This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

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

Generation on Fire

Tom Hayden provided the visual metaphor for the Generation on Fire segment. In an interview with Judy Baca conducted at SPARC, Hayden described the uniqueness of the generation. The 1960s was the first time in history, according to Hayden, in which an entire generation were self-described revolutionaries; they were a generation on fire. Judy recalls Hayden describing that the way many people got engaged in activism was a question of who they fell in love with.

Hayden’s metaphor inspired the imagery and title for the segment. In the background of this segment notable Freedom Riders–Joan Mullholland, Catherine Burks-Brooks, Jean Thompson, Alex Weiss, Robert and Helen Singleton, Lula Mae White, and Hank Thomas, Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael), James Farmer, and John Lewis–are depicted on a Greyhound bus. In the foreground, a line of youth with fire emanating from their heart centers hold hands as firemen try to extinguish their fire. These young people are linked across race and class carrying the belief that they could change the world. That is what the Generation on Fire is all about.

This page has paths:

Contents of this path:

Contents of this path:

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.
When traveling by air, rail or bus across country on business or pleasure, I always recall the summer of 1961, when the Rides made interstate travel the democratic activity we take for granted. Racial segregation on trains or in bus stations is unthinkable today. But I remember when it was the law or custom in many places. I was raised in New Orleans, and learned early on what segregated life was like as a Negro. And I remember the Freedom Rides. In August 1961, I was one of 11 men and women who boarded a train from Los Angeles to Mississippi. We Freedom Riders — some 400 people across the U.S. — bore witness to our conviction that segregation was illegal. We were disciplined, organized and racially mixed. We rode trains, buses and planes; we sought service at dining facilities, restrooms and waiting rooms. We expected to be incarcerated and knew there could be violence directed against us. But we were committed.
Singing We Shall Overcome, this group of Freedom Summer volunteers begins its journey from Oxford, Ohio to Mississippi. Despite the dangers, more than 1,000 college students volunteered to canvass, teach and establish community centers.Photo: Ted Polumbaum, Newseum Collection - Photographer Herbert Randall no longer has the nightmares that haunted his sleep after a harrowing incident while documenting the 1964 civil rights initiative known as Freedom Summer. Fifty years later, Richard Momeyer believes there is still much to learn from the hundreds of volunteers — many of them white college students — who trained in Oxford before heading south to register black voters and set up freedom schools and community centers. An estimated 800 volunteers went through orientation training June 14-27 of that year at the Western College for Women, which is now part of Miami University's Western campus. Three civil rights activists — Michael Schwerner, 24, James Chaney, 21, and Andrew Goodman, 20 — were murdered in Mississippi soon after leaving Oxford. Their deaths stunned the nation and sparked a major federal investigation. It was code-named "MIBURN" for Mississippi Burning after their charred station wagon was found on June 23.