Communications Question

Choose oneof the questions below and write a 4-5 page response essay (with a “References” page as well).  When crafting your essays, think of ways that you can integrate some of the thematic categories from weeks 1-2 into your narrative.  You need not answer every sub-question but the idea is to use the subquestions to guide you in constructing a fluent narrative about the topic.

Question 1

The film begins by recounting that the struggle for Civil Rights was a 10-year battle fought in the Courts, in churches, in schools, and in the streets.  It was a battle often pitting federal authority against states’ rights.

How does the film set-up the injustice faced by the Civil Rights movement?  What is the institutional context for this injustice?  In what way does the film make reference to notions of “consent” to this institutional context, and how do such notions echo what Gramsci calls, “hegemony,” and Foucault calls, “discipline”?  Why would the system of segregation in the South be so difficult to challenge and overturn?  According to the film, what was a critical factor in enabling African Americans to “imagine” a world different from the one to which they had been accustomed?  Finally, what were the sources of inspiration for African Americans in emerging from the environment of World War II to change their condition?

Question 2

There are two catalytic moments presented to us in the first part of Eyes on the Prize entitled “Awakenings.”

In what way is it possible to describe the first of these two moments, the Supreme Court decision of Brown v Board (1954) as a “trigger” for the Civil Rights Movement?  How did the case of Brown v. Board affect the Black Community in the South?  How did the Brown decision affect the White community?   How did the reactions of the two communities set the stage for the epic struggle for civil rights in the U.S.?  How do we understand these reactions in terms of what Klarman argues to us about the blowback effects of certain court decisions?

Question 3

The second cataclysmic moment in the film is among the most brutal crimes in American history.

How did the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 act as a trigger for the Civil Rights Movement.  In what way did the decisions of Mamie Till to have an open-casket funeral in Chicago and then invite a photographer from Jet magazine to photograph her son’s corpse amplify the injustice of the Jim Crow system in the segregated South?  How did the press at that time play a decisive role in conveying the horror of the crime and the injustice of Southern segregation but at the same time, how did the mainstream press differ in its coverage from the Black press?  Can we speak of the media circulation of the Till story and photos as a kind of “big bang” of the Civil Rights Movement as Castells describes it?  What does the media coverage of Emmitt Till’s murder and funeral in newspapers and magazines of the day suggest about media technology and social movements?

Question 4

After the Emmitt Till murder and trial, the film transitions to the first collective protest of the Civil Rights Movement, the boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery Alabama.  While the narrator of Eyes on the Prize points to the refusal of Rosa Parks to give up her seat on a bus as a trigger for the boycott movement, Parks had done this before but this time, as the film reveals through the person of E.D. Nixon of the NAACP, the refusal tactic became part of a plan by Nixon and Parks to end segregation on city buses.

Week 1
DISSENT and SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
9/26 –9/28
Film: Gandhi (1982). [Go to electronic course reserves for our course from UCSD Library Website
and watch from 6:00 – 16:15. YOU HAVE TO BE CONNECTED TO YOUR VPN TO VIEW
THE FILM.] https://digitalcampus.swankmp.net/ucasandiego371665/play/d40f8915cde170f4?
referrer=direct
(Links to an external site.)
Snow, David and Soule, Sarah (2010). Conceptualizing Social Movements. A Primer on Social
Movements. New York: W.W. Norton [pp. 6-19]. Read on Canvas from Week 1 Module
Almeida, Paul (2019). Social Movements: The Structure of Collective Mobilization. Berkeley:
University of California Press [pp. 1-16]. Read on Canvas from Week 1 Module
Week 2 POWER, CONSENT, AND DISSENT: BUILDING A MODEL OF PROTEST
10/3 – 10/5
Castells, Manual (2015). Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age.
Cambridge: Polity Press [pp. 1-19; [Read on Canvas Week 2 Module]. Also view this
video: https://vimeo.com/65218035
(Links to an external site.)
Gamson, William A. and Wolfsfeld Gadi (1993). “Movements and Media as Interacting
Systems.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 528: 114-125.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1047795?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
(Links to an external site.)
Gladwell, Malcolm (2010). “Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not be Tweeted.” The New
Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell
(Links to an external site.)
Kidd, Dustin and McIntosh, Keith (2016). “Social Media and Social Movements.” Sociology
Compass. Vol. 10 (11): 785-794. [Read only pp. 785-789] https://
onlineacademiccommunity.uvic.ca/uni201/wp-content/uploads/sites/1712/2019/01/
Kidd_et_al-2016-Sociology_Compass.pdf
Week 3
– 10/12
‘WE SHALL OVERCOME’: THE MOVEMENT FOR CIVIL RIGHTS
10/10
Injustice, Ideas and the Impulses for Equality
Film: Eyes on the Prize, Part I “Awakenings” [YOU HAVE TO BE CONNECTED TO YOUR
VPN TO VIEW THE FILM.] https://fod.infobase.com/p_ViewVideo.aspx?xtid=58632Links to
an external site.
