“The problem we all live with” is the title of this 1964 Norman Rockwell piece. The “problem”is of course not Ruby Bridges herself, but the fact that to go to school she had to be escorted by federal marshals. White parents pulled their kids out of the school. Only one teacher would teach her. Some protesters showed up with miniature coffins with miniature versions of Ruby Bridges in them. No kidding,
This chapter of course doesn’t begin with Ruby Bridges though, it begins with US 40 across Maryland. Though geographically next to NY and Pennsylvania, Maryland is the South. They grow peaches. Google a map and you’ll see what all of those new African diplomats had to cover moving from NY to DC.
Then there are more horror stories, like those of James Meredith and Ole Miss and the extent to which JFK really wanted to get involved in Civil Rights. Finally we get to the story of the march on Washington. You have to love John Lewis. He wanted his own Sherman’s March through the South with a Scorched Earth policy against Jim Crow, but nonviolently. How do you do Scorched Earth nonviolently? You can find his speech here. You can def sense the vibe he was after.
Finally after the speech is the horrific bombing of the 16th st Baptist church that killed the four little girls. This seems to be the point that JFK turned and began to take Civil Rights as a real moral issue, not simply a political one.
One of your colleagues called my attention to a recently opened lynching memorial in Alabama.
Each of those metal slab represents a county and each has the names of those lynched from the late 19th century to 1950. Use the exit sign in lower right to get a sense of scale. There are other artists and pther pieces but this looks pretty power and according to Wendy Ranke-Buhr, former principal o the San Diego Cooperative Charter school who recently visited its even more powerful in person.
Explained here in the NYT shortly after it opened. “It is perhaps better described as the presentation of an argument, supported by firsthand accounts and contemporary documents, that the slavery system did not end but evolved: from the family-shattering domestic slave trade to the decades of lynching terror, to the suffocating segregation of Jim Crow to the age of mass incarceration in which we now live.”
That’s a pretty damning quote that could be pretty effective if you find yourself answering a question on the successes and failures of the Civil Rights movement.
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I feel that the same theme of ambassadors being shocked by American racism was in this chapter. And I also find that art piece super powerful, I didn’t notice there were multiple names on each piece until I read your comment about it. Also John Lewis! I love him so much! His name being mentioned just made me understand that this movement didn’t happen too long ago – I feel like we sometimes lose perspective on that. Some people’s grandparents were living while segregation was legal. And we try so hard to pretend it’s ancient history. I also feel that the government used to be more supportive of marches, just because of how they considered supporting the march on Washington. This summer, I participated in a march at DC, and we were harassed by yelling trump supporters and given glares by some elected officials, and there wasn’t any law enforcement trying to prevent this.
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Something I found very interesting was how Arthur Schlesinger, Kennedy’s aide, thought voting rights were “the keystone in the struggle against segregation” and that voting “did not incite social and sexual anxieties”. Therefore, the Justice Department seemed to latch onto voting rights as their way of “civil rights effort”. I would think that focusing on the abolishment or violence through more government enforcement would be a straighter course and something that needed to be focused on immediately. If the government were the stand behind African Americans and protect them from violence, I would think that would make a bigger stand (especially considering that law enforcement arrested the Freedom Riders). However, this could’ve led to another civil war. I guess they chose voting rights because it would cause the least amount of damage; “it was the least threatening action for white people”.
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I think it’s interesting how the US finally received a president who became relatively dedicated to civil rights: JFK. Dudziak notes that at first JFK is dedicated to the Cold War and foreign affairs, but some of his advisors try to stress the fact that civil rights was intertwined with these. JFK backs the civil rights protests, but I think for reasons similar to Eisenhower’s (upholding federal law.) Dudziak talked a little bit about how JFK’s attitude towards the movement changed after the Birmingham bombing, that it became more of a moral passion of his. I would like to know more about the effect that the news of the bombing had on him, and why this atrocity, among many other atrocities that had happened, had an increased effect on him.
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I was a little confused with the section about the Civil Rights Act of 1963, specifically John Lewis’s reaction. I think the quote was “too little, too late”. Was this because the act was designed so that in rhetoric is was positive, but lacked any substance, and therefore he had policy issues with it, or was it something else, because the act, from what I read and from what is usually claimed in other history books and textbooks, is that the Civil Rights Act was a massive success that was culmination of decades of civil rights work.
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That confused me a little bit as well. I remember in APUSH when we read about the Civil Rights Movement, this act would always be referred to as a very large victory, but was seen much differently in Dudziak’s work. Is this the general consensus about this perception of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, or is it only looked at like this in the eyes of Dudziak? It would be interesting to find out more about this difference in ideas.
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This was a very interesting chapter, as it gave me a new perspective on JFK. The book gives us an understanding that JFK was irritated with the Civil Rights Movements that were going on doing his presidency, especially because they were around the same time he was solving the Cuban Missile crisis and making strong relations with the USSR.
But instead of dealing with the civil rights issues in the US, JFK saught for the African Americans to hold back on their freedom rides. Because it “embarrassed” him in front of Khruschev. If anything, I don’t a leader should ever think in that manner, the only reason he became embarrassed was that he was a good enough leader to solve the issues passed down to him when he became president.
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I find it perplexing how Kennedy’s priorities laid elsewhere besides the growing Civil Rights Movement. Particularly, he claims to have focus on foreign policy and the Relatoonis with the Soviet Union but how can you successfully do so if he couldn’t control or manage his own country. Especially with the Soviets and other countries using propaganda or simply making the moral and domestic issues within Us borders WORLD NEWS then it would’ve been more beneficial for him, for his country, our country if he had a stronger supporting advocacy for this movement. In order to gain support, better foreign relations and good press, he needed-in my opinion-to have acted sooner rather than two years into his presidency.
