Frederick Douglass Quotes

This was the speech that started the "Black Power" Movement. The rally was held in a city park to Protest the murder just 10 days before of the civil rights activist, James Meredith. It also marked the break between the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the nonviolent movement lead by Martin Luther King. Because of that, the speech received so much publicity that "Black Power" became a significant political term instantly.

His strategy was to fill the jails of Birmingham, and asked the young people to help. The next days saw virtually all the Birmingham high school students our of school and in the streets protesting which was then against the un-Constitutional laws of Birmingham and Alabama. The students were arrested by the droves and the white authorities, believing that they were being firm against “radical lawbreakers”, fell into the trap, and became a travesty to most of the country and the rest of the world and the hundreds of jailed students beaten and assaulted raised the consciousness of whites as well as Blacks.

At the time the Democratic Politicians of the South went to extremes from refusing to register Black voters to countenancing assault, torture and even murder of Blacks who organized voter registration. When the racists switched to the Republican party, is was Republican politicians who tried to make voter registration and voting more difficult for minorities, but the means and degree of these efforts were very mild compared to what is was when Rustin uttered this quotation.

to prevent blacks from voting

Preclearance was a requirement that any change in the voting or registration laws, rules or procedures needed to be approved by the Federal Justice Department. He was testifying about why preclearance was important and why it was placed in the Voting Rights Act every time it was reauthorized. See {635271} for what happens without preclearance.

In the South racism was so extensive that Blacks were not allowed to even vote. Brooke had moved from the South to Massachusetts and there as in the North, Midwest and West, African Americans could vote. So the first time Brooke ever voted he was a candidate.

Hoover and the FBI were supposed to be enforcing Federal law. However, they could not find any criminal activity on the part of Martin Luther King Jr. They regarded the Civil Rights Movement as a revolutionary threat to the nation. See {620621} and {74219} . So the FBI in an incredible abuse of power, had a meeting of its top officials to plan a strategy for destroying King as a Negro leader in America. We look back on this era where officials who were never elected by anyone, and having no authority from an elected official, took it upon themselves to decide who leaders in America would be.

Freedom Rides were interracial groups of Civil Rights advocates who boarded public interstate busses in Washington and rode South through some of the most segregated communities in the country. As the bus stopped at the segregated rest stops, the Black Freedom Riders would use the “white” waiting rooms, toilets, and other facilities which was against the local custom and law. Racist segregationists often brutalized and assaulted the Freedom riders whose leaders demanded Federal Protection. The Attorney General and others were trying to get the local politicians and law enforcement officials to protect the Freedom Riders, but often these were the worst of the racist segregationists. Kennedy thought if he could have a “cooling off period” for a few days, he could persuade the locals to protect the Freedom Riders from the mobs with the threat of sending Federal Marshalls or troops for the protection. So he asked Farmer and other Freedom Ride organizers to stop the Freedom Rides for a few days. This was Farmer’s famous response. The Freedom Rides continued and forced the Federal Government to respond on a timetable they did not prefer.

This was art of the Nixon "Southern Strategy" to alienate the white supremacists and racists from the Democratic Party with Civil Rights legislation and rhetoric, and get most of them to become Republicans. But as Phillips observed, when Negroes began voting in significant numbers in the South the party switching really accelerated.

He had written this text on a newspaper when he was jailed in Birmingham for violating a court order not to demonstrate. A common tactic of the Southern segregationists was to have local segregationist judges issue injunctions against civil rights demonstrations on the grounds that they would promote violence. These were generally unconstitutional, but King and others were jailed until the legal appeal could even be heard.