XI.

The Battle for Civil Rights:

Political, Cultural and Legal
Fronts
-
- W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk (TCAR pp. 9-14)
- Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” (Urofsky pp.
228-32)
- Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address
 African Americans during
Reconstruction
• Amendments XIII-XV adopted after the Civil War: 13th –
slavery outlawed (1865); 14th – U.S. citizenship & equal
protection of the laws (1868); 15th – right to vote (1870);
ratification of 14th Amendment becomes condition for southern
states to be readmitted into the Union;
• Freedman’s Bureau (est. 1865), a federal government agency
to assist former slaves; active in education, public health,
employment; nationwide alphabetization; originator of many
public & private African American colleges (e.g. Howard
University, Fisk University etc.); sharecropping – one
economic solution for blacks, but plantation owners retained
their land and means of production;
• Widespread poverty among southern blacks causes mass
migration to urban areas up North;
 Post-Reconstruction Racial
Discrimination
• Reconstruction and black people’s
advancement opposed by such forces
as paramilitary organizations like the
White League & the Ku Klux Klan;
• Jim Crow laws adopted since the
1870s – 1965 (state laws) to enforce
racial segregation and discourage
freedmen from voting: e.g. poll taxes
& literacy tests
• Lynchings and other crimes were
perpetrated against black citizens,
white social activists, and
Freedmen’s Bureau agents
(especially in the Deep South, i.e.
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, and South Carolina)
 Literacy Tests
Source: The Civil Rights Veterans Website
(http://www.crmvet.org/info/lithome.htm)

• A typical Alabama "test" consisted of three-parts:

• In "Part A" the applicant was given a selection of the Constitution to read aloud. The registrar could assign a long
complex section filled with legalese and convoluted sentences, or he could select a simple one or two sentence section
(see Alabama Literacy Test for examples). The Registrar marked each word he thought you mispronounced. In some
counties, you had to orally interpret the section to the registrar's satisfaction. You then had to either copy out by hand a
section of the Constitution, or write it down from dictation as the registrar spoke (mumbled) it. White applicants
usually were allowed to copy, Black applicants usually had to take dictation. The Registrar then judged whether you
"literate" or "illiterate." His judgement was final and could not be appealed.
• In Parts "B" and "C," you had to answer two different sets of four written questions each. Part "B" was 4 questions
based on the excerpt you had written down. Part "C" consisted of 4 "general knowledge" questions about state and
national government.
• Your application was then reviewed by the three-member Board of Registrars — often in secret at a later date. They
voted on whether or not you passed. It was entirely up to the judgment of the Board whether you passed or failed. If
you were white and missed every single question they could still pass you if — in their sole judgment — you were
"qualified." If you were Black and got every one correct, they could still flunk you if they considered you
"unqualified."
• Your name was published in the local newspaper listing of those who had applied to register. That was to make sure
that all of your employers, landlords, mortgage-holders, bank loan officers, business-suppliers, and so on, were kept
informed of this important event. And, of course, all of the information on your application was quietly passed under
the table to the White Citizens Council and KKK for appropriate action. Their job was to encourage you to withdraw
your application — or withdraw yourself out of the county — by whatever means they deemed necessary.

• ALSO SEE: The Impossible Literacy Test (Louisiana; source: Slate Magazine):
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test
_louisiana.html?utm_source=tw&utm_medium=sm&utm_campaign=button_chunky
 African American Responses to Racial
Discrimination
• Booker T. Washington, black social activist and author of Up
from Slavery (1901; founder of Tuskegee Institute, Alabama)
emphasized self-improvement of African Americans through
labor skill acquisition; not opposed to segregation: “In all
things that are purely social we can be as separate as the
fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual
progress”
• Most African American leaders actively opposed segregation;
Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equally good facilities such as
buses etc.; 1896) results in “separate but equal” constitutional
doctrine (repudiated in 1954: Brown v. Board of Education;
declared segregation of public schools unconstitutional, thus in
a sense but not entirely overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, which
was never explicitly totally overruled);
 W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
• An earnest and angry voice that
spells out the blatant racism of
American society, militating for
equal rights
• First black man to get a
doctorate from Harvard
• Professor of sociology, history,
and economics at Atlanta
University
• Black activist (one of the
founders of the NAACP)
 From The Souls of Black Folk
• Highly critical of the gradualism and accomodationism of previous
leaders of the black movement, particularly Booker T. Washington
• The Black man in America is “born with a veil, and gifted with
second-sight in this American world, —a world which yields him no
true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the
revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-
consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that
looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—
an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength
alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
 The Harlem Renaissance
• 1918 = record number of black lynchings in the American South
(following the rising popularity of the Ku Klux Klan). => many black
people moved North
• 1919 = race riots in Chicago and elsewhere
• The New Negro/Harlem Renaissance is a literary movement that
started after the end of WWI and continued up to the beginning of the
Great Depression (1929)
• The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People, founded 1909) published Crisis Magazine, an important
platform for black writers and activists
• Charles S. Johnson published Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life,
which kept track of black literary productions
• “New Negro” literature was influenced by spirituals, jazz and blues
• Expressing the fight for equal civil rights of the black community.
 Post-WWII Civil Rights
Developments
• 1954, sentence in the case Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation in schools
• 1964, The Civil Rights Act ended segregation in all public sectors all over the US
• Rosa Parks incident in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955; bus boycott ends in victory; Martin
Luther King, Jr. rises to prominence; Christian love, civil disobedience, and peaceful resistance,
his principles in the battle for civil rights;
• The 1963 March on Washington; King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; passage of Civil Rights Act
(1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965; purpose: to prevent individual states from keeping black
voters from exercising voting rights); King assassinated in 1968;
• Other approaches to civil rights movement: Nation of Islam (Malcom X, assassinated February
21, 1965) and the Black Panther Party proposed violent resistance (1966-1982); Black Power
Movement also in art and literature: “black is beautiful”;
• Watch this Malcolm X vs. Martin Luther King, Jr. debate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4PqLKWuwyU

