Perspectives from historical leaders resound about current calls for racial justice
The recent protests and riots sparked from brutal police behavior toward blacks compel us to look at the historical roots of these issues and how they were perceived by previous African American leaders.
In the wake of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass denounced systematic oppression and segregation as obstacles to true peace and liberty.
Excerpt from THERE WAS A RIGHT SIDE IN THE LATE WAR, speech delivered at Union Square, New York City, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1878:
“Fellow-citizens, I am not here to fan the flame of sectional animosity, to revive old issues, or to stir up strife between races; but no candid man, looking at the political situation of the hour, can fail to see that we are still afflicted by the painful sequences both of slavery and of the late rebellion. In the spirit of the noble man whose image now looks down upon us we should have ‘charity toward all, and malice toward none.’ In the language of our greatest soldier, twice honored with the Presidency of the nation, ‘Let us have peace.’
“Yes, let us have peace, but let us have liberty, law and justice first. Let us have the Constitution, with its thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, fairly interpreted, faithfully executed, and cheerfully obeyed in the fullness of their spirit and the completeness of their letter. Men can do many things in this world, some easily and some with difficulty; but there are some things which men cannot do or be. When they are here they cannot be there.
“When the supreme law of the land is systematically set at naught; when humanity is insulted and the rights of the weak are trampled in the dust by a lawless power; when society is divided into two classes, as oppressed and oppressor, there is no power, and there can be no power, while the instincts of manhood remain as they are, which can provide solid peace.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized the flagrancies of racial segregation, and advocated strongly for peaceful, constructive advocasy as a means of enacting change
Excerpt from LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 16, 1963:
“Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial ‘outside agitator’ idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.”
Expert from I HAVE A DREAM, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963:
“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children...
“But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.”
Malcolm X took a staunch stand against integrative policies, and instead championed for a separate state for black people
Excerpt from “Racial Separation”, Malcolm X, 1963
“Has the government effort to bribe our people with token integration made our plight better; or has it made it worse? When you tried to integrate the white community in search of better housing, the whites there fled to the suburbs. And the community that you thought would be integrated soon deteriorated into another all-Black slum. What happened to the liberal whites? Why did they flee? We thought that they were supposed to be our friends. And why did the neighborhood deteriorate only after our people moved in?
“It is the tricky real estate agents posing as white liberal friends who encourage our people to force their way into white communities, and then they themselves sell these integrated houses at such high prices that our people again are forced to take in roomers to offset the high house notes. This creates in the new area the same overcrowded conditions, and the new community soon deteriorates into the same slum conditions from which we thought we had escaped. The only one who has benefited is the white real estate agent who poses as our friend, as a liberal, and who sells us the house in a community destined by his own greedy schemes to become nothing but a high-priced slum area.
“We believe in a fair exchange. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A head for a head and life for a life. If this is the price of freedom, we won’t hesitate to pay the price.
“By trying to oppose the divine solution that God has given to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the American government will actually provoke another Civil War. That is, this government – and especially that present administration in Washington, D.C. — will provoke a civil war among whites by trying to force them to give up their jobs and homes and schools to our people. And our people will provoke a race war by trying to take the white man’s jobs and his schools and his home away from him.
“This racial dilemma poses a serious problem for white America. Civil war between whites on the one hand, a race war between the whites and their 20 million ex-slaves on the other hand. And the entire dark world is watching, waiting to see what the American government will do to solve this problem once and for all.
“We must have a permanent solution. A temporary solution won’t do. Tokenism will no longer suffice...Twenty million ex-slaves must be permanently separated from our former slavemaster and placed on some land that we can call our own. Then we can create our own jobs. Control our own economy. Solve our own problems instead of waiting on the American white man to solve our problems for us.”
A glimpse into the atmosphere and actions of the Birmingham civil rights movement underlines the tenacity of advocates for integration
“Freedom Now!”, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963. Transcript of Pacifica Radio Documentary
ANNOUNCER: Pacifica Radio presents "Freedom Now!"
(Music: "I've Got a Job.")
ANNOUNCER: Forty days of organization and demonstration by the combined forces of the integration movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King culminated in the most significant turning point in the entire history of the struggle for racial justice in the United States.
RALPH ABERNATHY: Birmingham is on the front pages. It is on every radio station. It is seen today all over the world. The movement of freedom that is going on in the world today has somehow leaped over the head of the state troopers. And it fills the heart of every black American today, fills the hearts of those on the plantations of Mississippi and the swamps of Louisiana, in the fields of Georgia, in the hills of Alabama, and in this magic city of Birmingham. And we are going to continue here until the victory is won. (Applause.)
ANNOUNCER: Birmingham was chosen as the target of the integration movement, because, said Martin Luther King, Birmingham is the symbol of segregation. The demonstrations were planned the preceding winter when King was in the city holding workshops in nonviolent action. They began the first week in April, 1963, as an effort to bring about the desegregation of the downtown area. For four weeks the Birmingham effort followed the pattern of earlier integration campaigns in the South; however, two innovations changed the picture. They demonstrated in mass numbers, and even more important, the masses were principally composed of grammar and high school children. And on May 3rd, precisely one month after the campaign began, violence began to shake Birmingham from its complacency. Adult bystanders, already angered at the arrest of the children, came off the sidelines hurling bricks and bottles when the Birmingham police turned police dogs and high-pressure water hoses on the youthful demonstrators. Birmingham's jails were beginning to overflow and Negro leaders were threatening to empty the schools and fill the jails.
Gay Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin argues that in addition to mass action, democratically-driven policy is integral to register lasting change
Speech By Bayard Rustin, Fourth Annual SNCC Conference, Washington, D.C.,
December 1, 1963
“We are giving all of our attention to the integration of schools and this in part good. But the fact of the matter is there are to be segregated schools for some long period in many, many areas of this country no matter how hard we try to get rid of it. And therefore we are equally in crisis because in our effort to integrate nobody, but nobody is giving any attention to the abysmal education of the millions of [African Americans] who are trapped in integrated schools, and who by any stretch of the imagination can in great masses get out of it.
“So that everywhere we look there are more [African Americans] unemployed now then there were last year. And there will be more unemployed next year than this year. The fact of the matter is we have been as it were slowed down, at every point we are in grave difficulty. Why? This is true for many reasons but one of the great and important reasons is that we do not as black people and a handful of white people represent with all of our enthusiasm the political and economic strength to contend with the forces who are against us, who possess a tremendous deal of political and economic strength.
“Secondly, we are in this problem because the movement has been broadened to include the fight for freedom on levels, particularly jobs, where you touch great forces, and where the problem becomes economic. If in Montgomery you want to get into a bus there is room in that bus for you. And therefore a limited degree of social dislocation can get you a seat in that bus. Or if you want to be able to eat as you travel there are seats in those restaurants. And if you are thorough going and are prepared to go to prison and make a mountain of dislocation about it, you can be accomodated. But when you touch the problem of jobs you face a totally different job because you can not be accommodated to that which does not exist.
“And I come to what I think therefore is the profound need of the movement. And that is a perspective which is political, historical, and economic. Study, study, read, thinking to see that if you are truly talking about integrated schools and jobs-- but if these things can not be brought about without profound social change, then we must think in terms of not merely mass action, but a political program, the enticement of allies which will make it possible for us to see that in addition to talking about opposition to segregation and discrimination, we are talking more fundamentally about opposition to many of the assumptions held in the society and the institutions which are constructed on those assumptions.”
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