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Civil Rights Movement (Introductory) – Transcript
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- The National Constitution Center class focuses on the civil rights movement of the 1900s, particularly the 1950s and 1960s time period.
- The NAACP was founded in 1909 to promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among United States citizens.
- The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren issued a unanimous decision in Brown versus the Board of Education.
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Okay, here we are. Welcome everybody. My name is Curry Sner. I'm the chief learning officer at the National Constitution Center. And today's class is all about the civil rights movement of the 1900s. So, we're going to dive deep into it, really focus on that 1950s, 1960s time period and going to walk through some major organizations, some fascinating people, and some major changes to our constitution. and to do this great work in this class. Today we
are here with all of you, but also one of our top scholars, Tom Donnelly. Tom, would you like to say hi to everybody? Hi everyone. Thanks so much for being here. We are kicking off the new year with our favorite topic, the civil rights movement. Dive into it, or I guess your second favorite topic, Tom, even though I always think of the reconstruction era and the civil rights movement as something that's intertwined in can't separate them. Um, so I thought we'd start off a little differently today.
And this, um, image was on our website. It was promoting the class. And I I love this image because when you talk about civil rights, this is not an image that pops up into most people's heads. They usually see the March on Washington, which this is a part of the March on Washington, but they see the forward facing, the um, the reflecting pool, MLK, people marching, those big pieces.
What I love about this is like kind of the casual nature of before the shot is taken, how they look. But there was one worry I had about this. I want you guys to look, and this is not a hard question, so don't don't overthink it.
When you look at this, and you think about the civil rights movement, and I always like to do this with primary sources, who's missing who's missing from this primary source, this image? We'll give you guys a second to answer. Thank you, Roberta. There you go. in the chat. Anybody else can answer in the chat as well? Give you one more minute.
But women, women are missing from this image. So when we're talking about civil rights, we need to make sure that we understand who are the main players and also who are the players that we may not have heard of and women are a huge part of this. Oh, Cheryl, good one. Some local leaders. There's some national leaders here, but how many local leaders are here as well? Tom's going to walk us through all these faces. tons of amazing women, tons of amazing local leaders and
some of the local leaders that started small and then became national leaders and how that process worked over years. So, I think it's an important way to kick off whenever we look at history. We should look at a primary source and say what's going on in this moment, what was happening. I like to think about what conversation those two guys are having right there because it looks really interesting. Um, but also who's missing from the image, from the story, from the source. So Tom, we have so many questions about the civil rights
movement and we can dive right into it, but maybe you started off with the big idea. What's the big idea behind this fight for civil rights in the 1900s? Absolutely. So I mean, I think one of the things we always like to go back to when it comes to the civil rights movement is that one way to understand the civil rights movement is as realizing the promise of our nation's founding creed. So our nations conceived in liberty, the Declaration of
Independence, advances of promise of freedom and equality. We wrote that promise into our Constitution in various ways. But we know for far too long that promise wasn't realized for many Americans, especially African-Americans.
And so the story we're going to tell today is all about the story of how we changed our Constitution and America to better live up to those ideals of the Declaration of Independence. What we'll see is there's no single person. It's no single person that does it. It's not a single moment. But it's a really extended period of time. And it takes a combination of ordinary Americans, social movements, movement leaders, the Supreme Court, the president, Congress,
all of those various entities and people working towards the same goal in order to bring big change to the United States. So good, Tom. That's a fantastic way to set this up. This takes a long amount of time, years and years and generations of people pushing for change at every single level of the system and tons of groups and people. So, one of the most powerful ways to make change is for
singular people to work together. What's the Margaret me line? Five great people can change the world. Something like that. I'm butchering it a little bit. So, let's start with four great people that are highlights of the NAACP. This is our first organizational group. What is the NAACP? Tell us about its history and we're going to go through all the different groups and how they work together over time to make constitutional change.
Yeah. So the NAACP it's founded in 1909. So even there you can see we often think of the civil rights movement is made mostly the 1950s and60s. The NAACP is older than that. Its mission you can see right there on their screen is to promote equality of rights and eradicate cast or race race prejudice among citizens of the United States. They wanted to do it at the ballot box. So with voting, in the courts, in in our in our schools, at work. And so really
throughout American society, their big vision was that what you see at the end of the charter there, that quote, they wanted complete equality before the law. What an inspiring mission that is. The NAACP brings together some really, really important figures. So you can see them on the screen here. Beginning at the bottom left, we see Ida B. Wells.
