In the
1960s America was witness to an
explosion that had been looming
since the Reconstruction. Violent
race riots, Freedom Rides, billy
clubs, boycotts, tear gas,
sit-ins, assassinations, peaceful
demonstrations, astounding
examples of courage and
stomach-churning malevolence, and
the most significant advances in
civil rights since the
Emancipation Proclamation.
We
preach freedom around the world,
and we mean it, and we cherish
our freedom here at home, but are
we to say to the world, and much
more importantly, to each other
that this is the land of the free
except for the Negroes; that we
have no second-class citizens
except Negroes;
that we have no class or caste
system, no ghettoes, no master
race except with respect to
Negroes?
Now the time has come for this
Nation to fulfill its promise.
The events in Birmingham and
elsewhere have so increased the
cries for
equality that no city
or State or legislative body can
prudently choose to ignore
them.
(John F. Kennedy
June 19, 1963, after the brutal
response, led by the infamous
Eugene "Bull" Connor, to the
efforts to desegregate
Birmingham, Alabama. Television
viewers witnessed fire hoses and
police dogs, authorized by
Connor,
turned on students who
had skipped school to participate
in organized protests.)
President
Johnson's Great Society, a
landmark set of programs to
tackle social concerns, chief
among which were poverty and
racial injustice, was led off in
1964 with the Civil Rights Act,
which outlawed segregation at
public accommodations as well as
job discrimination.
But
suppose God is black?
What if we
go to Heaven and we, all our
lives, have treated the Negro as
an inferior,
and God is there,
and we look up and He is not
white?
What then is our
response?
(Robert
Kennedy)
I
refuse to accept the view that
mankind is so tragically bound to
the starless midnight of racism
and war that the bright daybreak
of peace and brotherhood can
never become a reality ...
I believe that unarmed truth and
unconditional love will have the
final word.
(Martin
Luther King, Jr.)
If
any man claims the Negro should
be content ... let him say he
would willingly change the color
of his skin
and go to live in the
Negro section of a large city.
Then and only then has he a right
to such a claim.
(Robert
Kennedy)
The
next day I was in my car driving
along the freeway when at a red
light another car pulled
alongside. A white woman was
driving and on the passenger's
side, next to me, was a white
man. "Malcolm X!" he called
out-and when I looked, he stuck
his hand out of his car, across
at me, grinning.
"Do you mind shaking hands with a
white man?"
Imagine that!
Just as the traffic light turned
green,
I told him, "I don't mind
shaking hands with human beings.
Are you one?"
(Malcolm
X)
In 1965
President Johnson introduced the
Voting Rights Act that guaranteed
minorities the right to vote and
eliminated voter-qualification
tests. After several people were
killed and hundreds others
arrested during an organized
march from Selma to Montgomery in
Alabama, part of voter
registration program, Johnson
spoke:
But
even if we pass this bill, the
battle will not be over. What
happened in Selma is part of a
far larger movement which reaches
into every section and state of
America. It is the effort of
American Negroes to secure for
themselves the full blessings of
American life.
Their cause must be our cause
too.
Because it is not just
Negroes, but really it is all of
us,
who must overcome the crippling
legacy of bigotry and
injustice.
And we shall overcome.
