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GRP1, Section Q10 Billy Kras and Student Alias 1 The Civil Rights Movement in 1955 The Civil Rights Movement refers to the political, social, and economical struggle of African Americans to gain full citizenship and racial equality. Although African Americans began to fight for equal rights as early as during the days of slavery, the quest for equality continues today. Historians generally agree that Civil Rights Movement began with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 and ended with the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Despite the 14th and 15th constitutional amendments that guarantee citizenship and voting right regardless of race and religion, southern states, in practice, denied African Americans the right to vote by setting up literacy tests and charging a poll tax that was designed only to disqualify them as voters. In 1955, African Americans still had significantly less political power than their white counterparts. As a result, they were powerless to prevent the white from segregating all aspects of their lives and could not stop racial discrimination in public accommodations, education, and economic opportunities. Following the 1954 Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, it remained a hot issue in 1955. That year, however, it was the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till that directed the nation’s attention to the racial discrimination in America. Till was an African American schoolboy in Chicago, and he went to visit his uncle in Mississippi. He reportedly “wolf whistled” at a white grocery store attendant, Mrs. Bryant, and was kidnapped by her husband and her husband’s half brother that following night. The boy’s body, terribly battered, with a bullet hole in the head and a cotton-gin fan affixed to the neck with barbed wire, was found three days later in Tallahatchie River. The two half brothers, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were quickly arrested and charged with murder. They admitted to the kidnapping of Till but claimed that they released Till afterwards. An all-white jury heard the evidence against Bryant and Milam and found them not guilty for murder. The trial resumed one month later, and Bryant and Milam were not even indicted for kidnapping. The brutal killing of the African American boy received large amounts of media coverage. The process of the whole trial was reported in magazines such as Time, Newsweek, New Republic, and the Nation, just to name a few. While most magazine articles gave similar information about the main story and the trial, they differed more notably in what supporting information to disclose and how facts were interpreted. For example, an article in Newsweek, published after the murder trial of the Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, notices a peculiar statistical fact about the political power of the people in Tallahatchie County. It says that there were 11,000 white people and 19,000 black people in the county, but not a single African American out of the 19,000 was registered to vote (Newsweek, “The Place” 24). Published on the same date, an article in the Time magazine not only acknowledges the absence of a single black voter in the county, but it appeals for sentiments by quoting the Till’s mother’s caution to Till that he should “be careful…to humble himself to the extent of getting down on his knees” because he did not know the reality of discrimination in the South (Time, “Trial” 18). However, some writers were more unsympathetic about the slaying of the black boy. Dan Wakefield, in his article in the Nation, hints at the possibility that the whole story was nothing but “a plot against the South” (284). He quotes John Whitten, the defense’s last speaker, as saying that “a sinister group is trying to the social order of the South and widen the gap which has appeared between the white and colored people in the United States” (Wakefield 285). Later, upon the jury’s verdict that the white men were not guilty for murder, he comments that the decision “evidently help close the gap between the white and colored races” (Wakefield 285). This was a sharp contrast to other popular magazines, which regretted the court’s decision (Time, “”Ill-Chosen” 21; Newsweek, “No true” 34; New Republican 5). The death of Emmett Till suggests that African Americans would be in great peril if they broke the de facto segregation. It also shows that James Baldwin does not exaggerate in his essay “Notes of a Native Son,” where he says that he “could have been murdered” after attempting to assault a white waitress in a white-only restaurant (72). The murder of Till certainly caught the attention of the American public, but it was the Montgomery bus boycott that ignited the Civil Rights Movement. On December 1, 1955 a woman named Rosa Parks finally stood up to the Jim Crow laws that declared the “separate but equal” doctrine. Mrs. Parks was riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama when she was asked to give up her seat to an oncoming white passenger and move the back of the bus. Instead of complying like most blacks did during the time, she refused and did not move until she was arrested. Her arrest caused the black community to boycott the bus system. The manager of the bus company “said that ‘several thousand’ Negroes rode the bus system on a normal day” (Buses, 31). This caused an enormous loss of revenue for the bus system causing them to have to raise rates (Negros’, 71). 