The focus of the video documentary "Ain't Scared of your Jails" is on the courage displayed by thousands of African-American people who joined the ranks of the civil rights movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the south. In 1961, Freedom Rides were running throughout the southern states. These rides consisted of African Americans switching places with white Americans on public transportation buses. The whites sat in the back and black people sat in the front of the public buses. Many freedom riders faced violence and defied death threats as they strived to stop segregation by participating in these rides. In interstate bus travel under the Mason-Dixon Line, the growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1960 presidential campaign. Federal rights verses state rights became an issue.
One of the first documented incidents of the sit-ins for the civil rights movement was on February 1, 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. Four college African-Americans sat at a lunch counter and refused to leave. During this time, blacks were not allowed to sit at certain lunch counters that were reserved for white people. These black students sat at a white lunch counter and refused to leave. This sit-in was a direct challenge to southern tradition. Trained in non-violence, the students refused to fight back and later were arrested by Nashville police. The students were drawn to activist Jim Lossen and his workshops of non-violence. The non-violent workshops were training on how to practice non-violent protests. John Lewis, Angela Butler, and Diane Nash led students to the first lunch counter sit-in. Diane Nash said, "We were scared to death because we didn't know what was going to happen." For two weeks there were no incidences with violence. This all changed on February 27, 1960, when white people started to beat the students. Nashville police did nothing to protect the black students. The students remained true to their training in non-violence and refused to fight back. When the police vans arrived, more than eighty demonstrators were arrested and summarily charged for disorderly conduct. The demonstrators knew they would be arrested. So, they planned that as soon as the first wave of demonstrators was arrested, a second wave of demonstrators would take their place. If and when the second wave of demonstrators were arrested and removed, a third would take their place. The students planned for multiple waves of demonstrators.
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
Black liberation was stalled once again in 1961 and 1962, as white savagery reared its head again and black people were forced to deal with the reality that success was not inevitable, yet. Still more "sit-ins", "shoe- ins" were led to combat segregation in public places which were met with violent responses from some white people. These responses ranged from burning down a bus with black people to assaulting black passengers on a train car in Anniston. These racist white people also targeted other white people who were deemed as sympathizers to black struggle or "nigger lovers". Police refused to arrest the white aggressors and in some cases also refused to protect the black people. The Freedom Rides resulted in both losses and gains in the civil rights movement. People came to the realization that justice will not be won through merely trying to persuade Southern whites with peaceful protest but only "when
Stanley Nelson chronicles the journey of a group of individuals, known as the Freedom Riders, whom fought for the rights of African Americans to have the same amenities and access as the Caucasians. The purpose of the Freedom Rides was to deliberately violate the Jim Crow laws of the south that prohibited blacks and whites from mixing together on buses and trains. Expectedly, many of the Freedom Riders were beaten and the majority was imprisoned. This carried on for the majority of 1961 and culminated with the Interstate Commerce Commission issuing an order to end the segregation in bus and rail stations. Nelson encapsulates this entire movement in about two hours. At the end of the two hours, the viewer is emotionally tied to the riders. For the sake of this analysis, I will focus on a portion towards the end of the film that gives us a sense of what kind of emotions victory evoked from those vested in the Freedom Rides. Nelson’s pairing of music and song coupled with a mixture of pictures and footage provides great emphasis to the subject matter while emotionally connecting the viewer.
This documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice”. It was a radical idea organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) that alarmed not only those who challenged the civil rights but also deliberately defied Jim Crows Law that were enacted between 1876 and 1965, by challenging the status quo by riding the interstate buses in the South in mixed racial groups. This law segregated public services like public transportation, public places, public schools, restrooms, restaurants, and even drinking fountains for black and whites. Though these activists were faced by various bitter racism, mob violence and imprisonment, they were successful in desegregating the buses and bus facilities in the Deep South in September 22, 1961. They strove for nonviolent protest for justice and freedom of African Americans freedom.
The Freedom Rides took place in the early May, 1961 where two groups of students riding in integrated Greyhound buses would stop at rest stops and blacks would go into white only bathrooms and whites would go into black only bathrooms. These bus rides were supposed to start at Washington DC and go on straight through the Deep South. These students were trying to protest interstate segregation laws and put an end to them. The trip went smoothly at first, but later everything went south as one bus got burned and the people inside were beaten. The second bus was stopped not to long after and everyone onboard was beaten and put in a hospital. Neither bus made it to their destination but it did put an immense amount of attention on them as a multitude of people followed in their footsteps and over a hundred buses became dragged into a freedom ride. (A Time for Justice )This shows how much these students were willing to take as in being beaten without fighting back and it also shows the amount of dedication involved.
Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
White people began to beat the students who refused to fight back. The police watched and refused to help the students and later arrested the students for disorderly conduct. Many of the students rather than pay the fines went to jail. The sit-in begin to spread around the country. The lawyer in Tennessee that represented the students, Mr. Zee Alexander home was bombed and destroyed. The Civil rights movement gained momentum after the bombing but it was also tearing the city apart. A few weeks after the major gave speech African –American were served at the lunch counters.
