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Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

1960s Black Liberation

Contents of this tag:

Nonviolence Workshops & Lunch Counter Sit-ins Organizing 1957-1969: Lawson is involved with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), 8 a pacifist organization founded in Europe at the outbreak of WWI and the oldest pacifist organization in the U.S. 9 He serves as a southern director of FOR and begins organizing workshops on nonviolence for community members & students at Vanderbilt and the city’s four black colleges (Tennessee State University, Fisk University, Meharry College, and American Baptist College). 10 He then enrolls at Vanderbilt University Divinity School in Nashville. As of 2011, Lawson identified himself as a member of FOR. From Jan.-May in 1958 Lawson held nonviolence workshops in Little Rock, a year after the Little Rock Nine had begun desegregation of the local high schools. In 1959, Lawson alongside Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, & James Bevel plan nonviolent From Jan.-May in 1958 Lawson held nonviolence workshops in Little Rock, a year after the Little Rock Nine had begun desegregation of the local high schools. In 1959, Lawson alongside Diane Nash, Marion Barry, John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, & James Bevel plan nonviolent demonstrations in Nashville & conduct test sit-ins. These organizers are met with resistance and considered “radical” in Nashville as the belief was that Nashville was a “moderate” city with “the best working relationships with Black people and that in fact the sit-in was not the way to do it.” In 1958, Lawson attended his first meeting with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) where he met with King and led his first workshop on nonviolence. Following the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins in 1960, Lawson and other activists launched similar protests in downtown Nashville. More than 150 students were arrested before the city began desegregating lunch counters. First sit-in in Nashville on February 13th 1960. The city of Nashville officially desegregated its downtown lunch counters in May of 1960. In 1960, Lawson was expelled from Vanderbilt due to involvement with the desegregation movement.
Civil Rights Movement: Firemen turn hoses on demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama - IRMINGHAM, Ala., May 3 -- Fire hoses and police dogs were used here today to disperse Negro students protesting racial segregation. Three students were reported to have been bitten and to have required hospital treatment. Two firemen and a news photographer were injured by bricks and broken bottles thrown from the top of a Negro office building near the major encounter, at 17th Street and Fifth Avenue North. [In Washington, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy warned that ``increasing turmoil'' would be made inevitable by a refusal to grant equal rights to Negroes, United Press International reported. But he questioned the timing of the demonstrations.] Marchers Are Dispersed This was the second day of major demonstrations by the students here. Yesterday, more than 900 students were sent out from the Negro section in groups of 10 to 50. Some succeeded in reaching City Hall and several downtown corners. More than 700 were arrested. Today, with the dogs and fire hoses, the police were largely successful in dispersing the student marchers before they left the Negro section. Fewer than 500 were able to leave the 16th Street Baptist Church before the police sealed its doors. Only two groups won their way through the police lines. One group of 20 reached City Hall, where they were arrested. Another group of 10 got as far as the bus depot on 19th Street, where they also were taken into custody. In all, more than 250 persons were reported arrested today. The demonstrators today appeared to be older than those who marched yesterday. They appeared to be mostly high school and college students. All the demonstrations were held between 1 and 3 P.M. They followed by less than three hours a declaration by the two principal leaders of the month-old direct action campaign against segregation here. The leaders said that the demonstrations would continue with increasing intensity until there were both ``promise and action'' from the city authorities and white merchants to start to end segregation. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Atlanta, Ga., and the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, head of the local affiliate, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, made the announcement. They told the news conference that they had no intention of relaxing the pressure without such action. ``We are ready to negotiate,'' Dr. King said. ``But we intend to negotiate from strength. If the white power structure of this city will meet some of our minimum demands, then we will consider calling off the demonstrations, but we want promises, plus action.'' Both said there was no lack of recruits from among the Negro community of 140,000 persons here. If there ever was any division within it over the timing of the campaign, it now has disappeared, they declared.
Congress passes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The act establishes affirmative action programs, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender, creed, race, or ethnic background: "to achieve equality of employment opportunities and remove barriers that have operated in the past" (Title VII). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is also established through Title VII to prevent job discrimination. The Bracero Program, the government program initially put in place during WWII, ends. It brought Mexican laborers into the country to replace the American men who were fighting overseas. When the war ended the program continued.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, is considered one of the crowning legislative achievements of the civil rights movement. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. In subsequent years, Congress expanded the act and passed additional civil rights legislation such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Lead-up to the Civil Rights Act
Article by Reverend Jim Conn: Lynd Ward, "Wild Pilgrimage" My friend, mentor and colleague, Rev. James Lawson, calls our economic system “plantation capitalism.” Lawson was the nonviolent strategist for Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement and the key figure in the desegregation of Nashville. His reference, of course, pulls forward the image of enslaved field workers in the Old South. The image chafes in my mind. Yes, slavery, but today’s workers are not slaves. They are not the landless peasants or sharecroppers that emancipated slaves were forced to be. They are not the low-level, below-the-standard-wage employees that Southern blacks became when they migrated to the steel cities of the North. They are not second-class citizens isolated into segregated neighborhoods and limited to menial jobs. Except, there is a growing body of evidence showing that this is exactly what a majority of workers of all colors is becoming. Between 1965 and 2011, while the top 10 percent gained an inflation-adjusted annual income increase of $116,000, the other 90 percent received a paltry $59. No wonder 75 percent of families report living paycheck to paycheck, and one in four Americans report using payday loans, pawn shops, auto-title loans and tax-refund loans to make ends meet. It’s why working people depend on check-cashing stores, purchase cars from “buy here/pay here” dealers and get re-treads from rent-a-tire shops. People who depend on such high-interest businesses to make it feel a lot of anxiety. Some 59 percent of Americans who think of themselves as middle class fear falling out of their class. Half of working-age Americans skipped necessary medical care in 2012 because it was too expensive. Even people with health insurance postponed care because of the cost of co-pays. Nearly a quarter of Americans report struggling to put food on the table. Meanwhile, women have moved into the breadwinner position. More than 40 percent of families say the woman is the sole earner. Yet a wage survey indicates that a mother is paid five percent less per child than her female counterpart without children, and women on the whole receive lower wages than their male colleagues. While moms in many states can now take an extended maternity leave without fearing losing their jobs, most do not. These patterns did not result from worker choices, but resulted from employer policies. Now they pile on more. Employers monitor employees in ways only technology could provide. Companies measure the keystrokes of data-entry workers. The phone message “this call may be monitored for quality assurance” is heard everywhere, all the time. Warehouse workers wear head phones that direct them to their next task and tell them how much time they have to finish it. The delivery guy sets a timer, then runs to leave the package and jogs back to his truck. Piece-work quotas are up, and managers even time bathroom breaks. As one worker put it, “I’m worn out. I get home and I can barely stand up.” With the constant threat of downsizing, layoffs and pay cuts – while a long line of the unemployed waits to take any available job – employees find themselves less and less willing to voice complaints or even talk among themselves about grievances. Since 92 percent of private-sector wage workers have no union or worker/peer means of redressing egregious circumstances on the job, people self-censor. They check their civil liberties at the door and take their bitterness home. A job, for most workers, means go to work, keep your head down, close your mouth, work to exhaustion, then go home and try to meet your family’s needs by going into debt. No wonder this generation of young people is not making long-term buying decisions on new cars and houses. They face the anxiety and stress of life-long financial insecurity. I think that is what my friend means by “plantation capitalism.”