Civil rights movement

==Characteristics==
[[File:Fannie Lou Hamer 1964-08-22.jpg|upright|thumb|[[Fannie Lou Hamer]] of the [[Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party]] (and other Mississippi-based organizations) is an example of local grassroots leadership in the movement.]]

=== African-American women ===
{{main|African-American women in the civil rights movement}}
[[African-American]] women in the civil rights movement were pivotal to its success.<ref name="gyant"/> They volunteered as activists, advocates, educators, clerics, writers, spiritual guides, caretakers and politicians for the civil rights movement; leading and participating in organizations that contributed to the cause of civil rights.<ref name="gyant"/> [[Rosa Parks]]'s refusal to sit at the back of a [[public bus]] resulted in the year-long [[Montgomery bus boycott]],<ref name="gyant"/> and the eventual [[Desegregation in the United States|desegregation]] of interstate travel in the [[United States]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Civil Rights Movement History & Timeline, 1955 |url=https://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis55.htm#1955mbb |website=www.crmvet.org}}</ref> Women were members of the NAACP because they believed it could help them contribute to the cause of civil rights.<ref name="gyant">{{Cite journal |last=Gyant |first=LaVerne |year=1996 |title=Passing the Torch: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement |jstor=2784888 |journal=Journal of Black Studies |volume=26 |issue=5 |pages=629–647|doi=10.1177/002193479602600508 |s2cid=143581432 }}</ref> Some of those involved with the Black Panthers were nationally recognized as leaders, and still others did editorial work on the ''Black Panther'' newspaper spurring internal discussions about gender issues.<ref name="Greene">{{Cite book |last=Greene |first=Christina |date=November 22, 2016 |chapter=Women in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements |title=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History |chapter-url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-212 |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.212|isbn=978-0-19-932917-5 |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180304055329/http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-212#acrefore-9780199329175-e-212-div1-6 |archive-date=March 4, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Ella Baker]] founded the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee|SNCC]] and was a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.<ref name="urban"/><ref>{{Cite news |last=Ransby |author-link=Barbara Ransby |first=Barbara |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/martin-luther-king-ella-baker.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200120101115/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/opinion/martin-luther-king-ella-baker.html |archive-date=January 20, 2020 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Opinion: Ella Baker's Legacy Runs Deep. Know Her Name. |date=January 20, 2020 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=April 24, 2020 |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> Female students involved with the SNCC helped to organize sit-ins and the Freedom Rides.<ref name="urban"/> At the same time many elderly black women in towns across the Southern US cared for the organization's volunteers at their homes, providing the students food, a bed, healing aid and motherly love.<ref name="urban">{{Cite journal |last=Urban|first=Dennis J. |year=2002 |jstor=41887103 |journal=International Social Science Review |volume=77 |issue=3/4 |pages=185–190|title=The Women of SNCC: Struggle, Sexism, and the Emergence of Feminist Consciousness, 1960–66 }}</ref> Other women involved also formed church groups, bridge clubs, and professional organizations, such as the [[National Council of Negro Women]], to help achieve freedom for themselves and their race.<ref name="Greene" /> Several who participated in these organizations lost their jobs because of their involvement.<ref name="Greene" />

==== Sexist discrimination ====
Many women who participated in the movement experienced [[Sexism|gender discrimination]] and [[sexual harassment]].<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/ |title=Women in the Civil Rights Movement – Civil Rights History Project |work=The Library of Congress |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180328070559/https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/ |archive-date=March 28, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> In the SCLC, [[Ella Baker]]'s input was discouraged in spite of her being the oldest and most experienced person on the staff.<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=http://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/ |title=On MLK Day, Honor the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement |magazine=Time |access-date=March 3, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180220173039/http://time.com/4633460/mlk-day-ella-baker/ |archive-date=February 20, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> There are many other accounts and examples.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement: A Discussion Guide|url=https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/sexism-in-the-civil-rights-movement-a-discussion-guide|last=Holladay|first=Jennifer|date=2009}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Gender and the Civil Rights Movement|publisher=Rutgers University Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-8135-3438-1|editor-last=Ling|editor-first=Peter J.|editor2-last=Monteith|editor2-first=Sharon}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Women in the Civil Rights Movement|url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/women-in-the-civil-rights-movement/|website=Library of Congress}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Dorothy Height and the Sexism of the Civil Rights Movement|url=https://www.theroot.com/dorothy-height-and-the-sexism-of-the-civil-rights-movem-1790879502|last=Delaney|first=Paul|date=May 12, 2010|website=The Root}}</ref>