• Watch Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=vP4iY1TtS3s
• Affirmative action programs start in the 1970s.
• Today: #BlackLivesMatter (activist organization that started in the wake of the murder of
Trayvon Martin by George Zimmermann//Florida, stand your ground//Feb. 2012// and his
acquittal in 2013)
Photograph Title: “Title: The racist dog policemen must withdraw immediately
from our communities, cease their wanton murder and brutality” (Huey Newton
seated in wicker chair, 1967); poster below, right, by Emory Douglas
“The Black Panther” newspaper,
featuring activist Angela Davis
 “I Have a Dream”
• Given during the March on Washington (250,000 people, 1963)
• Begins by paying tribute to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
and his Emancipation Proclamation: “But 100 years later the Negro still
is not free.”
• References the broken promises of the Declaration of Independence
and the U.S. Constitution
• The black man is “an exile in his own land”
• American democracy is in debt to the black man, who was delivered “a
bad check,” marked “insufficient funds.”
• Stresses the urgency of the granting of equal rights: “I have a dream
now.”
• Speaks against the violence of the Black Panther Party
 Rhetorical Strategies
• Repetition of key-terms such as “freedom”
• Anaphora: “Now is the time”//” Go back to Mississippi, go back to
Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to
Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities,
knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.”
• Metaphors: “This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of
freedom and equality.” etc.
• Appeal to religious arguments and biblical references (King was a
Baptist minister). Important: Galatians 3:28 (“There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female:
for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
 Multiculturalism
• Multiculturalism not only acknowledges difference (along the lines
of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation), but seeks to
promote and celebrate it; it appears as a desideratum in American
universities following the Civil Rights Movement and the Student
Protests of the 1960s;
• In society and politics, multiculturalism is about identity politics,
equal representation, affirmative action, political correctness;
• As an academic movement, it aligns American identity with the
paradigm of transnational power relations, it is concerned w/
curricular reforms, literary canon expansion, rise of new academic
domains (women’s studies, area studies, gay studies, African
American studies, etc.);
• Mainstreaming of multiculturalism and its appropriation by the official
discourse;
 Globalization or Americanization?
• Cultural globalization in the footsteps of economic
globalization (international trade, international law, world
financial institutions, simultaneous introduction and rapid
spread of new technologies, internet and communications,
multinational corporations);
• U.S. prominence on world stage means the country is
widely associated with globalization (for better and for
worse);
• Reaction and resistance to globalization often take the
form of anti-Americanism; controversial U.S. foreign
policy plays an important role.
 Donald Trump’s Inaugural
Address
• January 20th 2017, will be remembered as
the day the people became the rulers of this
nation again.
• The forgotten men and women of our
country will be forgotten no longer.
• Everyone is listening to you now.
• From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.
• From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.
• Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs,
will be made to benefit American workers and American families.
• We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries
making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.
Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.
• We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it
shine as an example for everyone to follow.
• We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the
civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will
eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.
• And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept
plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart
with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same
almighty Creator.
• Together, We Will Make America Strong Again.
• We Will Make America Wealthy Again.
• We Will Make America Proud Again.
• We Will Make America Safe Again.
• And, Yes, Together, We Will Make America Great Again. Thank you, God
Bless You, And God Bless America.