The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Freedom Struggle of the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Black Freedom Struggle ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Social Change Organizations

The only youth-led national civil rights organization in the 1960s in the United States, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), grew out of sit-ins, with the base of its early membership coming from Black colleges. It became one of the most militant civil rights groups, pushing older organizations to become more aggressive. Under the tutelage of the experienced activist Ella Baker, it emphasized developing leadership in “ordinary” people. Its early years were dominated by direct action campaigns against White supremacy in the urban and Upper South, while internally, SNCC strove to actualize the Beloved Community. Later it specialized in grassroots community organizing and voter registration in dangerous areas of the Deep South. Its Freedom Summer campaign played a significant role in radicalizing young activists. SNCC, in general, acted as a training ground and model for other forms of youth activism. Notwithstanding its own issues with chauvinism, SNCC was open to leadership from women in a way that few social change organizations of the time were.

Racial Realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

Prison autobiographical narratives: Making sense of personal and social (racial) transformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 174165901988011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Lynn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Rights Era ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Racial Solidarity ◽  
Autobiographical Accounts ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
The 1960S

This article investigates autobiographical public narratives of people who are, and were, incarcerated during different regimes of injustices in the United States—from the civil rights era to the current era of mass incarceration. People make sense of their experiences with race and racism through time, from a present standpoint of incarceration or freedom, in retrospect via proximate and distant memories of injustices, and toward a vision of the future. I juxtapose mainstream autobiographies from Malcolm X to Shaka Senghor with public blog posts from individuals incarcerated who provide autobiographical accounts to the world. I find that generations of incarcerated people who came of age during the height of the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 1990s project a narrative of a neoliberal subject who has a more individualistic and de-racialized idea of transforming their moral self and community. This contradicts with the way they portray prison as being a conduit for creating communities of racial solidarity and racial consciousness. Highly influenced and inspired by other narratives of radical prisoners of conscience of the 1960s and 1970s who were prone to view their liberation, and of the Black community, through vanquishing White supremacy, the new generation speaks to the color-blind narratives that pervade mainstream society and possible in narrative interventions correctional program.

The Civil Rights Movement. Million Man March. Black Lives Matter

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Million Man March ◽  
The 1960S

The author discusses three historical civil rights movements in the United States—Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; the Million Man March; and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The author compares and contrasts each movement and event from his perspective as a participant in each and identifies similarities and differences among them. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was born out of a desire and need to end legalized segregation, better known as Jim Crowism, in the south. Strategies included direct action, passive resistance, and redress of grievances through the judicial system. The Million Man March, which occurred in 1995 in Washington D.C., brought together more than a million Black men from across the United States. Moreover, it was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. Whereas the latter was established as a response to legalized racial segregation in the south, the former was designed to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among Black men as leaders in their communities. In addition, the Million Man March attempted to bring greater awareness of the unkept promise of racial equality. The BLM Movement provided an opportunity for multiple generations from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups to coalesce around the issue of police brutality. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and continuing to the present time, the BLM platform has become the principal venue through which outrage is expressed over the deaths of innocent, unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement and White vigilantes.

Youth and Women Lead

2019 ◽  
pp. 17-34
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Organizing ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
Nonviolent Direct Action ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Typical Mode

Diane Nash, Bob Moses, and The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) routed an oppressive system that had existed for nearly a century. In just five years, between 1960 and 1965, young activists—most Black, some not—dismantled large parts of legalized segregation, a system widely known as Jim Crow. They set up voting rights, community organizing, and nonviolent direct action in the very places in which segregation was most deeply rooted—Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. Ella Baker, possibly the greatest champion of American democratic politics that no one outside of certain circles has ever heard about—was a lodestar for SNCC’s group-centered leadership. Baker resisted the typical mode of individual heroics. Her legacy not only pervades the story of SNCC but also becomes visible in many of the movements that followed the civil rights/Black Power era.

On the Freedom Side

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wesley C. Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Of Color ◽  
Immigration Reform ◽  
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ◽  
Indigenous Lands ◽  
Comprehensive Survey ◽  
The 1960S

