Looking at Civil Rights in 2006

01/14/2006

Paul Munnis

The Civil Rights Movement was at peak from 1955-1965. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, guaranteeing basic civil rights for all Americans, regardless of race, after nearly a decade of nonviolent protests and marches, ranging from the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott, to the student-led sit-ins of the 1960s, to the huge March on Washington in 1963.

I was a teen when the civil rights movement started and a young married man with a child when it ended. Elvis Presley was King of Rock and he dared to sing the hot blues and jazz songs of the black experience across America and he introduced sexual suggestion to music for white teens. This literally rocked our elders across America as a new generation of young Americans tore away the barriers of color and racial intermingling. The youth of America continue to be the water carriers of civil rights today by just simply refusing to be prejudiced.

It was a painful time for all Americans both in the North and the South. Both groups were fearful and for good reason. The South was preaching the politics of hate as George Wallace spewed his litany of hate out in Montgomery, Alabama, and people feared revolution and rioting. The North was fearful of race riots breaking out in our cities too thus creating a bloodbath and gridlock. Young black children were attending forced integrated schools with armed guards in the South and white college students were being killed by National Guardsman at Kent State University in Ohio while Martin Luther King, Jr., was trying to pour cold water on a raging inferno of inflamed passion across the nation.

At a time when Americans were fearful of violence, Martin Luther King, Jr., was preaching his sermon of non-violence in the spirit of Ghandi. People were listening but they were also looking over their shoulder. Firearms were at the ready.

Then Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot and killed and it served as a wake-up call to all Americans. It forced us to ask ourselves what we thought that we were doing as a people. The media reported his death and they published his speeches and we were forced to ask ourselves what we really wanted as a nation and for ourselves.

It was clear enough. We wanted racial integration, a pluralistic society, a nation that was free for both black and whites to become all that they could become, plus equal educational and economic opportunity for people of all races.

After that we reached for these things under the leadership of the Democratic Party and we overhauled America to create equal opportunity for all of our citizens. The Supreme Court lead this effort by demanding equality under the law and without exception.

The South and its GOP representatives still harbor prejudice; witness the not so long ago ousting of Sen. Trent Lott from his Congressional leadership office for uttering racial slurs and racist public behavior. We understood where that originated from and the culture that it sprang from, one that seeks to define black people as a lower life form. We understood how that was cultivated to gain votes and obtain public office. We rejected it again.

The fires of hate and prejudice are still present in some people’s hearts and awful atrocities have been practiced against blacks by white bigots. If you travel to the South and listen to the awful things coming out of the mouths of the residents there you would be honestly appalled. There is still a struggle for economic opportunity and for higher education of blacks. Our cities still have ghettos and they are filled with black faces. Our schools, especially in the South, are hostile to the education of black children with the town fathers staying up nights plotting how to get school vouchers for white kids and denying educational opportunity to blacks. When you examine why this is then you find two things to be present and fear and ignorance become the father and mother who give birth to prejudice.

Is America making any progress? Yes, I think so, at least in civil rights legal terms. But in the hearts of many people bigotry still lies just waiting for an opportunity to surface.

I think that America will always have to work at guarding the civil rights of its people. That is why so many are suspicious of the Patriot Act. Is this an excuse to deny people their civil rights? When we see illegal spying on people, others being held without due process, and an attempt to stuff the Supreme Court with Conservatives many of whom are from the Souh then we all feel our antennas vibrating in a negative manner as we realize that these are the tools that can be used to deny people their civil rights. Putting them in place to deal with terrorism reminds us that they can also be used to terrorize.

We are a pluralistic society and that means a nation of people coming from many races and many ethnic and religious backgrounds. I think that the key to reducing bigotry lies in how we view people. It starts by realizing that the person with whom you are dealing is a person who is beloved by someone someplace and who needs respect and courtesy as a pre-requisite to all social interaction. When I lived in the crowded lands of Asia the first rule for daily happiness was courtesy and respect towards others. It was always returned. The golden rule should be the first rule of the civil rights effort: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If we do this then the rest will be easy.

We thank Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for preventing the race riots of the last century here in America so that we can even have the luxury of such meditation today. It cost him his life.