Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement in the middle of the 20th century marked
an important point in the changing of race relations in the United States. Prior
to and during the civil rights movement, African-Americans faced legally sanctioned persecution
and Jim Crow justice at the hands of white Americans. Peaceful protests and other methods of civil
disobedience were often met with aggression and violence from whites.
Although legally having the right to vote since the 19th century, many
African-Americans were unable to practice their right. Poll taxes and often outright violence
made exercising their right to vote difficult and dangerous. In 1961, Robert Parris Moses
worked to register fellow African-Americans to vote, and he and his coworkers were met with
much resistance from the white community. "Along with other SNCC workers who subsequently
joined him and local blacks who supported them, Moses was harassed and beaten; he was jailed
several times. The threat of violence discouraged most blacks from registering"
(Albert, 69).
In the result of Brown vs. the Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that
segregation was unconstitutional. This decision reversed
the previous decision in the case of Plessy vs. Ferguson, ruling in favor of the legality of
the separation of races, as long as the facilities were equal. After the legal ending of
segregation, one of the major focuses of African-Americans was to integrate schools. They
wanted their children to benefit from the better facilities of the schools for white children.
Unfortunately, the integration of schools was also met with resistance and violence from
white communities. The experience of Fred Schuttlesworth, shown left, and his wife, while
trying to enroll in a white high school was described as follows: "...in 1957, [Fred]
Shuttlesworth and his wife had sent their kids, the first black kids, into a high school
in Birmingham. They had escorted their kids, and Fred Shuttlesworth was attacked by the
Klan and beaten with chains, and his wife was stabbed" (Albert, 81).
Even during the civil rights movement, Jim Crow
justice prevailed in the South. Although
the Supreme Court had ruled on the constitutionality of segregation, many white-owned businesses
still refused to serve African-Americans. In March of 1964, four female reinforcements, all trained
in "the disclipine of nonviolence", arrived in Jacksonville from Boston. Known mostly for
their marital connections, they shared excitement over joining the new movement. The group,
along with others, tried several times to eat at different restaurants, and from all were asked
to leave, because the establishments did not serve 'colored' people. In the last restaurant
they tried, they were met with police dogs, and some were escorted to jail.
"The group managed to reach a table in the empty bar of the Ponce de Leon Motor Lodge, and
when Sheriff L.O. Davis entered with a brace of police officers and two German shepherds,
Peabody refused to leave until he retrieved and read for her the exact language of Florida's
'undesirable guest' statute. None of the unflattering definitions applied to her party,
she remarked, but Peabody (shown right being escorted out by Sheriff L.O. Davis) and two of her
Boston friends retreated politely before Sheriff Davis's stern choice of immediate departure or
jail. The other five stayed to face arrest: Hayling,
two chaplains, a Pembroke student, and Esther Burgess, who, trembling, was placed with one
of the police dogs in the back seat of a squad car" (Branch,277-279).
African-Americans also faced violence for even
being suspected of supporting the civil rights
movement. Mississippi members of the Methodist Mount Zion AME Church were beaten and brutalized
for agreeing to host a Freedom School, to receive and train volunteers for the Freedom summer.
To the left is a picture of Bob Moses at a memorial service on the ruins of the Mount Zion Baptist
Church, which was burned down after the beatings of several church members. The following events
occurred the last evening the church was standing,
"... the stewards locked the church and drove away as usual, but ran into roadblocks a hundred
yards in both directions. At one end, perhaps because the stewards had their young children
with them in the cars, armed Klan interrogators reluctantly accepted word that Mount Zion harbored
no white plotters, but frightened answers only seemed to infuriate the ambushers at the other
end. 'Where are your guards?' they shouted, clinging to the assumption that something
military was going on in preparation for the summer 'invasion.' Cries of liar turned into slaps and several beatings. One Klansman reached inside the cab of a pickup to break Georgia Rush's
collarbone with the butt of a pistol, after others had dragged Rush's son from the driver's seat.
Nearby, Beatrice Cole ran screaming, 'Lord have mercy, don't let them kill my husband,' around
her car to a place in the road where a circle of men was stomping her prostrate husband,
Rosevelt 'Bud' Cole. She asked permission to pray and fell to the ground crying out the words
of a Methodist hymn .... until someone said to let him live and the Klansmen withdrew to torch
Mount Zion Church with gasoline. Cole took her bleeding husband back to their farm with
a broken jaw and spinal injuries, but did not dare take him to a hospital before daylight"
(Branch, 352).
Although it may seem that all of the violence against African-Americans was caused by
vigilante and white-power groups, that is not the case. Africans-Americans were often the victims
of police sanctioned violence. Wilmer Jones was arrested on May 30, 1964 because he was
suspected of asking a white female store clerk for a date. Wilmer wrote a long letter describing
his experience in jail, "how Sheriff Rainey and his deputy, Cecil Prince, had slapped him around
in the cell, cut off his scraggly new high school graduation goatee with a pocketknife, and
finally released him around midnight to armed abduction by four Klansmen waiting outside the
jail" (Branch, 409).
African-Americans were not the only group subject to violence from the white establishment during
the civil rights movement. Whites that sympathized with the civil rights movement faced
social ostracism as well as threats of violence. In southern Mississippi, a white couple had
their lives destroyed when they agreed to listen to civil rights workers. "Neighbors from a
local militia called Help, Inc. surrounded the home of Malva and 'Red' Heffner to abort their
fleeting introduction to Sweeney on July 17, then stalked and harassed the Heffners, poisoned
Falstaff, their dachshund, and orchestrated such a merciless ostracism that the Heffners
abandoned their Mississippi home for good on September 5. By then, Red had fallen from 1963
Lincoln Life Salesman of the Year nearly to bankruptcy, and Malva already had lost more than
her prestige as the daughter of the governor's old law partner and mother of the reigning Miss
Mississippi" (Branch 394).
During the civil rights era, African-Americans were subject to much violence from local police
forces as well as vigilante groups. One can assume that the violent acts perpetrated by the
vigilante groups were illegal, but were often ignored by local police departments. Even if the
local police departments were forced into action, it is easy to imagine how few faced jail time
suitable punishment when being tried in front of a jury of their white peers. Local police forces
even encouraged vigilante justice by turning prisoners over after their release, another act for
which participants were surely not held accountable. The violent stories that can be told of events
during the civil rights movement illustrate the manner in which race, violence and crime combine, in
a way that is difficult for many young Americans to relate with.