The Civil Rights Movement began when Rosa Parks, a middle-aged seamstress who was simply tired after a long day at work, refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The ensuing bus boycott lifted a young minister, Martin Luther King Jr., to become the leader of a movement to gain civil rights for southern blacks. Using the philosophical principles of non-violence he had learned from Gandhi, King led a series of large-scale marches and protest campaigns, including the historic March on Washington during which he gave his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of the following year, the movement finally achieved its goal of securing racial equality in the South.
This popular version of the Civil Rights Movement, enshrined in public memory and school curriculum around the country, has come under attack by a new generation of historians who have sought to add greater complexity to the heroic story of the civil rights struggle. In Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement, Emilye Crosby has compiled a series of essays from this group of revisionist scholars who argue that the civil rights movement has been misunderstood by most Americans.
While not questioning the importance of national leaders like King, they have delved deeper to see how the movement played out in the various counties across the South. These historians argue, quite persuasively, that this local perspective reveals the flaws and simplicity of the popular narrative of the movement.
For example, take the notion of non-violence, that most sacred principle of King and his followers. In her essay “It Wasn’t the Wild West,” Crosby points out that most African Americans in the South did not subscribe to the philosophical principles of Gandhi, but rather used non-violence as a tactic, if at all, while always reserving the right to defend themselves against white violence. In places like rural Mississippi, gun ownership was common among blacks and whites, and advancements in civil rights were always played out against this mutually understood fact.
Perhaps the best argument about the poverty of our public understanding of the Civil Rights Movement comes in Jeanne Theoharis’ essay about Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. These two iconic figures, who died just a few months apart in 2005 and 2006, received unprecedented public memorials. But in both cases, most of their careers were ignored in the numerous tributes and eulogies.
In popular memory, Parks was just a tired woman who did not want to give up her seat; in reality she was a long-standing activist, who had been trained at the Highlander Folk School and whose commitment to racial justice guided her life and career until her death.
Coretta Scott King was not simply a dutiful wife, but rather was a longtime peace activist who pushed her husband to come out against the Vietnam War. While she ended her own autobiography with her husband’s death, Coretta spent the next four decades continuing to fight against injustice and war. When looked at closely, the careers of these celebrated women are far more compelling that the bit parts they are given in the civil rights narrative.
Also, as these scholars show, the civil rights timeline is all wrong. Instead of the movement essentially ending with the landmark legislation passed in 1964 and ’65, in many places, the struggle for freedom was just getting started then. Both Crosby and J. Todd Moye show that public challenges to white supremacy only begin in places like Claiborne and Sunflower County, Mississippi after President Johnson signs the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It was all well and good for congress and the president to pass these laws, but it was up to what John Dittmer calls “local people” to ensure that they would be enforced in the rural parts of the Deep South.
Also, these scholars argue that the movement did not end in the 1960s, or even the 1970s. To them, the struggle for racial justice continues today, even in an era where Barack Obama was elected president. As one learns from this book, don’t just look at the top, but examine the counties and towns across the country, where the wide disparities in income and education between blacks and whites continue.
In the end, Crosby and her colleagues seek to change the way the civil rights movement is taught and understood in America. Crosby points to the seminal PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize” as an example of how to incorporate local people and their stories into the history of the movement. Like this documentary series, Crosby and her colleagues seek to reach out beyond the ivory tower and reshape the popular narrative with the local stories they have gathered.
To this end, Civil Rights History From the Ground Up is a good start. Its essays, both engaging and readable, challenge the reader to rethink their assumptions about the movement and to understand that the story is much more complicated and interesting that they ever imagined.
Join us Tuesday evening at 5.30 for a visit with Emilye Crosby, author of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up.
Thank you to Dr. Stuart Rockoff for kindly sharing his review with Lemuria Blog. He currently serves as the Vice-President of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and is working on a general history of Jewish life in the South.
Comments are closed.