tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/sncc-88359/articlesSNCC – The Conversation2023-04-26T12:35:53Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2045002023-04-26T12:35:53Z2023-04-26T12:35:53ZHarry Belafonte leveraged stardom for social change, his powerful voice always singing a song for justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522980/original/file-20230426-18-t6jgr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C47%2C3765%2C2616&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/2011SundanceFilmFestivalPremiereofSingYourSong/32d0aee1f1544348892eac7fb4427f08/photo?Query=Belafonte&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=756&currentItemNo=565">AP Photo/Chris Pizzello</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In May 1963, as <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign">civil rights demonstrations rocked the city of Birmingham, Alabama</a>, Harry Belafonte was at a cocktail party in Manhattan, scolding the then-attorney general of the United States. </p>
<p>“You may think you’re doing enough,” he recalled telling <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy">Robert F. Kennedy</a>, “but you don’t live with us, you don’t even visit our pain.”</p>
<p>Belafonte had many frank and heated conversations with Kennedy. In fact, the singer, actor and activist was on intimate terms with many pivotal figures of the civil rights era.</p>
<p>He was a confidant and adviser to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/">Martin Luther King Jr</a> and allied with <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/toure-ahmed-sekou-1922-1984/">Ahmed Sékou Touré</a>, the president of Guinea. He funded the grassroots activists of the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a> (SNCC) as it battled Jim Crow, and he brought a delegation of Hollywood stars to the March on Washington. Along with his best friend and sometimes-rival, actor Sidney Poitier, Belafonte delivered funds to civil rights volunteers in Greenwood, Mississippi, <a href="https://blavity.com/how-sidney-poitier-and-harry-belafonte-escaped-the-kkk-to-help-save-freedom-summer?category1=news&category2=politics">while the Ku Klux Klan watched their every move</a>. </p>
<p>Belafonte, who <a href="https://apnews.com/article/harry-belafonte-dead-2d8cbdf0043e4383a6c4a85c862cdbe1">died on April 25, 2023, at the age of 96</a>, was a unique figure in the history of the Black freedom struggle in the U.S. No other entertainer immersed themselves so deeply in the Civil Rights Movement; no other activist occupied a niche at so many levels of American politics. If he was a powerful voice for justice, it was because he leveraged his celebrity.</p>
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<img alt="A black man dressed in a military uniform stands next to a woman with her hand on her hip." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522840/original/file-20230425-22-urvbtl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in the 1954 film ‘Carmen Jones.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actors-dorothy-dandridge-and-harry-belafonte-in-a-publicity-news-photo/686940153?adppopup=true">Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A remarkable career</h2>
<p>On stage, Belafonte was something to behold, a beacon of charisma. Clad in body-hugging shirts with his chest bare, drawing his audience’s eyes to the looping metal rings at the belt of his tight silk pants, he oozed with seduction. Women swooned. </p>
<p>And he was wildly successful. In 1957, Belafonte sold more records than Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley. His repertoire resembled neither Sinatra’s classic pop nor Presley’s up-and-coming rock ‘n’ roll. </p>
<p>The son of West Indian/Carribean immigrants, Belafonte inspired a short-lived craze for calypso music thanks to hits such as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5dpBWlRANE">Day O</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_mK1MyDntc">Jamaica Farewell</a>,” and he adapted ethnic folk music for popular consumption – his mainstays included “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE8rl5UwTP8">Hava Nagila</a>,” the Jewish celebration song. </p>
<p>He also starred in Hollywood films such as “<a href="https://prod-www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/639/bright-road#overview">Bright Road</a>” (1953) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046828/">Carmen Jones</a>” (1954). “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050549/">Island in the Sun</a>,” released in 1957, caused a furor. Though Belafonte never kisses his white co-star, Joan Fontaine, on screen, the film explores the theme of interracial romance. The Southern censors banned it. </p>
<p>Belafonte danced around the taboos of race and sex. This exceptionally handsome Black man was charming primarily white audiences, though his light skin color and facial features softened that threat. As a performer, he nudged at racial boundaries without jabbing through them. </p>
<p>“Harry Belafonte stands at the peak of one of the remarkable careers in U.S, entertainment,” proclaimed <a href="https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19590302,00.html">Time magazine in a 1959 cover feature</a>. He had come a long way from a childhood split between Harlem and Jamaica, from stints in the Navy and as a struggling actor. By then, he was earning about US$750,000 a year, with a lucrative residency at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. </p>
<h2>Civil rights activism</h2>
<p>That stardom connected Belafonte to Martin Luther King, Jr. </p>
<p>The civil rights leader called him in 1956 during the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott">Montgomery Bus Boycott</a>. Soon Belafonte was part of the movement itself. Following King, he embraced nonviolence. As their friendship strengthened, Belafonte realized the crosses that King bore: the burden of leadership, the fear of death.</p>
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<img alt="Two black men dressed in business suits are shaking hands and smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522845/original/file-20230425-3274-8aml0o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=960&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Harry Belafonte and Martin Luther King Jr. shaking hands on Aug. 21, 1964, at JFK International Airport in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/singer-harry-belafonte-shakes-hands-with-us-clergyman-and-news-photo/494798200?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Belafonte bought a 21-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan. “Martin would come to think of it as his home away from home, staying with us on many of his New York trips,” he recalled in his memoir, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/10860/my-song-by-harry-belafonte-with-michael-shnayerson/">My Song</a>.” </p>
<p>“On occasion, he brought with him two or three of his closest advisers, and by the mid-sixties, the apartment was one of the movement’s headquarters.” It was a place to both plan strategy and blow off steam, laughing at stories and sipping Harveys Bristol Cream.</p>
<p>Ironically, for such a public figure, much of Belafonte’s work was in private. </p>
