We had a recent comment on the somewhat peaceful protests organized by Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders during the tumultuous decade of the Sixties: “They were violent rioters, not peaceful protesters.” How violent were these protesters, and how violent where the white supremacists they were confronting? And who was the most violent?
Many older progressive white voters who are over seventy years old remember watching on television the events at the Selma, Birmingham, and other civil rights protests demanding equal rights for black citizens. Martin Luther King insisted on peaceful protests. What did the nation witness on their television sets? Viewers witnessed the brutality of police on horseback attacking the peaceful protesters with billy clubs at Selma. Viewers witnessed police attacking teenage black protesters with German Shepherds and fire hoses in Birmingham. Viewers watched white supremacists burning Greyhound buses carrying black and white student protesters. In addition, they learned how white supremacists took the lives of several peaceful protesters at Selma and other protests.
These Civil Rights struggles are no longer remembered history for most of us, whereas the memory of the years-long riots remain. As for me, I am in my late sixties, and I have no memory of viewing these events on television. Indeed, what I remember was that John F Kennedy’s assassination completely usurped my Saturday morning cartoons. I do not remember seeing Martin Luther King’s assassination on television. But I do remember the years-long violent riots that followed King’s assassination. There was some loss of life during these riots, likely shared by both blacks and whites, as many businesses in the urban core were torched. In my city and many other cities, the price of commercial real estate near the urban core collapsed, and many businesses migrated to the suburbs in the following decades.
How many people lost their lives unjustly? During the hundred years between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the enactment of the major Civil Rights legislation of the Sixties, there have been tens of thousands of blacks who have died during racial conflicts. Over ten thousand lynchings, mostly of blacks in the Deep South and Midwest, were documented by brave journalists such as Ida B Wells and WEB DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP. Not all lynchings were publicized and counted, and many lynchings were public. The US Post Office was compelled to forbid the circulation of postcards celebrating lynchings, and some lynchings were scheduled for Sunday afternoons in the town square so churchgoers could conveniently attend. As this is a distasteful topic, our reflection on lynchings alternates discussions of lynching incidents with discussions on civil rights.
Ida B Wells, Journalist, Brave Woman, and Anti-Lynching Activist
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/ida-b-wells-journalist-brave-woman-and-anti-lynching-crusader/
https://youtu.be/sLDHs0AigvY
WEB DUBOIS, COFOUNDER OF NAACP, CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE
During World War I, WEB DuBois encouraged blacks to volunteer to serve in the army, hoping the country would counter by making progress in civil rights.[1] Blacks were disappointed in the summer of 1919 when race riots erupted in Tulsa and many other cities. After black veteran soldiers returned home from fighting, demanding civil rights, race riots erupted in cities across the country where whites attacked and often burned black communities. Blacks had no legal recourse, and if they reported these crimes they were often arrested even though they were the victims of the riots. Many whites were jealous of whatever financial success Negroes might achieve.
As WEB DuBois’ biographer David Levering Lewis states, there were “race riots on a national scale, flight out of the South of hundreds of thousands of African-Americans, the explosion of labor strikes from coast to coast shutting down shipyards, coal mines, steel works,” “and the panic inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia,” each “made race relations far worse than they already were.”[2] As was typical, there was no due process for blacks, no compensation, no protection from white rioters burning down black businesses, churches, and homes.
WEB Du Bois and the NAACP, Continuing the Fight For Civil Rights
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/web-du-bois-and-the-naacp-continuing-the-fight-for-civil-rights/
https://youtu.be/MNhkq69CIfo
What opened my eyes to greater appreciation of civil rights history? It was Doris Kearns Goodwin’s description of why, during World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to support a federal anti-lynching bill, since the Southern senators controlling the Senate would refuse to support the war against fascism if anti-lynching legislation was passed at home. At first, I did not understand how the federal government could pass legislation that directly determined local criminal laws. Then I realized that this was a due process issue, where the federal government required that Southern sheriffs and Southern state attorneys would prosecute for murder the white supremacists who were suspected of lynching negroes.
FDR explained to a colleague that “the southerners by reason of the seniority rule in Congress are chairmen of the key Congressional committees. If I come out for the anti-lynching bill, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.” So, FDR had a choice, he could fight the Nazis, or he could fight lynching, but he could not do both. And, defeating the Nazis was an attainable goal.[3]
American Civil Rights History: Yale Lecture Notes
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/american-civil-rights-history-yale-lecture-notes/
Early Civil Rights Era, Through World War II Era: Yale Lecture Notes
https://youtu.be/weGmYOe0Lyg
MARTIN LUTHER KING, LYNDON JOHNSON, AND CIVIL RIGHTS PROTESTS
Were the Sixties protesters violent? During the Sixties, Martin Luther King believed seriously in non-violent protests, sometimes canceling protests to prevent violence. Before the bloody protests at Birmingham, King organized workshops on non-violent protests.
