﻿Hi, I’m Clint Smith and this is Crash Course Black American History! As we get further along
in the series, you’re probably encountering more events and people that you recognize,
people like Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. But, as you’ve probably learned at this point,
the civil rights movement, and any social change movement for that matter,
aren’t successful just because of singular, heroic figures.
They’re successful because of the everyday work and courage
of ordinary people, and among the people who most effectively help make social change possible,
is young people, students just like many of you. So today we’ll be talking about three different
groups of students who helped advance the cause of justice, equality, and civil rights. Whose
bravery, intelligence, and commitment is something that all of us can learn from.
Let’s start the show! INTRO
The civil rights movement is considered by many to have officially started
in 1954--with the ruling from the Supreme Court on Brown v. Board of Education--and largely ended
in 1968--with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, the popular mode
of organizing against the discrimination of Black Americans was using non-violent direct action.
Sometimes people misunderstand the tactic, and they think this sort of non-violent activism
was all about holding hands, and picking flowers together, and singing kumbaya.
No shade to any of those things, I love flowers and kumbaya is a great song,
but non-violent direct action was often about putting your body directly in harm’s way,
and possibly even putting your life on the line. It took an enormous amount of self-control,
dignity, and courage. Many young activists even spent days, and weeks, and months training for
the actions they would take, so that they could teach their bodies and their minds
how to respond when encountering the violence that often awaited them.
The three groups we are going to talk about today are the Little Rock Nine, the Greensboro Four,
and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (which also
contributed to the Freedom Riders). The Little Rock Nine were a group of
high school students who were hand-chosen by the NAACP to test whether Brown v. Board of Education
was going to be enforced. It’s not surprising that this ruling needed to be tested
considering the unrest that followed it, including the gruesome murder of Emmett Till.
Black people needed to make sure that the state – not just the literal state of Arkansas,
but the United States as a country – was going to follow through on its commitment.
Through generations of experience, Black folks knew better than to think that just because the
Supreme Court made a ruling for Black equality, that people across the country would follow it.
Daisy Gatson Bates, President of the Arkansas NAACP,
was the mastermind behind this test. She recruited ten high school students
to integrate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
The students knew that they would face serious opposition,
and the NAACP did everything they could to prepare them for what they may experience. This
included counseling sessions and practicing how to respond to hostile situations. And remember, these
are high schoolers, not battled-tested activists. Their courage and commitment can’t be overstated.
On September 4, 1957, the first day of school, the state of Arkansas was ready for a fight.
Governor Orval Faubus ("OR-vuhl FAW-buhs") called in the National Guard to keep the students from
integrating the school. Daisy Gatson Bates had arranged for the students to meet up before going
to school to protect them from the mob activity, however Elizabeth Eckford didn’t have a phone
so didn't know this. Eckford had to walk to school alone, while being screamed at and harassed as
soon as she was within sight of the building. The National Guard even kept her from entering,
while the mob harassed her outside. And because of the violence and threats against her father’s job,
one of the students, Jane Hill, withdrew and returned to her segregated school,
now making them the Little Rock Nine. This havoc went on for weeks, meaning zero of
the nine students were able to attend a full day of school. They attempted to go to school through
a side door on September 23rd, but an angry mob threatened to rush the students. The NAACP
was so afraid for the students' lives that they let the authorities send them home.
It would get so bad that the President of the United States,
Dwight D Eisenhower, had to send down 1,200 members of the Army AND federalize the National
Guard to protect the students from the mob. They were finally able to attend school
on September 25th - almost a month after school had started. All nine students remained there
for the rest of the year, but that didn’t stop the harassment. Every day on the way to school
they had things thrown at them, including acid. Each student had an armed guard that escorted
them to class, but the guards didn’t go /inside/ the classrooms, or in bathrooms or locker rooms,
so the students still experienced horrible harassment at the hands of their classmates.
After one student, Minnijean Brown, was expelled in February of 1958 because of an altercation she
got into with a white classmate, some students wore badges that read, “One Down, Eight to Go.”
Ultimately, through incredible persistence, on May 27, 1958 Ernest Green graduated
and became the first Black student in history to graduate Central High School.
The presence, and the reaction to, the Little Rock Nine forced the nation to confront how hard it was
going to be for the promise of Brown v Board, and desegregation more generally, to be fulfilled.
Now let’s get to know the Greensboro Four. At North Carolina Agricultural and Technical
State University, another Historically Black University also known as North Carolina A&T,
students started organizing to integrate lunch counters in the south.