<p>In the 1960s, he served as an essential link between King and the SNCC. He not only bankrolled the young militant activists, but he also listened to their concerns, respected their organizing efforts and communicated their perspectives to influential power brokers.</p>
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<img alt="A black man is smiling as he looks into the distance." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522842/original/file-20230425-2107-8ihhgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The ‘King of Calypso’ shortly before his 50th birthday in 1976.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/theres-good-news-as-usual-from-the-okeefe-centre-box-office-news-photo/502267825?adppopup=true">Erin Combs/Toronto Star via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>That responsibility to speak for the movement led Belafonte to chide Bobby Kennedy in May 1963. Throughout the early 1960s, he expressed frustration with the attorney general’s detachment from the activists’ struggle. But over time, he came to appreciate Kennedy’s evolution, as he became a U.S. senator and emerged as a voice for the poor, for racial minorities, for “The Other America.”</p>
<p>Famously, in February 1968, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/08/910650652/the-sit-in-revisits-a-landmark-week-with-harry-belafonte-as-tonight-show-host">Belafonte hosted “The Tonight Show” for a week</a>, using his platform to illuminate Black perspectives and spotlight social injustice. His guests included King, who was about to launch his Poor People’s Campaign, and Kennedy, whom Belafonte urged to start a presidential campaign. </p>
<p>Within months, both men were assassinated.</p>
<p>For more than a half-century, Belafonte carried on the legacy of the 1960s, often taking <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2002-10-23-0210230046-story.html">provocative positions</a> from the far-left edge of the political spectrum. Like few others, he blended the worlds of culture and politics, singing a song of justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204500/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aram Goudsouzian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Singer, actor and activist died on April 25 at the age of 96. His legacy spans stage, screen and political activism.Aram Goudsouzian, Bizot Family Professor of History, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1613342021-07-14T12:23:16Z2021-07-14T12:23:16ZFrom the labor struggles of the 1930s to the racial reckoning of the 2020s, the Highlander school has sought to make America more equitable<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407988/original/file-20210623-19-holujg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=56%2C50%2C3713%2C2255&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Highlander founder Myles Horton (right) with civil rights leader Rosa Parks and labor leader Ralph Helstein in 1957.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>During this <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/americas-racial-reckoning">period of racial reckoning</a>, many Americans are seeking to make the United States more equitable and just. Many new organizations and coalitions are arising out of a new wave of engagement, but they don’t need to start from scratch. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41674667">Highlander Research and Education Center</a>, a training ground for civil rights activists founded nearly 90 years ago, offers a useful model. As a <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469661445/shelter-in-a-time-of-storm/">social movement historian</a>, I am intimately familiar with how this school and similar engines of grassroots engagement have transformed America’s social and political landscape by inspiring generations of leaders seeking to end institutional racism.</p>
<p>Located outside of Knoxville in the eastern Tennessee mountains, Highlander is among the hundreds of organizations that the billionaire philanthropist and author <a href="https://mackenzie-scott.medium.com/116-organizations-driving-change-67354c6d733d">MacKenzie Scott</a> has funded to combat systemic inequity. It’s also playing a critical role in attracting and distributing philanthropic support to lesser-known Southern grassroots organizations.</p>
<p>Together with <a href="https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/song">Southerners on New Ground</a>, another activist training group, it helped launch the <a href="https://www.laughinggull.org/southern-power-fund">Southern Power Fund</a> in 2020. The initiative had <a href="https://www.philanthropy.com/article/how-a-14-million-fund-for-black-led-grassroots-groups-in-the-south-is-upending-traditional-grant-making">raised US$14 million by mid-2021</a> to make it easier for grassroots organizations to address local needs with <a href="https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/unrestricted-grant">no-strings-attached</a> grants.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Myles Horton created the Highlander school to help poor people find solutions to their ‘common problems.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Myles Horton vs. the color line</h2>
<p>Highlander was the brainchild of <a href="https://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/myles-horton">Myles Horton</a>, a white Southerner who grew up under the crushing weight of poverty in rural Tennessee in the early 20th century. As his parents scratched out a living doing odd jobs, Horton grew increasingly bitter regarding the social and economic system that produced such stark contrasts between the privileged few and the struggling masses. He also became an avid reader.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A clean-cut man in a white shirt smiles at the camera" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=729&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407981/original/file-20210623-19-1mc2v9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Myles Horton in 1957.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>During the Great Depression, Horton went to graduate school at <a href="https://thesocietypages.org/monte/2014/08/24/remembering-myles-horton-a-man-who-left-academic-sociology-behind-in-order-to-change-society/">Union Theological Seminary in New York and the University of Chicago</a>.</p>
<p>There, he was <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520302051/education-in-black-and-white">mentored by John Dewey</a>, a philosopher who believed in the need for education aimed at “correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation.” American social movements at that time, when the nation’s economic and racial divisions were becoming deeper, were intensifying their critiques concerning the wealth gap and the color line that violently threatened and undermined the lives of millions of African Americans.</p>
<p>Subsequently, Horton founded the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/highlander/">Highlander Folk School</a> in 1932. Nestled in the tiny backwoods town of Monteagle, Tennessee, it aimed “to educate rural and industrial leaders for a new social order.”</p>
<p>For Horton, the economic crisis was the perfect moment to achieve the unthinkable: bridging the color line to create synergy between Black and white Southerners.