The volunteers had to agree to and sign this Ten Commandments Pledge:
- “MEDITATE daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.
- REMEMBER always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation, not victory.
- WALK AND TALK in the manner of love, for God is Love.
- PRAY daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.
- SACRIFICE personal wishes in order that all men might be free.
- OBSERVE, with both friend and foe, the ordinary rules of courtesy.
- SEEK to perform regular service for others and for the world.
- REFRAIN from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.
- STRIVE to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
- FOLLOW the directions of the movement and of the captain of the demonstration.”
The purpose of the last point is to avoid having the protests spin off into violence. But Bull Connor was more than willing to resort to violence when countering the peaceful protestors, including sicking police dogs and fire hoses on young protestors.
There were many Civil Rights martyrs in Mississippi and Alabama during the time of the Selma Marches that demanded that black citizens be permitted to register to vote. This was the most sensitive civil right of all, because if blacks did not have the right to vote, then they were denied representation and political power.
Four months later, in September 1963, the KKK detonated dynamite under the stairs of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham during Sunday School, killing four young black girls, including Addie Mae, Cynthia, Carole, and Denise, ages eleven to fourteen, and injuring several dozen others. A white jury eventually convicted several of the perpetrators for murder, unlike other trials where white juries refused to rule against white defendants no matter how heinous their crimes against blacks. [4]
Martin Luther King, Youth and Schooling, Lewis’ Biography Chapters, 1 and 2
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-youth-and-schooling-lewis-biography-chapters-1-and-2/
https://youtu.be/_64FMZ6AlEg
Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lewis’ Biography, Chapter 3
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-and-rosa-parks-montgomery-bus-boycott-lewis-biography-chapter-3/
https://youtu.be/TuiyFycWE-U
Martin Luther King, Lunch Counters, Freedom Riders, and Albany, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 4-6
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-lunch-counters-freedom-riders-and-albany-lewis-biography-chapters-4-6/
https://youtu.be/_TLt2fQqL4w
Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-birmingham-nonviolent-protests-v-bombs-and-brutality-biography-chapter-7/
https://youtu.be/5y0v0tYMdy8
Mississippi, like many Southern states, was a one-party state. As only whites could join the Democratic Party, blacks could not vote in the Democratic primary where all elections were decided. Not only that, blacks were also prevented from registering to vote. In the Freedom Summer of 1964, many enthusiastic white, and a few black, college students traveled to Mississippi to assist in these voter registration efforts.
Three volunteers, one black and two white Jews, disappeared when returning from registering voters in Mississippi. Their car was found, but they were not. Federal authorities became involved, LBJ ordered Navy divers to search the canals of Mississippi for bodies. They found one body, then another, then another, of blacks who had been lynched, but none were the bodies of the three students. Finally, an informant came forward to tell them where they had been buried alive with a backhoe. The full horrifying story is in our Yale Lecture Notes.[5]
American Civil Rights History: Yale Lecture Notes
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/american-civil-rights-history-yale-lecture-notes/
https://youtu.be/GQesHoV5IdI
During the marches on Selma demanding voting rights for blacks, Martin Luther King was able to restrain the violent impulses of the rising Black Power advocates in his own ranks. But white supremacists were not restrained: they decided to attack three white Unitarian ministers who ate lunch in a black restaurant. When they left, white thugs assaulted these ministers with clubs, and one of them died two days later in a hospital.
White supremacist violence helped ensure the passage of the voting rights bill. Police attacked nonviolent protesters on horseback with billy clubs. Three houses of protest leaders were dynamited, though nobody was injured, and several bombs at the mayor’s house were disabled. Most tragic was the death of a white Detroit mother and housewife who had volunteered to drive protestors home to Selma from Montgomery. As she was driving to Selma, white thugs drove up beside her and shot her in the head.[6]
There were many other violent incidents during the time of these protests. Buses carrying black protesters were burned, protesters were beaten while police watched, sometimes police beat protesters, police attacked teenage protesters with German shepherd guard dogs, and many more violent incidents.
But after he was assassinated in Memphis, Martin Luther King could no longer influence events. John F Kennedy, although he championed civil rights, was unable to pass the first landmark civil rights bill, but his successor, Lyndon Johnson, as the former Senate majority and minority leader, was able to strong-arm multiple civil rights legislation through Congress. In the momentary aura after King’s assassination, he was able to squeeze the most important, and most contested, civil rights legislation guaranteeing voting rights for blacks. But there was no celebratory signing ceremony, the raging riots in multiple cities blazing on television screens across the country evaporated much of the support among the conservative white electorate.
