Does the Movement Need a King?

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER J. LING

Not every book sent for review comes with two pages of endorsements from the great and the good. Stokely is accompanied by glowing approval from such familiar names as Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, Robin D. G. Kelley, Michael Eric Dyson, Gerald Horne, Charles Oglethorpe, and David Levering Lewis. Even without the para-textual apparatus to guide one's judgement, however, there is enough in this biography of Stokely Carmichael for any scholar of the civil rights movement to relish. This may not be the “definitive biography” that John Stauffer declares it to be, but it is indisputably important. In essence, Joseph argues that Stokely is the missing panel in a triptych of heroes, flanked on either side by the already canonized Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In key respects, he insists, Stokely was the synthesis of Malcolm and Martin.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-121
Author(s):  
Nicholas Binford

Artists, scholars, and popular media often describe James Baldwin as revolutionary, either for his written work or for his role in the civil rights movement. But what does it mean to be revolutionary? This article contends that thoughtlessly calling James Baldwin revolutionary obscures and erases the non-revolutionary strategies and approaches he employed in his contributions to the civil rights movement and to race relations as a whole. Frequent use of revolutionary as a synonym for “great” or “important” creates an association suggesting that all good things must be revolutionary, and that anything not revolutionary is insufficient, effectively erasing an entire spectrum of social and political engagement from view. Baldwin’s increasing relevance to our contemporary moment suggests that his non-revolutionary tactics are just as important as the revolutionary approaches employed by civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Werner

Martin Luther King and East Germany are connected both directly and indirectly. The Communist Party had the power to make public decisions on agenda-setting topics related to Martin Luther King. The Christian Bloc Party mostly represented the state and published books by Martin Luther King, which churches and the civil rights movement liked to use. Moreover, pacifists and civil rights activists used these books to undermine the political system in East Germany. Church institutions reported by far the most on Martin Luther King. This empirical study, which can also act as a basis for further research on Martin Luther King and East Germany, will appeal to both church staff and admirers of Martin Luther King.


Author(s):  
Stephen Tuck

1968 is commonly seen as the end of the classic era of modern civil rights protest: a year when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, when violence seemed endemic in urban black communities, when Black Power groups fractured and when candidates opposed to further civil rights legislation made giant strides at the ballot box. 1968 seemed to usher in a decade bereft of major civil rights activity, ahead of a resurgence of conservative politics. And yet a look behind the headlines tells a different story in the post-1968 years at the local level: of increasing civil rights protest, of major gains in the courts and politics and the workplace, of substantial victories by Black Power activists, and calls for new rights by African American groups hitherto unrecognised by civil rights leaders. This chapter argues that in many ways 1968 marked the beginning of a vibrant new phase of race-centred activism, rather than the end, of the modern civil rights movement.


Author(s):  
John Kyle Day

The conclusion assesses the long term implications of the Southern Manifesto for both the course of the Civil Rights Movement as well as the larger racial dynamic s of Postwar America. Under the circumspect rhetoric of moderation, the Southern Manifesto undermined the efforts of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to desegregate the South, and empowered southern officials to ignore the Brown decision for years. This conclusion thus places the Southern Manifesto in proper historical perspective and provides a summary of the implications of this event, the greatest episode of antagonistic racial demagoguery in modern American History.


Author(s):  
Elaine Allen Lechtreck

The chapter reveals the violence associated with the Civil Rights Movement, the courage of African American activists (Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers) and the small minority of southern white ministers who joined them. In Montgomery, Alabama, Robert Graetz provided taxi service for demonstrators. Andrew Turnipseed paid the salary of James Love, who signed the Mobile bus petition, when his parishioners would not. No southern white minister would participate in freedom rides, but John Morris organized a Freedom Ride after the violence subsided. The group was arrested. Joseph Ellwanger was harassed in Birmingham. Hundreds of black protestors were arrested and tortured. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Edwin King was arrested and tortured. The Klan and other white supremacist groups flourished. Black activists and some whites were murdered in Mississippi. As Edwin King commented, “Good white people could do nothing in the face of madness.”


Author(s):  
Rodney A. Smolla

This chapter highlights the national outpouring of grief and anger over the death of Heather Heyer. It discloses how Heyer's ashes were buried in a secret location in order to protect the grave from desecration by neo-Nazis. It also mentions the placement of Heather Heyer's name on a memorial wall at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama that honors martyrs of the civil rights movement. The chapter recalls Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights organization that staged demonstrations in Alabama and Jimmy Lee Jackson, an African American participant in the protest demonstrations, who was fatally shot by a white Alabama state trooper. It reviews the infamous “Bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965 that was stimulated by Jackson's shooting.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document