Blog #4 Rights Movement Tactics

The different social rights movements of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s all employed a variety of tactics with which to help their cause. All of the different methods chosen to make people aware of what that movement was trying to accomplish seemed to be a direct reflection of the group leader’s personality and beliefs. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and Richard Oakes stand out due to their influence during these times. Other tactics were employed depending on the principles and goals of the groups using these tactics. The SNCC, Black Panthers, CORE, MAPA, and AIM each had different goals that they wanted to accomplish, and each group adopted different tactics to reach their goals.
I think that the African-American civil rights movement of the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s had the greatest variety of tactics used in their struggle for true equality. Men like Martin Luther King Jr. used a non-violent approach to civil rights that many of his fellow rights movement brothers thought to be too “low impact” or not radical enough, contrary to what most whites thought, which was that King was very radical. King’s non-violent protests, marches, and boycotts worked well to bring African-American civil rights into the spotlight to force the U.S. Government to deal with them, and his tactics did it in a way that would show people just how rational and civilized African-Americans were, and at the same time made the white southerners trying to stop him look like crazy, unjust, fanatics. In the end, the work he did and the way in which he did it earned him a Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom among many other awards and distinctions.
Malcolm X chose words to make people aware of the injustices facing African-Americans in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. The speeches he gave were very powerful and moved many people and united them in their fight. Although sometimes his words got him into trouble some of the time, he kept up his public speaking until he was assassinated just before he was about to speak at a protest in 1965.
Stokely Carmichael was an African-American man who embraced more physical and confrontational methods of making an impact. Carmichael adopted very separatist views and was heavily vocal about “Black Power”. After Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Carmichael was part of a riot that ruined downtown Washington D.C. and brought a very negative impact on their cause and was also very ironic since they were rioting for the respect of a man who would have condemned the violence caused by the men causing it.
Richard Oakes was smart and went about his business as an activist by doing things that would attract lots of media attention and at the same time, call out the U.S. Government in a way that they almost had to agree or they would look bad. A leader in the council for the occupation of Alcatraz Island, Oakes put the U.S. Government in a Catch 22 that took months for them to find a way out of. Alcatraz made people realize that American Indians weren’t going to be pushed around by the government anymore and it also helped unite many Indians in the common fight for civil rights.
Among all these tactics, the more confrontational, militant tactics of groups like the Black Panthers were probably the most debated. Many African-Americans thought this would be the way in which to get the recognition they needed in which to further their cause. However, it also put a negative feel in the civil rights movement because it reinforced the brutish, savage stereotype they had been fighting for so long to get rid of. The rights movements of the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s may not have worked without this variety of methods employed. Each different tactic focused on a different group of people creating a larger unity. None of the men and women fighting for their rights would have been able to do it on their own, so even if they did not all agree with each others principles, they still very much needed each other.

Blog #3 The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was something that seemed to become a reality when African Americans realized that they could be something more than the white man’s servant. They also began to realize that they were needed for more than picking cotton. They, along with the other minorities, helped build America, did the work white men did not want to do, and were also viable consumers that whites depended on for business. They could see the hypocritical views that the government had when it came to making laws and policies dealing with race. It seemed that when it came to the finer things, Anglo Americans were people, not African Americans, but when it came to taxes and other negative things, all of a sudden, African Americans and the other minorities were citizens, and should be included. The Jim Crow laws came about, and even though the U.S. Constitution said differently, they were treated without any respect, and lived in a lot of fear, with lynching’s occurring all over when any African American dared to become something more than what the white man thought he should be. The attitude of the whites doing the lynching, especially in the south was really unnerving, you could tell they felt as if they were doing little more than putting down a wild dog.
When World War II started, African Americans along with many minorities saw this as a chance to prove that they could stand equal with their white fellow Americans and fight for their country. At first the African Americans were not taken as real troops, but as cooks, cleaners, and other jobs that only supported the real troops. Once they were accepted as fighting men however, they still could not be pilots, tank drivers, or other jobs that required an intelligence that whites did not perceive African Americans to have. They also saw that in Europe, they were instantly treated as equals, and wondered how this could be when in their home country, they were treated as much less. Time and time again, African Americans broke down these barriers, and with each one gained a little more pride for themselves, and also showed them that there were more rights they could have if they were willing to fight for them.
Once the war was over, they returned home expecting to have finally won the respect of their fellow Americans, but quickly realized that they were wrong. Having fought in the war for freedom, they were insulted that they were still heavily discriminated against at home. They realized that there was going to be another war fought; this one to secure their full rights as Americans, and also as people. Many things in everyday life that whites took for granted were not even available to African Americans and it wasn’t right. The decided to dig in and even though they knew it was going to be a long battle, they pushed ahead constantly through beatings, bombs, and hate for the things they had never had before.