Within Highlander’s welcoming walls and in its outdoor classes, segregation or any pretense of hierarchy was nonexistent. </p>
<p>Groups of Southern labor organizers and civil rights activists would gather at Highlander to read and discuss. Its library was stocked with books by progressive intellectuals, including not just Dewey but the theologian <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-comey-learned-from-theologian-reinhold-niebuhr-about-ethical-leadership-95330">Reinhold Niebuhr</a> and the educator and activist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-S-Counts">George S. Counts</a>.</p>
<p>Participants would learn even more from their community-building. Horton sought to create a space where people of all backgrounds could be exposed to history and literature that enlightened them about their common struggles. Highlander also fostered the creation of music and art that built communion and solidarity, while inculcating the radical notion among trainees that they could transcend racial and class divisions.</p>
<p>In sharing a common space for an extended period, participants in Highlander’s training program could begin to build a truly democratic society as a “<a href="https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/996/">circle of learners</a>.” </p>
<h2>Empowering civil rights leaders</h2>
<p>Today’s training center is the successor to Horton’s original civil rights movement incubator. In 1957, <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/highlander-folk-school">Martin Luther King Jr. praised Highlander’s “noble purpose and creative work”</a> with having “given the South some of its most responsible leaders.”</p>
<p>Four months before her historic act of dissent against Montgomery’s segregated buses, for example, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibitions/rosa-parks-in-her-own-words/about-this-exhibition/the-bus-boycott/highlander-folk-school/">Rosa Parks</a> attended a Highlander workshop on one of several trips she would make there. </p>
<p>And as student sit-ins rocked America’s social and political foundations in the spring of 1960, it was Highlander that served as a retreat for many of the Nashville students, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/john-lewis-traded-the-typical-college-experience-for-activism-arrests-and-jail-cells-143219">John Lewis</a>, the future congressman. </p>
<p>Because of unrelenting attacks by prejudiced politicians who <a href="https://www.gale.com/c/fbi-file-on-the-highlander-folk-school">alleged that Highlander was spreading communism</a>, Tennessee authorities <a href="https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2018/01/school-for-subversives-and-communists.html">forced the school’s closure and revoked its charter in 1961</a>. The staff then reincorporated as the Highlander Research and Education Center and moved, first to Knoxville and then to New Market, a small town about 25 miles away.</p>
<p>Under its barely changed name, the nonprofit school would keep forging some of the most unlikely coalitions at the height of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/lynching-preachers-how-black-pastors-resisted-jim-crow-and-white-pastors-incited-racial-violence-129963">Jim Crow South</a> and beyond.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A classroom full of adults in the 1950s" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407984/original/file-20210623-21-1y3x6u0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=591&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Highlander’s workshops brought Black and white people together, even at the height of U.S. segregation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.library.nashville.org/research/collections/civil-rights-collection">Nashville Banner Collection, Special Collections Division, Nashville Public Library</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Septima Clark</h2>
<p>One of Horton’s most influential hires was a South Carolina schoolteacher named <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/clark-septima-poinsette">Septima Clark</a>. A graduate of two historically Black colleges, she first arrived in 1954 out of curiosity because she wanted to see for herself the one place she had heard of where “<a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/ready-from-within-septima-clark-and-the-civil-right-movement-a-first-person-narrative-edited-by-cynthia-stokes-brown/">blacks and whites could meet together and talk over the problems</a>” that defined the Jim Crow South.</p>
<p>She returned a year later after being fired from her teaching job in Charleston for belonging to the NAACP. At Highlander, Clark developed and led workshops on leadership. Parks was among her first students, six months before an <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/montgomery-bus-boycott">eventful act of dissent aboard a bus in Montgomery</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly woman holds an award" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1170&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/407992/original/file-20210623-13-1opsvsn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Septima Clark in 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CivilRightsPioneerClark/dea21193332348258743b1133d5dae6a/photo">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clark became a full-time staffer in 1956. She later implemented her Highlander lesson plans in what she referred to as <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/septima-clark-was-the-teacher-of-the-civil-rights-movement/CZSM4IT56RC4FFMMLD7L53YLPA/">Citizenship Schools</a> in Johns Island, South Carolina.</p>
<p>Horton’s and Clark’s methods of empowering and training local folks in political literacy became staples of organizations such as the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, or SNCC.</p>
<p>SNCC later emulated the concept of Clark’s Citizenship Schools during the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/freedom-summer">Freedom Summer campaign of 1964</a>, which sought to register scores of Black voters who had been barred from registering in Mississippi – under the threat of white terrorism as well as Jim Crow laws.</p>
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<p>SNCC activists also created Freedom Schools throughout the Mississippi Delta region that exposed <a href="https://www.civilrightsteaching.org/exploring-history-freedom-schools">Black residents to an education that most had been deprived of</a> as <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/sharecropping">impoverished sharecroppers</a>.</p>
<h2>Building new coalitions</h2>
<p>After the school’s organizers relocated, twice under its new name, Highlander redoubled its efforts to address systemic poverty. In recent years, <a href="https://highlandercenter.org/our-story/mission/">while upholding its original mission</a>, Highlander has begun to tackle issues such as environmental racism, xenophobia and human rights abuses while advocating for intergenerational and multicultural coalition-building.</p>
<p>Tragically, there are those who still regard such efforts as a threat.</p>
<p>The Highlander Research and Education Center’s main office building in New Market, Tennessee, burned down in 2019. The subsequent identification of a white power symbol raised <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/highlander-attack-arson-racism/">suspicions of arson</a>, but <a href="https://www.wbir.com/article/news/community/we-are-survivors-one-year-after-the-highlander-center-fire/51-7fdf920b-929f-4ee4-b8e5-da0dba4f308f">the case</a> apparently remains under investigation.</p>
<p>Although the blaze engulfed the building, it didn’t raze the spirit and mission of the center that in my view has served as a citadel for democracy and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/161334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jelani M. Favors does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The training center, which welcomed Rosa Parks and John Lewis before they became famous, still empowers and inspires marginalized Americans to use their own voices and talents.Jelani M. Favors, Associate Professor of History, Clayton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1556752021-04-09T12:19:49Z2021-04-09T12:19:49Z‘Our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration’ – recovering the lost words of a jailed civil rights strategist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393822/original/file-20210407-17-1tooxnm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C21%2C4770%2C3127&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">View of the Friendship 9 students who protested against racial discrimination and were put in prison, Rock Hill, South Carolina, February 1961.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-the-friendship-9-students-who-protested-against-news-photo/179698243?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a cramped cell in a South Carolina prison camp, 22-year-old African American activist <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/tom-gaither/">Thomas Gaither</a> wrote, “I am presently in deep contemplation as to just what our nation and our particular region of the nation prizes most.” </p>