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I feel like art took a big role on the civil rights movement, especially music. Through songs many found encouragement to continue fighting for their rights. My favorite one is A Change is Gonna Come by Sam Cooke. Released in 1964, this song is currently considered one of the most important songs of the African-American community in the United States. The strength of his lyrics, in which Sam Cooke leaves his soul, and his musical cadence make this soul an irresistible theme. Written and recorded in 1963 under the RCA Victor label, just one year before the singer’s death in December 1964, this song was modestly successful if it is contrasted with what his previous singles had been up to that time. In fact, many years had to pass before it became the anthem of the African-American civil rights movement.
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During the reading of this chapter, i found it really interesting how Kennedy was characterized by the author and his actions. The whole debacle of him acting out in the Missippi conflict and how he was praised with it. It was interesting to read about how Kennedy realized how he could act in favour for foreign affairs with civil rights problems at home, but also kind of sad since its shows how he was solely focused on the international affairs and cold war problem which is also very important at the time i get that but its also so important to clear out the problem once and for all. I mean the whole Highway 40 incidident and Kennedys first reaction on it being ‘They should Fly!’ as if that would resolve it long term?!. This reminds me of the Brown vs Board of education decision how it took literatly years for it to happen and still then it didn’t. Just resolve the problem form the roots and not the results of it.
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One thing I found interesting was the Freedom Riders journey and Kennedy’s reaction to it. It’s crazy to believe that they still continued even after a mob of 1 thousand beat them up in Alabama. What was even more surprising was that Kennedy stated that the Freedom Riders were an embarrassment to him and that he wanted them to stop. You would think that he would be mad at Alabama for going against his order to leave them alone and then help the Freedom Riders continue on.
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One thing brought up in the blog that seems crazy to me is the coffins anti integration protesters had with the little girl, Ruby in them. That seems like such an outrageously horrible thing to do and it’s crazy that that is real. Another thing that interests me is that one teacher who decided to teach Ruby. I wonder how that teacher was treated by the other teachers and parents and students. That seems like something the teacher could get an unbelievable amount of hate for so it is amazing that they still taught Ruby.
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It seems to me that pretty much the only reason that the presidents we have read about so far have taken a stance on civil rights is because they noticed that they needed the African American vote, not necessarily because of a need for a greater moral good. Even with Kennedy, he took a political stance on the movement until the bombing which killed four little girls, which then shifted his moral view. Obviously views in the White House reflect upon the greater American public, so say if Eisenhower had not enforced federal law, or Kennedy had purely used his views on civil rights for political gain, the world would be much different from today. The only true catalyst that I’m noticing for the relative “success” of the civil rights movement was the outside pressure from the international community, which I hadn’t realized was incredibly impactful before reading Dudziak.
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One thing that surprised me was the fact that Kennedy did not have much of what the book referred to as a “breakthrough” on civil rights. I think that this is interesting especially considering my prior knowledge of his brother Robert Kennedy who worked very closely with Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers movement. I sort of just expected that JFK would have been more active on the issue. I remember last class we talked about the way the civil rights movement has been portrayed through children’s literature and I thought it was interesting to see how Dudziak wrote about Ruby Bridges because my prior knowledge of her was through a children’s book. It just like reinspired my anger about the whole situation because of the hatred this little girl had to face. I remember when I was younger I thought the story was fake.
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There were a few things that stood out to me this chapter. First, it’s crazy how recent this actually was. People that lived through segregation and this civil rights era are still alive today. The Ruby Bridges story was so terrible. It’s insane how they treated just a little girl. I wonder how the rest of that school treated the only teacher that taught Ruby Bridges.
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During this reading I found very interesting the pictures incorporated into the chapter. I found it crazy to believe this was how the United States was at one point where “firefighters bear down on civil rights demonstrators who tried to seek refuge in doorway, Birmingham” using fire hoses to spray African Americans and the image of “Freedom Rider James Zwerg recovering in a Montgomery, hospital bed” as “riders were brutally attacked by mobs” firebombs were going off. It’s unbelievable to imagine the violence going on during this time and seen in the image above about the metal slabs representing each county and the names of those that’ve been launched it shows through the text and images that this was a serious and large issue in the United States.
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I know this has been brought up in previous chapters, but what really stands out to me is how African diplomats/ambassadors are being treated when they come to the United States. Like in this chapter, with the story of the Ambassador from Chad going down Route 40 in Maryland and being refused service, and the text emphasizes how embarrassing it is for him. But I think it’s really embarrassing for the U.S. And Kennedy responds to this issue like ‘why would you drive from NY to DC? fly!’ but that’s really avoiding the issue. And the Kennedy administration views the issue as a political threat because the U.S. needs those Cold War alignments with the newly established nations of Africa. And though (I think) Dudziak suggests that Kennedy is beginning to view civil rights as a moral issue, I don’t feel as if he is because of how he views this specific issue. Why would we fix these discrimination issues so that visiting political figures will feel better when they visit when the black citizens of the U.S. are still being discriminated against?
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What I find interesting is the difference of policies between Dulles and Rusk. They are both secretary of state, and both realize the relationship between the civil rights movement and the Cold War. Yet Rusk sees the importance of action (which was part of the “new era of race relations”). He personally advocated for the Civil Rights Bill of ‘63 in front of congress; when opposed, he stated that if he was denied what black Americans were denied, he would demonstrate as well. In this, he embraced and sympathized with the civil rights movement, rather than focusing only on international relations, as Dulles tended to do. He also didn’t try to hide it–he brought it to the forefront.
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