In March of 1968, “I AM A MAN” would have seemed like a rather innocuous declaration. However, for sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, it was a rallying cry that had implications that went far beyond a local labor dispute. Laurie B. Green’s extraordinarily insightful article, “Race, Labor, and Gender in 1960s Memphis: ‘I Am a Man’ and the Meaning of Freedom” published in Journal of Urban History, goes back to that time that came to symbolize the issues in America during the late 1960s and were rooted in the founding and a failed Post-Civil War Reconstruction. She considered the events that took place in Memphis during the 1950s and 1960s within a much bigger historical context. They brought to the public the other social problems …show more content…
The article makes compelling connections between the “plantation mentality” that characterized the American South from its earliest days through the Civil War and beyond (Green 467). As the article points out, with few exceptions, Memphis was still a cotton-based economy during the 1960s, which suggests this plantation mentality was easily transferrable from the cotton fields onto the factory floors. When sanitation workers decided to protest their working conditions, what might have been an isolated incident was given national media attention when the most famous American civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., participated in the March 1968 march. But according to the article, it was not Dr. King’s presence that mobilized factions to participate in civil disobedience; it was the freedom sentiments that were contained in protest signs that read, “I AM A …show more content…
Martin Luther King, Jr. less than a week after joining the striking sanitation workers did not minimize the national impact of the “I AM A MAN” campaign as Laurie B. Green revealed in “Race, Labor, and Gender in 1960s Memphis: ‘I Am a Man’ and the Meaning of Freedom.” A simple sentence was transformed into a declarative statement celebrating the civil rights movement in the United States that, as the author noted, transcended time and geography. She observed that ‘being men’ meant a rejection of subservience in terms of civil rights and social identity (Green 484). The black male workers used it as a mantra to attack the racial stereotypes that persisted and the black female workers used it to reject the notions that there was a different “womanhood” defined by race (Green 484). Instead, “I AM A MAN” awoke within these women a determination and commitment to social activism that were equal to their male counterparts. Ms. Green concluded her article with the observation, “In the context of the working-class struggles in the urban South of the 1960s, we need to emphasize demands for both an altered social reality and a changed self-definition. As wage laborers who had left sharecropping and other forms of plantation labor behind when they migrated to the city, urban African American workers now engaged both these aspects of freedom within the turmoil of the mid-1960s”
Thesis: McGuire argues that the Civil Rights movement was not led just by the strong male leaders presented to society such as Martin Luther King Jr., but is "also rooted in African-American women 's long struggle against sexual violence (xx)." McGuire argues for the "retelling and reinterpreting (xx)" of the Civil Rights movement because of the resistance of the women presented in her text.
2- Carl Schurz wrote reports called Reports on the Condition of the South, in 1865 in which he investigated the sentiments of leaders and ordinary people, whites and blacks, from the defeated South. He describes that was not safe to wear the federal uniform on the streets and soldiers of the Union were considered intruders, Republicans were considered enemies. But, even worse was the situation of freedmen in which were expected to behave as slaves for white Southerners. Schurz heard the same phrase, “You cannot make the negro work, without physical compulsion,” (Schurz) from so many different people that he concluded that this sentiment was rooted among the southern people. He related this case of a former slaveholder that suggested blacks were unfitted for freedom, “I heard a Georgia planter argue most seriously that one of his negroes had shown himself certainly unfit for freedom because he impudently refused to submit to a whipping.”
Many students generally only learn of Dr. King’s success, and rarely ever of his failures, but Colaiaco shows of the failures of Dr. King once he started moving farther North. In the book, Colaiaco presents the successes that Dr. King has achieved throughout his work for Civil Rights. The beginning of Dr. King’s nonviolent civil rights movement started in Montgomery, Alabama, when Rosa Parks refused to move for a white person, violating the city’s transportation rules. After Parks was convicted, Dr. King, who was 26 at the time, was elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA). “For 381 days, thousands of blacks walked to work, some as many as 12 miles a day, rather than continue to submit to segregated public transportation” (18).
C. Vann Woodward’s book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, has been hailed as a book which shaped our views of the history of the Civil Rights Movement and of the American South. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the book as “the historical Bible of the civil rights movement.” The argument presented in The Strange Career of Jim Crow is that the Jim Crow laws were relatively new introductions to the South that occurred towards the turn of the century rather than immediately after the end of Reconstruction after the Civil War. Woodward examines personal accounts, opinions, and editorials from the eras as well as the laws in place at the times. He examines the political history behind the emergence of the Jim Crow laws. The Strange Career of Jim Crow gives a new insight into the history of the American South and the Civil Rights Movement.