Film: Eyes on the Prize, Part III “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (watch until 22:45)
ucsd.kanopy.com/video/aint-scared-your-jails Links to an external site.
https://
Chappell, David L. (2004). A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. [1-8, 87-104]. Read from Canvas Week 3
Module.
Klareman, Michael J. (2007). Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement.
Oxford: Oxford University Press [chapter 3, pp. 92-97; Read from Canvas Week 3 Module].
Media in the Movement for Civil Rights
“How the Lynching of a 14-year old Boy Sparked a Movement.” NBC News Archive. https://
www.nbcnews.com/video/death-of-emmett-till-revisited-history-of-the-1955murder-1194367043799Links to an external site.
“The Civil Rights Movement Gets a Boost from TV News.” NBC News Archive. https://
www.nbcnews.com/video/civil-rights-tv-and-the-mass-media-mlk-50-1194379843575Links to
an external site.
“Analyzing Martin Luther King’s Media Strategy.” NBC News Archive. https://
www.nbcnews.com/video/how-the-media-covered-martin-luther-king-jr-s-movement-inbirmingham-1194389059595Links to an external site.
“MLK Planning the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Media.” NBC News Archive. https://
www.nbcnews.com/video/mlk-plans-montgomery-bus-boycott-in-rare-footageshows-1194375747633
Civil Rights!
State’s Rights, the ‘Law of the Land,’
and the Legal Context of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement
Argument
In order to understand the Civil Rights Movement, it is necessary to
revisit some of the constitutional and legal history of the U.S.
One of the signature themes of this history is the ongoing conflict
between federal authority and ‘states’ rights.’
The Civil Rights Movement forced the federal government to
overturn segregation laws of Southern States and assert the idea of
“equality for all” as the “law of the land.”
Merrill v. Milligan
Will the Supreme Court Allow the State of Alabama to Redraw the House Districts in
a Way that Restricts Black Representation in the U. S House of Representatives?
The question at issue for the Supreme Court is whether
Alabama’s 2021 redistricting plan for its 7 seats in the U.S.
House of Representatives violates a federal law – Section 2
of the 1965 Voting Rights Act — which bars “voting practices
or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color,
or membership in one of the language minority groups.”
At the core of this case are state practices of
gerrymandering, the arbitrary drawing of boundaries for
legislative seats to favor one group over another.
U.S. Constitution
7 Original Articles
27 Amendments
Bill of Rights
(Amendments 1-10)
Supremacy Clause / Pre-emption Doctrine U.S.
Constitution Article VI (Clause 2)
…Establishes that the Constitution, and federal laws pursuant to it,
constitute the supreme law of the land, and that the federal
government “pre-empts” state and local laws in cases of conflicting
legislation.
Doctrine of States’ Rights
10th Amendment (1791)
The history of the American constitutionalism has been marked by
conflict over the allocation of power between the states and the
federal government.
Accordingly, the 10th Amendment was added to the Constitution as
part of the Bill of Rights. The 10th amendment stipulates that
“powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it, are reserved to the States…”
The Cotton Economy
African Americans as Slave Labor and Propety
Dred Scott v. Sandford
(1857)
In 1857 Dred Scott, an enslaved African
American, sued for his freedom and that of his
wife and 2 daughters.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision,
considered the worst in U.S. legal history, the
Court ruled 7-2 against Scott arguing that
Scott’s 4-year residence in the free North was
not sufficient to make him a free man.
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney cited two
rationales for this ruling: First, as an African
American, Scott was not a citizen and “had no
rights which the white man was bound to
respect.” Second, slaves were property, and
that status did not change as result of Scott
living freely for 4 years in the non-slave North.
Scott’s freedom would be an unwarranted
seizure of property.
Abolition of Slavery
England
Spain
Denmark
France
Portugal
Holland
U.S.
1833
1833
1846
1848
1858
1861
1865
The Period of Reconstruction
Reconstruction Amendments (1865-1877)
13th Amendment
14th Amendment
15th Amendment
13th Amendment
Abolition of Slavery (1866)
The 13th Amendment, (also known as the Civil Rights Act of 1866) affirmed the abolition of
slavery. The aim of the law was, in the words of Rep. James F. Wilson, “to provide for the
equality of all citizens in the enjoyment of civil rights and immunities.” The law, however, did
not provide for voting rights. In the words of Wilson, “suffrage is a political right which has
been left under the control of the states.”
14th Amendment
Equal Protection Clause (1868)
The 14th Amendment is what granted African Americans rights
of citizenship. It also stipulated that:
“No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law; nor deny any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
14th Amendment, Section 1
15th Amendment
…Granted African American men the right to vote – in theory — by declaring that the “right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.” At the same time, the 15th Amendment did not expressly grant African American men the right to
vote. It simply states that the right to vote would not be ”abridged” on account of skin color or previous servitude.
The End of Reconstruction
1877
In 1877, after the federal government withdrew its last troops from the
South, Southern State legislatures enacted new laws discriminating
against African Americans.
This ending to Reconstruction represented a counterattack – a kind of
blowback — by the defeated Southern States against the movement for
equal rights.
These Southern states used the 10th Amendment – the doctrine of
States’ Rights — to create a new set of institutions known as ”Jim Crow.”
