HST5317: Race in the US: Slavery to Civil Rights-Take-home Exam
By: Jayden Fitzgibbon
Resistance took a variety of forms for African Americans over the centuries. Starting with passive, day-to-day protests of slaves in Virginia and the mid-Atlantic, resistance soon escalated into non-violent campaigns led by Civil Rights leaders, while cultural and violent resistance was also prominent during the Reconstruction and Civil Rights movements. For many enslaved people, the initial perception of slave labour in Colonial America was one of economic prosperity, where under the promises of ‘indentured servitude’ in 1619, workers would be provided access to transport, food, clothing, and shelter. However, bondmen soon realized they were not only being employed by landowners as a cheap source of labour for the production of cash crop commodities such as cotton and tobacco, both central agricultural commodity of the state of Virginia; but also exploited for their ‘inferior’ race, where they became the subjects of violent oppression from slave masters under chattel slavery.
Enslaved black people, therefore, employed a variety of methods for challenging this injustice. Many became fugitive slaves, where they resorted to running away without the permission of their masters, and even marrying and having children. Eventually, however, passive resistance was stamped out by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which prohibited enslaved people from abandoning their labour duties according to Article 4, Section 2, of the U.S Federal Constitution. By the twentieth-century, non-violent protests led by black activists such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. propelled the Civil Rights Movement, where people of all races joined in marches, sit-ins, and protests, in opposition to racial inequality. More ‘radical’ leaders such as Malcolm X, engaged in alternative violent acts of resistance which propelled black nationalism, and rejected the more moderate aims of MLK for liberal integration. In the long-term however, violent resistance was limited by its inability to force whites to pass Civil Rights legislation. King, on the other hand, had been successful in collaborating with white liberal politicians in the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and Voting Rights Act in 1965. Therefore, non-violent resistance carried the most historical significance as it promised the protection of 'legal' rights, and pressed white elites to pass five federal laws and two amendments within the Constitution, which went a long way in ending Jim Crow segregation.
On the one hand, historians David Waldstreicher and Billy G. Smith consider individual acts of everyday resistance in the eighteenth century mid-Atlantic as equally, if not more promising for the destabilization it caused, than collective forms of resistance in the late-colonial American South.[1] Indeed, many engaged in acts of disguise and resistance on Southern crop fields, such as sending slaveowners in the wrong directions or working at a slow pace which limited productivity. Both acts of resistance were important as part of a wider assertive resistance of running away from plantations, and escaping bondage. Starting off with individual acts of protest, fugitive slaves became common to eighteenth and nineteenth century resistance. As they learnt to challenge the system of indentured servitude, they benefitted widely from the print culture of Benjamin Franklin, and developed a more quintessential cosmopolitanism as ‘confidence men’. For example, as many fugitive slaves were well-travelled, they developed multilingual skills and an intellectual status similar to that of ordinary freedmen, after being predominantly illiterate. Hence, the seventeenth-century Colonial period marked a minor protest movement for the establishment of freedom and equality, where slaves became more hopeful of discovering their Afro-American culture through greater access to literature and history.
However, the Fugitive Slave Act was introduced by Congress in 1793, to prohibit runaway slaves from escaping white control by imposing penalties on them. This controversial Act destroyed the unique aspects of black identity by supressing intellectual progress, and instead propelling the customs and values of white Americans to devalue the 'slave identity'. Therefore, whilst slave resistance had significant promise in bringing the widespread issue of slavery to the attention of Congress, it had not yet united enslaved people in a nationalist movement to challenge the status quo as seen with the Civil Rights Movement.
Similar to slave resistance in the Colonial period, non-violent protest was also adopted by political activists of the Civil Rights Movement. Leaders such as Pauli Murray, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, were just some of the many activists who inspired campaigning and marches to end racial discrimination, often in the forms of residential segregation, segregation from public spaces, and protesting against disenfranchisement. For instance, Murray was one of the first female civil rights activists who publicly portrayed her opposition to Jim Crow segregation in the American South, by boarding a bus from Virginia to New York city in the 1940’s, where she sat in the ‘white only’ section. While Murray was arrested for her public protest and not prioritised by the NAACP at the time, her individual protest inspired black female activists to engage in resistance against double oppression from sexual and racial discrimination, and coined the concept ‘Jane Crow’ segregation. It was Murray’s remodelling of civil rights protest that inspired figures like Rosa Parks, who similarly refused to give up her seat to white passengers fifteen years later in 1955, and was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama. Parks’ protest signified the beginning of a 13-month resistance movement of non-violent protests known as the ‘Montgomery Bus Boycott’, which was organised by the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and led by Civil Rights figurehead, Martin Luther King. The MIA was an important initiative which set the groundwork for further civil rights protests, after forcing the Supreme Court to vote to end segregated busing in 1956.
In addition, MLK also led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organisation founded in 1957, after the events of Montgomery. The SCLC and King were important both on a community and national level in organising non-violent resistance movements and boycotts to challenge the Supreme Court, and improve social conditions for African Americans. SCLC projects like the ‘Crusade for Citizenship’ of 1958, and ‘Poor Peoples Campaign’ of 1967, aimed to double the number of African-American voters in the South, while also inspiring mass demonstrations in response to unemployment, housing shortages, and poverty. ‘The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’ in 1963, for example, formed the core of the SCLC’s mass protest campaigns, and was initiated after King’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech, where he encouraged 250,000 people to engage in non-violent direct action. While there were pitfalls to the social activism as the SCLC struggled to gain a foothold in black communities and churches in the early years of their existence due to white supremacist pressure from the WCC and KKK, the expansion of grassroots resistance proved a defining turning point in Congress’ decision to pass important legislation including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In turn, this ‘legally’ ended racial segregation in public spaces and education throughout the South, as well as granting African Americans enfranchisement which seemed an impossible feat in the Colonial era. Overall, the protests of civil rights leaders including Pauli Murray and Rosa Parks had true potential and promise, and were fundamental in inspiring MLK and the SCLC to lead mass protest campaigns for the quashing of racial inequality in education, the workplace, and society.