Marable, Manning. Race, reform, and rebellion: the second reconstruction and beyond in Black America, 1945-2006. 3rd ed. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Print
Women, Race and Class is the prolific analysis of the women's rights movement in the United States as observed by celebrated author, scholar, academic and political activist. Angela Y. Davis, Ph.D. The book is written in the same spirit as Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Davis does not merely recount the glorious deeds of history. traditional feminist icons, but rather tells the story of women's liberation from the perspective of former black slaves and wage laborers. Essential to this approach is the salient omnipresent concept known as intersectionality.
The Movements of the New Left by Van Gosse documents the events that shaped America’s lives during the 1960s and 1970s. In these 45 documents, Gosse touches on topics of race, antiwar, gay rights and nonviolent demonstrations. The Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement both shared the idea of equal rights for everyone. Both movements relate to mainstream liberalism, share similar goals or differences, evolved in the 1970s, and still have an impact on America’s to this day. Both of these movements related to mainstream liberalism in a sense that they both wanted change in a social advancement rather than through rebellion.
The book, “My Soul Is Rested” by Howell Raines is a remarkable history of the civil rights movement. It details the story of sacrifice and audacity that led to the changes needed. The book described many immeasurable moments of the leaders that drove the civil rights movement. This book is a wonderful compilation of first-hand accounts of the struggles to desegregate the American South from 1955 through 1968. In the civil rights movement, there are the leaders and followers who became astonishing in the face of chaos and violence. The people who struggled for the movement are as follows: Hosea Williams, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and others; both black and white people, who contributed in demonstrations for freedom rides, voter drives, and
South of Freedom by Carl T. Rowan examines the experiences a young African American man traveling around the American South in the 1950’s. Carl Rowan, a man employed by The Minneapolis Tribune set out around the American South for 10 years reporting on his personal experiences of how segregation and racism were affecting the south differently than the north. The social mores and southern tradition of slavery led to a culture of people who refused to change and grow with their evolving country. South of Freedom shares an insight into a culture of people who acted out of hate and fear of “different”. While some readers might say that Carl Rowan’s accounts are one sided, and are selectively negative experience he had while visiting the south, South of Freedom also gives examples of everyday people going against the social norm and acting out of human kindness, and thought these examples were small, personal interactions the author had with
In the 20th century, Greensboro, North Carolina was recognized for its “progressive outlooks, especially in industrial development, education and race relations” (4). As a progressive city, Greensboro allowed its blacks some educational and intellectual freedom. For example, individuals like Nell Coley and Vance Chavis openly announced their participation in the NAACP and advocated blacks to register for voting (24). This open exchange of ideas gave blacks a sense of power and ultimately led to gatherings with an agenda. At these gatherings, blacks began to demand: better job opportunities, decent housing, and quality equipment for schools (9). The ability for blacks to speak freely on their opinions is an example of progressive mystique, and the philosophy of hospitability to new ideas. As a result of this freedom, Greensboro’s blacks woul...
9. Gilmore, Stephanie. "The Dynamics Of Second-Wave Feminist Activism In Memphis, 1971-1982: Rethinking The Liberal/Radical Divide." NWSA Journal 15.1 (2003): 94. Academic Search Elite. Web. 14 Feb. 2014.
During the 20th century, the pro-segregation laws in Birmingham, Alabama, not only divided schools and shops based on race, but parks, cemeteries, restaurants, and swimming pools as well (“Racial Strife” 191). As one visiting reporter stated, “Whites and blacks still walk the same streets. But the streets, the water supply, and the sewer system are about the only public facilities they share.” (Mayer 7). In mid-April, the rising tensions between the African American and Caucasian races led to a prolonged sequence of violent and peaceful protests, beginning on April 3rd and concluding in late September. Though Alabama Christian Movement f...
Whenever people discuss race relations today and the effect of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, they remember the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was and continues to be one of the most i...
Pete Daniel’s book Lost Revolutions, tells readers the story of the South in the 1950’s.
Massive protests against racial segregation and discrimination broke out in the southern United States that came to national attention during the middle of the 1950’s. This movement started in centuries-long attempts by African slaves to resist slavery. After the Civil War American slaves were given basic civil rights. However, even though these rights were guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment they were not federally enforced. The struggle these African-Americans faced to have their rights ...