‘Jim Crow’
Jim Crow was the name of the
racial caste system which
operated primarily — but not
exclusively — in southern states,
between 1877 and the mid-1960s.
Jim Crow was more than a series
of rigid anti-black laws. It was an
institutionalized, legalized, and
cultural way of life. Under Jim
Crow, African Americans were
relegated to the status of secondclass citizens. Jim Crow
represented the legitimization of
anti-black racism after the period
of Reconstruction had ended.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
The Court ruled that, while the aim of the 14th Amendment was to
create “absolute equality of the two races before the law,” such
equality covered only political and civil rights (e.g., voting and serving
on juries), not “social rights” (e.g., sitting in a railway car that one
chooses).
The Court rejected Plessy’s arguments that the law stigmatized blacks
“with a badge of inferiority,” pointing out that both blacks and whites
were given equal facilities under the law. In this way the decision
affirmed the notion of “separate but equal” as the law of the land.
Separate but Equal
Segregation and Jim Crow (1896 – 1967)
Jim Crow
as Cultural System
In addition to strict legal
codes, the system of Jim Crow
became institutionalized as a
cultural system reflecting a
dominant set of beliefs among
white Southerners in the
superiority of the white race
that translated into
discriminatory behavior as in
this example of Imperial
Laundry, all of which was
openly legal and defended as
morally right.
The Culture of the Jim Crow South
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Michael Klarman / Brown v. Board “Blowback”
Conventional wisdom holds that one of Brown’s
most important consequences was to educate
white Americans to condemn segregation. Yet,
little evidence supports this view. Americans have
often disagreed with the Supreme court…Engels v.
Vitale (1962) ruled that the Constitution prohibits
prayer in public schools, yet polls indicate that a
solid majority of Americans favor that practice
today. Furman v. Georgia (1972) ruled capital
punishment to be unconstitutional and seems to
have mobilized support for it. Roe v. Wade (1973)
which invalidated statutes criminalizing abortion
mobilized opposition to abortion…. Brown’s most
significant contribution to the events in
Montgomery may have been its impact on whites
not blacks….Montgomery officials became
intransigent, adopting a “get tough policy,
arresting boycott organizers, joining the citizens
council and choosing not to suppress violence
against black leaders….In this [post-Brown]
environment, whites refused to make any
concessions.”
This is a special presentation of American Experience.
Major funding for American Experience is provided by the Alfred P Sloan Foundation. National corporate funding is provided by
Liberty Mutual and the Scotts Company. American Experience is also made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and
by public television viewers.
Funding for the re-release of Eyes on the Prize made possible by the Ford Foundation and the Gilder foundation.
I guess our courage came out of because we didn’t have nothing, that we couldn’t lose nothing. But we wanted something for
ourselves and for our children. And so we took a chance with our lives.
We marched up the steps with this circle of soldiers with bayonets drawn. And walking up the steps that day was probably one of
the biggest feelings I’ve ever had. I figured I had finally cracked it.
[CHANTING]
My freedom is very much entangled with freedom of every other man. So I’m fighting for my own freedom here.
Are you scared?
Yes. I’m very much afraid. Everyone here is.
[MUSIC – “GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN”]
In a 10-year period in the 1950s and 1960s, America fought a second revolution.
[MUSIC – “GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN”]
It was fought in the south by black people and white. It was fought in the streets, in churches, in courts, in schools. It was fought to
make America be America for all its citizens. These were America’s civil rights years.
[MUSIC – “GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN”]
I take it then that you are advocating Negroes in New York to stay out of these national chain stores.
Oh, no, that’s not true. I’m advocating that American citizens, interested in democracy, should stay out of chain stores.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I have thought for a long time that Negroes should be allowed to sit at the counters where we are have served downtown. This is
just a part of many things that I think they should be allowed to do.
All the people of the south are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain
segregated schools down in Dixie.
We’re willing to be beaten for democracy. And you misuse democracy in the street. You beat people-Why don’t you get out in front of the camera and go on.
It’s not a matter of being in front of the camera. It’s a matter of facing your shouts and then hide your blows.
Well, go on.
It was a clear engagement between those who wished the fullness of their personalities to be met and those that would destroy us,
physically and psychologically. You do not walk away from that. This is what movement meant. Movement meant, finally, we were
encountering– on a mass scale– the evil that had been destroying us on a mass scale. You do not walk away from that. You
continue to answer it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I always think of what Matthew Junior told me when he called. When he called from the jail, he said, be cool, mother. And that was
very trying and yet it was amusing, too. His telling me to be cool at this point.
[SHOUTING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We must come to see that the end we week is a society at peace with itself. A society that can live with its conscience. And that
will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It was a hard fight, challenging America’s basic beliefs. What is an inalienable right? What is equal treatment under the law? What
is liberty and justice for all? It was a hard fight. But the prize was freedom. And no American could afford to lose.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC – “KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE”]
For much of this century, America was segregated. It was our social system, our way of keeping blacks and whites apart. By
custom and by law, most blacks were servants, laborers, tenant farmers, went to separate poorer schools, lived in separate poorer
housing. Segregation was the context for black lives throughout the country but especially in the south– a complete environment,
socially and psychologically.
