NONVIOLENCE

“What a world this will be when human possibilities are freed, when we discover each other, when the stranger is no longer the potential criminal and the certain inferior."

-- W.E.B Du Bois

TASK ONE - A SUMMARY

Use the following words and phrases to fill in the blanks, writing the complete paragraph - yes, the entire thing - neatly into your book. It's important that you understand, and can correctly use, all of these terms.

After the American __________________________ and the subsequent ____________________ of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted ____________________ and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been ____________________. For a short period of time, African American men voted and held political office, but they were increasingly deprived of ____________________, often under the so-called ____________________ laws, and African Americans were subjected to ____________________ and sustained violence by white ____________________ in the ____________________. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and ____________________ rights.

THE NAACP

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells. Leaders of the organization included Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins.

Its mission in the 21st century is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination". National NAACP initiatives include political lobbying, publicity efforts and litigation strategies developed by its legal team. The group enlarged its mission in the late 20th century by considering issues such as police misconduct, the status of black foreign refugees and questions of economic development. Its name, retained in accordance with tradition, uses the once common term colored people, referring to those with some African ancestry.

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON VERSUS W.E.B. DU BOIS

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON

One-third of the population of the South is . . . Negro [and] whatever . . . sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the [business] world. . . Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper [when] we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; [we] shall prosper [when] we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental . . . and the useful. [The Negro will never] prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life [where] we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our [complaints] to overshadow our opportunities.

-- Booker T. Washington | Atlanta Compromise Speech, 1891

W.E.B. DU BOIS

. . .self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and . . . a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things.

First, political power, Second, insistence on civil rights, Third, higher education of Negro youth — and concentrate all their energies on industrial education . . . This policy has been courageously and insistently advocated [but] what has been the return?

The disfranchisement of the Negro.
The legal creation of a distinct [atmosphere] of inferiority for the Negro.
The steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for the higher [learning] of the Negro. . . .

[T]he Negro must . . . strive mightily to help himself. . . . By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the right which the world accords to men, clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the [Founding] Fathers would [gladly] forget: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

-- W.E.B. Du Bois | The Souls of Black Folk, 1903

TASK TWO - COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Referring to the two sources above, and conducting any research you need to, complete the following tasks in your book.

Define the words “gradual” and “active.”
In the late 19th century Booker T. Washington advocated a policy of gradualism to achieve civil rights for African Americans. Use specific evidence from Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise” Speech to support this statement. You can use this sentence scaffold - below in yellow - to help build your answer, including your own thoughts to fill in the blue gaps.

Booker T. Washington suggested that African Americans must take a gradual approach to obtaining civil rights. In an 1891 speech called The Atlanta Compromise, Washington stated... <insert quote>. This shows that Washington <explain what the quote tells us about Washington's thoughts>.

In the early 1900s, W.E.B. Du Bois believed that activism was the most effective approach for black Americans who wanted to gain civil rights. Use specific evidence from Du Bois’ writing in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk, to support this statement. I'm not giving you a sentence scaffold this time, but look at the response you have already given, and stick to that structure:

Topic sentence which outlines the topic (activism) and the argument (Du Bois' belief that activism was the most effective approach).
Evidence: context (the 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk), and a quote.
Explain: how this quote supports your topic sentence.

HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A PROBLEM?

An animated excerpt of an article from W.E.B. Du Bois depicts the alienation experienced by African Americans. You can read more here.

IDA B. WELLS

Ida B. Wells was born a slave in 1862 in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Because of the Civil War, her family was soon free. Her parents were politically active in the community and she sometimes feared that the Ku Klux Klan would kill her father when he went to community meetings at night. When Wells was 16, her parents died suddenly from yellow fever. She was left alone to support and care for her five younger siblings.

Fortunately, Wells’ parents had made sure she got the best education possible. She left school before graduation, made herself look older by putting up her hair, passed the teaching exam in her county and got a job teaching six miles from her family home. A friend of her mother’s took care of the children while Wells fulfilled her teaching duties, and Wells spent her teenage weekends raising her younger brothers and sisters.

When she was 22, Wells got a better teaching job in Memphis. She boarded a first-class “ladies” car on the train to go to her job. Two conductors tried to remove her to the smoking car because, by 1884, southern states were passing Jim Crow laws.

Wells refused to go sit with drunken, rowdy men in the smoking car. When the conductors tried to drag her, she disembarked from the train and filed a lawsuit against the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad Co. and won. Three years later, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned Wells’ victory, claiming that the railroad cars were “separate but equal.”

Wells became a journalist devoted to writing about injustice. Two of her most famous campaigns were the anti-lynching campaign and the struggle for women's suffrage. Because she spoke out and refused to follow rules she believed were unjust, Wells was often derogatorily labelled a non-conformist.

