Soul Is Rested: Movement Days

¶ … Soul is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered by Howell Raines. Specifically it will discuss the changes in the Civil Rights movement between 1941 and 1968. The Civil Rights Movement is one of the defining moments of Black American history, and this book attempts to put it in perspective by interviewing a wide range of Civil Rights participants and leaders. This book illustrates how difficult it was to gain Civil Rights in America, and how diligent Civil Rights workers were in gaining rights for African-Americans, even if it endangered their own lives.

Civil Rights organizations began to form in the 1940s, and gained momentum until the Civil Rights laws were passed in 1964 and 1965. During that time, many African-Americans worked diligently to gain rights and equality for Black Americans, and many died in the fight for freedom. The earliest organizations, like the Fellowship of Reconciliation (for), morphed into organizations that are more familiar today, such as the Committee of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). These organizations all worked hard to end racial inequality, and most of them subscribed to the non-violent techniques of Gandhi, who had accomplished so much with these techniques in India, and won freedom from British oppression and rule in the process.

Non-violence was the perfect solution for these groups, because many whites were intensely afraid of the black Civil Rights Movement, and they could have responded to this "threat" with violence, (and many did anyway). By acting non-violently, the African-Americans gave no cause for violence, and by not condoning it, they showed they could reach their goals peacefully, without the need for violence or abuse.

The SCLC was founded after the successful Montgomery bus boycott that began when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white person on a bus in December 1955. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. founded the group by calling together Southern protest group leaders and organizing them into one, coherent and powerful group, the SCLC.

King was elected president because he had led the Montgomery bus boycott, he had notoriety and had attracted media attention, and it seemed he was the best one to represent the black community in their quest for rights.

In addition, Joseph E. Lowrey, familiar with the roots of the organization, notes, "In the black community, historically, it's been the preacher who has been the principal community leader," and that may help explain King's choice, and the reason so many religious groups and organizations were involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

Throughout the fight for Civil Rights, non-violence remained the key, and many different tactics evolved to help gain rights without using violent or strong-arm tactics, which would only bring resistance and backlash to the movement. One tactic was the sit-in, which was becoming a popular way to protest everything from war to Civil Rights on college campuses. The sit-ins gained attention, helped disrupt business, and were entirely non-violent. Many people think of them on college campuses, but the Woolworth sit-in in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1960 took place on restaurant counter stools, not a campus, and it spread like wildfire to other areas because it worked, and because it gained so much media and public attention. This was a time when more and more students were becoming involved in protests and Civil Rights, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed in early 1960 to help coordinate student efforts and separate them from the SCLC, who many felt were not as involved in student protests as they could have been.

Most of these attempts at change had been local, but the Freedom Riders changed that, and brought wider attention to their cause. They rode buses from Virginia to Mississippi and Alabama, in an attempt to stop the illegal segregation of buses and terminals in the South. In many states, they terminals quickly stopped segregating before they arrived, and in others, they faced beatings and violence in their attempts to desegregate the interstate bus system. Many of the riders ended up in jail, but eventually, the ride led to the true end of bus segregation in the South.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement, and he appears often throughout this book. He helped organize and lead SCLC, and he often appeared in the media as a very vocal representative of the Movement. One interviewee says of King, "[a]nd then we'd hear Dr. King speak, and that would quite down the angriest lion, because he just had that thing about him, that halo that he would shine."

Of course, all the movements did not value Dr. King, some felt he did not attempt to work with the college students enough, and others, including Black ministers, chided him for his stance on civil disobedience. In addition, many whites feared Dr. King and felt he was nothing more than a dangerous rabble-rouser who was organizing the blacks and encouraging change and equality that they did not desire or believe in. King really made his reputation in his "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," and he became a true leader of the Civil Rights Movement after his work in desegregating Birmingham businesses.

Probably the most distressing part of this book is the information on how whites continually attempted to thwart the Civil Rights Movement though just about any means. They beat up (and killed) protesting blacks, bombed homes and businesses, tried to keep them from registering to vote, and did just about everything imaginable to get in the way of the Movement. They were so enraged and full of hate that sometimes it is difficult to believe. They also had political and police backing, often at a heavy cost to the movement. Another interviewee says, "But more and more, the black people would see that the board of supervisors controlled everything. What they didn't control, they left to the chief of police."

The author notes that police, or people dressed as police, often planted bombs in the homes of black activists, too.

This shows how widespread and violent the hatred was, and how it permeated the South.

At the end of the book, Martin Luther King is assassinated, and it was assumed by many that the Civil Rights Movement was successful by that time. Even the book ends there, in fact, implying that is the case. However, it does not seem that the Civil Rights Movement was completely successful by this time, nor is it completely successful today. There is much more equality between blacks and whites, but the truth is, there are still far more black people living in poverty, there are still distances in education between blacks and whites, and there is still inequality in hiring and pay, even though these things are not supposed to occur. Blacks often earn less because they have less education and less opportunities for advanced education than whites do, and the list goes on. Because these disparities still exist, it seems that the Civil Rights Movement has been successful in ending many blatant acts of aggression and prejudice, but there is still a racial divide in this country, and the Civil Rights Movement attempted to end that divide, and so, the work is not yet finished.

Using oral interviews to reconstruct and interpret history certainly has its advantages and disadvantages. One clear advantage is the interviewees tell their story in their own words, with little or no interpretation by the interviewer. Thus, their stories are real, from the heart, and extremely touching in many cases. The author interviewed each of the subjects himself, usually in one sitting, and he learned to ask them questions about things they wanted to talk about, in order to get the most feeling and emotion in the interviews.