<p>It was Thursday, Feb. 23, 1961, and Gaither was serving a 30-day term of hard labor on a road gang for what police called “trespassing,” when he and students from Friendship Junior College staged a sit-in at a Rock Hill, South Carolina, lunch counter. The letter he was <a href="https://pascal-usc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991018701269705618&context=L&vid=01PASCAL_USCCOL:USC&lang=en&search_scope=MyInst_and_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,Jailed-In&offset=0">writing marked day 23</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://civilrights.sc.edu/our-work/#SCCHR">Gaither wrote on a folded sheet of paper</a>, responding to Alice Spearman, a white civil rights advocate and executive director of the South Carolina Human Relations Council. Gaither told Spearman that he lauded “the concern you and many other Americans have shown for us as we have been imprisoned here, and moreover for the cause for which we suffer…</p>
<p>"Ugly, distasteful, and irrational attitudes as displayed here in S.C. and all over the confederate South are suppressing Justice and the glowing opportunity for America to become again the leader of the world,” he wrote.</p>
<p>For the nation, Gaither concluded, “our ultimate choice is desegregation or disintegration.”</p>
<p>For nearly 60 years, Gaither’s powerful words on yellowing paper lay deep in one records box in the <a href="https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/university_libraries/browse/south_caroliniana/index.php">South Caroliniana Library</a>. The carefully written letter came to light as scholars at the University of South Carolina’s <a href="https://civilrights.sc.edu/">Center for Civil Rights History and Research</a>, where one of us, Bobby J. Donaldson, is the director, reviewed material for an exhibit entitled “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMMe9ZnruHk&amp;t=1s">Justice for All</a>,” that tells, through hundreds of documents like Gaither’s letter, the long history of South Carolina’s African American struggle for justice and civil rights.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A yellowed press release from 1941 in which the Friendship Nine are said to be the inspiration for other students being arrested at a sit-in." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393816/original/file-20210407-13-bun97r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=977&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A draft press release by SNCC in which the Friendship Nine are said to be the inspiration for other students being arrested for a subsequent lunch counter sit-in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll2/id/66664">Wisconsin Historical Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Training of a movement architect</h2>
<p>In 1960, students moved to the front lines of civil rights activism in the U.S. <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins">with an independent movement of lunch counter sit-ins</a> and mass marches to protest segregation. </p>
<p>Inspired by the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/februaryone/film.html#:%7E:text=In%20one%20remarkable%20day%2C%20four,small%20city%20in%20North%20Carolina.">Feb. 1 sit-in of four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina</a>, thousands of students in cities across the South staged sit-ins. One of the <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/orangeburg-south-carolina-students-sit-us-civil-rights-1960">largest movements took place in the college town of Orangeburg, South Carolina</a>, where Gaither was a senior at Claflin College and <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/chuck-mcdew/">Charles McDew</a>, the future chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC, was a student at South Carolina State College.</p>
<p>After organizing Orangeburg protests, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/tom-gaither/">Gaither was hired as a field secretary for the Congress of Racial Equality</a>, an interracial alliance formed in Chicago in the 1940s that used nonviolent direct action to draw public attention to social injustice. He was assigned to Rock Hill, near his hometown of Great Falls, South Carolina.</p>
<p>After a fall of training, Gaither capped a month of student sit-ins with a special protest, leading the group of Friendship Junior College freshmen in the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">Rock Hill McCrory’s store sit-in on Jan. 31, 1961</a>. Police and television news crews were waiting, and a manager immediately told the students: “We can’t serve you here.” </p>
<p>After just 15 seconds, police rushed in, shoved the students off the lunch counter stools, then roughly marched them to the nearby city jail.</p>
<p>Typical of courts in the Jim Crow South, Gaither and the students <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/south-carolina-court-clears-friendship-nine-in-1961-sit-in.html">stood trial</a> the next morning. They were summarily convicted. In an attempt to end sit-ins, the judge threatened the students with a sentence of hard labor or US$200 bail.</p>
<p>Instead, the students had planned to serve time in the prison farm in a “<a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">Jail, No Bail</a>” strategy. Gaither learned the tactic at a fall 1960 CORE conference in Florida; then he trained Friendship Junior College students in it. </p>
<p>Now, the group that would come to be known as the “<a href="https://www.crmvet.org/nars/gaithert.htm">Friendship Nine</a>” hoped to reinvigorate the sit-in movement and to push the costs of enforcing segregation onto the city, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/rock-hill-sit-ins-and-jail-no-bail/">rather than onto civil rights supporters</a>, who paid substantial bail fees every time students were arrested.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.pbs.org/blackpress/news_bios/courier.html#:%7E:text=The%20Pittsburgh%20Courier%20was%20one,%2C%20Ohio%2C%20and%20New%20York.">The Pittsburgh Courier</a>, a leading African American newspaper that circulated widely in South Carolina and the South, ran an article headlined, “Jail … No Bail Is ‘Sit-ins’ New Approach.” It was obvious, <a href="https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/mccray-john-henry/">South Carolina journalist John McCray</a> wrote, “that the idea of putting school kids on the chain gang ‘shook up’ just about everybody.”</p>
<h2>New civil rights strategy</h2>
<p>Inside the prison, armed guards forced the prisoners to work at hard manual jobs.</p>
<p>Outside, word spread of their “Jail, No Bail” campaign. Within a week, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/charles-sherrod/">Charles Sherrod</a>, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/charles-jones/">J. Charles Jones</a>, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/diane-nash-bevel/">Diane Nash</a> and <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/ruby-doris-smith-robinson/">Ruby Doris Smith</a> of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee traveled from an Atlanta meeting to stage a sit-in in the same Rock Hill lunch counter in protest of the Friendship Nine’s treatment – and also went to jail.</p>
<p>New York Times reporter Claude Sitton traveled to Rock Hill to write about Gaither and his sit-in companions in a story headlined, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1961/02/07/archives/4-negroes-jailed-in-carolina-sitin-students-declare-they-will-not.html">Students Declare They Will Not Post Bail or Pay Fine – New Campaign Seen</a>.” In the article, SNCC leaders urged other students from the region to “join them at the lunch counters and in jail.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jVGW9JxTJK8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gaither, in a 2014 interview with Civil Rights History Project, discusses the ‘Jail No Bail’ strategy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As public demonstrations of support for the students grew, the warden increased his pressure on them, forcing them to work double that of the other hard labor prisoners. When one of them, John Gaines, objected to their treatment, the warden removed him from the group and <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HvdNAAAAIBAJ&pg=4432,2889166&dq=rock+hill+sit-in&hl=en">put the rest of the men back in solitary confinement</a>.</p>
<p>“Aware of what might happen to a lone Negro ‘agitator’ in the hands of white southern prison guards,” Gaither wrote later, “we feared for Gaines’ safety.”</p>
<p>The students launched a hunger strike until they learned where and how Gaines was. On the third day, alarmed prison officers told the students that Gaines had been transferred to the city jail. The Friendship Nine ended their hunger strike. The warden returned them to regular confinement and ended the injurious double work.</p>