Whilst the non-violent collaborationist policies of MLK and other civil rights leaders accomplished a significant amount for black nationalism, there was still opposition from the more militant groups. For example, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), both argued that MLK and the SCLC were too moderate in their approach to resistance against whites. Prior to the March on Washington in 1963, the SNCC and CORE had mobilised themselves for non-violent direct action in support of MLK’s protests. However, in response to the passing of civil rights legislation, student activists adopted a much more assertive approach to resistance against white supremacists and politicians, with the aim of furthering reforms in education. Former SNCC members and college students, Heuy Newton and Bobby Seale, were important in the radical transition away from non-violent protests to violent Anti-Racist demonstrations, and founded the ‘Black Panther Party’ in October 1966.
The Black Panther’s were a leading political party who contested civil rights protests, and propelled ideologies of violent self-defence and black nationalism during the Black Power Movement which developed much optimism and promise amongst the black community. As with the SNCC, a select number of CORE’s leaders became affiliated with violent direct action and supported the ‘Deacons for Defence and Justice’ in their armed self-defence against the Ku Klux Klan. James Farmer for instance, attempted to incorporate black nationalism into CORE’s resistance, and was heavily inspired by the ‘Nation of Islam’s’ vision of ‘Black Power’. In Malcolm X, the leader of the NOI’s speech in 1963, “A Message to the Grassroots”, he outlined the Black Power Movement’s intention to inspire racial solidarity amongst the black youth, emphasising the shared African culture and heritage, and unity under a common struggle. He did not directly support radical sections of the Black Panther Party, but was clearly opposed to MLK’s non-violent protests, and aimed to achieve significant reform. While housing and education did improve in the following centuries with middle-to-upper class black households increasing from the 1970’s-2000’s, poor blacks continued to live in poverty, with U.S schools remaining largely segregated and poorly funded.[2] Therefore, whilst Malcolm X and other militant leaders inspired violent resistance amongst students and radical thinkers, violent direct action was not an effective, long-term solution for achieving societal reform and racial equality.
Cultural and intellectual resistance, in the form of black nationalism, the post-war Harlem Renaissance and Great Migration were important in depicting African Americans as intellectual and sophisticated beings. Historian Chad Williams, for instance, discusses the vanguard of the ‘New Negro’ as an example of the growing awareness of ‘global democracy’ among black veterans during the Reconstruction period. For instance, many joined revolutionary organisations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), expressing opposition to ‘systematic discrimination during military service, exposing tensions between race, manhood, and citizenship.’[3] This period marked the beginning of the Great Migration from 1916-70, where as many as six million African Americans migrated from the rural South to the industrial North in search of employment. By participating in organisations such as the NAACP, performing jazz, and creating art in the city, many black Americans were able to develop a new modernist aesthetic and identity for themselves. As well as this, mass migration and abandonment of rural responsibilities in the South, allowed blacks to gain better jobs in the post-war period of economic depression. Therefore, cultural forms of resistance where African Americans were productively seeking their own cultural and class identity in the city, proved a significant challenge to the status quo. In response, Franklin D. Roosevelt passed his ‘New Deal’ from 1933-39 as President of the United States in an attempt to take the country out of economic depression, and went some way to ending racial inequality. Consequently, cultural resistance placed white authorities under intense pressure to issue labour laws that outlawed discrimination and recognised Afro-American heritage, however like eighteenth-century slave resistance was only a step towards the Civil Rights Movement and equality.
In conclusion, slave, non-violent, cultural, and violent forms of resistance were all adopted by black Americans in response to white radicalism and racial segregation throughout the centuries, but were not always effective in achieving their social and political aims. For example, everyday protests from slaves and fugitives who tried to escape their plantations were easily punished by white slave masters in the Colonial era. However, it did place pressure of the federal government to issue legislation such as the Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, and gave promise to the cause of equality. Similarly, cultural resistance was a decisive turning point after the First World War as it gave African Americans a distinct cultural identity from which to resist white suppression, but likewise was limited by its lack of impact on the passing of federal laws. Even in the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement, non-violent resistance was not always successful as seen by Parks arrest in 1955, and MLK’s arrest in 1963 following protests for equal rights in Birmingham. However, more so than violent resistance adopted by militant organisations such as the Black Panthers, and student movements like the SNCC, the non-violent collaboration between MLK and white liberals, accomplished vital legislative changes in Congress such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. While blacks were still discriminated against after this legislation was passed, it provided the groundwork for substantial social and economic reform throughout the South. Therefore, a combination of resistance across the centuries contributed to a vast improvement in black’s lives, and established the framework for the Civil Rights to enforce legislative and political changes to end inequality.
Notes: [1] Smith, B.G., “Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region during the Revolutionary Era,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995), 199-230. [2] Williamson, J.A, “The Black Panther Party’s Educational Programs”, Counterpoints Vol. 237, Black Protest, Thought, and Education (Oxford: Peter Lang AG, 2005), JSTOR, p.138 [3] Williams C.L., “Vanguards of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post- World War I Racial Militancy”, Journal of African American History 92, no.3, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p.351 Bibliography
Smith, B.G., “Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region during the Revolutionary Era,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement, (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995)
Williams C.L., “Vanguards of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post- World War I Racial Militancy”, Journal of African American History 92, no.3, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
Williamson, J.A, “The Black Panther Party’s Educational Programs”, Counterpoints Vol. 237, Black Protest, Thought, and Education (Oxford: Peter Lang AG, 2005), JSTOR
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