Listen. For a long time, I had the idea that a man with white skin was superior because it appeared to me that he had everything.
And I figured if God would justify the white man having everything, that God had put him in a position to be the best.
If you were born into a system that’s wrong– whether it’s a slave system or whether it’s a segregated system– you take it for
granted. And I was born into a system that was segregated and denied blacks the right to vote. It also denied women the right to
vote. And I took it for granted. Nobody told me any different. Nobody said it was strange or unusual or wasn’t like other states.
Segregation had its rules. And southern blacks knew that if they didn’t obey them– if they didn’t step aside to let a white man pass
or if a black man look too closely at a white woman– the system could be enforced by violence. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan used
terrorism to uphold white supremacy and were an ever-present symbol of intimidation.
But there were always blacks who fought against segregation. Many ministers preached equality. And black unions and
organizations, like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, worked for it for decades through speeches,
demonstrations, and court cases.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All-American News brings you our peoples’ constitution to America and freedom.
World War II had an enormous impact on black hopes for change. Black Americans fought and died in a segregated US Army. But
they saw a larger, unsegregated world. They saw their own power as they fought and as some were trained as officers and
specialists. And they came back with a new sense of themselves.
I spent three years overseas in New Guinea. And I became an officer during that period. I had been eager to exercise authority. So
when we got out, it was just one more step to say, well, look, we aren’t going to take this anymore.
The south they came back to was determined to resist change. And most of the nation was not ready to hear black demands for
justice. Then, in the early 1950s, after years of carefully-planned litigation, the NAACP brought these demands to the Supreme
Court. The test cases were set in schools.
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v Board of Education that segregated schools were
unconstitutional. It called into question the whole system of segregation.
It was quite a shock to the Southerners to be told that the way they had been running their affairs for many, many years was no
longer acceptable to the nation as a whole. And a great many of the older crowd of white Southerners felt that they came of an
ancestry that were founders of the Republic and that knew the Constitution and customs and laws of the country as well as
anybody else.
The south resisted desegregation with legal and illegal delays. It would take years before the Supreme Court’s decision would be
implemented in any meaningful way. But it had one immediate effect.
I think that the greatest impact of the Brown decision was on the black community itself. It was a statement to the black
community that they had a friend, so to speak, the Supreme Court. And so, it emboldened the communities of blacks around the
country to move forward, to secure their own rights.
The change began slowly, especially in rural areas. Blacks knew they could still lose their livelihood or their lives, if they pushed
whites too fast. But step by step, the change began– first, with small acts of personal courage. In September 1955, an old man
named Mose Wright took that remarkable first step. His story starts at the Tallahatchie River in Money, Mississippi.
Here, the body of Mose Wright’s nephew, Emmett Till was found, weighed down in the waters. Two local men were arrested and
charged with the murder. They were white. Emmett Till was black. Till had come down from Chicago to visit his relatives.
This is Mose Wright. I am the uncle of Emmett Louis Till. Sunday morning, about 2:30, somebody called at the door. And I said,
who is it? And he said, this is Mr. Wright. I want to talk with you and the boy. And when I opened the door, there was a man
standing with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand.
And he asked me, did I have two boys there from Chicago. I told him I have. And he said, I wanted, I wants the boy that done all
that talk. And they marched him to the car and they asked someone there, was this is the right boy. And the answer was, yeah.
And they drove toward Money.
And I found out about it 9:30 Sunday morning. I was in bed. I got up, called my mother, when I got the news because I had– every
decision I had ever made or every crack that I had ever been in, it took her to get me out of it. And I took that one to momma, too,
because I didn’t know what to do. Mother told me to come right over and she would start making calls. And I got over there as
quickly as I could make it. And that wasn’t very long.
By this time, everyone in Money knew what had happened. Emmett Till had broken one of segregation’s rules. He’d talk fresh to a
white woman in a store. He was only 14. He was a Northerner. And he didn’t understand.
He went into the store to buy some candy. Before he went in, he had showed the boys around his age– he had some picture of
some white kids that he had graduated from that was female and male. So he told the boys down there, hey, gather around this
store. It must have been around about maybe 10 to 12 youngsters around there that the girls with his girlfriend.
So one of the local boys said, hey, there’s a girl in that store there. So I bet you want go in there and talk to her. So he went in
there to get some candy. So when he was leaving out the store, after buying the candy, he told her, he said, bye, baby.
And the next thing I know, one of the boys came up to me and said, say, man, you got a crazy cousin. He just went in there and
said bye to that white woman. And that’s when this man I was playing checkers with– this older man, I guess he must have been
around 60 or 70– he jumped straight up and say, boy, say, you all better get out of here. He say, that lady will come out of that
store and blow your brains out.
Wednesday, the sheriffs came and told me they had found a body at [INAUDIBLE] and wanted me to go and identify the body,
which I did. And we found the body. It didn’t have on any clothes at all. His body was so badly damaged that we couldn’t hardly
just tell who he was. But he happened to have on a ring with his initials. And that cleared it up.