<p>In writing his letter days later, Gaither emphasized that the students staging sit-ins at lunch counters “are not striving to make headlines in the newspaper or to put any store out of business, but to save a lost nation.” In Atlanta, 85 students adopted the “Jail, No Bail” strategy following a sit-in arrest and conviction, and their action led directly to an agreement to desegregate the city’s lunch counters.</p>
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<p>After his release, <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/freedom-rides/">Gaither received a new assignment</a> from CORE’s directors. In April 1961, he rode a bus south from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans, scouting the route for <a href="http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom%20rides.htm">CORE’s Freedom Rides</a>, which tested enforcement of the <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1960/7">1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling</a> that ordered desegregation of waiting rooms, lunch counters and restrooms used for interstate buses and trains.</p>
<p>Gaither mapped bus station entrances and exits, preparing for the historic challenge later that month. He routed the group through Sumter, where he had done CORE work, and Rock Hill, where riders including future Congressman John Lewis <a href="https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/9">encountered their first violent attack</a>.</p>
<p>In 2015, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/south-carolina-court-clears-friendship-nine-in-1961-sit-in.html">a South Carolina court vacated the sentences</a> of the Friendship Nine, clearing them of the convictions. Judge John C. Hayes III, whose uncle originally sentenced the Friendship Nine, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/01/28/382136622/judge-throws-out-friendship-nines-civil-rights-era-conviction">said from the bench</a>, “We cannot rewrite history, but we can right history.”</p>
<p>On the contrary, Thomas Gaither’s neatly folded letter permits us to revisit and revise a pivotal chapter in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. As Gaither supporter Lillian Smith wrote at the time, “It is something that should not have happened in our country and yet it did happen. Why? You and I must answer that.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155675/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A long-lost letter from prison by a civil rights activist provides a window on the pivotal role protesters in South Carolina played in fighting segregation.Bobby J. Donaldson, Associate Professor of History; Director Center for Civil Rights History and Research, University of South CarolinaChristopher Frear, Doctoral candidate, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432192020-07-24T12:26:52Z2020-07-24T12:26:52ZJohn Lewis traded the typical college experience for activism, arrests and jail cells<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348950/original/file-20200722-36-ebuv5w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">John Lewis, right, marched with Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to fight for equality. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/martin-luther-king-leading-a-march-from-selma-to-montgomery-news-photo/525580854">Steve Schapiro / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As an 18-year-old student attending a training session for activists at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, John Lewis stuttered and struggled to read. A visiting professor mocked his stammered speech and “poor reading skills” and dismissed Lewis’ potential as a “suitable leader” for the burgeoning movement.</p>
<p>Famed activist and organizer <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/septima-clark/">Septima Clark</a> rose to his defense and her support of Lewis paid off.</p>
<p>The unassuming teenager from the backwoods of Troy, Alabama, became a giant of the Black freedom struggle and, ultimately, would go on to serve more than three decades in Congress. He died on July 17.</p>
<h2>Enthralled by ‘Social Gospel’</h2>
<p>Lewis enrolled in American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tennessee, mainly because it charged no tuition, but also due to the profound moral calling that he felt in his life. It was in Nashville where Lewis grew fascinated with the potential of the <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/social-gospel">Social Gospel</a> – a theoretical movement that applied Christian principles to addressing social problems such as poverty and white supremacy.</p>
<p>He soon came under the tutelage of <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/james-lawson/">James Lawson</a>, a graduate student at Vanderbilt who was fully immersed in the doctrines of non-violence. Lawson trained other notable activists such as Diane Nash, James Bevel and Bernard Lafayette – all friends and contemporaries of Lewis.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348955/original/file-20200722-34-ex9ib3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=599&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lewis participated in student activism in Montgomery, Ala.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/civil-rights-leaders-including-future-congressman-john-news-photo/51756565">Francis Miller / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span>
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<p>The student activism that emerged from southern Black colleges beginning in February of 1960 was the catalyst that the modern civil rights movement desperately needed to confront segregation. The thrust of direct-action protests, such as sit-ins and Freedom Rides, provided the dramatic confrontation that the earlier bus boycotts did not. </p>
<p>However, it was Lawson’s young pacifist disciples from Nashville that heavily influenced the ideology of the early student movement. It also aided in the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, better known as SNCC.</p>
<p>In dedicating his life to the movement as a young student, Lewis willingly gave up the comforts, experiences and accoutrements of a typical college student. Instead of gaining traditional work experience, Lewis got an insider’s look at numerous southern jails and prisons. His activism led to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/us/john-lewis-dead.html">40 arrests between 1960 and 1966</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348951/original/file-20200722-34-yx8q4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Lewis (left) and James Zwerg (right) stand in bloodshed after being beaten by pro-segregationist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/two-blood-splattered-freedom-riders-john-lewis-and-james-news-photo/514694748">Bettmann / Contributor/GettyImages</a></span>
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<p>Late-night bull sessions with his fellow SNCC activists who debated the proper path towards freedom became his laboratory. Sit-ins and Freedom Rides served as his examinations. They often resulted in beatings and bloodshed.</p>
<h2>SNCC leadership</h2>
<p>By 1963 Lewis had assumed the chairmanship of SNCC, a position he would hold for the next three years. The formidable organization would undergo its most drastic changes during this period as they wrangled with more <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674447271">moderate and traditional organizations</a>, concerns about <a href="https://www.crmvet.org/docs/6604_sncc_atlanta_race.pdf">white liberalism</a> and the <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814743317/bloody-lowndes/">intractable nature of white supremacy</a>.</p>
<p>Lewis and other SNCC organizers were forced to swallow a bitter pill during the 1963 <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/march-washington-jobs-and-freedom">March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom</a>. Although Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech became a focal point, it was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/07/18/john-lewis-was-last-living-speaker-march-washington-civil-rights-leaders-asked-him-tone-it-down/">Lewis’ speech</a> that drew the most controversy.</p>
<p>Archbishop Patrick O'Boyle, along with march organizer Bayard Rustin, forced Lewis to change his original draft that placed a heavy critique on the slow response of the Kennedy administration in protecting the civil and human rights of activists in the Deep South. The edit prompted Malcolm X to <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Parting-the-Waters/Taylor-Branch/9780671687427">derisively refer to the event as “The Farce on Washington.”</a> It was not the last ideological scrum SNCC would have with liberals and moderates.</p>
