The Civil Rights Era

Caught a documentary on local (N.C.) participation in the struggle - focused mainly on lunch-counter sit-ins - last night, and thought this morning, you know, fuck it, we commemorate the times in particular sometimes on MLK today or during black history month but I felt inspired to just make for myself today a day when I take as many times as I can to remember how many people said "it's time to do something heroic & I'm probably going to get beaten or jailed for it" and did it anyway back then because it was time for change. Interviews with people who remember what they ordered before they were told "no" were so awesome on this show. And a story, from Greensboro, of a black man & woman who were able to "pass" strolling right in past the protest into a Woolworth's, sitting down, successfully ordering & eating & paying & then saying "I'm black btw" - awesome.

tl;dr fuck yeah civil rights there were more heroes than you could count standing up to be counted back then.

I'm reading a history of the Supreme Court, and the long list of ways in which the Court gutted congressional legislation between 1870 and Plessy v Ferguson is pretty chilling.

Advertising, if anything, helps bring on change. The market, and I’m talking in a purely Marxist sense, dictates that we must include everyone. “Consumer” has no color.

Rev. Shuttlesworth, that dude;

Early on Christmas Day 1956, dynamite was placed under Rev. Shuttlesworth’s bedroom window. Though the explosion destroyed the house, Shuttlesworth and his family were uninjured. When a police officer saw Shuttlesworth emerge unscathed from the ruins, he warned: “If I were you, I’d get out of town as quick as I could.” To which the Reverend replied: “I wasn’t saved to run”. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court had recently ruled segregated buses unconstitutional, on December 26, he led a group that integrated Birmingham’s buses. 21 persons were arrested. He immediately sued the State.

in re: the market, that only becomes true when there's pay equity, which isn't something you can get through advertising

I only know of brief instances where the pre-Civil Rights movement brushed up against my family; instances like my dad and grandmother having to switch trains in Cincinnati when they went back south from visiting my great-aunt, or how the whole extended family moved up north to keep one of my dad's cousins from getting lynched. They had their issues from time to time as pretty much everyone does, but they were also pretty successful once the family settled in Ohio; I have an uncle who is a retired principal, an aunt and a second cousin who are principals, an uncle who is a retired federal agent, a cousin who is a captain in the fire department (they tried to screw him with the captain's test, actually; they basically told him to study only half of the material that was going to be on the test but he pretty much ignored them and scored the highest score in the district, lolololol), plus my dad was one of the first black PhDs hired by both Goodyear and 3M.

To my knowledge, my family didn't actively participate in the Civil Rights Movement; they lived their lives and fought through adversity that attempted to keep them from succeeding. All of them won.

they lived their lives and fought through adversity that attempted to keep them from succeeding. All of them won.

this is what I'm talking about

hell yes to victory in struggle this morning

not that this is what the thread about but im not sure why pay equity would have anything to do it--some consumers have less money, some consumers have more, but they all have money, and they all spend it

If you have a system whereby institutionalized discrimination results in one segment of the population almost unilaterally getting paid less than another segment of the population for doing the same jobs, you are de facto denying access to a certain tier of goods and services simply by pricing them outside of the undesirables' budgets, denying their credit applications, and punishing them severely if they do receive credit but run into financial hardship that prevents them from paying off their debts.

not that I don't consider gay rights / marriage equality to be a 'civil rights' issue, but the early posts here really demonstrate what a stretch it to compare contemporary gay activism to the struggles of that era. one could argue that recent advances in normalizing gay rights are indeed based on the power of the market, eg demographic marketing, bravo tv unbridled consumerism, etc

I agree; there are parallels but they are pretty obviously different, related beasts.

Which is why I'm starting to cool down my anti-Obama rhetoric when it comes to gay rights. Most serious believers in abortion (like Ruth Bader Ginsberg) mourn Roe v. Wade, and not just because it's poorly written. A conversation was just starting nationwide about the right to abortion, several state legislators were only just considering laws legalizing it, until the Court jumped in and made it a national issue.

With gay rights, the incremental federalist manner in which marriage gets a state sanction, coupled with the effect of the market and cultural forces elmo mentioned, augurs well for the eventual repeal of DOMA. I'm pretty well shocked by how quickly the northeast and Iowa have asserted themselves democratically.

xxp right, which is one part of the point enrique's making (i think?)--that "the market" demands that those individuals be given free(er) & easy(er) access to money & credit in order to improve the free flow of capital and the growing of the economy.

enrique's 'point' was just a mad men quote, dont know if he meant anything by it??

lol

hahaha

pwnd

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.

My own little family thing is that my grandpa was one of the first group of 13 black men picked to integrate the air force, which was the first branch of the military to do so.

^wow

I have a surviving great-uncle who played baseball in the Negro League; for the life of me I could not tell you which team, though.

awesome!

if some consumers have less money and some consumers have more, and they all spend it, then why is advertising being cited as an integrationist phenomenon?

capitalism doesn't demand equality in order to maximize profit, it demands an exploited class to maximize profit - when that class stands up and insists on its rights, it'll turn elsewhere if the kitchen gets too hot

maybe special guest stars mark bronson has something to back his post up with though, i don't know

i like the feeling behind this thread, J0hn

Hard to say whether I was more formed by growing up during the Civil Rights era and its heroism, or by the Vietnam War and its futility.

Learning about civil rights movement in grade school was the single most important thing that led to love of country for me

^^^otm

To my knowledge, my family didn't actively participate in the Civil Rights Movement; they lived their lives and fought through adversity that attempted to keep them from succeeding.

Obviously I know what Dan means by "actively," but yeah, the second part of this is a participation all in itself. (I don't even just mean that in some sort of airy, symbolic way: I think the existence, then or at any other point in our history, of people who succeeded, excelled, got educated, whatever, despite not only being legally hindered but also facing disbelief that it was even possible for them to do so -- that in itself was an argument that mattered in terms of the organized movement; that in itself said "I Am a Man" better than words on a sign, you know?)

i don't know whether it's crazier to think that in like 20 years these days will be out of living memory, or to think that in 2009 they are within millions of people's living memory

dwelling on the sheer recentness of it is a pretty good way to feel amazed and happy and hopeful about the success people have had since then

this is kind of a hijack and anti to the tone of the thread, but what do y'all think about any of these divisions and obstacles narrowing effectively to zero? a couple of things i've been reading have touched on it, and at my most cynical i wonder if they'll continue to decrease in half-lives - each generation having made vast progress from the one before - without ever disappearing entirely. reading about sandra o'connor's input into affirmative action suits in the nine, and seeing how much courts still relied on the necessity of the laws put in place decades earlier, which still needed to be implemented. alongside that, reading some old joe brainard letter with a fleeting reference to how he thought by the next generation, any twitchiness over gay rights would have disappeared, and thinking that we say the same thing now in light of the progress made.

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