The body was shipped home, back north to Chicago, where Mamie Till Bradley insisted on an open casket funeral, so all the world
can see, she said, what they did to my boy.
[MUMBLING AND CHATTER]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Jet Magazine showed Till’s corpse– beaten, mutilated, shot through the head. A generation of black people would remember the
horror of that photo.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me. And if the death of my son can mean something to the other
unfortunate people all of the over the world, then for him to have died a hero would mean more to me than for him just to have
died.
Roy Bryant, husband of the woman in the store, and JW Milam, her brother-in-law, were arrested for the murder of Emmett Till. The
trial was held in nearby Sumner, Mississippi. Black organizations like the NAACP and the Black Press were especially interested.
And they worked hard to keep the case in the news to make an example of Southern racism for the world.
It was because it was a boy that they went there. They had to prove that they were superior. They had to prove it by taking away
a 14-year-old boy. You know it’s in the virus, it’s in the blood of the Mississippian. He can’t help it.
I’d like for the NAACP or any colored organization anywhere to know that we are here, giving all parties a free trial and intend to
give a fair and impartial trial. And we don’t need the help of the NAACP. And we don’t intend for them to help us. We never have
any trouble until some of our southern niggers go up north. And the NAACP talks to them and they come back home.
[CHATTER]
I had covered the courts in many areas of this country. But the Till case was unbelievable. I mean, I just didn’t get the sense of
being in a courtroom. It was, first place, segregated. The Black Press sat at a bridge table far off from the court. And the boy’s
mother came down. They sat her there at the bridge table with us.
Plus the United States congressman, at that time, Diggs– he came down. And I was the one that got him in because the sheriff
wouldn’t let him in. He said to the deputy that he called over– he said, this nigger here said there’s a nigger outside who says that
he’s a congressman and he has corresponded with the judge and the judge had told him to come on down and he would let him in,
he said, but the sheriff won’t let him in.
So he’s sending his card up there and said, this guy said, a nigger congressman? And he says, that’s what this nigger says. I said to
myself, my god, I have never seen anything like this in my life.
There were, of course, a lot of buzzing when I entered the place and was placed in that area. And I think the judge said something
about, yeah, have that boy come on up here and sit down over here with these news reporters.
What do you intend to do here today?
To answer any questions that might– that the attorneys might ask me to answer.
How do you think you could be possibly a help to them?
I don’t know– just by answering whatever questions that they ask me.
Do you have any evidence bearing on this case?
I do know that this is my son.
The defense argued that the body found tied to the cotton gin fan in the river was so disfigured that it could not be identified as
Emmett Till. The trial took five long, hot days. Because of threats to his life, the prosecution’s star witness, Mose Wright, was kept
hidden out of state.
Will you go back to Mississippi to testify in the kidnap trial.
Sure, sure. I’ll go back because I promised the sheriff I would do that. And so, if I live, I’m going back to testify. And after the trial,
well, I’m through with Mississippi forever and ever. They can have my part of Mississippi. I’m through with that. I don’t have
nothing to tell you.
At the time, I really didn’t realize how brave my grandfather, Mose Wright, was. But after I got older, I realized that he was a brave
man. He was a mighty brave man to travel back down there among all those hostile peoples and testify and get up in court and
point his finger at a white man and accuse him of murder.
He was called upon to testify as to could he see anybody in the courtroom– identify anybody in that courtroom that had come to
his house that night and got the Emmett Till out. He stood up and there was a tension in the courtroom. And he says, in his broken
language, dar he.
Dar he– there he is. Other black witnesses came forward, too. Their courage made no difference in Sumner, Mississippi. As the trial
ended, a defense lawyer told the jury he was, quote, “Sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.”
It took the jury an hour to find the men not guilty.
[CHEERING]
How do you folks feel, now that it’s all over? Roy, how about you?
I’m just glad it’s over with.
JW?
I am, too.
Mrs. Bryant?
I feel fine.
How about you, Mrs. Milam?
Fine.
Did you expect this verdict?
Well, I was hoping for it.
Well, the whole trial was just a farce. But the verdict was the one that I had expected to be given.
Months later, Roy Bryant and JW Milam told their story of the night of August 28, for $4,000, to reporter William Bradford Huie.
Milam was startled at the belligerent attitude or the fact that young Till didn’t appear to be afraid of him. Now, he’d gone and
gotten him out of bed and had him in the back the truck. And young Till never realized the danger he was in.
I’m quite sure that he never thought these two men would kill him. Or maybe he’s just in such a strange environment, he really just
doesn’t know what he’s up against. And it seems, to a rational mind today– it seems impossible that they could have killed him.
But JW Milam looked up at me and said, well, when he told me about this white girl he had, he says, my friend, that’s what this
boy’s about down here now. He says, that’s what we’ve got to fight to protect. And he says, I just looked at him, and I said, boy,
you ain’t going to never see the sun come up again.
For much of southern history, lynching had been an ordinary story. Race killings were down by the 1950s. But over the years, there
had been more than 500 documented lynchings in Mississippi alone.
