1. Anneliese Johnson
Formal Essay
Honors History 114
April 27, 2016
While there is no doubt that the 1950s and 60s are rightfully penned in history as the
culmination of the civil rights movement, it is not completely fair to point to the years between
1954 and 1968 as the precise definition of the era of said movement in America. If this
simplification of the struggle for civil rights was accurate, there would not be a single instance of
African American oppression following the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting
Rights Act of 1965 or prior to the conditions that led to the 1954 decision in Brown.v. Board of
Education. President Lyndon B. Johnson perfectly articulated in his 1965 Commencement
Address at Howard University why the civil rights movement is perpetual when he said “You do
not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do
as you desire, and choose the leaders you please.”1
Similarly, the historically documented “scars
of centuries” to which Johnson referred cannot be ignored because there was no evidence of an
organized political movement designed to protest them until the days of Martin Luther King Jr.
and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). However, the supposed absence
of what is popularly defined as a political movement prior to the 1950s and 60s does not
correlate with historical evidence. The civil rights movement in the United States cannot be
isolated to the middle of the 20th
century because doing so would be equivalent to taking over
150 years of American history and rendering it irrelevant. To ignore the Ida Wells of the world is
equivalent to portraying the entire nation prior to the 1950s and 60s as accepting of segregation
1
“Lyndon B. Johnson, Commencement Address at Howard University,” in Eric Foner, Voices of Freedom:
A Documentary History, Volume II: Second Edition (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008), 278.

2. and racial discrimination. It is nearly impossible to conclude such a thing in good conscious
when the same ideas coined by King, Fanny Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X are present in World
War I and II era literature, 19th
century Supreme Court dissents, and in documents as early as the
Edisto Island petition in 1865. History is the sole leg on which the motivations of the civil rights
movement allow it to stand and to neglect to consider it as part of the movement is inaccurate.
From the Emancipation Proclamation and Reconstruction Amendments, to Letter From a
Birmingham Jail and The Ballot or the Bullet, the common thread is the promise of America as
synonymous with freedom and the reality that it is not.
In 1954, the first nationally visible challenge to segregation takes place in the Brown v.
Board of Education Supreme Court ruling. This decision catalyzes a political movement that
finally brings to a national stage an intrinsic problem of the American practice of democracy. It
is the moment when the African American population says to the entirety of America, we cannot
sit idly and accept oppression anymore. Because it is the first time that many Americans have
had the tragedy of racial discrimination delivered to their doorsteps, it is compelling to look at
this moment in history as the concrete beginning of the African American movement to obtain
the civil rights granted to them in the Reconstruction amendments. However, when considered in
historical context, this view proves fallacious. W.E.B. DuBois' post-World War I version of what
will be adopted by King in the 50s and 60s suggests that the urgency so brilliantly conveyed by
King was indeed a sentiment already present in the African American community. After
explaining that in order to fight for America, African Americans must first overcome the
circumstances of the nation, DuBois writes in Returning Soldiers, “But by the God of Heaven,
we are cowards and jackasses if now that that war is over, we do not marshal every ounce of our
brain and brawn to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle against the forces of hell in our

3. own land.”2
The same call to action is authored on toilet paper in a Birmingham jail cell in 1954
by Martin Luther King Jr. when he articulates why this demand for equality can no longer be put
off, saying, “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to
say, "Wait"…..but when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white"
and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy"
(however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never
given the respected title "Mrs.";... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of
"nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait."3
It had been difficult to
wait for centuries by the time Martin Luther King Jr. became part of the conversation. As
impressive and influential a man as he was, not even he could materialize a such desperate sense
of urgency if it was not already instilled in the African American population in the days of
DuBois and prior.
Even before World War I catalyzed the writings of W.E.B. DuBois, African American
requests for enactment of the civil rights due them were existent. A particular theme which
connects these earlier voices to later figures like King and Ruby Nell Sales is the use of an
appeal to a higher power which rules in terms of morality rather than legality. As early as 1865,
the newly liberated men of Edisto Island who wrote their president with the intention of
collecting on the promise of freedom granted to them by way of the 13th
Amendment conclude,
“We pray that God will direct your heart in Making such provision for us as freedmen which
Will tend to united these states together stronger than ever before.”4
This appeal to the highest
power of God as decider of moral rightness resonates also in the notice from the Coloured People
2
Returning Soldiers (Blackboard)
3 Letter From a Birmingham Jail (Blackboard)
4
“Petition of Committee on Behalf of Freedmen to Andrew Johnson,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom
Volume II, 4.