Blog #2 Nativism in America

As America was growing in the 19th and 20th centuries, I think there was more than one opinion as to what Nativism meant. To the white Americans, that didn’t seem to include the American born children of immigrants. To them, they were supposed to be the work force that did the dirty work that would help achieve the American dream and Manifest Destiny. Americans did not want these future miners, factory workers, railroad workers and farm laborers to take the better, privileged jobs that the “real” Americans should have. They were not meant attend schools and become lawyers, doctors, or politicians, but quietly fade into the background as civilized Americans enjoyed the fruits of these foreigners labor. As the population of American born children of immigrants grew and began trying to get educations and better paying jobs, white Americans saw this as a problem and knew thy had to do something to change what it meant for these next generations of Africans, Indians, Mexicans, Irish, Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish to assimilate themselves into mainstream American society. White Americans did this by creating laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act, Burke Act, and Alien Land Law, along with using tactics like taking land, putting restrictions on the number of incoming immigrants or not allowing family of the immigrants at all, or wage cuts that almost guaranteed the entry of these young adults into manual labor to help their family.
To the American born children of immigrants however, Nativism and their assimilation into American society meant something different altogether. In their minds, they should be awarded the same privileges any other American born citizen were afforded. Most of them spoke better English than they did their own language, and were more accustomed to the practices and culture of America than their own countries which they had never even seen. They had grown up in America and watched their parents work themselves to the bone for Americans, why shouldn’t they be able to get an education and obtain the same jobs as white Americans? As this generation was growing up, most embraced the American way of life as their own. They were converting to a Christian religion, speaking English, and dressing like civilized Americans. They bought into the American dream, thinking that if you followed the rules, worked hard, and got an education, you could own land or get a better job than the one your parents had to do. These young people wanted the things that were guaranteed to the white Americans so easily but not to them. Contrary to the opinion of the whites, these young men and women felt that they were Americans, and full citizens, and should be eligible for the same privileges as their American bothers and sisters.

Blog #1 The Formation of Race

When the British settlers first came to America and saw the Native Americans, they saw what they thought was a primitive, infantile people. Because of the “brutish” and primitive ways of the Native Americans, they were called savages. Once they were labeled as such, the British settlers felt they could help these savages by trying to civilize them, and teach them to farm, convert them from their pagan religions, anything else that might make them more like the white man. Along with the savage Native Americans, the settlers also saw all this great land that wasn’t being used to its full potential. The settlers set out to farm this land, at first with the help of the Native Americans. It never seemed to occur to the settlers that they were trespassing on lands that were already owned. Instead they rationalized that these natives needed some sort of guidance, and that the best way to help was to settle there and take land for themselves. Once they started getting comfortable, they began to see how great this land was for farming, and as more and more settlers came over, they wanted more and more land.
At the same time, with these growing colonies, they needed labor, and while at first that need was filled by indentured servants, it soon became apparent that more workers would be needed. Shortly after, Africans were being brought over by the shipload in which to meet this demand for labor. Once these black workers arrived though, how should they be governed, and what rights did they have? They took what looked like the easiest road – none. To do this though, they needed a reason, since they themselves went to America for freedom. They had to separate themselves from these people, and “race” was the most obvious difference. Because they looked different, talked different, and acted different, African Americans must be inferior, which meant they were not worthy of rights or freedom. The same differences made it possible for Native Americans to be pushed off of their land. They were not smart enough to use it properly as the white man could; therefore he was more entitled to it.
As whites took over more and more land, and buying more and more slaves, they began to rationalize the taking of land and slaves so that it was “scientific”. It became widely known that slaves were inferior scientifically; their brains were smaller making them far less intelligent, and were also physically inferior. At one time, the settlers thought that the Native American may be able to be civilized, and many attempts were made by both races. But once again, whites found themselves in need of the land that the newly “civilized” Native Americans possessed, and then decided that the Indians were in fact, savages, making their land available to white colonists.
All the time these settlers were making these rationalizations, they never seemed to consider that they were doing the same thing to Native Americans and African Americans that was done to them by the British. Even when the Declaration of Independence was written, saying all men were created equal, they could talk themselves into not including the other races in that equality.