And so she's a courageous journalist and civil rights figure. She studied white violence in the south in the 1890 late 1890s uh in the early 1900s. So much of what we know about violence against African-Americans in the south during this period comes from her courageous journalism. She helped found the NAACP.
But then there's also Web Deo who was one of the great public intellectuals in American history. was the first African-American to earn a PhD at Harvard and he was also the author of among many things an amazing book called Black Reconstruction which tells that that story of post civil war America through the prism of how African-Americans continued to fight for change. So that's web de boys. Couple of other key figures with the NAACP's
founding, Mary White Oington, who was a suffragist, a journalist, and again a co-founder of the NAACP. And finally, there's Morfield Story, who was a lawyer from Boston and NAACP's founding president from 1909 to 1929.
And I I just want to pull out and we're going to hear this over and over again the first amendment talking about freedom of the press with IDB Wells as a writer um and with Mary White Overington as a journalist as well. How much of this movement is utilizing all different parts of the first amendment? So pulling that out as we drive through. But let's look, you know, part of the first amendment is the freedom to assemble and to and to talk to others about what you
believe and protest. And I always think of a positive non-violent protest and think of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. So let's through this group. Yeah. So the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in many ways maybe the most prominent organization in people's minds when it comes to the civil rights movement. It's associated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It's founded in uh 1957. And so some of the key players here, you know, you see you have you have Dr. King. Again, the
central tenant of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is nonviolence. So nonviolent direct action and some of the key figures there's Dr. King but there's also you can see here in the bottom lefthand corner Ella Baker who had an amazing five decade career in the civil rights movement. She largely worked behind the scenes as an organizer and she really tried to get the movement to focus on two big things. One was to make sure that it wasn't just a top- down organization but was also from the
grassroots up from the ordinary people upward pushing for change. The other is to make sure that the civil rights movement wasn't just run by men, but that women would have a powerful voice in leadership within the movement as well. Some other key figures in this organization were Ralph Abernathy, who was a Baptist minister, a close friend and mentor to Dr. King. He worked with Dr. King on the Montgomery bus boycott.
And he also became the president of the organization after King's tragic assassination. There's Fred Shuddlesworth who was also a minister from Birmingham and a co-founder of the organization and ally of Dr. King. And finally, there's Bayard Rustin who is this really cool figure who's both he's both a theoretician and an actor. He's a man of action as well. So he's a trailblazer of nonviolent direct action.
So those big principles that undergur the civil rights movement, he taught those principles to Dr. King, but practically HE WAS ALSO A great organizer. He organized the freedom rides and he also organized a lot of the logistics around the March on Washington. Yeah, Cheryl and I were just sharing in the chat like amazing human being like dive deep into some of his memoirs and some of his autobiographies and biographies really really fascinating.
Now another group that we look at as a huge group that made movement is uh Congress for racial equality. Sure. So it's it's formed in 1942. Its big mission is to quote bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or ethnic background. So, it's a really ambitious goal. Some of its key players are James Farmer, who's committed to non-violence.
He also organized the first freedom ride. Uh there's also George Hower, who's a Methodist minister. And finally, Bernice Fischer, who was based in Chicago and has been called the godmother of the sinnin movement.
Fantastic. And now we're going to uh leadership conference on civil rights. Sure. So this they're also known as LCCR. It's founded in 1950. Their big role in the movement was to organize big national legislative campaigns. So think about big laws passed during the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Leadership Conference is doing a lot of the organizing at the national level.
Some of the key figures here are Rory Wilkins who was active from the 1930s all the way up to the 1970s. So a very long career in the movement. We see a Philip Randolph who was a key labor organizer. And finally Arnold Harrison who was the executive director of the group from 1950 to 1980. He worked with Randolph to help lobby FDR to end racial discrimination in various contexts and he also helped to plan the March on Washington.
Fantastic. Now, Mandy asked a great question and I think it's perfect to share during this next group as well. So, we're going to talk about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee um and we can talk about boycott sitins and she wanted to understand what are who were the Freedom Writers and what did they do?
Absolutely. So yeah, we could definitely So the Freedom Writers, we're going to talk about them a little bit later as well, but these they're these amazingly courageous civil rights uh uh uh uh activists during the 1960s who take interstate take buses interstate from the north into the southern states. And their goal is to desegregate buses and the bus terminals all throughout the south. So they're trying to attack Jim Crow segregation headon. They use non-violent direct action to do it. And
it's an amazing act of courage. I mean, it's a reminder again for the civil rights movement. We see brilliant people. We see persistence, but there's also just physical courage for these civil rights organizers understanding that they're going from the north down into the segregated south. They're going to be met with violence. They're going to meet that violence with nonviolence.