The Fight To End Hyphenation

In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate. – Toni Morrison

There can be no debate that in this so-called ‘great nation’ there exists a deep and inherent racism. It has been 152 years since President Abraham Lincoln had the great presence of mind to declare that all men held as slaves “are, and henceforward shall be free” (Emancipation Proclamation, 1863), and yet we see racism blatantly prevalent in our everyday lives. “Black
Lives Matter” is an oft-uttered catchphrase, and high racial tensions are blamed for any and all interactions between the races, from minor slights to major crimes. Yet even with all of today’s tensions and battles, there is no denying that our country has come an incredible distance from the days of Jim Crow, segregation, and public lynching. Several key events finally sparked this change, including the development of non-violent protests, several important Supreme Court decisions, and, of course, the great Martin Luther King Jr’s explosion into the leading role of the civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century.

The American battle for civil rights was rife with violence, particularly in areas of the Deep South. It was not uncommon for the Klu Klux Klan to get involved in the violent removal
and death of black people and black sympathizers. It was entirely too frequent that these horrific
deaths were publicized, with families, children, and police coming to watch, popping popcorn and enjoying the evening’s festivities. They were considered lessons to anyone who thought they were uppity enough to challenge white power. Their purpose was to keep the Jim Crow era going and to show the blacks that, although the White House deemed them free, they would never be equal citizens. In response to this reign of terror, the civil rights movement began answering with strong peaceful protests, and for the first time since the war, they saw real results.

One of the best-known peaceful protests was sparked by the now famous Rosa Parks, who, by simply refusing to give up her seat in the front of a segregated bus, sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. This event would have far-reaching effects, from starting the peaceful protest movement within civil rights, to causing the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr., a young Baptist minister in the area. King stood strong behind Parks, declaring in a speech given in Montgomery that “We are not wrong in what we are doing. … If we are wrong, justice is a lie…” ( Foner, Voices of Freedom #168: MLK, Jr “Meeting at Holt Street Church”) Despite the whites in the area reacting with violence, and bombing local churches and black homes, the boycott was successful only a year later, desegregating the busses in Montgomery, Alabama, and backed by a Supreme Court ruling that declared that segregation on bus systems was unconstitutional. This event encouraged other areas to follow suit in the battle against segregation and racism through the use of peaceful protests.

Directly prior to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Supreme Court had been faced with the case of child Linda Brown, in Brown v. Board of Education. In segregated Topeka, Kansas, Linda was forced to bus to a distant African-American school, instead of attending the white school within walking distance from her home. Her father sued Topeka’s school board, bringing the
case to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Brown, outlawing the “separate but equal” system that had been in place as being inherently racist and uneven. The 1954 decision prohibited the segregation of schools, claiming that such actions were a violation of
Constitutional rights.

The Southern Manifesto, written in 1956 on the Brown v. Board of Education ruling truly highlighted the feelings of the majority of whites at the time. Not only did it accuse the Supreme Court of making a decision that was actually contrary to the Constitution, it attempted to speak eloquently of the negative effects of such a decision on the supposedly friendly relations between blacks and whites in the South: “It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and the Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both
races”. (Foner, Voices of Freedom #164: The Southern Manifesto, pp. 254-55) Unfortunately, this manifesto not only supported the large resistance in the South that came about as a result of the Supreme Court ruling, but it also showed clearly the ignorance of the time. The writers, and many of the protestors, truly believed that there was a friendliness about the relationship between the Negro man and the white man in the South. Perhaps they were so used to assuming that they knew what the black man felt, that they could not understand why he wasn’t falling over himself in excitement over their “separate but equal” venues.

The Southern Manifesto exemplifies the ingrained thinking that the civil rights movement was facing. The concept of creating true equality between two peoples who had so recently held such very different standing was nearly impossible. How was the white community supposed to let go of all they had ever known, after convincing themselves for so many years that they were
doing what was right for the Negro man by giving him work, and shelter (of sorts) to keep him out of trouble and sin? The thought that these former slaves were not only to be granted freedoms, but equality to the whites, went against the god-given right of rulership that they had convinced themselves of. Rev. Martin Luther, Jr and his peaceful followers were perhaps the
most important tool in changing that thought process, both in the eyes of individuals and the machinations of the government.

One thing the Southern Manifesto did not take into account was that the nation was now dealing with a generation of “New Negros”. Alain Locke explained this generation in an essay The New Negro, in 1925. He says: “…the younger generation is vibrant with new psychology; the
new spirit is awake in the masses…..With this renewed self-respect and self-dependence, the life o’ the Negro community is bound to enter a new dynamic phase” (Foner, Voices of Freedom 135: Alain locke; The New Negro pp 150-154).

After being brought to the forefront of the civil rights movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther grew into perhaps the greatest leader that the civil rights movement would ever know. He was so different in a very important aspect – not only was he an incredible orator, but he had also closely studied the writings of Gandhi and Thoreau, both great leaders of civil disobedience. He continually marked the differences between the violent antics of the white southerners and the peaceful protests of the black citizens. At the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he even declared that “There will be no white persons pulled out of their homes and
taken out to some distant road and lynched”. (Foner, Give Me Liberty!, pp 964-965) MLK was also very well known for his ability to relate the Negro struggle to the struggle of the nation as a whole, thus attempting to erase the line between the two. He urged his people to react to violence
with a Christian attitude, to be calm in the face of adversity so that they may have no unkind word to be said about them aside from their protest.