=== Avoiding the "Communist" label ===
{{See also|The Communist Party and African-Americans}}

On December 17, 1951, the [[Communist Party USA|Communist Party]]–affiliated [[Civil Rights Congress]] delivered the petition ''[[We Charge Genocide]]: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People'' to the United Nations, arguing that the U.S. federal government, by its failure to act against [[lynching in the United States]], was guilty of [[genocide]] under Article II of the [[Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide|UN Genocide Convention]] (see [[Black genocide]]).<ref>[http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm ''We Charge Genocide''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080402015621/http://www.crmvet.org/tim/timhis51.htm |date=April 2, 2008 }}&nbsp;– Civil Rights Movement Archive</ref> The petition was presented to the United Nations at two separate venues: [[Paul Robeson]], a concert singer and activist, presented it to a UN official in New York City, while [[William L. Patterson]], executive director of the CRC, delivered copies of the drafted petition to a UN delegation in Paris.<ref name="autogenerated1981">{{cite book |last=Carson |first=Clayborne |title=In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s |url=https://archive.org/details/instrugglesnccbl00cars_1 |url-access=registration |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1981|isbn=978-0-674-44726-4 }}</ref>

Patterson, the editor of the petition, was a leader of the Communist Party USA and head of the [[International Labor Defense]], a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans who were involved in cases that involved issues of political or racial persecution. The ILD was known for leading the defense of the [[Scottsboro Boys]] in [[Alabama]] in 1931, where the Communist Party had a considerable amount of influence among African Americans in the 1930s. This influence had largely declined by the late 1950s, although it could command international attention. As earlier civil rights figures such as Robeson, Du Bois and Patterson became more politically radical (and therefore targets of Cold War [[anti-Communism]] by the U.S. Government), they lost favor with mainstream Black America as well as with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />

In order to secure a place in the political mainstream and gain the broadest base of support, the new generation of civil rights activists believed that it had to openly distance itself from anything and anyone associated with the Communist party. According to [[Ella Baker]], the Southern Christian Leadership Conference added the word "Christian" to its name in order to deter charges that it was associated with [[Communism]].<ref>{{cite interview |url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/html_use/G-0007.html |title=Oral History Interview with Ella Baker, September 4, 1974. Interview G-0007. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007): Electronic Edition. Ella Baker Describes Her Role in the Formation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee |last=Baker |first=Ella |author-link=Ella Baker }}</ref> Under [[J. Edgar Hoover]], the FBI had been concerned about communism since the early 20th century, and it kept civil rights activists under close surveillance and labeled some of them "Communist" or "subversive", a practice that continued during the civil rights movement. In the early 1960s, the practice of distancing the civil rights movement from "Reds" was challenged by the [[Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]] which adopted a policy of accepting assistance and participation from anyone who supported the SNCC's political program and was willing to "put their body on the line, regardless of political affiliation." At times the SNCC's policy of political openness put it at odds with the NAACP.<ref name="autogenerated1981" />

=== Grassroots leadership ===
While most popular representations of the movement are centered on the leadership and philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr., some scholars note that the movement was too diverse to be credited to one person, organization, or strategy. Sociologist [[Doug McAdam]] has stated that, "in King's case, it would be inaccurate to say that he was the leader of the modern civil rights movement...but more importantly, there was no singular civil rights movement. The movement was, in fact, a coalition of thousands of local efforts nationwide, spanning several decades, hundreds of discrete groups, and all manner of strategies and tactics{{mdash}}legal, illegal, institutional, non-institutional, violent, non-violent. Without discounting King's importance, it would be sheer fiction to call him the leader of what was fundamentally an amorphous, fluid, dispersed movement."<ref name="bostonreview.net">{{Cite news|url=https://bostonreview.net/forum/occupy-future/what-should-sustained-movement-look|title=What Should a Sustained Movement Look Like?|date=June 26, 2012|website=Boston Review}}</ref> Decentralized grassroots leadership has been a major focus of movement scholarship in recent decades through the work of historians [[John Dittmer]], [[Charles M. Payne|Charles Payne]], [[Barbara Ransby]], and others.

