Reading Response Assignment

EYES ON THE PRIZE: AWAKE, FIGHTING

BACK…AND I AIN’T SCARED AFAM B201 – Intro to African American Studies

Najmah Thomas, Ph.D.

Session Agenda

Admin / Reminders

 RECAP: The New Deal & Old Dilemmas

Opening Discussion

 Lecture: Eyes on The Prize

Examining America’s Civil Rights Movement

Community Organizing

Episode 1 – Awakenings

Next steps / Adjourn

RECAP: The New Deal

 Reading:

 Week 1a Reading –Eyes on The Prize Study Guide –

Episode 1; Clark Ready From Within

 10/13 -14) ☺ ENJOY YOUR FALL BREAK

 Learning Module 4 Quiz (due EOD 10/19)

 Reading Response Assignment (due EOD 10/23)

RECAP: New Deal & Old Dilemmas

 Roosevelt’s New Deal programs in response to the Great Depression (FHA, SSA, WPA, FDIC)

 Discrimination in New Deal programs (FHA & red- lining)

 Fighting for ‘Double-V’ in WWII

 Discrimination in healthcare systems (US Public Health Service and Tuskegee Syphilis Study)

African American Studies: Timeline of selected events (1917 – 1968)

1917-18 - US intervenes in World War I

1919 - 'Red Summer' - over 25 documented urban race riots in Chicago, DC

and other cities

1920 - 19th Amendment (women's right to vote)

1920s - The Harlem Renaissance - NYC, Chicago, Detroit, etc.,

experience similar explosion of creative Black

culture; 1929 - Great Depression begins

1933-38 – NEW DEAL ERA

1937 - Zora Neale Hurston writes best-known novel,

Their Eyes Were Watching God, in seven weeks while studying religion in Haiti.

1939 - 1945 - WWII

1948 - President Harry Truman desegregates the

armed forces.

1948 - Beginning of Apartheid in South Africa

1952 - Briggs v. Elliot (Clarendon County, SC), first Supreme Court case in the US

to challenge segregation; 1954 - Supreme Court

outlaws segregated public schools in Brown v. Board of

Education.

1955 - 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American youth from Chicago, is brutally murdered for

flirting with a white woman four days earlier. Vietnam

War begins.

1955-57 - Bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama,

sparked by seamstress Rosa Parks and organized by Rev.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Civil Rights Act of 1957 - protect voting rights.

1956 - Septima P. Clark fired from teaching job for

refusal to renounce the NAACP as required by SC

1958 – Orangeburg Massacre – 3 students killed,

28 wounded at SCSU

1960 - 4 NC A&T students stage sit-ins at Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro,

North Carolina, sparking other sit-ins across the south; (May) Civil Rights Act of

1960 - protect voting rights.

1962 - James Meredith enrolls at University of

Mississippi after President John F. Kennedy sends in

troops.

1963 - (August) - Over 250,000 attend March on Washington; MLK “I Have a Dream” speech.

(September) Images of violence in Birmingham, Al. (4 girls die in

church bomb, police brutality, etc.) result in widespread sympathy for

the Civil Rights Movement.

1963 - (November 22) President John F. Kennedy

assassinated.

Nation of Islam membership reaches 30,000 (from 500)

under leadership of Malcolm X.

1964 - Students Michael Schwerner, Andrew

Goodman and James Chaney are murdered

during Freedom Summer in Mississippi.

1964 - (July) President Lyndon Johnson signs

sweeping Civil Rights Act, outlawing discrimination.

(October) MLK wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1965 - (March) MLK leads a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in support of black voter

registration; (August) Voting Rights Act of 1965

- abolish literacy tests.

1965 (February 24) Malcolm X assassinated.

(August) President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act.

1966 - New leader of the Student Nonviolent

Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Stokely Carmichael coins the term 'Black Power"

1968 - (2/8) Orangeburg Massacre - students Samuel Hammond, Henry Smith, and Delano Middleton (still in high

school) killed by police gunfire on the campus of

South Carolina State College.

1968 (April 4) - King assassinated, sparking riots

in more than 100 cities.

1968 - End of the "Great Migration" (over 6 million African Americans left the

south for points north & west)

Opening Discussion

Module Thesis Statement 7

The social, political and economic gains

for African Americans during the Civil

Rights Movement were achieved as a

result of ongoing interaction between the

government, civil rights organizations,

and individual advocates.

Eyes on the Prize

 Eyes On The Prize (1987)- helping us analyze the movement through primary sources

 Shows the link between education and political organizing – a strategy pioneered by ‘Queen Mother of the Civil Rights’ Septima P. Clark

 Describes the high costs of standing up for civil rights

 Episode 1 - Awakenings:

 No more accepting second-class citizenship…

 No more accepting blatant violations of basic rights…

8

Eyes on the Prize – Community

Organizing

 The Role of Organizations & Youth/Young People:

 ACHR (Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights)

 COFO (Council of Federated Organizations)

 CORE (Congress of Racial Equality)

 MIA (Montgomery Improvement Association)

 SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

 WPC (Women’s Political Council)

Image source: F/H

Eyes on the Prize Episode 1 -

Awakenings

 Marshall (Justice) in the making:

 NAACP legal strategy

 Charles Hamilton Houston – the Man Who Killed Jim Crow

 Brown v. Board of Education (1954):

 First, Briggs v. Elliott in Clarendon, SC (1950, decided 1952)

◼ Clark Doll Study

◼ 2010 CNN Study

 Overturns Plessy v. Ferguson and separate but equal doctrine

 Segregationists respond with terror and violence

Image source: Cecil Williams

SC Civil Rights Museum

Image source: NY Times

Eyes on the Prize Episode 1 -

Awakenings

 The murder of Emmett Till (1955):

 A Black Boy from Chicago…in Mississippi

 Enforcing segregation, maintaining white supremacy

 “The world is going to have to look at this.” – Mrs. Till

 Mose Wright stands up

 Getting away with murder…and sparking a movement

Eyes on the Prize Episode 1 -

Awakenings

 The Montgomery Bus

Boycott (1955 – 1957):

 But first, Claudette Colvin

(March 2, 1955)

 Rosa Parks…and Septima

P. Clark

 Jo Ann Robinson

delivers…50,000 leaflets

 A 26-year old shall lead

them...

 Winning…in 381 days

Septima P. Clark and Rosa Parks,

1955 (TN) loc.gov

Please be sure to read (& watch if possible) Eyes

on the Prize – Episode 2 before next class session!

Next Session: Tuesday, October 18th

4:30pm