At the same time all of this was happening, many people in the black communities did not know what it was that they sought. They had spent so long being oppressed that it made them bitter and distrustful of the true white allies that they had. After all, what reason was there to trust the white man in the neighborhood over there, when the white man over here
would lynch you for asking questions, or knock you down for daring to look him in the face? Although much of the black community followed MLK’s teaching of peaceful protest, there was still a large amount of inner turmoil, as well as anger and distrust towards white folk. They did not know how to deal with the hatred that existed for the white folk. How were you supposed to
love your neighbor, when your neighbor was sending a postcard that was a photo of a negro lynching? Would love prevent being beaten for asking for service, or demanding better education, and jobs outside of the service industries? These conflicting feelings are succinctly expressed by essayist James Baldwin. Two of his essays in particular, The Native Son and The Fire Next Time showcase some of the tumultuous feelings of black people during this time. Baldwin recognized that there was a wound that existed in the nation’s fabric between the blacks and the whites. He realized that the
unequal ideas of freedom for each race were creating an even bigger problem, as the two peoples were striving towards completely different goals. Whites believed that blacks had freedom. After all, they weren’t slaves anymore, so they were free! The black people knew what freedom really looked like – they’d been watching the whites enjoy it their entire lives. Baldwin used his
writing to challenge people to reassess what they thought freedom meant, and what freedom really meant to those people who were being forced to live without it.

Baldwin’s The Native Son is truly a heartbreaking account of what happens to the mind of a black man, a parent, after being enslaved and watching the people around him being killed or mistreated simply because of their skin color. Baldwin speaks eloquently on the bitterness that his father felt due to their poverty (pp. 590), but also of the love that he had for his children –
trying to keep them out of bad situations and away from people who did not seek to better themselves. From the setting of the story, we can gather that this family lived in one of the many black slums in the states at the time. He talks of the people his father tried to keep him away from : “people who had all-night rent parties to which we listened when we should have been
sleeping, people who cursed and drank and flashed razor blades on Lenox Avenue” (pp. 590) This quote speaks to the apparently easy going, attractive vibe of the Harlem areas. These areas often attracted young white people to come out and partake in the richness of the culture and
music of the blacks.

Baldwin goes on to tell a story of how his hatred at his treatment in New Jersey drove him into a blind rage (Baldwin, The Native Son, pp 593-594). Baldwin finally understood how constant mistreatment would breed hatred in a person’s heart. Just like it had to his father. Except that, where James was mistreated for only a short time, his father had been treated as such and worse for the entirety of his life. He finally understood where his father’s bitterness came from. After being downtrodden so long by a race of people, all he wanted was to see them pay. He speaks more in The Fire Next Time of religion, and how the children in his area knew it, and knew it well as the only way to save them from the literal hell in which they were living.

Baldwin had no fear of touching on the misconceptions and mistrust between the races. He saw that the white people around him were trying to turn the black cry for equality into something akin to a dog begging for a treat. They did not want a treat, he insisted, but rather to simply be left alone to love their own lives as they wished. He touches on this rift between the races: “I do not know many Negros who are eager to be ‘accepted’ by white people, still less to be loved by them; they, the blacks simply don’t wish to be beaten over the head by the whites every instant of our brief passage on this planet” (Baldwin, The Fire Next Time pp 2259).

Baldwin’s essays were incredibly wise, particularly for the time that they were written in. He knew that his people were not just looking for a handout, but rather to simply be accepted as worthy human beings, allowed to enjoy the same securities and peace as their light-skinned counterparts. The Fire Next Time and The Native Son are wrenching glimpses into a life that many people knew nothing about – but also that a great many more people were all too familiar with. Poverty, hatred, racism. Baldwin sought to use his essays to highlight these problems in the most relatable way possible. There is no denying that the 1950’s and 1960’s were the most important decades for Civil
Rights since the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. African-Americans were finally getting recognized as humans, deserving of the same freedoms that everyone else in the country had. Yet for all the success of the movement in these two decades, and in the time since, has there really been that much concrete progress? We are not barring the black man from the movie
theatre anymore, nor is he being lynched in the town square. But has racism started being defeated? Are black people being treated more equally – or are whites simply more subtle with their prosecutions? Racism is an ugly illness, handed down from generation to generation. Usually, children are brought up thinking a certain way, just from hearing their parents or grandparents talk that way, or having certain opinions. These traits are incredibly hard to change later in life.

Many of the race issues that we have learned about in this course are still incredibly important today. The welfare system is still largely used by minorities, as it was when it first began. Why? Because those same minorities are still not as able to get the same high-paying jobs as their white counterparts can. They have less education, fewer opportunities, and generally almost completely make up America’s most impoverished areas. Have we then, come so far from the Harlems, from the Ghettos? In a day when anything posted on a social media platform raises cries of racism! Discrimination! Are we that healed of a country? Entire newscasts occur on whether or not the President will make a remark on a black youth killed by a white cop, or a white family killed by a black youth. No crime can be committed involving more than one race without cries of hate crime and racism being bandied about.

The nation may have appeared to have come a long way since the days of Martin Luther King Jr.’s impassioned speeches, and James Baldwin’s heart-wrenching essays, but we have not. Racism and the civil rights movement is not over, yet it seems to have gone dormant. No great leaders are crying out for racial equality. No peaceful protests to remark on the injustice
afforded by color. Instead, some people claim they do not see color, which is a lie. Everyone sees color, but in today’s politically correct America, we are afraid of saying so, scared to incite the wrath of this person or that person. America has not gotten rid of the race issue; rather, we have been cowed by it. We are prisoners of our own faults and unable to see a way to fix it. Perhaps someday soon the civil rights movement will awaken again in all of its glory, and not rest again until we are all truly equal in this country.