TASK THREE - REFLECTIONS ON IDA

Some reflections about Ida B. Wells from her daughter, Alfreda Duster, from The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells:

Even when there was no segregation in Chicago, there were certain places you didn’t go because you knew they wouldn’t treat you right. After discrimination intensified, Mother went to Marshall Fields department store. She waited and waited, but no clerk would help her. Finally, she took a pair of men’s underpants, put them over her arm, and walked toward the door. Immediately, a floorwalker stopped her, and so she was able to buy them. She used to tell about this as a funny incident, Ida Wells-Barnett with a pair of underpants dangling over her arm. She was only five feet three or four, and she had grown plump in her fifties, but she walked as if she owned the world.

Referring to the above story about Wells, told by her daughter, answer the following questions in your book.

What problem(s) do you think Wells was experiencing?
What strategy did she use to solve the problem(s)?
How was Wells acting like a non-conformist? How would a conformist have acted?

CORE

CONGRESS OF RACIAL EQUALITY

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States that played a pivotal role for African Americans in the civil rights movement. Founded in 1942, its stated mission is "to bring about equality for all people regardless of race, creed, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or ethnic background."

Of the 50 original founding members, 28 were men and 22 were women, roughly one-third of them were black and the other two-thirds white. The group sought to apply the principles of nonviolence as a tactic against racial segregation, inspired by Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi's support for nonviolent resistance. CORE sought to apply the nonviolent tactics pioneered by Gandhi and his followers to successfully challenge racism in the United States through civil disobedience.

TASK FOUR - KEY TERMS

Define the bold terms in the text above, writing both the term and the definition into your book. Do not copy any definitions that you do not understand - if you do that, you haven't learned anything. Ask the person next to you, or your teacher, if you're not sure about something.
Use every one of the bold terms you have just defined to write a short summary - shorter, and different, to the one already provided above - of CORE and their methods.
Create an acrostic poem in your book, using the word RESISTANCE. I've provided an example below, using the phrase CIVIL RIGHTS as my starter. Note that my poem rhymes, but yours does not have to. You just need to express your opinion or understanding regarding the struggle for black civil rights, using the letters of 'resistance' as your starting point for each line.

Coloured people
In a nation they built
Violence and bloodshed
Injustice, no guilt?
Lynching and crosses
Reported? To who?
In this land of the free?
Good luck to you
History reveals
Their stories and faces
So let us condemn the hateful racists

SNCC

STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was founded in April 1960 by young people dedicated to nonviolent, direct action tactics. The Committee sought to coordinate and assist challenges to the segregation and exclusion of African Americans from civil and political life. At the first SNCC conference, Ella Baker emerged as a critic of what she perceived as Martin Luther King's top-down leadership at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). "Strong people don't need strong leaders," she told the young activists.

Under the same general principle, that "the people who do the work should make the decisions", the students committed to a "participatory democracy" which sought to reach decisions by consensus (agreement). Group meetings were convened (held) in which every participant could speak for as long as they wanted and the meeting would continue until everyone who was left was in agreement with the decision. Given the physical risks involved in many activities the SNCC carried out, this was thought particularly important: "no one felt comfortable making a decision by majority rule that might cost somebody else's life."

GREENSBORO SIT-IN

While SNCC wasn't responsible for the Greensboro sit-in, they were made up of members who participated in early sit-ins, and the organisation continued this method of nonviolent protest.

This nonviolent approach would become crucial to many of the civil rights movement's most successful protests.

TASK FIVE - NONVIOLENCE

Why do you think it was so important to those participating in the sit-ins to not use violence?

The two images below show the types of training those who would participate in nonviolent protest, like the sit-ins, would undergo.

Describe a time in your life where it has been important for you to remain calm, and not to respond when you have been deliberately provoked.

Protestors would practice remaining calm in situations that they thought might arise as a result of their actions.

Here, two young civil rights activists undergo an 'egg shampoo' training exercise, while being verbally insulted.

I HAVE A DREAM

Martin Luther King Jr. once said...

"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence."

3. What is oppression? Explain what it means to oppress an individual or group.

4. What is your opinion of MLK and organisations like SNCC's commitment to nonviolent tactics? Do you believe it was the right approach? Explain your thoughts.

Though we've moved past it in our timeline, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was an important step in the development of MLK's belief in nonviolence, and its use by CORE, SNCC, and other civil rights groups. Click HERE to read an overview of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, then complete the tasks below.

5. Most people have heard of Rosa Parks. Explain how she was involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

6. Click HERE to see a picture of President Obama, alone on a bus. Explain what this image represents. More info available HERE.

a review

This video covers some of the content we've already looked at, but also introduces Brown Vs. the Board of Education, the Little Rock Nine and the Freedom Riders.

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