Martin Luther King Day helps people remember civil rights movement, leaders
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in a letter from the Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King Day gave Utah State University a chance to think about the status of civil rights. Although this holiday specifically celebrated King, it was also a day for service, a day for remembering other leaders and a day for celebrating the work of people who struggled at a grassroots level.
Jennifer Ritterhouse and Denise Conover, professors in the history department, said students should take advantage of the diversity on campus and the vast resources available to learn about the civil rights movement.
The Audio Visual Center in the Sci-Tech Library and the Logan Library have large collections of documentaries, historical documents, journals, biographies, novels and music and are also excellent resources. Relevant courses are also available through the history department.
To help students better understand events recently sensationalized by media such as police brutality and the controversial Bush appointee John Ashcroft, past events can be examined to ensure not only the celebration of King, but the celebration of the work he and others accomplished during the civil rights movement.
According to the book “Events that Changed America in the Twentieth Century,” the modern civil rights movement in the United States may be said to have begun when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) began a concentrated effort to end racial segregation in 1935.
In 1954, this effort was rewarded with Brown v. the Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, however, was unable to mandate immediate social progress.
Conover, who grew up in the South, said her high school was not integrated until 1967.
Black men and women employed several methods to combat the deeply-rooted prejudice of the South. In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white person. This gesture inspired King and the Southern Christian Leadership Council to instigate the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1957.
“King knew how to use the media … He played the TV tool very well,” Conover said.
Non-violent protesting and the media attention it drew helped widen a sympathetic audience for the movement.
Television helped draw support from white people, and the Cold War helped draw support from the government, Conover said. She said during the Cold War America’s image was scrutinized, and every type of conflict would have been used against America.
In 1960 four black college students sat at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C. The waitress poured ketchup on one student’s head, several whites threw eggs and one man physically knocked one of the boys down, Conover said. She said the boy stood up and sat back down, remaining non-violent.
The sit-in was so effective, activist Ella Baker helped organize the Student Non Violent Coordination Committee (SNCC) to organized many more like it.
In 1963, King led a protest of segregated stores in Birmingham, Ala.
Conover said when she shows videos in class, students usually react strongly to footage of fire hoses and dogs attacking the protesters.
These grassroots events culminated into the March on Washington in 1963 where King delivered his “I have a Dream Speech.”
This speech has had a long-term effect and has become an icon of our culture, Conover said.
During the Candle Light Vigil on Monday, USU President Kermit Hall used the speech as a measure of improvement.
While the action that took place at the grassroots level did not immediately change legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are indirectly related, Conover said.
Conover said equal rights is not just a black and white issue anymore. It concerns Latinos, Asians and other minorities.
“This country doesn’t necessarily live up to its own ideals,” she said.
Blacks have fought extremely hard to gain and preserve the right to vote. In the past election thousands of voters in Florida may have been disfranchised.
Ritterhouse said inequality on any level points to flaws in the system. The civil rights movement attempted to repair many of the flaws, but there is still much room for improvement.
“At an individual level, [students should] just basically look inward and see where they need to improve. This is a time that you shouldn’t waste,” Conover said.