Long Essay for Black History

Matt Altstiel
11/1/05
AFRO 3866
Part II: Essay I

The American civil rights struggle following the land Brown V. Board of Education case barring school segregation gained strength and intensified as local and regional movements coalesced into a national movement. However, even as National and regional organizations such as the NAACP, SCLC and SNCC brought civil rights issues to national prominence, local grassroots initiatives fed national organizations and truly propelled the civil rights struggle to previously uncharted territory. Several key battleground cities, counties and states emerged in the years following the Brown decision which tested the resolve of African American populations and ultimately resulted in the reformulation or local, state and federal policy. The local response of both African Americans and Southern whites in these regions played a large role in determining the success of local movements. In the formative years between 1954-1965, many local struggles produced cohesive communities replete with powerful leaders, organizations and structures which aided and emboldened the crusade for civil rights.

Montgomery, Alabama provided the first successful widespread response to discriminatory and segregationist practices in the Deep South. The organizations created to carry out a successful economic boycott of a segregated transportation system later assumed national prominence and were hugely influential in the civil rights movement. Leaders such as E.D. Nixon, Jo Ann Robinson and especially Martin Luther King rose to national prominence. Local people aided the boycott of the city’s bus systems by providing rides, hailing all black taxi companies and avoiding the bus system altogether. The effective strike crippled the local transportation system and forced federal court to become involved. Many cities throughout the south replicated the tactics of Montgomery in order to overturn segregation in city transportation. Rosa Parks reflects, “African Americans in other cities, started their own boycotts of the segregated buses, the direct-action civil rights movement had begun,” (Parks 74). While federal legal action was required to end the boycott and the segregation of city buses, local non-violent grassroots action became a powerful tool in changing the entrenched social, political and economic order maintained by segregationists.

Another pivotal battleground city, the struggle in Little Rock, Arkansas helped enforce the decision of Brown and Brown II. Federal supremacy vs. state supremacy of law also gained prominence in regards to the civil rights movement increasingly after Little Rock. State constitutions in the South widely interpreted the timetable for beginning integration referred to in Brown. Under Arkansas state law, high school desegregation was slated to begin in 1957, but implementation provoked large scale mob violence by white Little Rock residents. Seeking re-election Governor Faubus appealed to segregationists by dispatching state National Guard troops to prevent the entrance of nine African-American students in Central High School. Such a mandate came in direct conflict with a national desegregation law, as well allowed for mob violence. President Eisenhower eventually intervened by nationalizing all state troops and forcing entry of African American schools. Such a challenge posed by local and state government established a pattern of federal intervention when national supremacy of law came into questions and when excessive violence and rioting occurred. As in other battleground cities, the African American population rallied around its “test subjects” the “Little Rock Nine” and formed meaningful community leadership to counter oppressive white rule.

Another “moderate” city, Nashville, Tennessee showed the resolve of the African American community and introduced another new non-violent means of resistance: the sit-in. For the first time, African Americans began being arrested on a mass scale and were charged with disorderly conduct and shipped off to jail. SNCC leader John Lewis refused to pay bail and served his sentence providing an example that would be followed throughout the Civil Rights movement: jail time for civil disobedience was a badge of honor, not a mark of shame. A boycott of downtown businesses proved nearly completely effective. Local student leaders and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, and sit-in participants forced government officials and white people to re-examine its policy of segregation. Finally, after a personal appeal to the mayor on the part of student leaders, the mayor overturned segregation stating that as a man, he felt it was wrong to deny rights solely on the basis of skin color. Nashville proved a major victory for SNCC and other organizations, which were able to take the success of Nashville sit-ins and boycotts and replicate it over 60 communities across the South.