<p>During the Democratic National Convention in 1964, the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/alliances-relationships/mfdp/">Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party</a>, or MFDP, arrived in Atlantic City, New Jersey, expecting to be the duly recognized delegation from the Magnolia State in place of the all-white delegation of the party that had used violence and intimidation in an attempt to keep Blacks from the polls.</p>
<p>Famed activist <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> declared that “if the MFDP is not seated now, I question America.” The party was not seated. A <a href="https://snccdigital.org/events/mfdp-challenge-at-democratic-national-convention/">backroom compromise</a> – orchestrated between traditional Black moderates such as NAACP head Roy Wilkins, SCLC organizer Bayard Rustin and Dr. King – left many younger activists bitter and broken. “This was the turning point of the civil rights movement,” <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Walking-with-the-Wind/John-Lewis/9781476797717">Lewis declared</a>. “We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as requested, had arrived at the doorstep, and found the door slammed in our face.”</p>
<p>A year after the disappointment of Atlantic City, the learning curve would continue for Lewis.</p>
<p>As bitter as he and other SNCC activists were about the fallout from the 1964 Democratic Convention, Lewis was still a committed ideologue who held fast to his belief in non-violence as a way of life. That position grew increasingly unpopular with younger activists who championed their constitutional right to armed self-defense in the face of tyranny.</p>
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<p>Many SNCC activists grew wearisome of the practical politics, moderation and compromise that some (including Lewis) argued produced setbacks within the movement. This frustration was on full display during Lewis’ most famous moment - the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965. SNCC’s executive committee had voted against the organization’s involvement because they saw such protest marches as largely ineffective. Lewis participated anyway. The result was “<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-images-of-john-lewis-being-beaten-during-bloody-sunday-went-viral-143080">Bloody Sunday</a>,” a horrific display of white terrorism that served as a springboard for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year. The world watched in horror as television cameras captured the moment that Lewis and hundreds of other peaceful protesters were teargassed, beaten and trampled by state troopers. </p>
<p>Like many committed activists, the social and political education of John Lewis had numerous twists and turns - from a wide-eyed and eager disciple of nonviolence (a commitment that never wavered) to a seasoned activist and organizer whose heroics and courage made him an icon of the movement. That journey came with bumps and bruises – both literally and figuratively – and he would later employ some of those lessons as a United States congressman representing the 5th Congressional District of Georgia for 33 years. In this role, Lewis would champion legislation that upheld the ideals that made him an icon of the movement. He sponsored or co-sponsored thousands of bills targeting poverty, gun violence, civil rights, health care and reform of America’s justice system, just to name a few. He became an award-winning author, and he was lionized as “<a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/07/21/remembering-john-lewis-the-conscience-of-congress-a-life-in-photos/">the conscience of Congress</a>.”</p>
<p>While Lewis learned the fine art of negotiating during his years as a movement leader, he never compromised in his insistence for justice and equality for all. In a <a href="https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1011991303599607808">tweet</a> from 2018, Lewis implored young idealists and activists to “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” Lewis remained a noise maker and a “drum major for peace” until his final days, and his courage and sacrifice should be an inspiration for us all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jelani M. Favors does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Though he had a speech impediment and came from humble beginnings, John Lewis went on to become a giant of the civil rights movement.Jelani M. Favors, Associate Professor of History, Clayton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1409062020-07-07T12:13:37Z2020-07-07T12:13:37ZThere are many leaders of today’s protest movement – just like the civil rights movement<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345824/original/file-20200706-21-1uqzj83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C3%2C2447%2C1901&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demonstrators march in the Black Mamas March to protest police brutality, June 27, 2020 in Washington, D.C. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-march-to-support-black-lives-matter-during-news-photo/1223100922?adppopup=true">Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent wave of protests against police brutality and systemic racism has inspired numerous comparisons with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. </p>
<p>Commentators frequently depict the <a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-african-american-leaders-131282">charismatic leadership</a> of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in sharp contrast with the <a href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/racial-justice/race-and-criminal-justice/how-black-lives-matter-changed-way-americans-fight">decentralized</a> and seemingly leaderless nature of the current movement. </p>
<p>Despite the efforts of <a href="http://stproject.org/from-the-field/blacklivesmatter-lessons/">activists</a> and <a href="https://www.colorlines.com/articles/ella-taught-me-shattering-myth-leaderless-movement">historians</a> to correct this “leaderless” image, the notion <a href="https://youtu.be/PVW2eaCyC5c?t=1083">persists</a>. Such comparisons reflect the cultural memory – not the actual history – of the struggle for Black equality.</p>
<h2>Heroic struggle led by charismatic men</h2>
<p>Through collective remembering and forgetting, societies build narratives of the past to create a shared identity – what scholars refer to as <a href="http://www.iea.usp.br/en/news/cultural-memory-the-link-between-past-present-and-future">cultural memory</a>. </p>
<p>The civil rights movement is remembered as a heroic struggle against injustice led by charismatic men. That is not the whole story. </p>
<p>King’s soaring <a href="https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf">rhetoric</a> and Malcolm’s unflinching social <a href="https://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/blackspeech/mx.html">critiques</a> have supplanted recollection of the significant work performed by legions of local leaders, whose grassroots organizational style more closely resembled the efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and other contemporary social justice groups to build movements <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reclaiming-our-movement-l_b_6498400">full of leaders</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2018/civil-rights-events-fd.html">iconic images</a> of 1950s and 1960s Black protesters marching, kneeling and being arrested while dressed in their “Sunday best” illustrated the <a href="https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-rise-of-respectability-politics">respectability politics</a> of the day. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345848/original/file-20200706-25-121vsvn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">American Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., flanked by Rev. Ralph Abernathy (center left) and Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche (center right) during the third Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march for voting rights, March 21, 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/high-angle-view-of-american-civil-rights-leader-dr-martin-news-photo/106162063?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>These efforts, designed to cultivate white sympathy for civil rights activists, relied on conformity with <a href="https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1266&context=uclf">patriarchal gender roles</a> that elevated <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1048809">men</a> to positions of visible leadership, confined <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/">women</a> to the background and banished <a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1061&context=historydiss">LGBTQ individuals</a> to the closet.</p>
<p>Yet the movement could not have happened without the extraordinary leadership of Black women like veteran organizer <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/ella-baker/">Ella Baker</a>. Baker’s model of grassroots activism and empowerment for young and marginalized people became the driving force of the <a href="https://snccdigital.org/inside-sncc/the-story-of-sncc/">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, known as SNCC, and other nonviolent protest organizations, past and present.</p>
