UNIT 9 READING PACKET The following information will help you to better understand some of the topics that we will discuss and read about. There are some discussion questions that relate to these readings. They will be due the day of our unit test. You should answer the questions in one area of your notebook so that you can hand in all of the answers together. Answers will be graded for quality.

The Civil Rights Movement The Problem As the Civil War ended legislation was enacted to protect the rights of Black Americans. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868, says that "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges…of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." In other words, all citizens should be treated equally by the law. The Fifteenth Amendment, passed in 1870, says that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any other state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Sadly, even though these laws were on the books, the United States did not truly protect the Civil Rights of Black Americans. Many southern states enacted laws that segregated society and denied blacks the right to vote. These laws were called Jim Crow Laws (Jim Crow comes from a theatrical performance where a white man would paint his face black and act foolish to entertain the audience. Thus, Jim Crow became synonymous with black). States adopted poll taxes and unfair literacy tests to prevent blacks from voting. Tragically, by the 1920s over 3000 African-Americans had been lynched. A lynching is an illegal execution of a criminal or "trouble-maker." Lynching is usually carried out by a mob. In the north, even though there weren't segregation laws, blacks faced significant discrimination. Even the Supreme Court accepted, and in a way, promoted segregation. In 1896, Homer Plessy challenged segregation on the grounds that it violated the 14th amendment. The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs. Ferguson that separate facilities were legal as long as they were equal. This gave legal backing to Jim Crow laws. Of course, the separate facilities were NOT equal. Schools and other public facilities for blacks were almost always inferior to those of whites. The impact of discrimination can also be seen in the military. During both World Wars, the US military was segregated. During World War I, the Marines refused to accept African-Americans and the Navy and Army mostly used them for labor--not for combat. During World War II, African-Americans were still not allowed to join the Marines or the Air Force. The Navy only allowed blacks to enlist for mess (food service) duty. The army used more African-American troops, but strictly limited their roles. By the end of the war, the need for soldiers allowed thousands of African-Americans to volunteer for combat duty. As World War II ended, Black Americans faced a great number of problems:  Most white Americans felt that Blacks were inferior—they did not want to live in the same neighborhoods, they did not want their children playing with black children, they certainly did not want to hire blacks for anything but low-level labor.  Schools for black children were inferior to those for whites  African-Americans faced segregated and inferior public housing, facilities and transportation  Most southern blacks were denied the right to vote, couldn’t serve on juries, or run for elected office  African-Americans were the victims of violence and threats (e.g. KKK)  Police brutality was a major problem

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Discrimination prevents blacks from gaining professional or higher paying jobs Blacks experienced high rates of poverty (a result of all of the above) Many national politicians were afraid of upsetting southern voters, so they ignored these problems.

Clearly, this situation was unfair and in need of drastic change. This set the stage for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

 DISCUSSION QUESTION 1: If you were a leader who wanted to “fix” this, where would you start? What would you do?

MARTIN L. KING - "I HAVE A DREAM" SPEECH I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon of hope to millions of slaves, who had been seared in the flames of whithering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the colored America is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the colored American is still sadly crippled by the manacle of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the colored American lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the colored American is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every Anerican was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice. We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy. Now it the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now it the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God's children. I would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of it's colored citizens. This sweltering summer of the colored people's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the colored Americans needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the colored citizen is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the colored person's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating "for white only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of your trials and tribulations. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our modern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you, my friends, we have the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father's died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." Questions:  DISCUSSION QUESTION 2: Describe King's thesis (the main idea of the speech)  DISCUSSION QUESTION 3: What passage of this speech do you find most powerful and why?  DISCUSSION QUESTION 4: What do you find the greatest weakness of the speech to be?  DISCUSSION QUESTION 5: After viewing Malcolm X's speech, how is his message different than that of King? Who do you find more persuasive and why (Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr.?).

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 6 Facts About Nonviolent Resistance Adapted from Peace to All Beings, by Judy Carman (Lantern Books, 2003). http://www.care2.com/channels/solutions/home/1716 From his deep studies of Gandhi and his own experience, Martin Luther King, Jr. developed a list of six facts to help people understand nonviolent resistance and join with him in his vision. 1. Nonviolent resistance is not for cowards. It is not a quiet, passive acceptance of evil. One is passive and nonviolent physically, but very active spiritually, always seeking ways to persuade the opponent of advantages to the way of love, cooperation, and peace. 2. The goal is not to defeat or humiliate the opponent but rather to win him or her over to understanding new ways to create cooperation and community. 3. The nonviolent resister attacks the forces of evil, not the people who are engaged in injustice. AS King said in Montgomery, “We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.”

