The Civil Rights Era from 1940-1980 maybe remembered as the time end of segregation and the decline of white superiority, but it was also the rise of Black Nationalism and Black Power. African Americans grew tired of accommodation to whites and just accepting the status of being second cla** citizens, they began their own movement to separate themselves from White America to their own Black America. Though this timeline I will an*lyze some of the words of several black leaders of the time who voice their frustrations with White American society.
1962-James Meredith becomes the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi.
Excerpt from Malcolm X speech on Racial Separation
“We must have a permanent solution. A temporary solution won't do. Tokenism will no longer suffice. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad has the only permanent solution. Twenty million ex-slaves must be permanently separated from our former slave master and placed on some land that we can call our own. Then we can create our own jobs. Control our own economy. Solve our own problems instead of waiting on the American white man to solve our problems for us.”
1963- March on Washington
Excerpt from John Lewis, We Must Free Ourselves
“The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The non-violent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside any national structure that could and would a**ure us a victory.” To those who have said, “Be Patient and Wait,” we must say that, “Patience is a dirty and nasty word.” We cannot be patient, we do not want to be free gradually, we want our freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for freedom, and we want it now. We cannot depend on any political party, for both the Democrats and the Republicans have betrayed the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence.”
1964- Civil Rights Act of 1964
Excerpt from Malcolm X Ballad or the Bullet
“Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pa** civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.”
1966- The Black Panther Party is formed
Excerpt from Black Power Stokley Carmichael's speech at the University of California Berkley
“We are oppressed as a group because we are black, not because we are lazy, not because we're apathetic, not because we're stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are black. And in order to get out of that oppression one must wield the group power that one has, not the individual power which this country then sets the criteria under which a man may come into it.”
1967-Detroit Race Riot erupts
Excerpt from Muhammad Ali explaining his refusal to fight in Vietnam
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
1969- Chicago police k** Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clarke
Excerpt from Amiri Baraka
“We want poems
like fists beating n******gs out of Jocks
or dagger poems in the slimy bellies
of the owner-j**s. Black poems to
smear on girdlemamma mulatto b**hes
whose brains are red jelly stuck
between 'lizabeth taylor's toes.”
1970- The San Rafael, California courthouse shooting on August 7 results in the d**h of Judge Harold Haley and three others.
Excerpt from Huey P Newton's speech at Boston College
“The Black Panther Party will not accept the total destruction of the people. As a matter of fact, we have drawn a line of demarcation and we will no longer tolerate fascism, aggression, brutality, and murder of any kind. We will not sit around and allow ourselves to be murdered. Each person has an obligation to preserve himself. If he does not preserve himself then I accuse him of suicide: reactionary suicide because reactionary conditions will have caused his d**h. If we do nothing we are accepting the situation and allowing ourselves to die. We will not accept that. If the alternatives are very narrow we still will not sit around, we will not die the d**h of the Jews in Germany. We would rather die the d**h of the Jews in Warsaw!”
1978- Minister Louis Farrakhan breaks with the World Community of al-Islam and becomes the leader of the revived Nation of Islam.
Excerpt from June Jordan's Poem about Police Violence
“not too often tell me something
what you think would happen if
everytime they k** a black boy
then we k** a cop
everytime they k** a black man
then we k** a cop
you think the accident rate would lower subsequently”