Thursday, March 6, 2014

A Brief Summary of the Strategies Used During the Civil Rights Movement

In class we went over the different strategies that African-Americans and other influenced minority groups used to achieve certain goals.  For those of you may have been absent or are interested in reviewing those strategies, this post should cover the majority of what we discussed in class and some analysis on why particular strategies were more effective than others.

The primary strategy used by Southerners, those who wanted to keep segregation, was to keep the government and Supreme Court from interfering.  This tactic was effective and pervasive in all Southern towns until African Americans found a new channel to the government, national media.

The first instance of national television being used as a medium of conveying the messages of the Civil Rights movement involved Emmett Till, a young African-American male who was murdered at the age of 14 by two white males.  He was brutally beaten and shot then thrown in a river.  Once his mangled body was recovered, his mother appropriately segued Till into martyrdom by having an open casket funeral for her son which attracted media attention.  Till's mother saw an opportunity to demonstrate the truth about the treatment of African-Americans in the South by showing the white Southerners as the aggressors or the villains on national television.

Another strategy that African-Americans used to get attention was the idea of "sit-ins" in which one would do as the name implies and sit inside a restaurant where "colored" people were not normally allowed to sit.  This idea came as a shock to the white Southerners because they did not know how to react.  Those who were sitting in were abused both verbally and physically by irate white Southerners, but they stayed strong and refused to move.  The main goal was to bring the cameras and make sure that there was coverage of these events otherwise the resistance would be in vain.  An important aspect of these "sit-ins" was that most of them were nonviolent protests, on side of the protesters at least, and this followed Till's mother's strategy of making the white Southerners appear as the aggressors.

In Birmingham, King and many other activists looked to nonviolent and emotional strategies.  It was not uncommon for them to use children as a tool for gaining support; "how dare they arrest children!"  On August 28th, King organized a nonviolent protest in the form of a march which attracted media attention and many new followers.  The white Southerners and police, however, reacted violently and broke the protest by unleashing dogs and hosing down the protesters; the media caught this and the white Southerners were effectively depicted as the "bad guys" in this situation.

Finally, another famous orator and writer, Malcom X, used less orthodox tactics to gain support.  Malcom X believed in "black power" which was not entirely the same thing as King's principles of equality.  Black power entailed that African-Americans become the superior race whereas the white Southerners would become the minority.  This obviously did not go well with the white Southerners and Malcom X resorted to an ineffective violent approach which spurned the Detroit Race Riots.

Well there you have it, the strategies used by prominent Civil Rights Activists in the South.  What do you think was the most effective strategy and why?

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