Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did

Fascinating read, really fascinating. First hand knowledge is priceless.

The author, in my opinion writes a brilliant and bold perspective about what Dr. King did. To talk about ending the silly behaviors that were taught so 'white people didn't go berserk' is true.

How does one 41 year old white female come to terms with what her grandparents did? I don't know. There are many stains on the US history. Dr. King helped eliminate the stain from spreading or continuing.

E

This is a really good seed, glad you found it. I was young then, I heard what the young people were doing and saw some of it on TV., but true awareness didn't occur until later.

The viewpoint of the author is one I had not ever thought about and I can see where he is coming from. Really, this created a whole different perspective for me. I have always admired King but now I think I understand a little bit more what his actions meant. Thanks.

i have a rebuttal to some of the points stated by the author in the article.

1) the article presents the non violent actions of king as a solitary achievement rather than the well thought out strategy of a group of associated african american men.

2) the article does not mention how the creation of the plans for implementation of the non violent strategy were devised

3) and continuity of the strategy was maintained.

it presents martin luther king as a parody of the american false idol the "rugged individualist" with but a faint mention of james farmer.

what about other civil rights martyrs like medger evers who was assassinated before king and showed how to keep fighting even with the knowledge of potential imminent death?

what about the fact that nonviolent tactics were being practiced by other groups.

there is a complete omission of the role that women played in the lead up to and events of the civil rights movement.

women who in a much earlier time risked death for doing civil rights work.

http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1997/3/97.03.10.x.html

Paving the path was the work accomplished by Ida Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell. Both women lived in Memphis, Tennessee, as young women but it wasn’t until much later that their lives would cross. Mary Church Terrell was born into the black elite of Memphis, on September 23, 1863, while Ida Wells-Barnett was born to former slaves in Holly Springs, Mississippi, on July 16, 1862. Both her parents were ardent believers in education and sent their children to school as early as possible. Unfortunately, Wells-Barnett’s parents died in a yellow fever epidemic that swept through Mississippi in 1878. Having passed the teacher’s exam, Ida supported her five siblings on a monthly salary of $25. After a year of teaching in Mississippi, she took two of the younger children to Memphis where she secured a teaching position at a higher wage. In 1884, she had her first physical encounter with Jim Crow. On a segregated train, Wells-Barnett refused to move to the segregated car and she was forcibly removed. She won a case in the local courts against the railroad but the ruling was reversed by the state supreme court.

Being an ardent reader, Wells-Barnett eventually started writing for local black newspapers. After the lynching of friends of hers, she wrote scathing articles about lynching. She concluded that lynching was a racist device for eliminating financially independent black Americans. The newspaper offices were destroyed and threats were made against Wells-Barnett’s life. She moved to New York City and continued her expose of lynching. She toured Europe trying to bring international pressure to bear on the United States to end segregation. She was one of two black women to sign the call for the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909. Later she broke with it because of its predominantly white board and its timid stance when confronting racial issues. Ida Wells-Barnett believed agitation, activism, and protest were the only means of change in the United States. She was one of the first black leaders to link the oppression and exploitation of African Americans to white economic opportunity. She believed that black citizens had to organize themselves and take the lead in fighting for their own independence. Her death in 1931 came a little too early to see the fruition of her work.

Mary Church Terrell on the other hand led a very different life from Wells- Barnett but came to the same conclusions. Not encountering racism until she was sent to school in Ohio, Terrell resolved to excel academically to prove the abilities of African Americans especially black women. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1884, Terrell moved back home to Memphis with her father. He expected his well-educated and talented daughter to be a social hostess until she married. After only a year, Terrell accepted a teaching position at Wilberforce University in Ohio and then at M Street Colored High School in Washington, D.C. It was here that she met Robert Heberton Terrell, the only colored graduate of Harvard University in 1884. They were married in 1888 and were together until Robert’s death in 1925.

Between 1888 and 1896, Terrell was faced with two major decisions. First, as an intellectual, she had to decide whether to remain in the United States, where she would not be judged by her abilities but by her race and gender. Second, as a woman, she had to decide whether to accept the Victorian ideal that a woman’s place is in the home. At that time, married women could not teach school. Terrell decided to tour Europe. She returned to the U.S. as an advocate for racial elevation.

