{"id":127,"date":"2021-04-02T02:57:48","date_gmt":"2021-04-02T02:57:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/?p=127"},"modified":"2021-04-02T03:00:41","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T03:00:41","slug":"the-civil-rights-movement-is-remembered-as-a-heroic-struggle-against-injustice-led-by-charismatic-men-that-is-not-the-whole-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/the-civil-rights-movement-is-remembered-as-a-heroic-struggle-against-injustice-led-by-charismatic-men-that-is-not-the-whole-story\/","title":{"rendered":"The civil rights movement is remembered as a heroic struggle against injustice led by charismatic men. That is not the whole story."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The civil rights movement is remembered as a heroic struggle against injustice led by charismatic men. That is not the whole story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King\u2019s soaring\u00a0rhetoric\u00a0and Malcolm\u2019s unflinching social\u00a0critiques\u00a0have supplanted recollection of the significant work performed by legions of local leaders, whose grassroots organizational style more closely resembled the efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and other contemporary social justice groups to build movements\u00a0full of leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0iconic images\u00a0of 1950s and 1960s Black protesters marching, kneeling and being arrested while dressed in their \u201cSunday best\u201d illustrated the\u00a0respectability politics\u00a0of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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American Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., flanked by Rev. Ralph Abernathy (center left) and Nobel Prize-winning political scientist and diplomat Ralph Bunche (center right) during the third Selma to Montgomery, Alabama march for voting rights, March 21, 1965.\u00a0PhotoQuest\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Get facts about coronavirus and the latest research.<\/em>\u00a0Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These efforts, designed to cultivate white sympathy for civil rights activists, relied on conformity with\u00a0patriarchal gender roles\u00a0that elevated\u00a0men\u00a0to positions of visible leadership, confined\u00a0women\u00a0to the background and banished\u00a0LGBTQ individuals\u00a0to the closet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the movement could not have happened without the extraordinary leadership of Black women like veteran organizer\u00a0Ella Baker. Baker\u2019s model of grassroots activism and empowerment for young and marginalized people became the driving force of the\u00a0Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, and other nonviolent protest organizations, past and present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Flyer announcing a Youth Leadership Meeting, that was to be held at Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 15-17, 1960, and bearing the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ella J. Baker, the president and executive director, respectively, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, April 1960.\u00a0New York Public Library\/From the New York Public Library\/Smith Collection\/Gado\/Getty Images).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The decentralized structure of the current movement builds on this history of grassroots activism while working to\u00a0avoid replicating\u00a0the entrenched\u00a0sexism\u00a0and\u00a0homophobia\u00a0of an earlier era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amplifying voices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

SNCC transformed lives by recognizing talent and empowering marginalized people. As Joe Martin, one of the organizers of a student walkout in McComb, Mississippi,\u00a0recalled, \u201cIf you had a good idea it was accepted regardless of what your social status was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ella Baker, NAACP Hatfield representative, Sept. 18, 1941.\u00a0Afro American Newspapers\/Gado\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Endesha Ida Mae Holland, a teenage prostitute, found purpose as a SNCC field secretary, organizing and leading marches in Greenwood, Mississippi. Facing down Police Chief Curtis Lary \u201cmade me feel so proud,\u201d she\u00a0recalled, and \u201cpeople start looking up into my face, into my eyes\u201d with respect. Holland went on to become an award-winning\u00a0playwright\u00a0and distinguished\u00a0university professor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Lives Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors also encourage strategies that place marginalized voices at the center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elevating \u201cBlack trans people, Black queer people, Black immigrants, Black incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people, Black millennials, Black women, low income Black people, and Black people with disabilities\u201d to leadership roles, they\u00a0wrote, \u201callows for leadership to emerge from our intersecting identities, rather than to be organized around one notion of Blackness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black women\u00a0and\u00a0teens\u00a0have played a critical role in organizing, leading and maintaining the momentum of recent protests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kimberly Jones\u00a0captured the nation\u2019s attention\u00a0with an impassioned\u00a0takedown\u00a0of institutional racism and debates over appropriate forms of protest. After repeatedly breaking the social contract to keep wealth and opportunity out of reach for black communities, Jones concludes, white Americans \u201care lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women have organized family-friendly demonstrations, including the \u201cBlack Mamas March\u201d in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a \u201cBlack Kids Matter\u201d protest in Hartford, Connecticut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six young women, aged 14 to 16, organized a peaceful protest attracting more than 10,000 people in\u00a0Nashville, Tennessee, while 17-year-old Tiana Day led a march on the\u00a0Golden Gate Bridge\u00a0in San Francisco.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Seventeen-year-old Tiana Day leads a march on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, June 6, 2020, to protest the death of George Floyd.\u00a0AP Photo\/Jeff Chiu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Full of leaders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The adaptive \u201clow ego\/high impact\u201d leadership model, in which leaders serve as coaches helping groups build their own solutions, has become popular among current social justice organizations, but it is not new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baker\u00a0encouraged\u00a0civil rights organizations to \u201cdevelop individuals\u201d and provide \u201can opportunity for them to grow.\u201d She praised SNCC for \u201cworking with indigenous people, not working for them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about where your leaders are,\u201d\u00a0former SNCC organizer\u00a0Robert Moses\u00a0reflected. \u201cIf you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Campaigns are\u00a0exhausting\u00a0and external recognition as a \u201cleader\u201d can take a heavy toll. Spreading leadership around helps to protect any one person from becoming a\u00a0target\u00a0for retaliation while advancing a stream of talent to rise as individual energy wanes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning from a citizenship training program in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1963,\u00a0Fannie Lou Hamer\u00a0was\u00a0arrested and severely beaten, leaving her with permanent injuries. Holland\u2019s mother died when their house in Greenwood, Mississippi, was\u00a0bombed\u00a0in 1965 in retaliation for her activism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil rights worker\u00a0Anne Moody\u00a0recounted\u00a0how the physical and psychological toll of constant harassment by white supremacists in 1963 forced her to leave a voter registration drive in Canton, Mississippi, saying \u201cI was on the verge of a breakdown\u201d and \u201cwould have died from lack of sleep and nervousness\u201d had she stayed \u201canother week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2017\u00a0interview, Erica Garner, who became a tireless campaigner against police brutality after her father, Eric Garner, died from a New York police officer\u2019s chokehold in 2014, echoed Moody\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m struggling right now with the stress and everything. \u2026 The system beats you down to where you can\u2019t win,\u201d she said. Just three weeks after that interview, Erica Garner\u00a0died\u00a0of a heart attack at the age of 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparisons to the romanticized cultural memory of charismatic leadership in the Civil Rights Movement devalues the hard work of today\u2019s activists \u2013 as well as those who worked hard outside of the limelight in the earlier movement. Social change \u2013 then and now \u2013 derives from a critical mass of local work throughout the nation. Those who cannot find leaders in this movement are not looking hard enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The civil rights movement is remembered as a heroic struggle against injustice led by charismatic men. That is not the whole story. King’s soaring rhetoric and Malcolm’s unflinching social critiques have supplanted recollection of the significant work performed by legions of local leaders, whose grassroots organizational style more closely resembled the efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","hide_page_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.whatistandfor.co\/humanrights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}