The fact that immaterial, a young black man, could be found floating down the river in Mississippi, as indeed many had been done
over the years just set in concrete the determination of people to move forward. And I think we said back there that really only
God, only the books in Heaven, can know how many Negroes have come up missing and dead and killed under this system in
which we lived.
In Mississippi, a few black people stood up to the system. But it was not enough. Their challenge was easily beaten back. Three
months later in Alabama, when many stood together, the challenge would be strong. It started with a woman named Rosa Parks in
Montgomery.
Montgomery in 1955 was a typical southern city. We are called the cradle of the Confederacy. And there is a tradition in
Montgomery of having the carrying out the old Confederate south type of things– the stars and bars flags. It was a totally
segregated community. Department stores had white water fountains and colored water fountains. We had separate taxis. You had
black taxis, and you had white taxis.
And Montgomery, like all of the south, had segregated buses. In interstate buses like this one, and in city buses, the white sat in
the front, the blacks in back. If more whites got on, the blacks had to give them the middle and back seats, too.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger.
The front seats were occupied and the one man, a white man, standing– at this point, the driver asked us to stand up and let him
have those seats. And when none of us moved at his first words, he said, y’all make it light on yourselves and let me have those
seats. And when the policeman approached me, one of them spoke and asked me if the driver had asked me to stand. I said, yes.
He said, why don’t you stand up? I said, I don’t think I should have to stand up. And I asked him, I said, why do you push us
around? He said, I do not know, but the law is the law and you’re under arrest.
Mrs. Parks was formerly my secretary in the NAACP, in the local branch, about twelve years. She also worked with me when I was
state president in the NAACP. And she also assisted me in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. And if there ever was a woman
who was dedicated to the cause, Rosa Parks was that woman.
This was not the first time a black person had defied the bus segregation in Montgomery. It was not Mrs. Parks’ first time. It was
her first arrest. E.D. Nixon went to the police station to bail her out.
As Mrs. Parks, I said, with your permission, we can break down segregation on the bus with your case. I said, I’m convinced that we
can do it. I said, if I wasn’t convinced, I wouldn’t bother you about it. She asked her mother what she thought about it. She said, I’ll
go along with Mr. Nixon. She asked her husband. He said, I’ll support it– said, that’s fine.
E.D. Nixon and other black leaders called for a one-day bus boycott. In some cities, it would’ve been impossible to organize 40,000
people in two days. But black Montgomery had a core of activists in the women’s political council. And they distributed these
boycott notices all over the city.
I called every person who was in every school and every place where we had planned to be at that– have somebody at that
school, or wherever it was, at a certain time, that I would be there with materials for them to disseminate. I didn’t go to bed that
night. I cut those stencils. I ran out 35,000 copies.
But the bus passed right down in front of my house. And I got up to see it. And several buses passed. I was late for work because I
was trying to see how many buses was empty. And they were totally empty.
The one-day boycott was a success. That night, I mobilized black community turned out for a meeting at the Holt Street Baptist
Church and voted unanimously to continue the boycott.
The preachers were preaching as I came in. I was about two minutes late coming in. And they were preaching. And that audience
was so on fire that they– the preacher would get up and say, do you want your freedom? And they’d say, yeah, I want my
freedom? Are you for what we’re doing? Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Overwhelmingly, I don’t know if there was one vote that said, no, don’t continue. The people wanted to continue that boycott. They
had been touched by the persecution, the humiliation that many of them had endured on buses. And they voted for it unanimous.
And that meant thousands of the people.
You see, when I first started fighting, I was fighting to keep– so that the children who came behind me wouldn’t suffer the same
thing I suffered. Then, the night of the bus boycott on December 5, I told the people that I’d been fighting like that for all these
years. And I said, tonight, I’ve changed my mind. I said, hell, I want to enjoy some of this stuff myself. And you ought of heard
people holler.
The keynote speaker at Holt Street Church was a new preacher in town, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was only 26 and was almost
unknown outside his own congregation. King wasn’t sure he should accept when his fellow ministers and other leaders asked him
to head the new Montgomery Improvement Association and the boycott. But they wanted him, in part, because he was new in
Montgomery.
Reverend King was a young man, a very intelligent young man. He had not been here long enough for the city fathers to put their
hand on him.
Martin said, well, I’m not sure I’m the best person for this position since I’m new in the community. But, if no one else is going to
serve, someone has to do it. And I’d be glad to try to do it. And of course, I guess, everybody then assured him they wanted him.
So he came home very excited about the fact that he had to give the keynote speech that night at mass meeting. He only had 20
minutes to prepare his speech.
We, the disinherited of this land– we, who have been oppressed so long, are tired of going through the long night of captivity. And
now, we are reaching out for the daybreak of freedom and justice and equality.
[APPLAUSE]
The only weapon that we have in our hands this evening is the weapon of protest.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
That’s all.
[APPLAUSE]
And certainly, certainly this is the glory of America with all of its faults. And we are not wrong. We are not wrong in what we are
doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
If we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
We had never seen a crowd like that before. It took 15 minutes before the people would sit down and become quiet and let us
begin the meeting. And I can tell you the name of the first song that we sang. And it was, what a fellowship, what a joy divine,
leaning on the everlasting arms.
