In the mid 1900's, America was finally now an independent country, but had many flaws within their undeveloped system. Racism and segregation towards African Americans was at an all time high in the Southern states. With the Jim Crow laws in place, the privileges that white Americans had were overwhelmingly more than African Americans had ("Civil Rights Movement," para. 1). During this period of injustice in our country's history, there were many activists of equal rights, both black and white. While there were many people who helped the cause, one of the most influential civil rights activists was John Lewis.
John Lewis is an African American man born on February 21st, 1940, into a sharecropping family in Pike County, Alabama (Moye, 2004). He grew up on his family's farm, and attended segregated public schools as a child. Even when he was just a young boy, Lewis was always inspired by the happenings of the Civil Rights Movement. Events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott or hearing the wise words of Martin Luther King Junior over the radio stimulated his desire to become a part of a worthwhile cause, and was a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement ever since ("Biography," para. 3). Lewis went to school at both the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary, and received a Bachelors degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University. While at Fisk, he learned the philosophy of how to be nonviolent, and would soon incorporate that into his civil rights work ("John Lewis Biography," para. 3). While he was a student at Fisk University, Lewis began putting together sit-ins at local lunch counters to protest segregation. Many...
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What Was Jim Crow?. (n.d.). What was Jim Crow. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm
("What Was Jim Crow?")
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("SNCC-People: John Lewis")
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("SNCC 1960-1966: Six years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee")
SNCC-Events. (n.d.). SNCC-Events. Retrieved April 13, 2014, from http://www.ibiblio.org/sncc/events.html
("SNCC-Events")
Ross, S. (n.d.). Civil Rights March on Washington. Infoplease. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.infoplease.com/spot/marchonw
(Ross)
Lewis states, “February 27, 1960 was my first arrest. The first of many” (Lewis and Aydin 1: 103). (See figure 1) John Lewis was not afraid of being arrested for doing the right thing. At this moment, the Nashville students were still trying to desegregate the department store lunch counters. Lewis says, “We wanted to change America-- to make it something different, something better” (Lewis and Aydin 1: 103). All of the students were willing to do what it takes to make a change happen. 82 students went to jail that day alongside with Lewis, they were offered bail however they refused. They did not want to cooperate with the system in any way because the system is what was allowing segregation in the first place. At around 11 p.m. they were all released and had to attend court the next day. They found the students guilty and ordered them to either pay a fine of 50 dollars each, or spend 30 days in jail. Of course they didn’t pay the bail and did their time in jail. As a result, when John Lewis’s parents later on found out he had gone to jail. They were devastated and he had become an embarrassment and a source of humiliation and gossip to the
Everyone that has been through the American school system within the past 20 years knows exactly who Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is, and exactly what he did to help shape the United States to what it is today. In the beginning of the book, Martin Luther King Jr. Apostle of Militant Nonviolence, by James A. Colaiaco, he states that “this book is not a biography of King, [but] a study of King’s contribution to the black freedom struggle through an analysis and assessment of his nonviolent protest campaigns” (2). Colaiaco discusses the successful protests, rallies, and marches that King put together. . 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.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the leader of a peaceful movement to end segregation in the United States this mission led him in 1963 to Birmingham, Alabama where officials and leaders in the community actively fought against desegregation. While performing sit-ins, marches and other nonviolent protests, King was imprisoned by authorities for violating the strict segregation laws. While imprisoned King wrote a letter entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, in which he expresses his disappointment in the clergy, officials, and people of Birmingham. This letter employed pathos to argue that the leaders and ‘heroes’ in Birmingham during the struggle were at fault or went against their beliefs.
Congressman Lewis’s powerful graphic memoir March highlights the role of nonviolent activism in challenging racial segregation and discrimination and effecting social change. Within the two books, March One and Two, we as readers see some of these nonviolent activities that were implemented by the protesters to show the world that nonviolence is the way to go to bring change in an unjust society and its bias laws. Some of these nonviolent activities that proved to be effective in the eyes of freedom fighters were sit-ins, marches and speeches. Even some minor activities such as going to jail for a cause was proven to be effective.
