Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
first cities in the South to begin desegregating its lunch counters.
In the midst of the sit-in demonstrations and the economic boycott, the coterie of Nashville student leaders was among those students who met in Raleigh, North Carolina, with Ella Baker of the SCLC, in April of 1960, to form the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). By the time the organizational meeting ended on April 17, the student delegation elected Marion Berry as their first chairman of the SNCC and Diane Nash as head of protest activities and chairman of the coordinating committee between students and adults. Over the next few years, as members of the SNCC, leaders of the NSM played a major role in keeping the CORE from aborting the Freedom Rides from Washington, D.C., after being met with violence in Anniston, Alabama. Leaders of the NSM also played a role in the 1963 March on Washington and Mississippi Freedom Summer.
Linda T. Wynn
National Welfare Rights Movement (1960s)
Numerous welfare rights organizations emerged in the 1960s and 1970s to challenge local, state, and national apathy toward programs to serve the needs of welfare recipients. Some of the groups had strong, assertive leaders who empowered welfare members to plan job training programs. Johnnie Tillmon, an African American and a resident of the Watts section of Los Angeles, was one such leader.
On the East Coast, the Brooklyn Welfare Action Council gained the attention of politicians as they sought endorsements from welfare groups. They also supported welfare rights activists. The National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), established in 1967, coordinated the efforts of these groups nationwide through a tightly organized structure. That organization emerged at the time when President Lyndon B. Johnson addressed the stark contradiction of poverty in affluent America. He developed a national antipoverty program to address the nation’s seeming inability to combat poverty. To sustain itself, the NWRO was successful in obtaining funding from middle-class churches as well as the federal poverty program.
During the movement, welfare rights activists applied direct-action tactics by leading sit-ins at welfare departments and engaging in other protest activities. After that, welfare rolls swelled as many poor people learned more about their rights to benefits and insisted on relief. This forced many welfare agencies to change their demoralizing practices. Although a powerful anti-welfare backlash arose in the 1970s and caused the NWRO to lose financial support and file for bankruptcy, the organization had been successful in bringing together welfare rights and civil rights in a common struggle.
Jessie Carney Smith
In addition to New Orleans race riots in 1874 and 1900, the earlier July 1866 riot caused great controversy, as this political cartoon by Thomas Nast, which is critical of President Andrew Johnson, shows (Library of Congress).
New Orleans Race Riot (1874)
This event took place in the context of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era, when freed blacks and “radical Republicans” briefly held political power in the South. Defeated ex-Confederates reorganized into a group called the White League and dedicated themselves to restoring a “white man’s government” through vigilante acts of violence directed at African Americans and white “carpetbaggers.” On April 13, 1873, the White League launched an attack on the Louisiana militia, which was almost completely made up of black soldiers, and killed approximately 100 militiamen in Colfax, Louisiana. By the summer of 1874, the estimated membership of the White League was 14,000 strong. As they continued their reign of terror, President Ulysses S. Grant did not act to restrain the activities of the White League. On September 14, 1874, nearly 4,000 armed vigilantes assembled on Canal Street in New Orleans, intent on ousting Republican Governor William Kellogg. They were met by an equal number of police and black militia, ironically under the command of ex-Confederate General James Longstreet. The one-hour fight became known as the “Battle of Liberty Place,” with 38 killed and 79 wounded in the outbreak.
The White League prevailed, yet they restrained themselves from firing directly on Longstreet. They captured him, deposed Kellogg, installed John McEnery as governor, and maintained political control for three days. Grant finally ordered federal troops to New Orleans to force their withdrawal, the release of Longstreet, and the reinstatement of Kellogg as governor.
Fletcher F. Moon
New Orleans Race Riot (1900)
This event took place between July 24 and 28, 1900, and resulted from the actions of Robert Charles, an African American who took up arms in self-defense when confronted and attacked by white New Orleans policemen. Charles shot and killed two officers, wounded a third, and was wounded himself before fleeing the scene. He immediately became the object of a manhunt. Before he was killed in a shootout on July 28, varying reports indicate that Charles shot or killed up to 27 white people before losing his own life. In 1899 another black man, Sam Holt, had been lynched and dismembered in Newman, Georgia, and Charles was reported as “beside himself with fury” upon hearing of the incident. He had already proclaimed the right of blacks to defend themselves and carried a weapon for his own protection, based on previous encounters with whites in Mississippi before he moved to New Orleans. While Charles was an uneducated laborer, he was also an agent for the International Migration Society that encouraged blacks to emigrate to Liberia, West Africa. White mobs responded violently after hearing that a black man had dared to shoot white people, and so they began attacking African Americans and their property throughout the city. At least a dozen blacks were killed, nearly 70 were injured, and the best city school for blacks was destroyed. Charles was alternately portrayed as a martyr and hero or violent murderer and desperado in the aftermath of the riot and violence.
Fletcher F. Moon
Newark, New Jersey, Race Riot (1967)
African Americans in the city had little political representation in the mid-1960s, despite being over half of the total population, and conditions were similar to those in other large urban areas. High crime and unemployment rates, political corruption, substandard housing, and police brutality led to increased community activism through organizations such as the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), the Newark Coordination Council (NCC), and the Committee for a United Newark (CUN), the last formed in 1966 by writer and activist Amiri Baraka. In 1967 Baraka convened the first National Conference on Black Power in Newark, but still no meaningful progress had been made in addressing the city’s problems. Tension and frustration exploded on July 12 after an incident of police brutality directed toward John Smith, an African American cab driver. Smith was arrested and severely beaten by police officers, but was taken to a hospital after civil rights leaders came to the police precinct. Rumors spread that Smith had died in police custody, leading to the outbreak.
The violence continued until July 17 and was described as “one of the bloodiest and most devastating racial insurrections in recent U.S. history.” Between 23 and 26 people were reported killed during the riot, along with an estimated $10 million in property damage. Both the New Jersey State Police and the National Guard were called in to restore order, but problems and violence continued with another riot after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
Fletcher F. Moon
Non-Violent Resistance
The tactic of non-violent resistance was not a novel idea at the time of the modern Civil Rights Movement. American colonists employed it during the Revolution when they boycotted British imports and offered resistance to taxation without representation. A modus operandi of social change that employs strategies such as strikes, sit-ins, boycotts, and civil disobedience, non-violent resistance is a theory that was developed by Henry David Thoreau in his 1849 essay, Civil Disobedience, in which he argued that it was morally justifiable to peacefully resist unjust laws. Leaders such as Asa Phillip Randolph, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin,