Discussion 8

“Anger has its place. Anger has fire. And fire moves things.” -Nina Simone

Discussion Question: What do the photos below collectively convey about the story of the American Civil Rights Movement?

2 white men lynched 14 year-old Emmett Till for allegedly flirting with a white woman,
Mississippi, 1955 – Note: The before and after photosare gruesome. Emmett’s mother,
Mamie Till, held an open-casket funeral to bring attention to racist acts of inhumanity
in the South, a decision that became a catalyst for the movement CRM.

The men who murdered Emmett Till celebrate their acquittal, Mississippi, 1955

Students heckle Elizabeth Eckford on her 1st day of integrating a “whites only” high school, Arkansas, 1957

Whites protest school integration with signs that read, “Race Mixing is Communism,” Arkansas, 1959

A white mob fire-bombed a bus carrying freedom riders protesting segregated bus terminals, Alabama, 1961

Freedom Riders were beaten by a white mob, Alabama, 1961 (On the left: Belated Congressman John Lewis)

The first sit-in at a Woolworth’s, North Carolina, 1960

A white mob assaulting activists during a sit-in at a Woolworth’s, Mississippi, 1963

A police dog attacks a peaceful protester at the Children’s March, Alabama, 1963

Police assault child-activists with high-pressure fire hoses at the Children’s March, Alabama, 1963

Three voting rights activists who were lynched in Mississippi, 1964

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Excerpt from the “Letter from Birmingham Jail’, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Alabama, 1963

…when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness” – then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.