Young People of the World: Adults Will Not Save You

From Mike Martin: 

It was interesting to watch the inauguration of President Obama on 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day but I still say people need to understand 

what really brought about the Civil Rights Act. What really allowed 

Barack Obama to win the Presidency in the United States of America.

People want to publicize the Tuskogee Airmen, and their history is 

important and dramatic, but mostly as an illustration of the stupidity 

of racism. The Tuskogee Airmen themselves had little effect on people in 

the Jim Crow south. It had an influence in the banning segregation in 

the U.S. military, but not much effect on civil society. The same is 

true of the Brown v. School Board decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. 

That decision made segregation illegal, but it was largely ignored. 

Busing didn't happen because of Brown. School integration didn't happen 

because of Brown. President Eisenhower forced the intregration of Little 

Rock High School, but that was essentially a one time event. Similarly, 

Rosa Parks is lauded for her courage, but she had a very limited effect 

on Jim Crow. Her protest is noted primarily because it was the first 

involvement of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It has historical import for 

that reason but not because it significantly changed the lives of 

African Americans in the U.S. There were many different efforts to break 

Jim Crow in the 1940s and 1950s, including violent riots. Nothing really 

happened.

However, on February 1, 1960, four Black college students (Ezell Blair, 

Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond) started a 

sit-in at the lunch counter of the F. W. Woolworth's in Greensboro, 

North Carolina. As I detailed in an essay at 

http://www.azsba.org/static/index.cfm?contentID=199 this action started 

the movement that crushed Jim Crow. It was 4 college students, not 

college graduates, not adults, not Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who 

started the sit-in that ignited a wildfire across America. Those 

students learned about freedom and courage in American public schools. 

They were still in college when they stood up to Jim Crow. And to top it 

off, the Greensboro business community refused to cave because they new 

the college students would go home for the summer. But when that 

happened, Dudley High School students led by William Thomas took up the 

protest and expanded it to Meyer's and Walgreens. It was then that the 

local business community capitulated. High school students broke Jim 

Crow. They were emulated throughout the country and a national meeting 

of sit-in participants was called to form the Students Nonviolent 

Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

College students in Tennessee were encouraged by the sit-ins and 

performed a sit-in on interstate buses. They were contacted by the 

Congress On Racial Equality about participating in a Freedom Ride on 

buses through the south. That Freedom Ride started in Washington, D.C., 

and when it got to Atlanta they were told by Dr. Martin Luther King, 

Jr., that they would never make it through Alabama. In Birmingham, 

Alabama, violence against the Freedom Riders, including the firebombing 

of one bus, resulted in the adults calling off the effort. But SNCC 

students refused to stop and continued the ride into Montgomery, 

Alabama, where a mob severely beat the riders. One of the white students 

was hospitalized where he told the others to keep going. And they 

continued, with support from the Kennedy Administration and Dr. Martin 

Luther King, Jr., on to Mississippi where they were arrested but the 

federal transportation agency decided to enforce integration in bus 

transportation, so the students won.

That, in turn, inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to try integrating 

businesses in Birmingham, Alabama in early 1963. He instituted marches 

and boycotts, but the adults were repeatedly arrested and thwarted. Dr. 

King wrote in his biography that they were defeated: "As we talked, a 

sense of doom began to pervade the room. I looked about me and saw that 

for the first time our most dedicated and devoted leaders were 

overwhelmed by a feeling of hopelessness." There was no way the adults 

could defeat Jim Crow. Dr. King realized "If our drive was to be 

successful, we must involve the students of the community. Even though 

we realized that involving teenagers and high school students would 

bring down upon us a heavy fire of criticism, we felt that we needed 

this dramatic new dimension. Our people were demonstrating daily and 

going to jail in numbers, but we were still beating our heads against 

the brick wall of the city officials' stubborn resolve to maintain the 

status quo. Our fight, if won, would benefit people of all ages. But 

most of all we were inspired with the desire to give to our young a true 

sense of their own stake in freedom and justice. We believed they would 

have the courage to respond to our call."

When you see movies of the fire hoses used on marchers, and police dogs 

biting marchers, those marchers were students. Bull Connor had 

peacefully arrested the adults, but when thousands of kids joined the 

protest he turned violent because he ran out of jail space and they 

still kept marching. The fire hoses and police dogs didn't stop the 

students from continuing the protest marches. The business community 

finally capitulated in the face of the student protest. The student led 

triumph in Birmingham resulted in a national vindication for Dr. King 

and nonviolent protests. It resulted in the galvanizing of protests 

against Jim Crow and the organization of the "March On Washington" where 

on August 28th, 1963, in Washington, D.C., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 

gave his "I have a dream" speech. That is a historical event, but it 

wasn't a triumph of adults. Condoleeza Rice lived with her parents in 

Birmingham, Alabama, at the time and they did not participate in the 

protests. The adults lived with Jim Crow, it was the students who 

learned about freedom and justice in their public schools who broke Jim 

Crow.

The Birmingham Board of Education, however, expelled over a thousand of 

the protesting students, which continued the controversy. So in the fall 

of 1963 protesters attempted to integrate Birmingham schools, 9 years 

after Brown. They enrolled children in white schools in the face of 

rioters who tried to attack them, and after a series of unfortunate 

events, the schools were, in fact, integrated. The protests were 

organized and led out of the Sixteenth Street Baptist church. It was in 

September, 1963, during this school integration struggle that this 

church was bombed, killing 11-year-old Denise McNair and three 

14-year-olds: Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. It 

was this bombing that outraged the nation, even the world, and 

galvanized efforts to finally bring civil rights to Black Americans. 

Certainly the protests were organized and instigated by adults, but it 

was the courage of 11-year-old Dwight and 9-year-old Floyd Armstrong 

enrolling at Birmingham’s Graymont elementary school in the face of 

jeering adult mobs, and teenager Richard A. Walker who integrated Ramsay 

High School as a White mob fought with police, that integrated public 

education. And, of course, four young students died in the process as well.

For some reason, no one wants to give credit to the children and their 

public schools for liberating America. Certainly I haven't heard Barack 

Obama talk about them. Certainly I haven't heard Arne Duncan talk about 

them. And Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., learned from them, not the other 

way around. Where did 4 young adults get the idea to stand up against 

Jim Crow nonviolently in Greensboro, North Carolina? Where did the young 

Freedom Riders who refused to quit when the adults gave up get their 

ideas of courage and liberty? What possessed young people in Birmingham, 

Alabama, to face down fire hoses and police dogs to rescue a failed 

adult protest? With adults screaming violently at them, how is it that 

school children in Birmingham integrated schools? Do we really want to 

teach that history just happens? Mysteriously?

It seems to me that this is the most important lesson to teach young 

people today: the adults are not going to save you. The adults are not 

going to prevent global warming. It is not Barack Obama who will control 

guns and stop children from being shot to death in classrooms. The NRA 

is nothing compared to Jim Crow. Jim Crow had night riders, lynchings, 

assassinations. Students crushed Jim Crow. They did it by learning about 

history, by learning about leadership, by learning about courage, by 

learning about perseverance, by learning about working together 

nonviolently. Where did they learn this?

-- 

Mike Martin

Phoenix, Az