As Wesley C. Hogan sees it, the future of democracy belongs to young people. While today's generation of leaders confronts a daunting array of existential challenges, increasingly it is young people in the United States and around the world who are finding new ways of belonging, collaboration, and survival. That reality forms the backbone of this book, as Hogan documents and assesses young people's interventions in the American fight for democracy and its ideals. Beginning with reflections on the inspiring example of Ella Baker and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, Hogan profiles youth-led organizations and their recent work. Examples include Southerners on New Ground (SONG) in the NAFTA era; Oakland's Ella Baker Center and its fight against the school-to-prison pipeline; the Dreamers who are fighting for immigration reform; the Movement for Black Lives that is demanding a reinvestment in youth of color and an end to police violence against people of color; and the International Indigenous Youth Council, water protectors at Standing Rock who fought to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline and protect sovereign control of Indigenous lands. As Hogan reveals, the legacy of Ella Baker and the civil rights movement has often been carried forward by young people at the margins of power and wealth in U.S. society. This book foregrounds their voices and gathers their inventions--not in a comprehensive survey, but as an activist mix tape--with lively, fresh perspectives on the promise of twenty-first-century U.S. democracy.

scholarly journals Mississippi Mau Mau : Medgar Evers and the black freedom struggle, 1952-1963

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kristin R. Henze
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Mass Movement ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Freedom Struggle ◽  
Mau Mau ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Strategies For Change ◽  
Mass Participation

Mississippi Mau Mau expands upon existing historical analysis of the ideological connections between African liberation struggles and the Black Freedom Movement in the United States by concentrating on the ways in which American civil rights activists absorbed and utilized knowledge from anti-colonial movements. This dissertation focuses on the career of NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers and connects the growth and development of his approach to fighting white supremacy in Mississippi to his interpretation of the Mau Mau movement in British colonial Kenya. While Mississippi may have felt as though it was worlds apart from Kenya, Evers was profoundly influenced by the Mau Mau use of force and mass participation to compel political and social change. Mississippi Mau Mau explores how, after being introduced to the story of the Kenyan uprising in both the mainstream and African-American press, Evers examined the racial climate in Mississippi through a transnational lens and transformed his analysis into grassroots strategies for change through his work with the NAACP. In realizing the significance of grassroots mass participation, unremitting dedication to action in the face of massive retaliation, an emphasis on class unity, and the use of a publicity campaign to highlight select cases of discrimination for broadcast on the national and international stage, Evers sought to permanently cripple Mississippi's white power structure. His determination to achieve his and the NAACP's objectives sometimes led to his frustration with the reactions of the National Office to the movement's failures in Mississippi, as well as with the numbers of black Mississippians who did not participate due to pressure from state authorities and private organizations resolute in their mission to maintain white supremacy. Nevertheless, Evers' strategic efforts not only helped lay the foundations for a mass movement in Mississippi, but also positioned it at the heart of the global struggle for black liberation.

Introduction

Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

“The Hall Does Not Make the Space”: Disrupting Concert Hall Norms in Hannibal's One Land, One River, One People

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-304
Author(s):  
Benjamin Safran
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orchestral Music ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
Late Capitalism

AbstractHannibal's cheering and shouting along with his request for audience participation during the 2015 premiere of his composition One Land, One River, One People caused a stir and created discomfort among the Philadelphia Orchestra audience. I interpret his work as an example of a successful musical direct action within contemporary orchestral music. By exposing and subverting the traditions of the classical concert experience, One Land, One River, One People highlights social boundaries within the genre of classical music itself. I apply Robin James's (2015) concept of Multiracial White Supremacy, or MRWaSP, to contemporary orchestral classical music of the United States. Under late capitalism, MRWaSP helps to explain the potential appeal to an orchestra of commissioning Hannibal, who is known as a “genre-crossing” composer rooted in classical and jazz. Yet I argue that the way in which Hannibal performs his identity along with the piece's inclusion of audience participation allow the music to resist functioning as expected under MRWaSP. Rather than promoting a sense that—as one might expect from the title—we are all “one people,” I see the piece as revealing racial difference and as speaking truth to power.

The Gospel of the Sit-In

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Gershenhorn
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The City

During the 1960s, Austin lent his talents and his newspaper in support of the direct action movement in Durham and throughout the state. Unlike many other black leaders in the city, he immediately and enthusiastically embraced an early sit-in in Durham that began in 1957, three years before the more celebrated Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins. He also aided a boycott of white retail businesses that refused to hire black workers by publishing the names of those businesses in the Carolina Times. This strategy was quite effective in forcing white businesses to hire African Americans. Austin’s efforts and those of countless civil rights activists led to major freedom struggle successes with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Selling White Supremacy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Grant
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Party ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter traces South African foreign policy responses to the civil rights movement in the United States. It explores how the National Party engaged with the racial politics of the Cold War in an attempt legitimize apartheid to an increasingly sceptical global audience. The National Party did not shy away from challenging negative portrayals of apartheid. In the United States, South African diplomatic officials mounted a systematic propaganda campaign to correct “misconceptions” and present the apartheid system in a positive light. Equating black protest with communist subversion, South African diplomats engaged in a deliberate and sustained effort to defend apartheid in the United States.

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