The Civil Rights Era

i think humans are hardwired to think tribally, it's just a matter of how much we are capable of not being assholes about it

i don't think racism will ever narrow to zero anywhere; and specifically in the united states i think that outside of a few privileged environments it will be a long time before the real effects of slavery and jim crow are smoothed over so as to be unnoticeable because separateness and inequality has been so entrenched, economically, socially, and culturally; i.e. everyone can SAY and really MEAN that they're over it, but patterns of homeownership and economic/educational inheritance take generations of committed effort to budge

Learning about the civil rights movement in grade school was the single most important thing that led to love of country for me. Maybe this is strange--I think learning about centuries of injustice complicates and perhaps spoils patriotism in a segment of conscientious white kids--but learning about this particular brand of heroism, so clearly taught to us as part of a stark battle between good and evil, and the fact that the good guys won, really made me love America as a kid.
― scott seaward (G00blar), Tuesday, June 9, 2009 2:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This might be off-topic a bit but I have some memories that relate to this. I am not American but spent 1 year in school there (2nd grade), and this was my first exposure to the concept of racism and civil rights, a concept that really captivated me. I spent half the year in a school in Alabama and the other half in Oregon. In Alabama I was in a class of about 25, with a large percentage of black kids, and we said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang My Country Tis of Thee every morning, learned about the pilgrims and whatnot, but I never heard a word about black history, or race, or civil rights. In Oregon my class was all white, never said the Pledge once and we learned about Martin Luther King and slavery and Rosa Parks and civil rights seemingly all the time. This could be a quirk of memory, and it's possible I just wasn't present when they taught this stuff in Alabama, but certainly in my recollection the difference is stark.

I don't really know what my point is but I always found it interesting.

2nd grade's kinda young to be going into major civics lessons, no?

like weren't you learning to spell and do arithmetic and shit?

dude you certainly covered history / civics pretty early

Well it was pretty basic stuff but the concepts were definitely talked about a lot. I seem to remember learning a ton of American history in that school. We did Lincoln and stuff. And I was Martha Washington in a play.

when it comes to history my memory of grade school curriculum is kinda fuzzy - cuz thx to my librarian mom and American history teacher dad I was surrounded by books about George Washington and MLK etc from an early age. Don't really remember when that came up in elementary school.

Basically all I really remember from grades 1 through 6 was doing all of my homework during the first five minutes of class so that I could read.

i remember doing american history stuff cuz i lived in the US till grade 3 - so we defly covered taht stuff that young.

omg u are secretly american

someone alert jaymc

I have read a bunch of really incredible books in the last year that I gotta recommend if you're interested in learning more deeply about specific pieces of this era:

Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights & Leadership At the Grassroots by Laura Visser-Maessen

This is a biography of Bob Moses, one of the key leaders of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's (SNCC) work in Mississippi. It spends a little time on his early life, but it's mainly focused on 60-64. That's when he was bringing his unique facilitation-over-dictates style to organizing everyday rural people demanding the right to vote in one of the most violent hotbeds of racism in America. In telling the story of Bob's time in Mississippi it tells the story of organizing Mississippi--from voter registration efforts to their effort to take the Democratic Party head on with an alternative institution in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. "They say that we have held a mock election to bring our delegates to Atlantic City. I say that they have held a mock election, we represent the black people of this state." Closest thing to a SNCC How-To you're gonna find.

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement by Aldon Morris

This taught me so much about how & why the Alabama movement was able to become a national flashpoint after prior similar efforts in the South (ever heard of the Baton Rogue Bus Boycott?) had failed to do so. Morris traces the movement networks that made it possible, makes an honest assessment of the often overstated influence of MLK & the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and reveals tons of lesser known "pre-history" to the so-called "Golden Era" of the movement. If you want to understand how a movement builds that can make history, this is the one.

I've Got the Light of Freedom: Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Charles M. Payne

This is a broader historian's overview of the Mississippi movement, from the 30s onward, that is rich with stories of everyday heroism--the teenagers who'd heard about the passage of the Civil Rights Act & decided they were gonna go integrate a movie theater, movement elders like Amzie Moore & Ella Baker who gave sage guidance from their time leading black organizations in the 40s and 50s, and so much more besides. If you want to read a history, this is the one.

Thank you for those recommendations. The Bob Moses book is on my to-read list (as part of a larger 'no, seriously, what is actually wrong with people generally and Americans specifically, and how have people historically coped with the breathtaking depths of our collective psychic damage?' reading project of which civil rights research has been a facet). I read the first 2/3 of Taylor Branch's three-volume MLK biography this year (which is very highly recommended, and which also deemphasizes King's centrality in favor of a broader view of the movement in general), and Moses is an un-/undersung hero.

Part of what I love about that book are the glimpses you get of Bob's skepticism about his own portrayal in history. "I read in books that I was part of the opposition at that meeting. I find that to be interesting."

guys, Ida B. Wells

by the time she was 20 she had dealt with her parents dying of yellow fever, her grandmother dying of a stroke, her sister dying, and had resisted an effort to separate her remaining siblings and send them to foster families by taking a job as a teacher

at age 22 she refused to give up her seat in a first-class ladies' carriage on a train and was dragged away. she sued the railroad herself, won, the case was reversed on appeal. this was 1884!!!!!

i need to read a real bio about her. what a woman.

!

Bryant’s triumphant performance was lauded in the national media for opening the door for Black entertainers on the important Miami Beach nightclub circuit. In many ways, glamor was a velvet hammer that broke significant barriers for entertainers in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement. “Joyce Bryant got into spaces like the Coconut Grove a decade before me,” famed jazz singer Nancy Wilson told me during our interview about the pioneering entertainer: “Without Joyce, there would have been no me.” Perhaps the most iconic of Wynn Valdes’s gowns for Bryant is the one worn for Jet magazine in their October 1, 1953, cover feature “

https://www.metmuseum.org/perspectives/articles/2024/03/zelda-wynn-valdes-and-joyce-bryant?fbclid=IwAR23Uwow9j6opEVEl5_VJPskYRgbZHHovydcU-trIEoqPhwe9zGIaPc-v-g

Singer Joyce Bryant and fashion designer Wynn Valdes

It's so great that GOP are reversing all the hard won rights so you can have a perpetual civil rights era just to feel topical. Or involved like.
Or not.

Very sad. In r3ecent years, I would listen to Ms. Dorie Ladner, civil rights, activist, guest on r'n'b, house music and more DJ Lance Reynolds Saturday show on WPFW. She would talk about the past (and the threats on her life in Mississippi) and the present ongoing struggle . She also talked about her fave music, daily life and more. She just died this week. An amazingly courageous and wise person. RIP

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/us/dorie-ladner-dead.html

Very sad. In r3ecent years, I would listen to Ms. Dorie Ladner, civil rights, activist, guest on r'n'b, house music and more DJ Lance Reynolds Saturday show on WPFW. She would talk about the past (and the threats on her life in Mississippi) and the present ongoing struggle . She also talked about her fave music, daily life and more. She just died this week. An amazingly courageous and wise person. RIP

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/15/us/dorie-ladner-dead.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2024/03/13/dorie-ladner-civil-rights-dead/

another obit for Dorie Ladner