Freedom Facts and Firsts. Jessie Carney Smith
in the late 1950s.
Success was achieved in the Mississippi Gulf Coast region in 1960 and 1961 with leadership from Biloxi NAACP branch President Dr. Gilbert R. Mason, but efforts in other areas still met stern and sometimes violent opposition. Shortly after the creation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, activist Robert “Bob” Moses was encouraged by mentor Ella Baker to travel to Mississippi, where he met local NAACP leader Amzie Moore. Moses was asked by Moore to increase the number of civil rights workers in the area, and to focus efforts on getting more black Mississippians to register and vote. The next year considerable numbers of black and white student activists came to McComb, Mississippi, to help with voter registration and basic literacy in black communities. Despite assaults, arrests, jailings, and murders of activists such as Herbert Lee (1961), and Medgar Evers (1963), voter education and registration efforts continued in the state.
In the fall of 1963, the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) developed the Freedom Vote program to demonstrate black voting potential, and Moses expanded this concept into the “Freedom Summer” campaign of 1964. Despite the tragic murders of volunteers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney in June, Freedom Summer continued. Organizers established “freedom schools” and other community centers to address the educational, health, and legal needs of poor blacks; and they created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the legitimacy of the all-white Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, led by activist Fannie Lou Hamer. These efforts dramatized the disenfranchisement of African American voters, and influenced the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a result, numerous black candidates were elected to municipal, county, state, and national offices in southern states and other regions of the country. Mississippi changed from five percent of eligible blacks registered to vote in the 1950s to 66.5 percent by 1969.
Despite the increased number of black elected officials, their success did not immediately translate into meaningful socioeconomic improvements for their constituents. Jesse Jackson inspired increased voter registration efforts during his presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988, and Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act in 1993. A number of African American media personalities also used their celebrity status to encourage increased African American voter registration and participation in recent years.
Fletcher F. Moon
Poll taxes, unfair literacy tests, “grandfather clauses” …, and violence were used to prevent and discourage blacks from voting.
War on Poverty (est. 1964)
On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War On Poverty” during his State of the Union Address. In that address he called for the creation of a “Great Society.” Johnson proposed an expansion in the federal government’s role in domestic policy. During his administration, Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, both of which were major civil rights acts. Succeeding to the presidency after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Johnson made poverty a national concern. His sensitivity to the issue, despite his personal wealth, rose with a growing national concern that was stimulated in part by Michael Harrington’s now classic tome The Other Americans: Poverty in the United States (1962). Harrington detailed the deplorable living conditions for millions of Americans suffering in desperate poverty in the midst of the world’s most affluent society. The destitute were everywhere, from decaying urban cities to rural areas such as Appalachia. More than one out of five Americans lived below the official poverty line and 70 percent of them were white.
Those who argued for a return to a homeland, nationalists, and separatists believed that there could be no equal treatment for men of color.
As a part of his Great Society Program, which was part of the administration’s domestic policy, Johnson envisioned a federally directed application of resources that extended beyond social welfare to include education and healthcare. The Great Society programs were reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal program of the 1930s. Johnson and Congress passed several measures aimed at alleviating poverty. They increased the availability of money and food stamps through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children, raised Social Security benefits to senior Americans, and focused on improving educational opportunities. Along with the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act (1964) and two education acts (1965). In addition, legislation was passed that created the Job Corps, Operation Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), Medicaid, and Medicare.
The most effective measures of the War on Poverty provided federal funds for the education of children in low-income families through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965; Medicare for the nation’s senior citizens; and Medicaid for individuals on welfare, which was created by the Social Security Amendments of 1965. Although the Great Society programs made significant contributions to the protection of civil rights and the expansion of social programs, critics increasingly complained that the antipoverty programs were ineffective and wasteful. The economic and political costs of the Vietnam War, as well as the cost of the programs themselves, surmounted President Johnson’s domestic initiatives. During the second term of President Richard Nixon, Congress replaced the Office of Economic Opportunity with the Community Services Administration and hastened the process in which favored parts of the antipoverty program were exported to established executive agencies, such as the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan abolished the Community Services Administration, leaving only individual programs, such as legal services and Head Start, as the bureaucratic survivors of the War on Poverty.
Linda T. Wynn
Race Consciousness
Black Pride
Black Pride is an important concept in the struggle for freedom and civil rights, for it cannot exist without this belief. Since one tactic in the oppression of black people is to provide them with a negative sense of self-worth, the emergence of black pride fosters an urgency that serves as a catalyst or undercurrent for the struggle for equality. Black pride was a phrase that was popular during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, but it is not limited to this period. It was a part of the thrust of educators and orators like Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Sojourner Truth, and Anna J. Cooper, women who spoke in support of equality and fought for better treatment. Those who argued for a return to a homeland—nationalists and separatists—believed that there could be no equal treatment for men of color. Among adherents to this belief were Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell, Martin Delany, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X. Garvey encouraged pride in race and the beauty of black people, while Malcolm X preached independence and separatism. Even a personality like Booker T. Washington, who is often viewed as a conservative, said in Up From Slavery that he would rather be a member of the Negro race than any other. This celebration of self and of heritage is evident in the practice of changing one’s name; following the emancipation, and especially during the 1970s, many black people changed their names to ones they felt were more reflective of their identity and freedom. Black pride is also in evidence in music, such as in James Brown’s “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.”
Helen R. Houston
Bridging the Racial Divide
Reconciling the races is a challenge that has permeated American society for centuries. There have been many initiatives to eliminate racial disparities over the years. The Center for Living Democracy (CLD) published the report Bridging