In 1890, Terrell spoke about black women’s handicaps, that of race and gender, at the National Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C.. She acknowledged that white women have a great handicap—that of gender to overcome but black women have a dual handicap—that of gender and race that must be addressed. Terrell worked for suffrage and interracial understanding and cooperation but her greatest contributions came in the field of the black club movement. Terrell was instrumental in forming the National Association of Colored Women and establishing socially progressive institutions such as kindergartens, day nurseries, and Mother Clubs. She began to move from an approach of black self-help to one of interracial understanding, advocating education as the way to this understanding.

By the last two decades of her life, Mary Church Terrell moved from the club movement to becoming a militant activist. Her most notable militant action was her leadership of a three-year struggle to end segregated public eating places in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s. Terrell employed picketing and boycotts to call attention to racial injustice. Her actions led to the 1953 Supreme Court decision that ruled that segregated eating facilities in Washington, D.C. were unconstitutional. Two months after the Supreme Court ruled on Brown v. Board of Education, Mary Church Terrell died.

Mary McLeod Bethune was a contemporary of Wells-Barnett and Terrell. Their paths crossed many times, sometimes working together and sometimes not. Bethune’s origins, strong Negroid looks, and personal religious faith took her along a different path.

Mary McLeod Bethune was the fifteenth child born to Patsy and Samuel McLeod but the first one to be born free. Her birth on July 10, 1875, marked a start of a new era for the McLeod family. Mary had a burning desire to learn to read but no one in her family could read because it had been against the law to teach a slave to read. When the opportunity arose, the McLeods wanted all their children to attend school but could only afford to send one, Mary. She walked five miles each way to Trinity Presbyterian Mission School where she was an excellent student, teaching family and neighbors what she had learned at night. After completing the mission school, Mary earned scholarships to Scotia Seminary in North Carolina and later to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

During the next eight years, Mary married Albertus Bethune and had one son, Alburtus McLeod Bethune. But Mary wanted to start a school of her own. There were too many black children who lived in areas without schools. She wanted more black children to have an opportunity to learn.

With only $1.50 in cash, Mrs. Bethune and her five year old son went to Daytona, Florida. There she founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls. Through determination and shrewd business skills, Mrs. Bethune guided the school into a fully accredited four year liberal arts college known today as Bethune-Cookman College. Along the way, Mrs. Bethune came into contact with some of America’s most prominent philanthropists and industrialists. This only angered many who tried to terrorize her with the horrid antics of the Ku Klux Klan. But Mrs. Bethune’s faith and determination kept her going.

In 1909, on a fund raising trip, Mrs. Bethune attended the National Association of Colored Women’s conference in Hampton, Virginia. Bethune asked to address the group. After her impassioned eloquent speech, a collection was taken up for Bethune’s school. Madame C.J. Walker, a black millionaire, volunteered to help direct a fund-raising campaign and Mary C. Terrell prophesied that Bethune would one day head the organization. By 1924, Terrell’s prediction had proved correct. Bethune beat out Ida Wells-Barnett for the presidency.

In 1927, Bethune was the only black invited to a luncheon meeting of the National Council of Women. The meeting was held at the home of New York’s Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. When it came time to sit, a perceptible tension filled the room. Who would sit next to a black woman? The Governor’s mother, Sara Roosevelt took Mrs. Bethune by the arm and led her to a seat between herself and her daughter-in-law, Eleanor Roosevelt. This was the start of a long and lasting friendship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod Bethune.

In 1935, Bethune founded the National Council of Negro Women “to open new doors for our young women (which) when (it) speaks, its power will be felt” and President Roosevelt appointed her to the Advisory Board of the National Youth Administration. At age sixty, Bethune was finally in a position as a college president, national organization president, and advisor to the president of the United States to forward her four passions: race, women, education, and youth. She deftly maneuvered the administration of FDR to place these passions on the national agenda for the first time in the history of black Americans.

Mary McLeod Bethune continued working for social justice, dying shortly after the Supreme Court announced their decision in Brown v. Board of Education. She left a message that is inscribed on a statue of her in Washington, D.C. that reads, “I leave you faith, I leave you hope, I leave you love.”