[MUSIC – “LEANING ON THE EVERLASTING ARMS”]
Before the boycott, two-thirds of the bus riders were black. After December 5, there were almost no blacks at the segregated bus
stops or on the buses. They walked. And they created a complex system that used private cars to carry thousands of people each
day.
We asked for persons who had cars and would voluntarily put them in the transportation pool, to let us know, and what time they
could be used. And in that way, we could know when we will have cars and where they had to go to pick up people.
People will call in and say, I’m out here on [INAUDIBLE] Road and such and such a block. And I’ll be ready at such and such a time.
But this was being done all through the day. And we would know what time they was to go to be picked up and where they were.
It was really surprising because we thought, well, maybe so many people would contain to ride the bus. But, after all, they had
been mistreated and been mistreated in so many different ways until, I guess, they were tired. And they just decided that they just
wouldn’t ride.
The black community was inspired by its own success. They held meetings with the mayor and the bus company and found they
could stand up to the city commissioners.
At first, we didn’t even ask for desegregation. We only asked for a more humane system of segregation on the buses. And when
the opposition refused to grant that, then, we realized that they wouldn’t grant anything anyway. So we might as well ask for
complete desegregation. And that’s what we went for. And we realized we had to go for broke, so to speak.
By this time, the boycott had lasted longer than anyone expected. A wave of violence started– shots fired at buses, bombs thrown
at Martin King’s home and E.D. Nixon’s home.
You’ve had some rather personal and trying experiences yourself. Are you afraid?
No, I’m not. My attitude is that this is a great cause. It is a great issue that we are confronted with. And that the consequences for
my personal life are not particularly important. It is the triumph of a cause that I’m concerned about. And I have always felt that,
ultimately, along the way of life, an individual must stand up and be counted and be willing to face the consequences, whatever
they are. And if he is filled with fear, he cannot do it.
We thought that you could just shame America– say, now, America, look at your promises and look at how you’re treating your
poor Negro citizens, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. But you can’t shame segregation. You can’t– rattlesnakes don’t commit
suicide, ball teams don’t strike themselves out– you’ve got to put them out.
The nightly mass meetings in church were the backbone of the boycott.
The mass meetings, usually, were attended by the maids and cooks and janitors and people who really used the buses a lot. And
they would be there, singing and praying for hours, sometimes, before the program actually started– the main part of the mass
meeting.
[MUSIC – “ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS”]
I think, just about all of them, they were really very interested in it because you could go and you could learn about so many things
that you didn’t know exist and so many people would tell you how they were being mistreated and they were glad that they were
able to come out and not have to take the same treatment that they once had taken and was afraid to admit.
The fear left– the fear that had shackled us across the years– all left suddenly when we were in that church together.
Dr. Abernathy would speak first, usually. And he had the ability to really make them laugh and, maybe, make them cry some. He
really knew how to get them in the mood.
This show is your show.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Not only is this show the show of Negroes in Montgomery, but this is the show of Negroes all over America.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And then, I want to go a little further than that and tell you that truly this show is the show of all freedom loving people all over the
world.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
I guess you’d call it a kind of folksy quality. He was able to do that because that was a part of his style. Whereas, with Martin, he
was more what you would consider formal. And he would come along with a very thoughtful message.
Let me urge you to be sane and rational. Eventually, segregation in public transportation will pass away– eventually. And I think
we should start, now, preparing for the inevitable. And let us, when that moment comes, go into the situation that we confront with
a great deal of dignity, sanity, and reasonableness.
It’s a very hard for a ordinary person to describe Reverend King’s speaking ability because he was such an outstanding– he could
make you feel what he was saying, as well as hearing what he was saying. He was sincere and dedicated. And he could lift you out
of your seat.
You couldn’t just be quiet and look like– it was such a stirring thing that it would affect you. It’d just go right through you. So I
can’t say much more than that because it’s such a stimulating thing. And he was carried away, looked like, with his own speech.
Dr. King spoke with a new voice. Not only was it a new movement, but it was a new voice that you must love, you must not hate
the people who hate or who act like they hate you. You must– and the best thing to make out of your enemy is a friend. So this
had a very profound effect upon, not only blacks, but whites at this time.
You are not going to permit the NAACP to control your state.
As the boycott entered its second month, the white community’s position hardened. There were whites who were sympathetic to
the boycott, but many more were not. A segregationist group called the White Citizens’ Council held huge rallies and vastly
increased its membership, becoming the largest organization in white Montgomery. They targeted anyone– black or white– who
supported desegregation.
90% of the white people in Alabama are for segregation. But in the last few years, we have had quite a number of backsliders, you
might say, that, for political reasons, to further their political ambitions, have been trying to garner the Negro vote and would do
most anything to get that vote. The Citizens’ Council is out to utterly destroy those people.
The thing that kept the whites going was segregation, was the old way– don’t break the old way, don’t break this fabric, don’t
breakdown segregation, don’t take this away– this old south– don’t take back the things that we’ve always known and that we
fought a war over these things and that are forefathers would have us do this.