115 people including Rosa Parks were indicted on charges related to the boycott. The grand jury, which ironically was composed of “seventeen white men and one Negro,” said that the primary cause for the tensions between whites and blacks in the south are the segregation laws and the attacks on them by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They even stated that they “‘intend to maintain’ separate facilities in schools, public transportation, and elsewhere” New York Times (Alabama Indicts, 1). This goes to show that the issue was not even receiving a fair trial because the jury was biased before the trial even started. The Blacks said that the boycott was the Whites’s faults and the Whites said that it was because of the Blacks and refused to change the laws. (Alabama’s Boycott, 84) All of this caused major unrest and tension between the two races in the south and all over the country. The boycott gave way for the rise of another prominent figure of the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a local reverend that took charge of the movement in the area and eventually became a champion of the national civil rights movement. As a result of the court cases that followed the boycott and the actions of Rosa Parks, segregation in the south began to fall starting with the segregation on public transportation. The events that took place in Alabama influenced the entire nation including James Baldwin. James Baldwin uses an approach to speak about black and white tensions that reflects how Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were able to accomplish so much in the Civil Rights Movement. In a very similar fashion to Rosa Parks, a young woman named Sara Keys refused to give up her seat to an oncoming white passenger while riding a bus in North Carolina. Keys was not arrested but instead all of the passengers boarded another bus and the driver refused to let Keys board the bus (Newsweek. 5 Dec 1955). Very few people have ever heard of Sara Keys even though almost everyone has heard of Rosa Parks. This is because of how the public responded to the events. The only people that knew of Sara Keys were the ones that were on the bus with her. She was not in a state where racial tensions were extremely high nor was a lot of attention drawn to the event. In contrast, Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her seat happened in an area where tensions were high and although the event itself received little attention, the boycott that resulted received enormous amounts of attention and the court cases that were a result of the boycott received even more attention. Baldwin seemed to notice this and followed the same path best he could. Instead of publishing his work to a local paper where only a few people would read it, he chose to instead publish it in “Ebony” where millions of black readers (people who actually cared about the subject) read what he had to say. Baldwin called out to blacks to stand up for what they believe in. By publishing his work in places that would receive attention from those that agreed with him, he in a way paved the path for a “boycott” and a protest against the way that blacks were treated. He fueled the civil rights movement by calling out to blacks to demand equal rights and fight against the injustices that blacks experienced everyday because of the whites. Just as Rosa Parks brought attention to the unfair treatment that blacks received, Baldwin told stories about the unfair treatment he and his family received. Although not immediately evident Baldwin used a specific strategy to affect society with his writing by publishing it where it would be seen and read by people who cared about the issue. Martin Luther King Jr. said that he modeled the boycott of the bus lines after the techniques of Gandhi (Alabama’s Boycott, 88). In much the same way Baldwin modeled his strategies for his writing after Martin Luther King Jr. Works Cited Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1995. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84. “Trial by Jury.” Time 3 Oct. 1955: 18-19. “The Place, the Acquittal.” Newsweek 3 Oct. 1955:24+ Wakefield, Dan. “Justice in Sumner: Land of the Free.” The Nation 1 Oct. 1955: 284-285. “Ill-Chosen Symbol.” Time 21 Nov. 1955:21 “No True Bill.” Newsweek 21 Nov 1955:34 “No Remedy in Law.” New Republican 21 Nov 1955:5 Newsweek 5 Dec 1955. 5 “Alabama’s Boycott: What its all about.” US News and World Report 3 Aug 1956: 84-88 “Buses Boycotted over Race Issue” New York Times 6 Dec 1955: 31 “Negroes Boycott Cripples Busline” New York Times 8 Jan 1956: 71 “Alabama Indicts 115 In Negro Bus Boycott” New York Times 22 Feb 1956: 1
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