In inspiration of Rosa Park’s actions, many college students took a part of sit-ins for civil rights. “When students refused to leave,” they were denied service and “the police arrested and jailed them,” just like Rosa Parks. They needed to do more, so in 1960, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Community (SNCC) formed. The SNCC would travel to bus stations to peacefully assemble in hopes to desegregate buses. Law enforcement treated them with brutality and denied them their “basic constitutional rights to free speech and peaceful assembly.” In 1963, King organized peaceful marches in Birmingham, but just like all other African American movements, whites responded with violence. The violence of the marches was so brutal, that it finally encouraged, “President John F. Kennedy to propose important civil rights legislation.” In order to push forward a civil rights legislation, “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom… in August 1963…” This eventually lead to a new civil rights
The civil rights movement was a popular historical movement that worked to allow African Americans to have equal rights and privileges as U.S. citizens. The movement can be defined as a struggle against racial segregation and discrimination that began in the 1950s. Although the origins of the civil rights movement go back to the 1800s, the movement peaked in the 1950s and 1960s. African American men and women, along with whites, organized and led the movement from local to national levels. Many actions of the civil rights movement were concentrated through legal means such as negotiations, appeals, and nonviolent protests. When we think of leaders or icons of the movement we usually think of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. Even though Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. are important figures, their participation in the movement was minimal compared to other unknown or forgotten figures. Howell Raines’s, My Soul Is Rested, contains recollections of voices from followers of the civil rights movement. These voices include students, lawyers, news reporters, and civil right activists. Although the followers of the movement were lesser known, the impact they made shaped the society we live in today.
Lawson, Steven F., and Charles M. Payne. Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 140. Print.
The March is a story about Congressman John Lewis fighting in the civil rights movement. He portrays his story in flashbacks from 2009 back to the 1950s. The novel starts of with young John Lewis leading his people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. While the police made a barricade at the end of the bridge preventing them to get through. The police were convicting the men of assembling an unlawful assembly but, they were doing nothing wrong.
...und on the online database JSTOR by searching for “March on Washington” under African American studies, history, and political science. In addition to these articles, three were found simply by browsing through magazines written at the time of the march. Information about books written at the time was found by searching the appendices of book review indexes for topics related to the march. By looking around in the reference section for specialized encyclopedias, the African American Encyclopedia was located.
New World Encyclopedia (2009) African-american civil rights movement (1955-1968), Retrieved on March 16, 2012 from
"Lewis, John (1940-)" Martin Luther King JR. And the Global Freedom Struggle. Stanford University, Web. Feb.-Mar. 2014.
John Lewis was suggesting to all the people that they should not give up hope, despite the suspicion that the march isn’t enough, but to continue doing more for their freedom, and he does this by connecting it to a revolution in 1776 that was left unfinished, according to him. For instance, Lewis states “We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution”(para 8). He doesn’t mean an actual revolution, but it is a fight for their freedom that they are facing. Lewis is only suggesting that the people should do more for their freedom, he isn’t demanding, but by comparing it to the revolution, it makes it sound important to be apart of this battle. Additionally, Lewis says “For in the Delta in Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in… and
Visiting Buffalo was a powerful experience as this served as first-hand experience living in a city where whites lived next door to blacks which was not the norm during the civil right era. This inevitably helped John Lewis visualize that the idea of integration, while it might be progress towards the future, it was far from perfect. After returning from Buffalo “home never felt the same, and neither did I.” (Lewis and Aydin 1: 47). The trip was eye opening in many ways and returning home only pointed out the visible injustice that was allowed by segregation. The interrelation of equality and segregation as part of the civil right movement emphasized that separate but equal, was never equal. This realization would probably not be as prevalent had his uncle Otis had not taken to Buffalo in the summer of 51’ giving him insight to what another place of the world are
We can see that African Americans were still struggling for equality even after the emancipation and the abolishment of slavery. They still did not get the equal rights and opportunities compared to whites. This had been reflected in the first essay in Du Bois’s book with a title Of Our Spiritual Strivings that indicates blacks were denied the opportunity that were available to the whites even after emancipation. During the days of Jim Crow, people of color received unfair treatment from almost all aspects of their lives. At that time, not all people were brave enough to express and speak up their desire for transformation. Two most influential black leaders that were known to have the courage to speak up their beliefs in social equality were
John Lewis was an influential SNCC leader and is recognized by most as one of the important leaders of the civil rights movement as a whole. In 1961, Lewis joined SNCC in the Freedom Rides. Riders traveled the South challenging segregation at interstate bus terminals. In 1963, when Chuck McDew stepped down as SNCC chairman, Lewis was quickly elected to take over. Lewis' experience at that point was already widely respected--he had been arrested 24 times as a result of his activism. In 1963, Lewis helped plan and took part in the March on Washington. At the age of 23, he was a keynote speaker at the historic event. He stepped down from his position in 1966. Stokeley Carmichael, a fellow Freedom Rider, was elected chairman of SNCC and soon after raised the cry of "black power." Some were alarmed by the concept of black power and many were critical of Carmichael's new approach.