Despite the pressure, the buses remained empty. The black leaders decided the boycott might weaken if they didn’t respond
quickly to the violence. They filed suit in federal court, claiming that bus segregation was unconstitutional. White officials
retaliated by indicting almost 90 black leaders under an old anti-boycott law. The tactic backfired. Suddenly, the national press
was very interested in the story and in the eloquent Martin Luther King, Jr.
We still feel that we are right and that we stand within our constitutional rights in the protest. We still advocate non-violence with
passive resistance and still determine to use the weapon of love.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Armed with the weapon of non-violent resistance, Montgomery’s blacks kept walking, month after month after month.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
How many miles do you think you walked?
Oh, about seven-eight miles a day, maybe longer, further than that, because going and coming, it made a great deal distance.
Ever chance to take a ride from-No. No, but if sometimes we would be out on the road, coming home, well, there’d be a white lady come along and pick us up and
carry us so far. And we would thank her for it. We would be very glad. And we would offer her pay. But she wouldn’t take it.
It’s a strange thing that happened. It was kind of a play between white women and black women in that the mayor of the town,
issued an order, saying, if the white women would just stop carrying their maids back and forth that the boycott would be ended.
And so– I don’t say all of them– but some of them replied and said, well, if he wants to come out and do my cooking and laundry
and nurse the children and clean up, he can. So the white women went and got them in the car. They said they did it because the
bus had broken down or any excuse you could possibly think of.
I would have to say that were many sympathetic whites who knew that the system was wrong and they would do what they could
to help to correct it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, a lot of times some of the young whites would come along and they would say, nigger, don’t you know it’s better to ride the
bus than it is to walk? And we would say, no, cracker, no, we’d rather walk.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
April 1956, the boycott was four months old. In other states, lawsuits and black pressure were breaking down bus segregation. But
not in Alabama.
We expect the city bus lines of Montgomery and the people of Montgomery to continue to obey all segregation laws as written. I
have, this day, issued orders to the chief police and the police department to continue to make arrests in all violations with
reference to the segregation laws.
Several southern cities, including Richmond, Virginia, Little Rock, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas, and others have ended segregation on
city buses. And white and Negro passengers rode together on front seats without incident, mishaps, or disturbances. The public
officials of the city of Montgomery and the state of Alabama intend to obey the segregation laws of the city of Montgomery. And
we, the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, do now and will continue to carry on our mass protest.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
June 1956– six months. There had been boycotts before– in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, three years before– even in Montgomery
itself, 50 years before. None had lasted so long with so much support. In Tallahassee, Florida, another boycott started. It was so
effective that the bus company was forced to shut down operations. It was clear the boycotts hurt the bus companies, businesses,
and the cities. It was not clear if they could end segregation.
September 1956– nine months. The Klan in Montgomery held a series of highly visible rallies.
They want to throw white children and colored children into the melting pot of integration through, out of which will come a
conglomerated blood mongrel class of people. Both races will be destroyed in such a movement.
Many of the black community were frightened. But they kept walking– 10 months, 11 months. The boycott’s second Christmas
was approaching. Downtown stores were hurt, but neither the city nor the marchers would compromise.
On November 13, 1956, the US Supreme Court broke the deadlock, ruling unanimously that Montgomery’s bus segregation was
unconstitutional. That day, the Ku Klux Klan rode and walked the black neighborhoods again. This time, the blacks just watched,
unmoved and unafraid.
The decision rendered by the Supreme Court yesterday was a victory. But it wasn’t a victory for colored folks. Don’t make that
victory that small. It wasn’t a victory for 50,000 Negroes in Montgomery. It wasn’t merely a victory for 16 million Negroes of
America. That was a victory for justice and good will.
Now, what will be our mode of action in the light of this decision? After thinking through this question very seriously, the executive
board of the Montgomery Improvement Association recommends that the 11-month-old protest against the city buses will be called
off and that the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, will return to the buses on a non-segregated basis.
[APPLAUSE AND CHEERING]
Are you ready for the question?
[CHEERING]
All in favor, let it be known by standing on your feet.
[APPLAUSE AND CHATTER]
It seems that it is carried unanimously.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Because you get to standard that God is with you, that God can take care of you, this is a God’s way– and you are there to do it.
And I think that’s a sense of drive. That’s what many people don’t understand about what happened back in the deep south– that
here I am, that this is my duty. I’ve got to do something. And God is with me. And if God is with me, how can you lose, leaning on
the everlasting arms?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When the bus boycott was over, the people just– the blacks got on the bus to sit on the front seat just to show off. And they had a
lot of fun, sitting on the front sear, riding to the college or riding away from the college. Nobody said sat in the back then because
all of them sat in the front. It was a jubilation. It was a joy.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We had won self-respect. We had forced the white man to give what we knew was a part of our own citizenship. And so, we had
won back. And if you have never had the feeling to feel that this is not the other man’s country and you are an alien in it– but that
this is your country, too– then you don’t know what I’m talking about. But it is a hilarious feeling that just goes all over you, that
makes you feel that America is a great country. And we’re going to do more to make it greater.