Ok, so this post's title sounds like the title of a mediocre college term paper. But check out some semi-random thoughts on the holiday Americans celebrate today in light of contemporary repression in the Middle East. Think about what sounds eerily familiar today.
The problem MLK faced in 1955: Enormous obstacles stood before anyone seeking to challenge
the repressive status quo. Antagonism – fueled by harsh legal repression, horrifying
violence, and debilitating social ostracism – was compounded by apathy from
free people on the outside. The result: abdication by decent people living in freedom.
A Region Frozen in Repression: In 1963, King opened the third chapter of
his new book Why We Can’t Wait by describing a time-warp: “If you had
visited Birmingham before the third of April in the one-hundredth-anniversary
year of the Negro’s emancipation… you might have concluded that here
was a city which had been trapped for decades in a Rip Van Winkle slumber; a
city whose fathers had apparently never heard of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas
Jefferson, the Bill of Rights, the Preamble to the Constitution, the
Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, or the 1954 decision of the
United States Supreme Court outlawing segregation in the public schools.”
Understanding the Human Experience of Repression: King challenged his readers to experience this time warp from the standpoint of a young black growing up inside it. “If your powers of imagination were great enough to enable you to place yourself in the
position of a Negro baby born and brought up to physical maturity in Birmingham…” was his kick-off for a litany of degradations and obstacles faced in the struggle for civil rights, including
- the banning of civic organizations like the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), which Alabama’s attorney general in 1956 declared an illegal “foreign corporation” and fined $100,000;
- the on-going denial of blacks’ right to vote;
- 17 unsolved bomb attacks against blacks in “Bombingham, Alabama” (most targeting churches and private homes) and the recent castration of a black man;
- Eugene “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, who in 1958 crushed a quiet demonstration of 12 black college students by instructing police to detain, fingerprint, and warn the students to “be good”;
- the arrest of a white bus station manager in 1961 for daring to serve blacks who flaunted the segregation regulations of the station’s café;
- the public silence of decent white citizens, a “silence born of fear – fear of social, political and economic reprisals.”
- "You would," King concluded, "be living in the largest city of a police state."
The failure of compassionate whites to confront repressive leaders: “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” King wrote in his 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Though concerned about abuses, the moderate “is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice… prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension… [and] paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”
Conventional Wisdom Cautioned Against Advocating for Change: The Washington Post dismissed King's 1963 campaign against segregation in Birmingham as “untimely” because many local blacks and liberal white clergymen saw the protest as inflaming tensions just when the city seemed to be making progress. A New York Times editorial observed that enlightenment would not come to Birmingham “overnight” and that King “ought not to expect it either.”
Winging It: King identified the problem of civil rights repression and quickly became an icon of the struggle to end it. But that didn't mean he had a clear plan from the beginning. During the spring of 1956, in the heat of the Montgomery boycott, King traveled to New York for his first northern fundraiser. 10,000 people turned out to hear him at Concord Baptist Church and contributed $4,000 toward the boycott. But privately the 27-year-old King struggled to make sense of what was happening. After his presentation, he huddled privately with Harry Belafonte, who had just recorded the calypso hit single “Day-o.” King sought to enlist Belafonte’s support, but confided his deep fears. “I need your help,” King confessed. “I have no idea where this movement is going.”
The solution MLK helped advance: Despite all the obstacles, small pockets of activists began to confront injustice and indifference. They struggled in several states, initially without grand ambitions or a long-term strategy. Eventually they united to adopt a philosophy of non-violence and slowly opened up civil society. Despite many setbacks, they persisted and after years of struggle broke the back of institutional repression to secure basic civil rights.
Outside support: The movement relied on outside support, mostly from young
people. Some wrote checks, some wrote letters, and some left behind the safety of home to march beside activists in the civil rights desert. Their financial contributions, raised voices, and physical presence provided vital air cover for the indigenous civil rights movement. Though denounced as outside agitators, they felt compelled to use their freedom to help liberate those democracy had left behind. They led, and their government followed.
Observations on the Middle East: King only visited the Middle East briefly in 1959 and rarely addressed the region. Holding out hope for “progressive Arab forces,” he did observe that “some Arab feudal rulers… neglect the plight of their own peoples” and that the “Arab world is in a state of imposed poverty
and backwardness that must threaten peace and harmony.”
Do King's perceptive comments about the Middle East's repressive
forces and their threat to "peace and harmony" make you depressed at
how little has changed? Or does the fact that King largely succeeded in his struggle (with all the caveats of work remaining to be done in the United States) inspire you? Is there a model here to draw upon for techniques and moral encouragement?
A half-century ago today, 1,000 troops from the 101st Airborne Division deployed... to Little Rock, Arkansas. Their mission: ensure nine black teenagers could enter Central High School to attend classes. The "insurgents" they faced: an unruly mob of angry whites. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had decided not to protect the black students, whose mere presence in the school was deemed a cultural assault. So the president reluctantly sent soldiers to escort the teenagers.
The July 9, 1999 Tehran student rebellion was the single most
important movement against the Islamic Republic government. The student
movement had steadily got more and more furious against the useless
Islamic government who had failed to bring about any changes, even
under the name of Khatami’s ‘reformist government’.The students were
ready to rebel against the fundamentalist dictatorship. This regime had
taken away every beautiful thing from their life.
Students of Turner County High School started what they hope will
become a new tradition: Black and white students attended the prom
together for the first time on Saturday. In previous years,
parents had organized private, segregated dances for students of the
school in rural Ashburn, Georgia, 160 miles south of Atlanta
