The Long Civil Rights Movement BUSINESS TABLE of CONTENTS
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UNFINISHED The Long Civil Rights Movement BUSINESS TABLE OF CONTENTS Unless We Remember President Christina Paxson ............................................................................1 Director’s Note Anthony Bogues ..................................................................................................... 3 This is America Shana Weinberg and Maiyah Gamble-Rivers ............................................................ 5 EXHIBITION GALLERY RACIAL TERROR & BLACK RESISTANCE Emancipation: Making Freedom ................................................................................................... 12 Segregation in the South: Jim Crow .............................................................................................. 16 Segregation in the North: Great Migration .................................................................................... 18 THE BLACK ORGANIZING TRADITION “Oldest and Boldest”: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ......................... 24 “Give Light and People Will Find A Way”: Black Grassroots Organizing in the South .......................... 28 Grassroots Organizing and Collective Action: Highlander Folk School.............................................. 32 Sparking a Revolution: Montgomery Bus Boycott .......................................................................... 34 Nonviolent Direct Action: Southern Christian Leadership Conference ............................................. 38 Marching in the Tracks of the Black Organizing Tradition: March on Washington .............................. 42 UNFINISHED We Shall Not be Moved: Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee ............................................ 46 The Long Civil Rights Movement Direct Action: Congress of Racial Equality .................................................................................... 50 BALLOT OR BULLET By Any Means Necessary: Malcolm X and Nation of Islam ............................................................. 54 Armed Defense & Self Determination: Black Panther Party ............................................................ 58 BUSINESS “One Man, One Vote”: Black Voting Power ...................................................................................... 62 “We Are the Vanguard”: Black Political Representation ................................................................... 66 ESSAYS: AN ORGANIZING TRADITION Organizing Traditions of the Black Freedom Struggle Charles E. Cobb Jr. ......................................... 73 My Enduring “Circle of Trust” Judy Richardson ............................................................................... 75 The Rosa Parks Story & Civil Rights Movement Françoise Hamlin .................................................. 79 A Rosary for Rosa Herb Boyd ....................................................................................................... 83 Women of the Movement ............................................................................................................. 85 The NAACP Youth Council and the Civil Rights Movement Pilar McCloud ...........................................97 The Black Freedom Struggle and the Remaking of America Anthony Bogues .................................... 99 Reflection on the Black Lives Matter Movement Barbara Ransby .................................................. 102 Unfinished Business of the Movement........................................................................................ 104 Selected Readings .................................................................................................................... 105 Contributors’ Bios ..................................................................................................................... 106 Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................................... 109 Unless We Remember President Christina Paxson In Ouidah, Benin on the coast of West Africa, adjacent Under President Ruth Simmons’ leadership, Brown to the Port of No Return gate through which hundreds was one of the first institutions of higher education of thousands of Africans boarded ships bound for to examine its role in the slave trade, appointing slavery in the Americas, there is a metal sculpture of a Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. the Tree of Forgetting that once stood there. And it was the Committee’s report that recommended the creation of the Center for the Study of Slavery The sculpture depicts how, before boarding, Africans and Justice. were forced to circle the Tree of Forgetting – men nine times, women seven times – so they would forget their This decision marked a recognition that issues of racial lives in Africa, and arrive in the New World not knowing inequality cannot be fully understood and resolved who they were. Their memories were ritually erased. unless we remember. Over the arc of Brown’s history, we have drawn Today, at the site wisdom – about of the Tree of ourselves as an Forgetting memo- Over the arc of Brown’s history, we have evolving communi- rial, visitors will drawn wisdom – about ourselves as ty of scholars and find an impromptu students – from street gallery an evolving community of scholars and remembrances of featuring folk campus dialogue art renditions of students – from remembrances of cam- on slavery and traditional rulers, pus dialogue on slavery and race, and race, and of and portraits actions we took to of prominent of actions we took to learn and heal. learn and heal. African Americans and Civil Rights We remember and leaders, painted by local artists. Martin Luther King, lionize Brown student James Tallmadge, who called for Jr. is there, as is Rosa Parks, captured in her iconic the abolition of slavery at the University’s commence- moment on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. ment ceremony in 1790, and had the audacity to speak up for his beliefs and buck conventional wisdom. The power of memory – to anchor historical narratives and distill eternal truths – is central to the work of We remember our partnership with Tougaloo College the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. This in Mississippi, forged in 1964 and sustained for more exhibition, Unfinished Business: The Long Civil Rights than 50 years, as a bridge of understanding. The Movement opens new windows of inquiry into the exchanges of faculty and students between Brown legacy of slavery, the struggle for civil rights, and and Tougaloo continue to strengthen constituencies the unfinished business of securing racial equality that powered the Civil Rights Movement and prompted in America. Brown to do better in living its values. Brown’s institutional memory on these matters has for We remember Brown students who mobilized groups generations been a source of guidance, and a constant like the Organization of United African Peoples, the University Walkout, 1975. reminder of the University’s commitment to combating Asian American Students Association, the Queer COURTESY OF THE BROWN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES racism with knowledge and understanding. Alliance, the Latin American Student Organization, 4 UNFINISHED BUSINESS THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 1 Native Americans at Brown, and the Third World Coalition, learned the lessons of organizing and found their voices. And more recently, we remember the powerful conver- sations we shared about identity and lived experience, that informed the development of Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion, our action plan to shape a more inclusive Director’s Note and respectful Brown community. Anthony Bogues As a university, institutional memory is vital. For it is In 2012 when the Center for the Study of Slavery and Thinking about history, memory, and how the “Civil our education and research that inevitably expand the University Walkout, 1968. Justice began, one of its first projects was to undertake Rights Movement” is remembered and the contempo- ways we know so that we might better understand the COURTESY OF THE BROWN UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES an oral history of ten of the figures who were active rary conditions of Black life, the CSSJ decided to first links between past events and present challenges – within the “Civil Rights Movement.” For a week we do an exhibition around the art installation of what was and be better positioned to effect meaningful change. hosted these individuals at the Center. Writer, former called “The Rosa Parks House.” For a variety of legal Brown students, too, are vital. They walk out of Brown professor, and a field secretary of the Student reasons this was not possible. However, for the Center classrooms, they organize protests, and they advocate Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Charles E. Cobb the exhibition was not primarily about Rosa Parks for the marginalized. What we seek to do is offer them Jr., did the interviews. Today these interviews are herself but rather about the Black organizing tradition not just the tools to move beyond moments of courage, part of the Freedom Archive held at Brown University. which she was part of. When we could no longer link but the inspiration to become wise, measured and The CSSJ undertook this project in part because we the exhibition to the Parks project we decided to further passionate activists who tackle the racial disparities recognized that there were individuals who had dedicat- deepen the exhibition along our initial lines – telling that persist in America. ed their entire life to organizing against the legacies