Reading Response #7
finewinesneed
EOTP-Episode1112.pdf
EYES ON THE PRIZE: A NATION OF LAWS &
MOVEMENTS
AFAM B201 – Intro to African American Studies
Najmah Thomas, Ph.D.
Admin / Module To-Do List
Reading - Eyes on The Prize Study Guide:
Week 1a Reading – Episodes 11-12
Week 1b Reading – Episodes 13-14
Assignments:
Reading Response due EOD 12/04
Donning of the Kente (Students
Connected Service Learning option; invite 2 guests & attend on 12/05, submit reflection by the 8th = 20 points)
A Nation of Laws & Movements –
Lecture Topics
RECAP: EOTP Episode 10
Timeline of Events
Opening Discussion
A Nation of Laws & Movements:
EOTP Episode 11 (Ain’t Gonna Shuffle No More):
Becoming Ali
Howard University Sit-ins
EOTP Episode 12: (A Nation of Law?): Angela Davis, FBI most wanted
FBI & COINTELPRO
Attica Correctional Facility revolt & suppression
EOTP EP 10 – Recap
We mean business now – Dr.
King’s final speech (April 3,
1968) and 3 strategies for
the movement:
“We’ve got to stay together
and maintain unity.”
“Let us keep the issues
where they are. The issue is
injustice.”
“Let us develop a kind of
dangerous unselfishness.”
EOTP EP 10 – Recap
Announced by Dr. King in November 1967 during SCLC staff retreat at Penn Center
Middle ground between riots and timid supplications for justice
Focused on economic security for African Americans and other disadvantage groups
After King assassination, campaign led by Ralph Abernathy, new SCLC president
Mothers Day (May 12, 1968), DC - Coretta Scott King leads 2000+ women,1st wave of demonstrators
Resurrection City – make-shift living quarters built on the National Mall, protestors remained for month+
Small victories attained – free surplus food for 200 counties, promises by some federal agencies to hire poor people to help run programs
2018 revival of the Campaign, ongoing efforts
Timeline of selected events
May 1966 – Stokely Carmichael elected SNCC national chairman
August 1966 – Escalation of Vietnam War
October 1966, Oakland, CA – Huey Newton and Bobby Seale form the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
November 1966, St. Helena Is., SC – Dr. King & SCLC meet at Penn Center
April 4, 1967-Dr. King speaks out against the war in Vietnam
April 28, 1967 - Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army
May 1967, Sacramento, CA – Armed Black Panthers protest firearms legislation at the capital
November 1967, Cleveland, OH – Carl Stokes becomes 1st Black mayor for a major US city
February 1968, Washington, DC – Kerner Commission report on economic disparities and racial discrimination
February 8, 1968, Orangeburg, SC – 3 students killed, 27 wounded by police on SCSU campus
February 12, 1968, Memphis, TN – Union of Black sanitation workers strike begins
March 19, 1968 – Howard University students stage 5-day sit-in at university administration building
April 4, 1968, Memphis, TN – Dr. King is assassinated
May 14, 1968, Washington, DC – The Poor People’s Campaign
June 5, 1968, Los Angeles, CA – Senator Robert Kennedy is assassinated
August 1970 – Angela Davis listed on FBI most wanted list
March 1971, Pennsylvania, PA – Activists break in to FBI office and discover documents related to COINTELPRO
September 8, 1971, NY – 1200 inmates take over Attica Correctional Facility; 29 inmates and 10 hostages killed during prison revolt suppression
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Opening Discussion
EOTP Episode 11: Becoming Ali
Formerly Cassius Clay, 1960 Olympic gold medalist; 1964 heavyweight champion
Close friends with Malcom X, converted to Nation of Islam at height of his career
1967, requested religious exemption from draft (Vietnam conscientious objector)
Stripped of heavy weight title, fined $10K, banned from boxing for 3 years, sentenced 5 years prison (over-turned in 1970 by US Supreme Court, violation of civil rights)
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand
miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro
people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights? …If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and
equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me. I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land of the laws of Allah. I have nothing to
lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail. We’ve been in jail
for four hundred years.”