=== Tactics and non-violence ===
[[File:White men and Robeson County indians (Lumbee Indians) in crowd with a car and guns (State's Exhibit No.5). Photo taken by Bill Shaw, Fayetteville Observer newspaper photographer. Photo used as state's (8223346871).jpg|thumb|Armed Lumbee Indians aggressively confronting Klansmen in the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]]]]

The Jim Crow system employed "terror as a means of social control,"<ref>Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, ''[[Poor People's Movements: How They Succeed, How They Fail]]'' (Random House, 1977), 182</ref> with the most organized manifestations being the [[Ku Klux Klan]] and their collaborators in local police departments. This violence played a key role in blocking the progress of the civil rights movement in the late 1950s. Some black organizations in the South began practicing armed self-defense. The first to do so openly was the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the [[NAACP]] led by [[Robert F. Williams]]. Williams had rebuilt the chapter after its membership was terrorized out of public life by the Klan. He did so by encouraging a new, more working-class membership to arm itself thoroughly and defend against attack.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html|title=Timothy B. Tyson, ''Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of "Black Power"'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 79–80|access-date=September 9, 2013|archive-date=March 26, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140326100437/http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-1534.html}}</ref> When Klan nightriders attacked the home of NAACP member Albert Perry in October 1957, Williams' militia exchanged gunfire with the stunned Klansmen, who quickly retreated. The following day, the city council held an emergency session and passed an ordinance banning KKK motorcades.<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 88–89</ref> One year later, Lumbee Indians in North Carolina would have a similarly successful armed stand-off with the Klan (known as the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]]) which resulted in KKK leader James W. "Catfish" Cole being convicted of incitement to riot.<ref>Nicholas Graham, [http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 "January 1958: The Lumbees face the Klan"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180206071001/http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-postwar/6068 |date=February 6, 2018 }}, This Month in North Carolina History</ref>

After the acquittal of several white men charged with sexually assaulting black women in Monroe, Williams announced to United Press International reporters that he would "meet violence with violence" as a policy. Williams' declaration was quoted on the front page of ''The New York Times'', and ''The Carolina Times'' considered it "the biggest civil rights story of 1959".<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 149</ref> NAACP National chairman Roy Wilkins immediately suspended Williams from his position, but the Monroe organizer won support from numerous NAACP chapters across the country. Ultimately, Wilkins resorted to bribing influential organizer Daisy Bates to campaign against Williams at the NAACP national convention and the suspension was upheld. The convention nonetheless passed a resolution which stated: "We do not deny, but reaffirm the right of individual and collective self-defense against unlawful assaults."<ref>Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 159–164</ref> Martin Luther King Jr. argued for Williams' removal,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/williams-robert-franklin|title=Williams, Robert Franklin|date=July 13, 2017|access-date=December 3, 2019}}</ref> but [[Ella Baker]]<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SEfOhvXSvZsC&pg=PA213|title=Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision|first=Barbara|last=Ransby|author-link=Barbara Ransby|date=November 20, 2003|publisher=Univ of North Carolina Press|isbn=978-0-8078-6270-4|via=Google Books}}</ref> and [[W. E. B. Du Bois|WEB Dubois]]<ref name="history.msu.edu" /> both publicly praised the Monroe leader's position.

Williams{{mdash}}along with his wife, Mabel Williams{{mdash}}continued to play a leadership role in the Monroe movement, and to some degree, in the national movement. The Williamses published ''The Crusader'', a nationally circulated newsletter, beginning in 1960, and the influential book ''Negroes With Guns'' in 1962. Williams did not call for full militarization in this period, but "flexibility in the freedom struggle."<ref>"[http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf The Black Power Movement, Part 2: The Papers of Robert F. Williams" A Guide to the Microfilm Editions of the Black Studies Research Sources (University Publications of America)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130108060037/http://www.lexisnexis.com/documents/academic/upa_cis/9353_BlackPowerMovemPt2.pdf |date=January 8, 2013 }}</ref> Williams was well-versed in legal tactics and publicity, which he had used successfully in the internationally known "[[Kissing Case]]" of 1958, as well as nonviolent methods, which he used at [[lunch counter]] sit-ins in Monroe{{mdash}}all with armed self-defense as a complementary tactic.