Comparing MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail with Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil in Nazi Germany
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/comparing-martin-luther-kings-letter-from-the-birmingham-jail-with-hannah-arendts-the-banality-of-evil/
https://youtu.be/PqFAUEXbi8k
Martin Luther King, I Have a Dream Speech, March on Washington DC, Biography Chapter 8
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-i-have-a-dream-speech-march-on-washington-dc-biography-chapter-8/
https://youtu.be/IJ64y3nQA4Q
Martin Luther King, Bloody Struggles in Mississippi and Selma, Lewis’ Biography Chapters 8-9
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-bloody-struggles-in-mississippi-and-selma-lewis-biography-chapters-8-9/
https://youtu.be/eMA_7vLYcdM
Martin Luther King & LBJ: Great Society, Vietnam, Chicago & Memphis, Lewis Biography Chapters 10-12
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/martin-luther-king-lbj-great-society-and-vietnam-northern-civil-rights-biography-chapters-10-12/
https://youtu.be/IeKssG8mrlk
But LBJ also understood the root psychology of those who rioted. He explained to Kearns, “God knows how little we have really moved on this issue, despite all the fanfare. As I see it, I have moved the Negro from a D+ to a C-. He is still nowhere, and he knows it. That is why he is out in the streets.”
LBJ continues, “Hell, I would be there too. It was bad enough in the South, especially from the standpoint of education, but at least there the Negro knew he was really loved and cared for, which he never was in the North, where children live with rats and have no place to sleep and come from broken homes and get rejected from the Army. And then they look on TV and see all the promises of a rich country and they know that some movement is beginning to take place in their lives, so they begin to hope for a lot more.”
LBJ added, “No matter how well you may think you know a Negro, if you really know one, there will come the time when you look at him and see how deep his bitterness is.”
The riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King lasted for years. Doris Kearns, in her biography of LBJ, notes that “Watts was the precursor of more than one hundred riots that stretched out for three long summers, leaving 225 people dead, 4,000 wounded, and $112 billion in property damage.” LBJ was frustrated that these rioters would ruin the cause for so many decent Negroes, preventing further civil rights legislation. [7]
Early in his presidency, after signing the first major Civil Rights Bill of 1964, LBJ was in a melancholy rather than a festive mood. Johnson told Bill Moyers, “I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.”[8]
We have several reflections on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s biographies of John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson.
Lyndon Baines Johnson, Youth, Schooling, and Rise to Power
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/lyndon-baines-johnson-youth-schooling-and-rise-to-power/
https://youtu.be/hBYD1yDo9eE
Presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Civil Rights, Great Society, and Vietnam War
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/presidency-of-lyndon-baines-johnson-civil-rights-great-society-and-vietnam-war/
https://youtu.be/lydW8mfpJGQ
John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o
Lyndon Johnson, Enacting the Great Society and Vietnam, Review of an Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/lyndon-johnson-enacting-the-great-society-and-vietnam-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/MgVEipHdvfM
CIVIL RIGHTS PROTESTERS VS WHITE SUPREMACISTS
Whenever my Democratic friends ask me to participate in local protests, I demur. What is the point? Public protests now have a bad name, and conservatives will not notice them, assuming they are only an excuse for violence and looting.
The civil rights memorial sponsored by the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, commemorates forty-one martyrs who died during the Civil Rights movement between 1955 and 1968.[9] You might object, these liberals are not going to track the number of whites killed during these protests. Indeed, they wouldn’t, and the number could be similar, but I have not read any accounts of white supremacists losing their lives, and I am sure that some police died as a result of the violence.
But when you include the number of black deaths during the lynching and race riots during the Jim Crow era, for every white who died, hundreds, or possibly thousands, of blacks died. Some of these were protestors, but many were murdered for the color of their skin. Many of these black deaths are forgotten in the sands of history, WEB DuBois, in his history Black Reconstruction, quotes Congressional testimony that confirms it was common after the Civil War for Deep South white supremacists to murder and steal from uppity blacks without fear of consequences. [10]
Refuting the Lost Cause: Black Reconstruction by WEB Du Bois
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/refuting-the-lost-cause-black-reconstruction-by-web-dubois/
https://youtu.be/JeRCM4PAqPk
Remember, more recently, there were no whites killed at the Charlottesville protests in 2017, but a white supremacist purposely drove his car into a crowd of civil rights protestors, injuring dozens of protesters, killing Heather Hyer, whom he ran over with his car.[11]
[1] David Levering Lewis, A Biography, WEB Du Bois, (New York: Holt Paperback, 2009), p. 363.
[2] David Levering Lewis, A Biography, WEB Du Bois, p. 381.
[3] Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp. 163-165.
[4] David Levering Lewis, KING, a Biography (Chicago, Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2013, 1970), Chapter 7, pp. 171-209 and https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety .
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Chaney,_Goodman,_and_Schwerner
[6] David Levering Lewis, KING, a Biography, Chapter 9, pp. 264-283.
[7] Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream (New York: Signet Book, 1976), Chapter 10, Things Go Wrong, pp. 300-323.
[8] Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2024), Chapter 7, Thirteen LBJ’s, pp. 182-203.
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Memorial
[10] WEB Dubois, Black Reconstruction (New York: The Free Press, 1935, 1962, 1998), pp. 136-142.
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlottesville_car_attack
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