American Despotism: The Great Upheaval Over Race Begins

The Trigger of the Civil Rights Movement

I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and grew up in U.S. Army schools. Local law enforcement — and, when necessary, the National Guard — enforced black compliance with segregation. If the state government was not aggressive enough in suppressing and controlling blacks, there were private groups such as the Ku Klux Klan willing and eager to use force to ensure control of the black population. More than 100 years earlier, Alexis de Tocqueville suggested that revolutions occur from a period of rising expectations. In 1956, since they could not be retried because of the prohibition on double jeopardy, they sold their story to Look magazine and admitted they killed the 14-year-old.

The Start of the Fight Over Race and Equality

Till’s brutal killing — and the reaction to the horrifying open casket — is considered by many the trigger that launched the civil rights movement. People were becoming fed up with oppression and were tired of waiting for freedom. As a result of the continuous effort, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Montgomery’s transportation segregation laws were unconstitutional. The complete victory of the non-violent but organized and patiently determined protest set the stage for a dramatic series of actions. For five months, three weeks and three days, students sat in at Woolworth gathering national media attention. On June 12, 1961, NAACP Secretary for Mississippi Medgar Evers, who had counseled Meredith through the process of enrolling at the university, was murdered outside his home. Their bodies were buried beneath an earthen dam.

Martin Luther King Jr., Race, and the Non-Violent Movement

During this same period, King was arrested while leading a protest in Birmingham, Alabama. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals. Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood. The national news media covered the violence against unarmed nonviolent protesters. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. With each act, the federal government gained more power to enforce desegregation — even over objections from state and local governments. Despite the progress in federal legislation, the struggle continued in the Deep South. 

The Rising Tide of Civil Rights Violence

From the 1954 Supreme Court decision compelling access to education for all Americans through the 1968 Civil Rights Act, an enormous revolution had taken place. The wrenching effect on the segregationist whites and the determined black activists is hard to overstate. Importantly, the scale and brutality of violence against those who sought to end segregation further undermined respect for the law. King tried to bring people together and articulate a positive vision of a unified America. By the third march, on March 21, 1965, there were federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and United States marshals protecting the marchers. But in that context, it came too slowly and unevenly.  

https://spectator.org/american-despotism-the-great-upheaval-over-race-begins/