1960s Civil Rights Movement

¶ … Changing Nature of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement

The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement

American society changed tremendously following World War II, and in many ways; among them, was the shift in population among African-Americans from the rural South to the industrialized North. In the 1950s and 1960s, 2.5 million migrated north and east from south and west (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 359). In particular, African-American population became more and more concentrated in the twelve largest American cities and comprised fully one-third of the nations black population by 1970 (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 359). Because of a combination of poverty, lack of equal opportunity in employment, education, and housing because of racism and discrimination, many migrated blacks ended up in what became known as "second ghettos" in their new cities (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 359).

Initially, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was the most influential leader within the African-American community in the United States, and his primary message was that the way to overcome inequality and injustice was through peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience. At that time, Latino-Americans were being led in their struggle for equality and justice in America by Reies Lopez Tijerina Rodolfo Gonzales, and Cesar Chavez, also primarily through peaceful means emphasizing the unionization of farm workers and the securing of employment rights and benefits pursued by the United Farm Workers (UFW) originally organized by Chavez (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 362).

The Eventual Shift from Peaceful Means to Violent Rebellion and Struggle

Martin Luther King, Jr. was tragically assassinated in 1968, but even by 1966, it had begun to seem to many in the African-American communities in the U.S. that peaceful demonstrations were simply not going to be enough to overcome the resistance of mainstream American society to granting full and equal rights to minorities. Perhaps most symbolically in that regard, it was Stokely Carmichael, then leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who said, in 1966, "We've been saying freedom for six years -- and we ain't got nothing. What we're going to start saying now is 'Black Power'!" (Goldfield, Abbot, Argersinger & Argersinger, 2005, 361).

In principle, Dr. King's approach had failed, at least in the minds of many in the black communities, precisely by virtue of the problems that King had articulated in his infamous Letter from Birmingham Jail in 1963. Specifically, the notion that perfectly legal restrictions and rules that were neutral and non-discriminatory on their face were being applied prejudicially by local authorities (especially throughout the South) against minorities; and the notion that the real problem was less the die-hard white racists who viciously opposed equality for blacks, but the more "neutral" mainstream white Americans who passively accepted a fundamentally unjust society.