orbit of influence. They chimed with the claim of movement activist Ella Baker that "The movement made Martin rather than Martin making the movement." Community studies also suggested that civil rights activism had a much longer history than an exclusive focus on the national picture in the 1950s and 1960s revealed. Viewed from the "bottom-up," civil rights struggles appeared to both predate and outlast the established King-centered movement chronology by decades.
The questions about when the civil rights movement began and when it ended have been a major source of debate. In the mid-1980s, at the height of King-centered studies, historian Clayborne Carson insisted that the civil rights movement should be reimagined as part of a longer and continuing "black freedom struggle" driven by activists at a local level. Almost 20 years later, Jacquelyn Dowd Hall argued that the black freedom struggle was part of a "long" civil rights movement, with its roots in the "liberal and radical milieu of the late 1930s." At the same time, Hall rejected the well-worn "declension narrative" about the movement's demise in the late 1960s and early 1970s, instead claiming that the movement's legacies continue down to the present day, as do those of the successive white "backlash" resistance movements that opposed it. In a provocative rejoinder, on the face of it Peniel Joseph essentially agreed with many of the points that Hall made: he too called for a longer movement chronology, an engagement with the uses and abuses of black freedom struggle history, and a more involved and nuanced discussion about movement legacies. However, Joseph, at the forefront of the emergent field of "Black Power Studies," more fundamentally maintained that these issues should be explored not within the framework of a "long" civil rights movement, but rather within the framework of a "long" black power movement, giving primacy to the black power movement rather than to the civil rights movement as the most authentic expression of a longer black freedom struggle. Very much in line with these developments, in 1990 Henry Hampton and Blackside, Inc. produced Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985 that extended the narrative arc of the first series.
Meanwhile, despite the ascendency of the longue durée approach in civil rights studies, there have been plenty of observers sounding notes of caution about dispensing quite so quickly with what movement activist Bayard Rustin called the "classical" phase of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s (for this usage, see Rustin's essay "From Protest to Politics" in Chapter 10). Civil rights activist Hugh Murray has been among the bluntest of these voices complaining, "The people who were involved in the movement in the 1950s and 1960s called it the civil rights movement. Historians in pipe-smoked rooms ought not to try to rename it." A number of historians have articulated their own particular reservations. Richard H. King, whose work has explored the distinct meanings of freedom that emerged during the classical civil rights movement, warns that, "the freshness, even inexplicability, of the movement should not be underplayed for the sake of historical pedigree." Adam Fairclough, whose work embodies the shifts that have taken place in civil rights studies, with his first major study one...
