The Civil Rights Movement was important in this country for a host of reasons.
We learned a lot about how to organize for equity and social justice.
It's been a tremendous amount of change in Atlanta, in particular, since the segregation era.
And we have been very fortunate in our leadership that has really helped to
manage that change, and so it's one reason it's important to really learn
about the individuals who stood up and made a difference and took on the
challenge of transforming Atlanta from a segregated city to a very diverse and
international city, where people come from all over the world.
Quite a number of our country's civic and political leaders, grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.
Well having learned so much about the ingredients of social movements
and how do you organize people around important public and political causes.
You can see the the role that these political leaders paid, like
Maynard Jackson, very ambitious from a politically and civically influential family,
who was elected as president of the Board of Aldermen—what's now the City Council—
and then he went on to become the first African-American mayor of the city of Atlanta.
The fact that Maynard Jackson became an African-American mayor
of one of the country's most important cities was a really big deal on many levels.
He created a pathway for other people of color to seek political office around the country.
He proved that a well-educated African American can run a complicated
public enterprise, bring new business and economic activity to the metropolitan area.
The work he did to create the new airport has made a lasting economic
difference in the city proper, and has probably made Atlanta not just an
important city nationally but internationally.
Our airport was renamed from Hartsfield to Hartsfield-Jackson as a way of really acknowledging the
leadership and contributions that the mayor made.
He broke down the old system of giving contracts, essentially,
to the white firms to a minority and the female-headed firms.
And so he began to change how it is that things were being done.
Of course he was followed by Andrew Young. The election of Andrew Young to
Congress from the fifth congressional district, when it was still majority
white district, showed that Congressman Young could create a
coalition of African Americans and whites.
And Mayor Young was incredibly influential in working
with Billy Payne to get Atlanta to be the site of the 1996 Olympics.
I don't think it's any accident that he eventually became a diplomat or a US ambassador.
Andrew Young has been a real thoughtful fellow with a balanced perspective.
Very capable of seeing the views of the other side, while staying true to his own principles.
And then you had John Lewis, who was the head of SNCC elected to Atlanta City Council,
and then ran for the seat that had been held by Andrew Young with the fifth congressional district.
It was his legislation and his persistence that made sure that the
National Museum for African-American History and Culture would be a part of the American landscape.
His leadership has been enormously important over a very long period of time.
Some of the really important people in Atlanta that
helped to create the change that our students benefit from now, I think of
Benjamin Mays, who was schoolmaster to the Civil Rights Movement.
He was the president of Morehouse College and was a tremendous inspiration to Martin Luther King
and other leaders who came later. But because of the teaching of Benjamin Mays,
he taught that you strive for excellence and that you don't accept segregation.
I think of leaders like John Wesley Dobbs.
He was very strategic. He talked about the book, the ballot, and the buck,
and that as an African-American community, we had to prepare ourselves
through education, we had to develop businesses and economic power,
and use the ballot to then expand and protect both of those opportunities.
We've been very fortunate in Atlanta to have
very significant African-American leaders, and we've also had very
important white leaders who have also stood for integration.
In the city of Atlanta, William Hartsfield was mayor in the 1940s and 50s,
and he received the overwhelming majority of the
African-American vote because he was willing to make accommodations to the
African-American community that included the hiring of the first black policemen.
Hartsfield created a biracial coalition that was
critical in Atlanta in the course of the 20th century.
Ivan Allen, a former mayor of Atlanta who testified in favor of the Civil Rights Act
and who was very much committed to working with the African-American leadership
to move the city forward in terms of its race relations.
When Jimmy Carter became governor of Georgia he began to do a number of things that
changed the existence of the color line.
And in the Capitol, there were important symbolic things that he did.
Carter appointed a commission to select three
people whose portraits would be hung, and they included Martin Luther King Jr. first,
and Bishop Henry McNeal Turner second, and Lucy Laney third.
And so those were the things that then-Governor Carter did to help advance the hundreds
of smaller decisions that had to be made.
That's just the tip of the iceberg of some of the really important people
and a reminder that what people do, what individuals do, does make a difference.
It was a long struggle to end segregation
and the customary requirements of the separation of the races.
And we've come an incredibly long way in terms of how that's happened.
But the residuals are still here with us, and it's going to take a while for us to work that out.
It's important to question whether or not these in justices born of segregation
whether we're past that.
I would argue that the vestiges of segregation are in one sense gone, but they have resurfaced in other ways.
The Civil Rights Movement and the struggle of African Americans to
overcome, first a legacy of slavery and then segregation, has created a framework
for the expression of rights under our constitutional system.
As we talk about gay rights and marriage equality, many of these tactics, many of the legal mechanisms
have their roots in the strategies of the Civil Rights Movement.
The example of Dr. Martin Luther King is an inspiration for people
standing for justice all over the world.
And, particularly in America, when people protest and stand up for their rights,
they're standing on the work of the Civil Rights Movement:
the work to establish that right, the freedom of assembly, the right to free speech,
and the basket of legal approaches to using the courts,
using the legislative system to create a framework for changing the law.
And then also his appeal to people's higher nature, to their morality,
so that we move towards also changing the practice and changing
the attitude that we have about each other, so that we we move to a place
where everyone sees the value in every human being.
And I think that's ultimately the message of the Civil Rights Movement, is that we move toward
a beloved community where we value and respect and honor the humanity of everyone.