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<span class="caption">Flyer announcing a Youth Leadership Meeting, that was to be held at Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 15-17, 1960, and bearing the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella J. Baker, the president and executive director, respectively, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, April 1960.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/flyer-announcing-a-youth-leadership-meeting-to-be-held-at-news-photo/505860232?adppopup=true">New York Public Library/From the New York Public Library/Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).</a></span>
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<p>The decentralized structure of the current movement builds on this history of grassroots activism while working to <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/">avoid replicating</a> the entrenched <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/sexism">sexism</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/homophobia">homophobia</a> of an earlier era. </p>
<h2>Amplifying voices</h2>
<p>SNCC transformed lives by recognizing talent and empowering marginalized people. As Joe Martin, one of the organizers of a student walkout in McComb, Mississippi, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/47qng2nh9780252065071.html">recalled</a>, “If you had a good idea it was accepted regardless of what your social status was.” </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345851/original/file-20200706-21-q4vze8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ella Baker, NAACP Hatfield representative, Sept. 18, 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photograph-of-miss-ella-baker-naacp-hatfield-representative-news-photo/557322103?adppopup=true">Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Endesha Ida Mae Holland, a teenage prostitute, found purpose as a SNCC field secretary, organizing and leading marches in Greenwood, Mississippi. Facing down Police Chief Curtis Lary “made me feel so proud,” she <a href="https://clarityfilms.org/freedom.html">recalled</a>, and “people start looking up into my face, into my eyes” with respect. Holland went on to become an award-winning <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-08-ci-55362-story.html">playwright</a> and distinguished <a href="https://news.usc.edu/11287/A-Very-Long-Way-From-the-Mississippi-Delta-Endesha-Ida-Mae-Holland-Ph-D-Open/">university professor</a>. </p>
<p>Black Lives Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors also encourage strategies that place marginalized voices at the center.</p>
<p>Elevating “Black trans people, Black queer people, Black immigrants, Black incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people, Black millennials, Black women, low income Black people, and Black people with disabilities” to leadership roles, they <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reclaiming-our-movement-l_b_6498400">wrote</a>, “allows for leadership to emerge from our intersecting identities, rather than to be organized around one notion of Blackness.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.thelily.com/teen-girls-organized-nashvilles-largest-protest-they-joined-a-long-history-of-black-women-activists/">Black women</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/06/05/teens-protests-george-floyd-tear-gas/">teens</a> have played a critical role in organizing, leading and maintaining the momentum of recent protests. </p>
<p>Kimberly Jones <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-authors/article/83572-ya-author-s-video-on-racism-goes-viral.html">captured the nation’s attention</a> with an impassioned <a href="https://youtu.be/sb9_qGOa9Go">takedown</a> of institutional racism and debates over appropriate forms of protest. After repeatedly breaking the social contract to keep wealth and opportunity out of reach for black communities, Jones concludes, white Americans “are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.”</p>
<p>Women have organized family-friendly demonstrations, including the “<a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article243502031.html">Black Mamas March</a>” in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a “<a href="https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-childrens-black-lives-matter-march-20200619-53pcaad6tncjvp4njhgfyyybxu-story.html">Black Kids Matter</a>” protest in Hartford, Connecticut. </p>
<p>Six young women, aged 14 to 16, organized a peaceful protest attracting more than 10,000 people in <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2020/06/04/teens-lead-nashville-march-protest-george-floyd/3151774001/">Nashville, Tennessee</a>, while 17-year-old Tiana Day led a march on the <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/578133-2/">Golden Gate Bridge</a> in San Francisco. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345854/original/file-20200706-21-7t4hsh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Seventeen-year-old Tiana Day leads a march on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, June 6, 2020, to protest the death of George Floyd.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/America-Protests-San-Francisco/bb4abc9301234a56be4276d30cbd6633/2/0">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Full of leaders</h2>
<p>The adaptive “<a href="https://changeelemental.org/resources/leadership-spectrum-what-it-looks-like/">low ego/high impact</a>” leadership model, in which leaders serve as coaches helping groups build their own solutions, has become popular among current social justice organizations, but it is not new. </p>
<p>Baker <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9780807856161/ella-baker-and-the-black-freedom-movement/">encouraged</a> civil rights organizations to “develop individuals” and provide “an opportunity for them to grow.” She praised SNCC for “working with indigenous people, not working for them.” </p>
<p>“You don’t have to worry about where your leaders are,” <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/moses.html">former SNCC organizer</a> Robert Moses <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674447271">reflected</a>. “If you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge.”</p>
<p>Campaigns are <a href="https://www.theroot.com/leaderless-or-leader-ful-1790860733">exhausting</a> and external recognition as a “leader” can take a heavy toll. Spreading leadership around helps to protect any one person from becoming a <a href="https://youtu.be/PVW2eaCyC5c?t=1169">target</a> for retaliation while advancing a stream of talent to rise as individual energy wanes.</p>
<p>Returning from a citizenship training program in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1963, <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> was <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedomsummer-hamer/">arrested and severely beaten</a>, leaving her with permanent injuries. Holland’s mother died when their house in Greenwood, Mississippi, was <a href="https://snccdigital.org/people/ida-mae-holland/">bombed</a> in 1965 in retaliation for her activism. </p>
<p>Civil rights worker <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/anne-moody-1940-2015/">Anne Moody</a> <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/116457/coming-of-age-in-mississippi-by-anne-moody/">recounted</a> how the physical and psychological toll of constant harassment by white supremacists in 1963 forced her to leave a voter registration drive in Canton, Mississippi, saying “I was on the verge of a breakdown” and “would have died from lack of sleep and nervousness” had she stayed “another week.” </p>
<p>In a 2017 <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminPDixon/status/946436687588192257">interview</a>, Erica Garner, who became a tireless campaigner against police brutality after her father, Eric Garner, died from a New York police officer’s chokehold in 2014, echoed Moody’s comments.</p>
<p>“I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything. … The system beats you down to where you can’t win,” she said. Just three weeks after that interview, Erica Garner <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/nyregion/erica-garner-dead.html">died</a> of a heart attack at the age of 27. </p>