During the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans sought to have their Constitutional Rights permitted. One form of protesting came forth in the form of the Freedom Rides. After slavery ended, many amendments and laws were created to ensure the rights of African Americans, but because of prejudices and racism, most of these were ignored. The Supreme Court's decision in Plessy v. Fergunson established "separate but equal" on interstate transportation in 1896, but in 1947 the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional. And although segregation was outlawed, Jim Crow laws still ruled the Deep South and “codified in law, sanctioned by the courts, and enforced by the ubiquitous threat of physical violence even more than legal reprisal" (Catsam 87). The Jim Crow laws drastically affected the public transportation systems of the South. The Congress of Racial Equality challenged the unfair laws with Freedom Rides, which "arose out of the need to end segregation at lunch counters, in bus terminals, as well as in other facilities essential to the intercity traveler" (Olds 17-18). The first freedom ride commenced in Washington, DC, in 1961.Because the first Freedom Riders were from the North, they didn't realize how harsh the racist South was and “violence in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama, would prove to be too much for the first group of freedom riders, who ended up flying from Birmingham to New Orleans. . ." (Catsam 94). However the movement didn't stop there because ". . .students from the Nashville Movement, led by Diane Nash, realized that to allow violence to stop the Rides would send a message that would do incalculable harm to the movement" and the progression of the African American race (94). The students choose to continue t...
This started a movement of peaceful sit-ins in towns across the South of the U.S. The SNCC was created to certify the philosophical or religious prefect of peacefulness as the establishment of their movement. Ella Baker, a director of the SCLC (also a civil rights group) became a pioneer of the SNCC. Strangely, at the point when the SNCC initially began they debilitated becoming an organization. However, they declined as they stayed a movement. The SNCC had some impactful developments, beginning off with proceeding with sit-ins. The first peaceful sit-in occurred in Greensboro, North Carolina. SNCC composed these sit-ins the country over, supported leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., and promoted the pursuit of the group. In April, nearly 142 students participated from 11 states different states and me in Raleigh, North Carolina, and voted to set up another gathering to organize the sit-ins, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. advised the students that their selflessness to go to prison would "[...] be the thing to awaken the dozing conscience of many of our white brothers.". However, the SNCC endured struggled at educating their purpose and motivation to the public while fighting to suppress white oppression. During these sit-in many of these students would be tormented by white students, being either physically beat up, pouring ketchup or sugar on the students, or
Sit ins began to be organized in that all of those who chose to participate were never violent and remained peaceful even when heckled, and assaulted both mentally and physically. Protestors had things thrown at them, pulled off lunch counters, and were arrested by racially bias police for disorderly conduct. After 2 weeks there were protests occurring in Virginia and South Carolina and within 2 months there were sit-ins in 54 cities across 9 states. Student groups that were entirely white from Colombia university were even seen picketing Woolworth’s counters in New York city where segregation was illegal and hadn’t been occurring. Ultimately the movement was extremely successful in achieving its goal and even beyond. After 6 months many restaurants and lunch counters had been de-segregated including all of the Woolworth’s lunch counters in Nashville being open to all races by May 6. By the mid 1960’s hundreds of restaurants and lunch counters had followed suit. The reason for the movement being successful beyond its goal was due to the fact that the reform spread far beyond restaurants to everything from art galleries to beaches, even before the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Why was
On April 18th, a bomb destroyed the home of the defense attorney for the sit-in demonstrators, Z. Alexander Looby. This led to a massive march of over 3,000 demonstrators, stretched three people wide and ten blocks long, to the City Hall in order to pray and demand answers from Mayor Ben West. West openly stated, “I appeal to all citizens to end discrimination, to have no bigotry, no bias, no discrimination”.23 Only three weeks later, on May 10th, 1960, the six targeted lunch counters were desegregated and Nashville became the first major city to desegregate facilities.24 As previously stated, Greensboro, the city that began the movement, was not desegregated until July 26th, 1960.25
From the Boston Tea Party of 1773, the Civil Rights Movement and the Pro-Life Movement of the 1960s, to the Tea Party Movement and Occupy Wall Street Movement of current times, “those struggling against unjust laws have engaged in acts of deliberate, open disobedience to government power to uphold higher principles regarding human rights and social justice” (DeForrest, 1998, p. 653) through nonviolent protests. Perhaps the most well-known of the non-violent protests are those associated with the Civil Rights movement. The movement was felt across the south, yet Birmingham, Alabama was known for its unequal treatment of blacks and became the focus of the Civil Rights Movement. Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, African-Americans in Birmingham, began daily demonstrations and sit-ins to protest discrimination at lunch counters and in public facilities. These demonstrations were organized to draw attention to the injustices in the city.
In the1960s, there was the Freedom Rides and Selma, Alabama. In May of 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) placed civil rights activists on greyhoud buses to travel the deep south in order to show segregation was still around. In Aniston, Alabama, the mob caught up to a bus, slashed the tires, and a fire bombed thrown onboard bus. All riders on the bus ran off and were beaten by violent anti-civil Right individuals. In Birmingham, Alabama, Jim Zwerg, a white activist for desegregation, got off the bus first. He was badly beaten and sent to the hospital for four days. Freedoms rides stopped shortly after that for a little bit. In 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a five day march was took place. The group marching was seven hundred strong and
Moreover, with the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, “new racial and ethnic ghettos were forming. These conditions alongside continued Southern segregation."9 After each nonviolent protests and boycotts many black men were being arrested and facing charges. Even though many people felt inspired and participated in protests, by the end of the 1960s, 3600 demonstrators were jailed. With all these happening in the South, the black community needed to become a whole and help their neighbors. As a response to this, “Northern students formed solidarity committees and raised money for bail”.10 In the document, Andrew states that the main challenge was to create a community among themselves and appreciate
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” This quote by Sir Winston Churchill resonates with me today because of the many issues African American people face today. These issues mirror many problems from long, long, ago. On May 4, 1961, a group of 13 African Americans launched the Freedom Rides, a series of bus trips through the American south to protest segregation in interstate bus terminals.” (history.com) The purpose of the Freedom Riders was to challenge racial laws in the American South that segregated by race. The group suffered very much violence and abuse from white protestors along the journey. The group grew by hundreds from gaining international attention. According to history.com, “After getting a lot of pressure from the Kennedy administration, the interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting segregation in interstate transit terminals.”