After combating segregation with non-violent protests, boycotts and sit-ins, civil rights leaders realized that the most effective means to changing policy was through the enfranchisement of African Americans. Voter registration became a stated goal for the mobilization of local populations to challenge the status quo. SNCC leaders Charles Sherrod and Cordell Reagan focused attention on the predominantly African American, South Georgia town of Albany and its surrounding county. Realizing the need for national recognition to change firmly entrenched policy, Martin Luther King was brought in to garner media attention. Key to civil rights tactics again was non-violent resistance and massing at the county courthouse to register to vote. It was hoped white reprisal and violence would once again focus national media attention on the region and the inhumanities of segregation and its disregard for federal law. However, a calculated move on the part of local sheriff Laurie Pritchett to respond at all time with non-violence effectively stalled the movement and local organizations in Albany. However, despite the perception of failure, “there was more self confidence, more self esteem, less fear of the white man’s jail, and a more widespread commitment to eventual equality than had existed a year earlier,” (Garrow 218). Such a new challenge posed by white officials allowed the African American community to regroup with new methods that proved to be effective and accelerated policy change, at local, state and federal levels.

Birmingham, Alabama provided the setting for some of the most dramatic conflict during the early civil rights era. Freedom Riders during the early 1960’s sponsored by SNCC loaded buses to test the compliance with national transportation laws mandating desegregation of interstate travel. Freedom Riders arriving at the Birmingham Bus Terminal on Mother’s Day were greeted by a mob that brutally beat the riders. Worse still was a string of unsolved bombings that’s earned the city the nickname “Bombingham”. However, in 1963 white supremacy was challenged by local leaders who proceeded to draw in national leadership and attention to Birmingham. One of the main planners, Reverend Shuttlesworth advocated a plan code named Project C (C for Confrontation.” Martin Luther King and his organization, the SCLC helped mass public support for the project which sought greater political, social and economic freedom for African American citizens. Learning from the lessons of Albany, King defied court injunctions and remained in jail where he emboldened the cause. Civil rights organizations consciously used, “mass media to try to get across what the message was, that Southern segregation was far more vicious than most White Americans had realized,” (Garrow 264). Police brutality in response to non-violent protest marches made national and world news leading to an investigation and action by the United States Justice Department. A resolution was reached between African American and white leaders that resulted in: desegregation of public facilities, improved job availability, release of political prisoners and greater communication between the leaders of both races. The local action and resistance encountered in a Birmingham was very influential in Kennedy’s decision to make civil rights a priority in his administration as well as galvanize congress for passage of a sweeping civil rights bill.

A final major battleground area in the early civil rights movement included the entire state of Mississippi. Known as the “closed society” and extreme repression towards its African American citizens, Mississippi required perhaps the most intensive concentration of grassroots, national and federal development and intervention than any other areas of the Deep South. Robert Moses, a member of SNCC began organizing voter registration drivers in the Southwest portion of the state where segregation was at its most severe. Through local branches of the NAACP, CORE, SNCC and the SCLC, leaders were picked and an umbrella organization called the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) emerged. Voter registration schools sprang up that taught basic citizenship skills and life skills to under-educated poor rural African Americans. In 1964, after growing increasingly desperate at the unchanging racial regime, Robert Moses and local leaders sent out a cry for help to the world outside “the closed society” calling for help from college students in the North. White resistance and the reluctance of the Democratic Party to seat nominees from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Federal government decided that voting rights should be clarify and extended to all to all persons of eligible voting age. Once again, local grassroots initiatives stirred up public desire for change and “helped to generate support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” (Crawford 134). This desire when faced with resistance from white Southerners garnered attention from the national media and recognition from the federal government. In Mississippi, the percentage of registered Black voters “rose 6.7 percent to an estimated 59.8 percent within two years,” (Crawford 134).

Clearly, the early portion of the modern civil rights movement sought to eliminate the most obvious and pressing injustices faced on a daily basis by Southern African Americans. While the South as a whole benefited from the advancements and legal recognition secured by changes in local, state and federal law, several key battleground cities, counties and states with ties to local grassroots and national leadership tested and overcame repressive policies of segregation and disenfranchisement. The experience of collective struggle, the emergence of leaders and eventual triumph spurred on the civil rights struggle as it grew from smaller local movements into a national struggle for equality and justice. Such shared memories and leadership apparatuses helped sustain the civil rights movement and the subsequent black power movement for years afterward.