In 1938, Pauli Murray, a young black women, wrote to the president and sent a copy of her letter to Mrs. Roosevelt who personally answered her. This was the beginning of a long and prickly friendship. Pauli Murray never hesitated to question or to challenge Mrs. Roosevelt to do more for the American Negro. Murray wrote in her autobiography:

In 1940 she (Mrs. Roosevelt) had not yet become fully aware of the extent to which all Negroes suffered almost daily humiliations and how bitterly we felt about these injustices. She was deeply compassionate . . . I think her gradual rise to her position as foremost champion of human rights came slowly and painfully, and that her greatness developed out of her capacity for growth through difficult experiences and from her unflinching honesty with herself and others.(2)

Ella Baker has been described as a leader behind the scenes but not a leader to be ignored. Without her work and dedication many ordinary people might never have been exposed to either the civil rights or women’s movements. Born on December 13, 1903, in Norfolk, Virginia, Baker grew up in Littleton, North Carolina where she knew the horrors of Jim Crow first hand. Fortunately her family saw that she learned at an early age the qualities of courage, ambition, the ability and desire to work hard, and a love of education. These are qualities that Baker relied on and utilized all her life. These same qualities are ones that we would want instilled in our children today. If children come to school with these qualities, we need to reinforce them and if they come without them we need to instill them, no matter what our personal beliefs are. Baker’s family was not rich but they saw that all three children were educated. Baker graduated from Shaw University in North Carolina in 1927. The only career open to educated black women in the South at this time was teaching. Since Baker did not want to be a teacher, she moved to New York City where she discovered that again teaching was the only career open to her. Instead of teaching she became a waitress, factory worker, and newspaper reporter. The Harlem Renaissance was in full swing when Baker arrived in New York City. She found an excitement in meeting different people and being exposed to many different philosophies. Then the Great Depression forced Baker to rely on one of her earliest lessons, that is, we all must care for other people. Many people, particularly marginally employed people lost their jobs and needed help to survive. Baker worked with groups of people teaching them how to buy in bulk and share the goods. Coops were formed with Baker’s help and guidance. Baker went to work for the Works Progress Administration and then for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She was involved in many aspects of social change.

The NAACP had developed a reputation in some underdeveloped areas of this country as an organization that was only concerned with the middle class educated Black community. Baker traveled throughout the deep South dispelling that myth. She was an early believer in grassroots organization. She was able to communicate with all people and help them do what they felt needed doing. She aroused in people a sense of strength in numbers and in a common goal. Baker broke with the NAACP over its hierarchical leadership structure in the early 60s. She helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and paved the way for creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee along with organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Anne Butler, who was a college student in 1966, has written that Baker was “ a civil-rights activist,” whose philosophy was “strong people do not need strong leaders that do not allow for all to participate.” Baker believed in building strong people and creating harmony between members of a group. When Ella Baker died in New York City on December 13, 1986, her importance to the civil rights movement was recognized nationally. But today, when children think of the civil rights movement, they tend to only think of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We as educators need to introduce our students to other strong workers like Ella Baker who contributed significantly to the civil rights movement.

and this leaves out people such as the great fanny lou hamer. an african american woman who was non consensually sterilized by the state of mississippi as part of a state program to reduce the number of poor black people in that state. she became a civil rights force of nature helping to create the mississippi freedom democratic party, of which she became vice chair, which fought to be the officially recognized delegates to the democratic convention in 1964.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fannie_Lou_Hamer

On June 9, 1963, Hamer was on her way back from Charleston, South Carolina with other activists from a literacy workshop. Stopping in Winona, Mississippi, the group was arrested on a false charge and jailed. Once in jail, Hamer and her colleagues were beaten savagely by the police, almost to the point of death.
(this was five years before dr. king's death on 4/04/1968).

for the record while dr. king was widely respected in the african american community nationally, but because of the different regional manifestations of how racism was practiced in america the fight against racism had to be regionally responsive. in the west his methodology, even acknowledged by his own speeches and writings, would not have been effective.

american racism has two manifestations

colonial-the races of all castes live close and the acts of racism that were committed were done by the community members in a ritualistic manner meant to preserve different castes.

in the west the racism was

neocolonialist-the upper castes of the caucasian race did not live close to the other classes and castes they oppressed. they relied on members of the other classes and races they could manipulate through flattery, bribes and a pseudo facsimile of inclusion. these people jobs were to maintain control of the other members of the race/class. they were backed by brutal military styled police whose jobs were to maintain control through murder, fear, and terror tactics. the gestapo police did the warrant less intrusions, the stop and demean, the harassment and intimidation of the "others". a large number police officers were lured from the south to police cities like oakland, ca in the west. these were brutal racists who would not hesitate to kill women or children. in this situation the non violent approach could be contained with little notice or news coverage using deadly force on nonviolent women and children and men. the use of deadly force was routine and had happened to peaceful students and minorities.

the treatment of malcolm x was likewise shortshrifted. malcolm's journey was as influential in his time as martin, more influential than maritn in the west coast.