4. The nonviolent resister accepts suffering without retaliating; accepts violence, but never commits it. Gandhi said, “Rivers of blood may have to flow before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood.” Gandhi and King both understood that suffering by activists had the mysterious power of converting opponents who would otherwise refuse to listen. 5. In nonviolent resistance, one learns to avoid physical violence toward others and also learns to love the opponents with “agape” or unconditional love - which is love given not for what one will receive in return, but for the sake of love alone. It is God flowing through the human heart. Agape is ahimsa. “Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate,” said King. 6. Nonviolent resistance is based on the belief that the universe is just. There is God or a creative force that is moving us toward universal love and wholeness continually. Therefore, all our work for justice will bear fruit the fruit of love, peace, and justice for all beings everywhere.”  DISCUSSION QUESTION 6: Do you believe that non-violent resistance, based on these principles, is a good way to bring about change? Explain.

Black Panther Party Background Information: Armed with sincerity, the words of revolutionaries such as Mao Tse-Tung and Malcolm X, law books, and rifles, The Black Panther Party fed the hungry, protected the weak from racist police, and presented a new paradigm of Black political and social activism. Founded in October 1966 by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, Ca., the Party grew to at least 5,000 members nationwide, with chapters in more than half of America and an international branch in Algeria. Its "survival programs"-such as food giveaways, free health clinics and free breakfast programs for childrenwere popular fixtures in Black neighborhoods in the early 1970s, but for the white power structure and the vast majority of the white public, the Panthers represented only anti-government militancy; a view which engendered the wrath of the police and FBI and led to the murder of several Party members by law enforcement. Some were little more than teens when they were killed, like 20-year-old Illinois state leader Fred Hampton, who was gunned down with fellow Panther Mark Clarke, in an early morning raid of the group's Chicago headquarters on Dec. 4, 1969. The attack, aided by the help of an infiltrator, was masterminded by the city's police force and the FBI powerful counterintelligence program. For those not killed, the threat of incarceration was ever present. Some, like Panther Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver, would be arrested, on what often seemed little more than engineered charges. Despite government hostility, the organization flourished for a while, sweeping across Black America and attracting some of the most articulate young Blacks on the revolutionary scene of the 60's. Among them were H. Rap Brown and Stokeley Carmichael, both former presidents of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, and activist Angela Davis. But it was divisions within the Party itself, along with a focus on winning local political campaigns in Oakland, which led to its decline by the mid-1970s. Decades later, however, the legacy of the Panthers remains vivid in the minds of many; for it is a powerful illustration of the ability of individuals to rise up and join together to fight oppression. From the Black History Museum. Written by Todd Burroughs & Olive Vassell (http://www.afroam.org/history/Panthers/panther-lead.html)

THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY Platform & Program October 1966 WHAT WE WANT WHAT WE BELIEVE 1. WE WANT freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community. WE BELIEVE that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny. 2. WE WANT full employment for our people. WE BELIEVE that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living. 3. WE WANT an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black Community. WE BELIEVE that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make. 4. WE WANT decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings. WE BELIEVE that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people. 5. WE WANT education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society. WE BELIEVE in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else. 6. WE WANT all black men to be exempt from military service. WE BELIEVE that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary. 7. WE WANT an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people. WE BELIEVE we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self- defense. 8. WE WANT freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

WE BELIEVE that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial. 9. WE WANT all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States. WE BELIEVE that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community. 10. WE WANT land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny. Source: http://www.cs.oberlin.edu/students/pjaques/etext/bpp-program.html  DISCUSSION QUESTION 7: Based on your reading of the Black Panthers party platform, what is one thing you agree with the Panthers about. Why?  DISCUSSION QUESTION 8: What is one thing you disagree with them about. Why?  DISCUSSION QUESTION 9: The Black Panther Party only gained about 5,000 members. What were the major factors that limited its growth?