The Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement

The 1960s Civil Rights Movement brought to fruition the notion of a nation “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” as articulated by Lincoln at Gettysburg. This great movement which resulted in expanded citizenship for all Americans employed multiple tactics to overcome and knock down the political and social apparatus of segregation in the South- legal challenges, boycotts, protest marches, sit-in demonstrations, freedom rides, and institutional building.

Black History Quiz: Test Your Knowledge

We are presenting this Black History Quiz to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge of Black History and to give you an opportunity to learn even more.  For more on African American History, go to kwanzaaguide.com.

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Quiz
1. Who was the first African warrior-king to unite Upper and Lower Egypt four millennia ago?
2. Name two great empires in pre-colonial Africa.
3. Name the fierce black woman and abolitionist and women’s rights activist woman who spoke truth to power with her famous statement, “Ain’t I a Woman?”
4. Who was the legendary female journalist and civil rights activist who wrote and fought against the lynching of black people in the United States?
5. Who wrote the Black National Anthem?
6. Who was the first African American woman to receive a patent?
7. Who invented the automatic traffic signal and the gas mask?
8. Who wrote the song “St. Louis Blues” and is known as “Father of the Blues?”
9. Who was the founder of the largest major black nationalist movement?
10.  Name the most famous female writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance

In All Our Glory: African American History

We celebrate African American History to learn its lessons, honor its achievements, and emulate its spirit. The history of African Americans is dominated by their struggle to free themselves from the oppressive, exploitative, and de-humanizing practice of American Slavery and to create the conditions for African Americans to fully realize their humanity.

History shows that the struggle of blacks to free themselves from racism and poverty has made America a better nation as Dr. Martin Luther King suggested – “And let us move on, in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”  Perhaps Ralph Ellison, author of the American classic, Invisible Man, best summed-up the presence and contribution of blacks to American Civilization in his essay What America Would Be Like Without Blacks.

Martin Luther King’s Most Significant Speech: I Have A Dream

Martin Luther King’s I have A Dream Speech was undoubtedly his best known speech.  More than just a popular address, this speech would resonate in the hearts and minds of Americans for forever. This speech has attained iconic status.

The year 1963 was the centennial of the signing of the emancipation proclamation. It was a momentous year for the civil Rights movement. Yet, the country seemingly was going in reverse; conditions for African Americans were getting worse. In Alabama, the police under segregationist Bill “Bull” Connor, turned fire hoses and police dogs on children and demonstrators. Medgar Evers, thirty-seven year old NAACP Field Secretary, was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi.  Civil disturbance occurred throughout the summer. the nation was on the brink of racial civil war. A Philip Randolph called for and was the driving force behind the landmark March on Washington D.C., August 28, 1963.  By 1963, All in all, some 250,000 Americans, predominantly African Americans, traveling on 2,000 “freedom buses” and 30 “freedom trains-came from all corners of the country to participate, making the march the largest demonstration of its kind in the history of the United States.  This was the backdrop for the Martin Luther King’s historic I Have A Dream speech.

As former president of the National Council of Negro Women, Dorothy I. height, observes, King’s I Have A Dream speech was a “riveting sermon that struck the conscience of America, taking its place as one of the most famous speeches in human history.” The speech was a “cascading vision, rich with historical resonance and contemporary significance, whose cumulative effect remains astounding and moving a half century later.

One of Martin Luther King’s Three Most Important Speeches- I’ve Been To The Mountaintop

Time to Break Silence
I’ve Been To The Mountaintop
I Have A Dream

The Speech

As one of King’s close advisers and friend, Andrew Young, writes, “No speech has provoked as much discussion and debate as the message” he delivered in his last address, I’ve Been To The Mountaintop. Speaking without notes, he delivered a spell-bounding message. The response of the audience produced a “powerful spiritual transformation of an earthly situation into a transcendent religious moment.” As what was say of that moment and situation, “God was in this place.”  In this speech, his last one, he weaves together a number of themes which demonstrated his evolving social and political thought. Thus, in the speech, I’ve Been To The Mountaintop, King:

Links struggle of black sanitation workers in Memphis with the liberation struggle in Africa- “I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding-something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta; Georgia, Jackson Mississippi; or Memphis Tennessee-the cry is always the same-‘We want to be free.’

Argues that Nonviolent struggle as the only viable option in the world today- “We have been forced to a point where we’re going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn’t force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years have been talking about war and peace.  But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. That’s where we are today.”

Suggest that the continued forward flow of human history is dependant on the struggle of people of color to free and live with dignity and a decent standard of living- “If something isn’t done in a hurry, to bring the colored people of the world our of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed.”