<p>Comparisons to the romanticized cultural memory of charismatic leadership in the Civil Rights Movement devalues the hard work of today’s activists – as well as those who worked hard outside of the limelight in the earlier movement. Social change – then and now – derives from a critical mass of local work throughout the nation. Those who cannot find leaders in this movement are not looking hard enough.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140906/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Silkey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Some lament that today’s anti-racism movement has no charismatic leaders like the civil rights era did. Such comparisons don’t reflect the real history of the struggle for Black equality in the US.Sarah Silkey, Professor of History and Social and Economic Justice, Lycoming CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1399372020-06-12T12:16:07Z2020-06-12T12:16:07ZA short history of black women and police violence<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341267/original/file-20200611-80789-14bg7jr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protester holds up a sign with Breonna Taylor's name. Taylor was killed by police officers on March 13.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gather-with-balloons-for-a-vigil-in-memory-of-news-photo/1218020612?adppopup=true">Brett Carlsen/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html">Breonna Taylor</a>, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home. </p>
<p>The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found. </p>
<p>But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers. </p>
<p>Although the majority of black people killed by police in the United States are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2019-08-15/police-shootings-are-a-leading-cause-of-death-for-black-men">young men</a>, black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The <a href="https://aapf.org/shn-campaign">#SayHerName campaign</a> has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue. </p>
<p>Police violence against black women is <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">marginalized in the public’s understanding of American policing</a>. There is a perception among many Americans that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. </p>
<p>This perception could not further from the truth.</p>
<p>Breonna Taylor’s story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a <a href="http://abwh.org/2020/05/31/by-remembering-our-sisters-we-challenge-police-violence-against-black-women-and-legacies-that-eclipse-these-injustices/">long-standing pattern</a>: For decades, black women have been targets of police violence and brutality. </p>
<p>And for decades, their stories have been <a href="https://time.com/5847970/police-brutality-black-women-girls/">sidelined in public discussions about policing</a>. Many scholars point to <a href="https://www.bustle.com/p/the-lack-of-mobilized-outrage-for-police-killing-black-women-is-injurious-erasure-22953764">misogyny</a> to explain the continued marginalization of black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53f20d90e4b0b80451158d8c/t/5edc95fba357687217b08fb8/1591514635487/SHNReportJuly2015.pdf">#SayHerName report</a>, <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/sayhername-police-violence-against-black-women-and-girls-an-interview-with-andrea-ritchie/">explains</a>, “Women’s experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men.”</p>
<p>Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.</p>
<h2>Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence</h2>
<p>Civil rights leader <a href="https://time.com/5692775/fannie-lou-hamer/">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence. </p>
<p>Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s. </p>
<p>After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</a>, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520251762/ive-got-the-light-of-freedom">only 5% of the state’s 450,000 black residents were registered</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341272/original/file-20200611-80784-1fmeyd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fannie Lou Hamer attended the Democratic National Convention in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ds.07134/">Warren K. Leffler/U.S. News & World Report Magazine</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter’s workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat. </p>
<p>The restaurant owners made it clear that black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/voice-that-could-stir-an-army-fannie-lou-hamer-and-the-rhetoric-of-the-black-freedom-movement/oclc/1062296766&referer=brief_results">immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her</a>.</p>
<p>Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/fannie-lou-hamer-the-life-of-a-civil-rights-icon/oclc/729961147&referer=brief_results">later recalled</a>, “They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn’t bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That’s how I got this blood clot in my left eye – the sight’s nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back.” </p>
<p>Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she <a href="http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html">recounted her story before a live, televised audience</a> of millions. </p>
<p>In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories – and the stories of their loved ones. </p>
<h2>From lynch mob to violent police</h2>
<p>During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">grassroots initiative in New York City</a> to combat police violence in black communities. </p>
<p>In 1984, Mary Bumper’s 66-year-old mother, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520061">Eleanor Bumpurs</a>, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/14/nyregion/honor-student-17-is-killed-by-policeman-on-west-side.html">Veronica Perry’s 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed</a> by a plainclothes police officer. </p>
<p>Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.</p>
<p>United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City – <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/street-justice-a-history-of-police-violence-in-new-york-city/oclc/1004798959">an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing</a>. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.</p>
<p>On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders. </p>
<p>“We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry insisted</a>. </p>
<p>Her comments emphasized black activists’ recognition that the fight for black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence – whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341275/original/file-20200611-80784-10gnx4c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, spoke after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gwen-carr-the-mother-of-eric-garner-speaks-to-a-group-of-news-photo/1215876745?adppopup=true">Stephen Maturen/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>The struggle continues</h2>
<p>In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/25/nyregion/jury-acquits-all-transit-officers-in-1983-death-of-michael-stewart.html">Michael Stewart</a>, who died in police custody in 1983. </p>
<p>Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/11/27/archives/boy-15-shot-to-death-pointblank-officer-arrested-in-east-new-york.html">Randolph Evans</a> was killed by New York police in 1976. </p>
<p>At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. “We as a people have to stand together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Mary Bumpurs explained</a>. “It takes each of us banding together,” <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10999949.2018.1520059">Veronica Perry added</a>.</p>
<p>Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women’s grassroots organizing during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role black women play in challenging police violence. </p>
<p>These women’s political work continues today through the “<a href="https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a38111/who-are-mothers-of-the-movement-dnc/">Mothers of the Movement</a>,” a group of black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.</p>
<p>This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to <a href="https://www.pix11.com/news/local-news/eric-garners-mother-gwen-carr-talks-police-chokehold-ban-cops-kneeling-taking-a-knee-george-floyd-protests">push for legislation</a> that would fundamentally change American policing. </p>
<p>In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/502114-trayvon-martins-mother-sybrina-fulton-qualifies-to-run-for-county">run for public office</a>. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for <a href="https://abc7ny.com/rev-al-sharpton-eric-garner-gwen-carr-corey-johnson/6226857/">greater police accountability</a> and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of black people in the United States.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keisha N. Blain has received funding from the American Association of University Women and the Ford Foundation.</span></em></p>Young men make up the majority of black people killed by police in the US. That’s fed a perception that black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence. They aren’t.Keisha N. Blain, Associate Professor of History, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.