Black Lives Matter: When Will It End?

For this week’s Peace of History:
Fifty-six years ago today, the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law. This landmark legislation outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; enforced the equal application of voter registration requirements; and prohibited racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations -- signaling an end to the Jim Crow era in the Southern United States. Most of us know the basic touchstones: Rosa Parks, Dr. King, lunch counters and buses, marches and hoses, “I have a dream…” But those are the singular, dramatic, snapshot moments we know from photos, transcripts, and mythology -- compressing a long and still-unfinished movement into a mythical long-ago.

As we look around today, with a catastrophically mismanaged pandemic, a looming financial collapse, and decades of racist police brutality and incarceration serving as the backdrop of the beginning of a new social justice uprising -- it is easy to lose a sense of how much time and work it takes to achieve justice. Social movements can last for years, even decades, and are composed of several interrelated campaigns, one often inspired by another. Campaigns have specific goals, and achieving those goals can take weeks or months of sustained effort -- and all that takes organizing and time. About three weeks ago, Instagram user gotgreenseattle posted an image reminding us of that fact. Let us meditate on how long these famous historical campaigns lasted, and what it might have been like to be in the participants’ shoes:

• Montgomery Bus Boycott: Beginning as a protest to the trial of Rosa Parks in her famous bus confrontation, African-Americans in Montgomery, Alabama began a boycott of the city’s public transit system starting on Dec. 5, 1955 -- it wouldn’t end for another year and 16 days. Mrs. Parks’ membership in the NAACP and the Citizenship Training she attended at the Highlander Center helped launch the campaign, as did Bayard Rustin’s trainings in Montgomery during the first month of the boycott. Some participants went on to organize a carpool system, while others instead cycled, hitchhiked, took cabs (many of which reduced their fares to match the bus fare in solidarity), or walked -- all while facing racist violence as well as all the trouble of getting around without buses. In the end, the US Supreme Court declared segregation on public transportation to be unconstitutional, the city desegregated public buses, names like Rosa Parks and Dr. King became household names, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was formed, and the first major step of the 20th C Civil Rights Movement roused the entire nation.
  
• Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-Ins: Starting in February 1960 and lasting until July, mostly teens and college students of color nonviolently challenged their right to order, be served, and eat at the same place and manner as White customers at lunch counters owned by the F.W. Woolworth Company. The campaign spread to several other cities across the South and soon included thousands of participants, who suffered ceaseless verbal abuse and humiliation, violence, and at least one bomb threat. After over 6 months, Woolworth and many other companies with lunch counters desegregated; participants went on to found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); and the campaign inspired the greater Sit-In Movement to desegregate other public spaces, which continued for another 3 years until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  
• Freedom Rides: Inspired by the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation led by Bayard Rustin and George Houser, from May to December 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and SNCC organized over 400 people in at least 60 bus rides through the South to assert their 1960 Supreme Court-issued right to ride unsegregated public buses. Many of the organizers and riders were young people who had been trained by Rev. James Lawson for the Nashville campaign to desegregate lunch counters, including Diane Nash and John Lewis. Riders suffered illegal arrests, mob violence, arson, and general terror for 7 months and 6 days. In the end, the Interstate Commerce Commission desegregated interstate travel, and an entire generation of people of all races were inspired to take direct action for justice.
  
• Birmingham Campaign: For most of April and the beginning of May, 1963, mostly young people of color (including school children) organized by the SCLC nonviolently challenged their right to freely move and participate in public life -- suffering clubs, fire hoses, attack dogs, and untold verbal abuse for 37 days. In the end, the campaign ousted the infamously racist Bull Conner from office and ended segregation in what Dr. King called the most segregated city in the country. Three months later, Dr. King would give his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
  

At this moment, we are writing a new chapter in the history of civil rights in this country. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955, people across the country were inspired to participate in direct action campaigns for racial justice for the next 9 years and beyond, forcing the conscience of the country to face its racist reality and getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed. Similarly, activists across the country have been pulling down or forcing the removal of racist statues from public areas in the wake of the George Floyd protests -- after years of debate, there’s been a tidal shift, and now statues are coming down left and right. Things seem to be happening so quickly these days -- and in a sense, they are. But if we want this movement to go beyond mere symbols, we must organize and press on with more campaigns and more demands. The time for sign-waving protest is drawing to a close; it is time to learn, organize, and take action.

NOTE: On June 15, 2020, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protection against workplace discrimination based on sex also applies to gay and transgender workers. This decision was announced days after President Trump announced the removal of nondiscrimination protections for trans and gender nonbinary people with regards to healthcare and health insurance -- in the middle of a pandemic. The only way to protect trans, nonbinary, and all vulnerable people is to organize, take action together, and strap in for the long haul.


Sources:
“Birmingham Campaign” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/birmingham-campaign

“Civil Rights Law Protects Gay and Transgender Workers, Supreme Court Rules” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/gay-transgender-workers-supreme-court.html

“CORE Volunteers put their lives on the Road” http://www.core-online.org/History/freedom%20rides.htm

“Freedom Rides” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/freedom-rides

“Montgomery Bus Boycott” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/montgomery-bus-boycott

“Sit-ins” https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/sit-ins

“Transgender Health Protections Reversed By Trump Administration” https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/868073068/transgender-health-protections-reversed-by-trump-administration