Williams led the Monroe movement in another armed stand-off with white supremacists during an August 1961 Freedom Ride; he had been invited to participate in the campaign by [[Ella Baker]] and [[James Forman]] of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The incident (along with his campaigns for peace with Cuba) resulted in him being targeted by the FBI and prosecuted for kidnapping; he was cleared of all charges in 1976.<ref name="Tyson 1998">Tyson, ''Journal of American History'' (September 1998)</ref> Meanwhile, armed self-defense continued discreetly in the Southern movement with such figures as SNCC's [[Amzie Moore]],<ref name="Tyson 1998" /> [[Hartman Turnbow]],<ref>[[Taylor Branch]], ''[[Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–1963]]'' (Simon and Schuster, 1988), 781</ref> and [[Fannie Lou Hamer]]<ref>{{Cite news |last=Marqusee |first=Mike |author-link=Mike Marqusee |date=June 17, 2004 |title=By Any Means Necessary |magazine=The Nation |language=en-US |url=https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/any-means-necessary/ |url-status=live |access-date=October 1, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140224101340/http://www.thenation.com/article/any-means-necessary |archive-date=February 24, 2014 |issn=0027-8378}}</ref> all willing to use arms to defend their lives from nightrides. Taking refuge from the FBI in Cuba, the Willamses broadcast the radio show ''[[Radio Free Dixie]]'' throughout the eastern United States via Radio Progresso beginning in 1962. In this period, Williams advocated guerilla warfare against racist institutions and saw the large ghetto riots of the era as a manifestation of his strategy.

[[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill|University of North Carolina]] historian Walter Rucker has written that "the emergence of Robert F Williams contributed to the marked decline in anti-black racial violence in the U.S....After centuries of anti-black violence, African Americans across the country began to defend their communities aggressively{{mdash}}employing overt force when necessary. This in turn evoked in whites real fear of black vengeance..." This opened up space for African Americans to use nonviolent demonstrations with less fear of deadly reprisal.<ref>Walter Rucker, "Crusader in Exile: Robert F. Williams and the International Struggle for Black Freedom in America" The Black Scholar 36, No. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 2006): 19–33. [https://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ URL] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170727005417/http://www.academia.edu/223267/_Crusader_in_Exile_Robert_F._Williams_and_the_Internationalized_Struggle_for_Black_Freedom_in_America._2006_ |date=July 27, 2017 }}</ref> Of the many civil rights activists who share this view, the most prominent was Rosa Parks. Parks gave the eulogy at Williams' funeral in 1996, praising him for "his courage and for his commitment to freedom," and concluding that "The sacrifices he made, and what he did, should go down in history and never be forgotten."<ref>Timothy B. Tyson, [http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html "Robert Franklin Williams: A Warrior For Freedom, 1925–1996"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130708140451/http://investigatinghistory.ashp.cuny.edu/m11d.html |date=July 8, 2013 }}, Southern Exposure, Winter 1996, Investigating U.S. History (City University of New York)</ref>

=== Jewish support for the movement ===
Jewish Americans played an active role supporting the Civil Rights Movement and were actively involved in establishing and supporting a number of the most important civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). These organizations played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement, advocating for racial equality and justice.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Brief History of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s {{!}} Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism |url=https://rac.org/issues/civil-rights-voting-rights/brief-history-jews-and-civil-rights-movement-1960s |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=rac.org |language=en}}</ref>

Despite representing less than 2% of the US population, Jews made up roughly half of all civil rights lawyers in the South during the 1960s and half of the white northern volunteers involved in the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer project.<ref>{{Cite web |title=American Jews and the Civil Rights Movement |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/american-jews-and-the-civil-rights-movement |access-date=2023-12-14 |website=www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org}}</ref>