EOTP Episode 11: Howard University
Sit-In
March 19, 1968 – Washington,
DC
39 students peacefully protest,
are expelled:
Protesting against HBCU education
centered on Western epistemology
Protesting against ‘traditional’ rules
and restrictions (the Black Harvard)
Demands for Black Studies and
Black experience on campus
(Color Us Black!)1:59-4:50
EOTP EP 12 – A Nation of Law?
Exposing and
examining racialized
law enforcement:
Angela Davis, FBI most
wanted
FBI & COINTELPRO
Attica Correctional
Facility revolt &
suppression
“We are all told when we are
young that America is a nation of
laws and not men: that America is
ruled by the law, that justice is
blind, and that it does not
discriminate. That's a myth.
America is a nation of men who
use the law. The law is the
standard of the most powerful
class of society made into a
social, political and economic
code of behavior for all.” –
Dhoruba Bin Wahad, 1990 (former
leader of NY BPP, served 19 years in prison
before conviction was overturned)
Angela Davis, FBI Most Wanted
Born 1/26/44, Birmingham, AL
Growing up in Jim Crow South = feminist, communist, Black revolutionary
Lost friends in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing
An academic and activist:
Attended Brandeis University, UC San Diego, studied in France and Germany
Joined Communist Party (CPUSA), BPP, and Che- Lumumba (all-Black faction of the Communist Party)
Professor of philosophy at UCLA
‘Political Prisoner’, arrest & response:
Accused of providing weapons used by ‘Soledad brothers’ during deadly riot
Wanted by FBI as ‘terrorist’
17+ months in jail, mostly solitary confinement
Aretha Franklin, John Lennon, James Baldwin, many others mount worldwide freedom campaign
Acquitted of all charges in June 1972
Still continues a life of activism…
FBI & COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO - Counter-intelligence Program 1956 – 1971 (uncovered 3/8/71 in Media, PA during the Ali-v-Frazier fight in NYC):
Goal: disrupt and destroy the Black Freedom Movement
Legal harassment, intimidation, wiretapping, infiltration, smear campaigns (‘fake news’), and blackmail
Resulted in countless prison sentences and, in the case of Black Panther Fred Hampton and others, murder
Tactics employed against every national civil rights organization and antiwar orgs…Students for a Democratic Society, the American Indian Movement, the Puerto Rican Young Lords, others
1975 Church Committee findings & results:
FBI over stepped boundaries
FBI undermined free speech, privacy, other rights
FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) passed to limit secret national security wiretaps
“The purpose of this new
counterintelligence endeavor is
to expose, disrupt, misdirect,
discredit, or otherwise neutralize
the activities of black
nationalist…organizations…their
leadership, spokesmen,
membership, and supporters…”
– J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director for
47+ years…
Attica Prison Revolt
Cause of the revolt – dehumanization:
1,200 inmates, majority Black and Latino suffered deplorable conditions
Openly hostile, all White correctional staff
Solidarity with murdered BPP prisoner at San Quentin
Brutal beatings of prisoners following hunger strike
Demands – humanization:
Toilet paper supply
Increase in wages
Better healthcare services
Response – dehumanization:
Governor Nelson Rockefeller refuses amnesty
State troopers storm the prison
39 people die, ALL victims of police gunfire
Retaliation, inmate tortures detailed in 570-page report (released to public May 2015)
No prosecution of troops, life sentences for inmates
Image source: nytimes.com
Discussion Questions
Inhumane conditions existed
in Attica for decades. Why
did people allow these
conditions to exist? How were
these conditions justified?
What prejudices made it
easy to treat prisoners as
outcasts?
Read Eyes on the Prize – Episodes 13 & 14 before
next session
Next Session: Thursday, December
1st