4. of the City of Richmond in 1866. In their notice to the public of Richmond, the colored people of
the city incite God as being “pleased to Liberate their long-oppressed race.”5
The incorporation
of religion in these demands for racial equality cuts to the heart of the American public by
making civil rights less about legality and more about theological morality, and is a tactic used in
both the century prior to Brown v. Board of Education and by many of the key civil rights
leaders after that monumental decision. King, for example, brilliantly captures the attention of
the American people by explaining his presence in Birmingham by way of an extended metaphor
about the Apostle Paul and quoting from Thomas Aquinas' writings on eternal and natural law
and its applications to the morality of American legislation. He goes on to reference the biblical
story of King Nebuchadnezzar, directs his prose to all his religious brothers and sisters in Christ,
and ends with this statement; “If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and
indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that
understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less
than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me.”6
By taking the decision away from the lawmakers
and placing it in the hands of God, King, the Edisto islanders, the coloured people of Richmond
and many others seek to reach white moderates who are “more devoted to "order" than to
justice”7
outside of the courtroom and legal papers where they cannot hide behind technicalities.
Moreover, this popular depiction of God as the power that deemed segregation a moral wrong is
exactly what gives so many African Americans the hope and courage to persevere through
centuries of brutality and discrimination. Ruby Nell Sales, in a stroke of pure genius, cuts right to
the heart of the civil rights movement when she says, “I don’t think a civil rights movement
5 The Coloured People of Richmond (Blackboard)
6
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Blackboard)
7
Ibid.

5. could have lasted as long as this movement did without the cultural nuances of God, without the
theology, without the intimacy, without the connections, and without the strong desire to be first-
class human beings.”8
In her interview, she is referring to the movement in the 1950s and 60s,
but when her statement is considered in context with earlier historical writings from Richmond
and Edisto Island, it is evident that many people before Ruby Sales drew upon the ultimate, all-
knowing power of God as the catalyst for racial equality.
Though many civil rights activists fought for civil rights primarily in the hearts and minds
of the American people by using tactics such as an appeal to religion, legislation also played a
role. The primary voices of the 50s and 60s criticize enactment and enforcement of the law much
more than they criticize the language of the law itself. Many years prior to the stereotypical civil
rights movement, this same kind of critique was being issued in the aftermath of Plessy v.
Ferguson in which the Supreme Court legalized separate but equal. Justice John Marshall Harlan
references the 13th
and 14th
amendments in his dissent with the statement, “These two
amendments, if enforced according to their true intent and meaning, will protect all the civil
rights that pertain to freedom and citizenship.”9
He goes on to point out that by upholding the
Louisiana statute under question in Plessy v. Ferguson, the language of the amendments is being
used to undermine the intention of them. He declares, “Our constitution is color-blind and knows
nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the
law.”10
The catch-22, as King points out in his letter is that, as in the case of the ruling of Plessy
v. Ferguson, “Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application.”11
In many cases,
such as the era of lynching which Ida Wells writes about, the protections put in place by the
8
Interview with Ruby Nell Sales (Blackboard)
9 “John Marshall Harlan, Dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom Volume II, 53.
10
Ibid.
11
Letter from a Birmingham Jail (Blackboard)

6. reconstruction amendments were either circumvented or ignored completely. Wells, in 1892,
writes, “The federal laws for Negro protection passed during Reconstruction had been made a
mockery by the White South where it had not secured their repeal.”12
Present in the words of
Harlan, King, Wells, and others, is frustration not with the language of the law itself but with the
enactment (or lack thereof) of it.
Outside of the law itself, one of the most prevalent critiques of American treatment of
minority groups is the hypocritical juxtaposition segregation poses when examined in tandem
with the self-proclaimed goal of the nation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his Four Freedoms
speech explicitly explains for what he, and many others, believe America stands. “Freedom,” he
says, “means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle
to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is in our unity of purpose.”13
Assuming the only
inhabitants of the nation white and middle to upper class, America’s strength is in its “unity of
purpose.”14
However, African American voices both prior to and during the 1950s and 60s point
out just how hypocritical this definition of what it means to be American is. Malcolm X in 1964
writes, “No, I’m not an American. I’m one of 22 million black people who are the victims of
Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but
disguised hypocrisy…. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”15
There
is no delicate metaphor or uncertainty in this blazing indictment of the circumstances American
democracy inflicts on African Americans in Malcolm X’s writings. Others, such as Fannie Lou
Hammer and W.E.B. DuBois share in the aggressive tradition. Hamer, in her 1964 speech to the
Democratic National Convention paints a visceral picture of the hardships endured by African
12
“Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom Volume II, 58.
13 “Franklin D. Roosevelt on the Four Freedoms,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom Volume II, 187.
14
Ibid.
15
The Ballot or the Bullet (Blackboard)

