For those who know so little about the civil rights movement, but insist on lecturing us about it [View All]

[EffieBlack]

Here's a quick primer:

Unfortunately, too many people have a sadly revisionist view of civil rights history, a view that, while seeming to glorify Martin Luther King, really end up turning him into a saintly, bigger than life characature of his true self and diminishing the work of many others, white and black.

Here are a few facts to counter the myths.

1. Dr. King was not the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. He was one of many leaders of the movement.

2. The civil rights movement did not begin with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and end with Dr. King's assassination in 1968. The movement began long before Dr. King was even born and continues to this day.

3. The civil rights movement does not consist only of protests, marches and agitation. A number of parallel and complimentary activities worked in concert to bring about the change that many people attribute solely to Dr. King.

For example, Dr. King, Rosa Parks and the black citizens of Montgomery, Alabama are rightly lauded for their tenacity, bravery and commitment during the year-long Montgomery Bus Boycott. But while the on-the-ground protest brought the nation's attention to the situation and brought the city's economy to its knees, the primary reason the boycott was ultimately successful was something that had occurred more than a year before the boycott began: The 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which invalidated state-imposed racial segregation and was the legal basis for the Montgomery protesters to fight the city's segregated transportation system. Without Brown, the boycotters may not have been successful. And Brown was the result, not only of a courageous and principled Supreme Court, but of DECADES of brilliant legal strategy developed by one of America's greatest heroes and perhaps the best legal mind this country has ever produced: Charles Hamilton Houston, who with his protege, Thurgood Marshall, used the Constitution and flawed legal system to save America from itself.

This pattern continued throughout the 50s and 60s, with the protesters drawing the public's hearts and minds while the NAACP lawyers used the legal system to untangled our jumbled rights. Neither entity could have been successful without the other. The protesters heavily influenced the judges who were hearing the cases and the lawyers and judges in these cases consistently protected and vindicated and advanced the rights of the protesters. It was a beautiful, brilliant symmetry of which far too many Americans are completely unaware.

There is so much more, but I hope that this initial primer will encourage people to go back and study the history - or talk to people who were actually there - before continuing trying to promulgate ill-informed, inaccurate assumptions about the civil rights movement.