Class Summary 3.18.13

In the previous lesson, we learned about the freedom rides. In May 1961, the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE) decided to test the Supreme Court ruling that prohibited segregation on interstate bus travel. This movement, which was supposed to take participants from Washington D.C. to New Orleans, LA became known as the Freedom Rides. Three white men and three white women, along with seven African Americans boarded two buses headed south on May 4, 1961. In Anniston, AL, the first bus was met by an angry mob who tried to break in the bus and successfully slashed the tires. When the bus was forced to pull over on route to Birmingham due to flats, the mob followed the bus and chaos ensued. The mob of 200 men threw fire bombs into the bus and proceeded to beat the demonstrators as they fell out of the bus door. When the second bus arrived in Birmingham, the same occurred. Local police gave men 15 minutes to do "what they could" before they would have to interfere and break up the beating. The trip was forced to stop in Jackson, Mississippi, short of the New Orleans goal and President Kennedy provided Federal Marshalls to protect the freedom riders.

Today, in four groups, we studied the actions of Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. After the investigation of one of the leaders, we assembled in groups of four, each with one of the four documents to compile a general knowledge of the two public figures. King, arguably the most influential leader of the Civil Rights movement, was the President of the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC). He organized numerous marches, rallies, and strikes to bring attention to the discrimination against minorities. He preached for nonviolent protests and urged demonstrators to act with love and with God. Malcolm X, member of the Nation of Islam and the founder if the Organization of Afro-American Unity, believed that violence was the only way to gain independence and that they should not try to integrate with whites. The two demonstrated the opposite sides and approaches to the Civil Rights movement.