7. Americans who try to claim their basic rights and concludes by saying, “Is this America, the land
of the free and home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the books
because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in
America?”16
Even DuBois in 1919, significantly prior to the visible civil rights movement, points
the finger at all of American, but particularly the government saying, “We stand again to look
American squarely in the face and call a spade a spade. We sing: This country of ours, despite all
its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land.”17
Though Malcolm X, Hamer,
and DuBois all take a clear, aggressive approach to pointing out the hypocrisy engulfing the self-
glorified nation, many others, before and after 1954, preach the same story in a more moderate
tone. The authors of the Edisto Island petition, for example, argue, “Shall not we who Are
freedman and have been always true to this Union have the same rights as are enjoyed by
Others?”18
Despite the fact that the sentiment is more delicately framed in this context, the
petitioners are issuing the same critique that will be made by Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer and
others nearly a century later.
The civil rights movement, no matter how the timeline is defined, can be discussed in
terms of the law, the government, the social atmosphere, and many other tangible, documented
categories. When examined in any of those contexts, it is possible to conclude that the civil rights
movement should be limited to the middle of the 20th
century during the days of King and
Malcolm X, even when considered in junction with historical evidence of the presence of major
civil rights motivations prior to that period. As helpful as such concrete facets are to
understanding the reasons behind events in history, the one thing they typically do not
16
Fannie Lou Hamer Speech to the 1964 DNC (Blackboard)
17 Returning Soldiers (Blackboard)
18
“Petition of Committee on Behalf of Freedmen to Andrew Johnson,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom
Volume II, 4.

8. adequately capture is how the events and social climate that preceded the civil rights movement
led by King and the SNCC actually affected the people that were oppressed. Ruby Sales in her
interview, shines some light on the matter, saying, “If it had just been merely a protest about
riding the bus, it might have shattered. But it went to the very heart of black womanhood, and
black women played a major role in sustaining that movement.”19
Similarly, Wells in 1892
describes the lynch law as a means to “stifle Negro manhood.”20
The point both these women are
trying to emphasize is that yes, civil rights in terms of legal protections is one facet of the civil
rights movement, but the problem with far deeper roots is one of human rights. Malcolm X
expresses this same position overtly in his writings. “When you expand the civil-rights struggle
to the level of human rights, you can then take the case of the black man in this country before
the nations in the UN. You can take it before the General Assembly. You can take Uncle Sam
before a world court. But the only level you can do it on is the level of human rights.”21
In a
more veiled, but equally poignant manner, King speaks of laws that uplift and degrade human
personality as moral and immoral respectively. Sales, however makes the sentiment piercingly
personal when she explains how limiting the movement to civil rights, “obscures… the horrors
of segregation…. No black girl was safe from rape in that society.”22
No black girl was safe from
rape in either in the mid-20th
century or the hundreds of years of American history preceding it.
Then, it is truly impossible for the fight for civil rights, or the fight for human dignity, or the
Southern Freedom Movement, or whatever you want to name it, to be limited to the years of
1954 through 1968. To do so is not only to ignore a centuries worth of evidence to the contrary,
it is also to devalue the horrors of poverty and lack of education. It is to disregard the blood
19
Ruby Nell Sales Interview (Blackboard)
20 “Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice,” in Foner, Voices of Freedom Volume II, 58.
21
The Ballot or the Bullet (Blackboard)
22
Ruby Nell Sales Interview (Blackboard)

9. spilled by overwhelming numbers of African Americans. It is to reduce Rosa Parks to a seat on a
bus. It is to dehumanize the entirety of the African American population by compressing every
hardship they ever endured into a period of 14 years. Most importantly, to limit civil rights to the
middle of the 20th
century is to tell African Americans that they never have been and never will
be, “first class human beings.”23
To define the civil rights movement as a single event in time is
historically inaccurate, morally abhorrent, and exactly the reason why the struggle for both civil
and human rights exists in the first place.
23
Ibid.