These sit-ins were an outgrowth of earlier nonviolent integration efforts
by an organization called Fellowship of Reconciliation in Chicago in 1942. James Farmer,
who eventually became the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, also known
as CORE, was at the forefront of those sit-ins. On February 1, 1960 Ezell (“EE-zell”) Blair Jr.,
David Richmond, Franklin McCain, and Joseph McNeil, who would become known as the Greensboro
Four, started off these protests by asking for service at the all white lunch counter
in the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. And they were denied.
But they persisted each day after that. And more and more HBCU students joined them. By February
5th, about 300 students sat at the counter and protested at Woolworths. They took up so much
space that they kept the lunch counter, and other local businesses, from even running.
This led to heavy television coverage of these sit-ins. And as a result,
a sit-in movement erupted across the entire United States. By the end of March, 55 cities
in 13 states had experienced sit-ins. Not just in the South, but in the North as well.
And they were not only denied, but they were spat on, had condiments poured on their heads,
and had cigarette butts pushed into their skin. they were spat on, had condiments poured on
their heads, and had cigarette butts pushed into their skin.
But by the end of July, the Woolworth lunch counter had been integrated.
Now you would think a bunch of students protesting on the national news would set off a lightbulb
in the heads of the older leaders working on civil rights. But not everyone fully understood
the power of these students right away. But there was one woman who definitely
did. Ella Baker, the acting director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
or SCLC, realized that the students were important and could play a unique role in the movement.
She organized a 1960 conference that trained students in nonviolent direct action,
and encouraged them to develop a strong autonomous organization independent of SCLC. And this
led to the formation of one of the more radical groups of the civil rights movement: the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. And many of the SNCC students
would go on to become Freedom Riders, a group that traveled throughout the south, testing integration
in places like bus stations and restaurants using non-violent direct action. The Freedom Rides
were actually started by members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), but they were also
joined by members of SNCC and the SCLC. Starting in Washington DC in May of 1961,
an integrated team of Black and white activists rode on buses as far as Anniston and Birmingham,
Alabama. In Anniston, Alabama the Ku Klux Klan, the domestic white supremacist terror group,
and other local white mobs, bombed the bus and brutally beat the riders.
In Birmingham, the students were once again attacked by white mobs and Klan members.
After the driver refused to go any further, the students were evacuated to New Orleans, Louisiana
on May 15, 1961. But if you thought that would be the end of the story,
you clearly don’t know these students. Organizers from other activist groups
started to support them and other Freedom Rides began happening throughout the South. And by the
fall of 1961 the Kennedy Administration started to pressure the Interstate Commerce Commission to
protect the activists, which was the whole point. It wasn’t that these Freedom Riders were asking
for a new law to protect them, they were simply asking for the one that already existed
to actually be enforced. And they were successful. And as a result of the Freedom Rides, the
Interstate Commerce Commission began enforcing the segregation ban in interstate transit terminals.
By 1965, SNCC had more staff members than any other civil rights organization in the South. They
not only engaged in desegregation activism, but they also conducted voting registration projects
all over the region. And what’s more, they also built two independent political
parties - one of which was the well-known Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.
SNCC organized labor unions, agricultural cooperatives, and reinvigorated the women’s
liberation movement. They also inspired what was called the New Left Movement. This was the radical
left movement that became active in the 1960s and 70s. It was composed of college students and young
intellectuals whose goals included furthering racial equality, nonintervention in foreign
affairs, and other major social changes. The work of these young activists,
completely transformed the civil rights movement. Without the sit-ins,
the freedom rides, the voter registration drives, and the school integration battles the movement
would not have made the progress that it did. We can’t emphasize this enough. Martin Luther King
is amazing, he did remarkable work. But he alone did not push the civil rights movement forward,
and he would be the first to tell you that. it took thousands of people,
many whose names we’ll never know, but whose work made it possible that I’m even able to
be here talking to you all today. The work of social change, is intergenerational. The
fight for freedom and liberation needs us all. So if you’re a young person, don’t ever feel
like you don’t have the ability to change things. And it doesn’t have to be some
massive global movement, most of the time the most important changes happen on hyperlocal levels.
In our families, in our schools, in our communities. In ourselves. And ultimately,
the work we put into changing ourselves and our friends and our family create the groundswell that
leads to societal level change. You got this. Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time.
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