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The African American struggle for freedom, equality, and justice is emphasized by a number of civil rights anniversaries observed during the first decade of the twenty-first century. The modern civil rights movement had its roots in the long battle fought by African Americans as they sought inclusion in “We the People,” as delineated in the 1787 Preamble to the Constitution of the United States. Despite the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, African Americans continued to be excluded from “We the People” and regarded as second-class citizens. By 1896, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s mandated system of racial apartheid, African Americans were sentenced to an existence under draconian justice. The omnipresent signs specifying segregation between blacks and whites punctuated the landscape of the American South. While de jure segregation discriminated against southern blacks, de facto segregation discriminated against northern blacks.

Although the movement for civil rights operated along a continuum among African Americans, it was not until the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s captured the attention of everyday people that justice rolled down “like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24)—at least to an extent. The modern movement relied upon the power of mass organization to convey the philosophy and attainable goals of equality, which in turn empowered the minds and spirits of ordinary people to take extraordinary actions to secure their rights as American citizens. As the chains of inequality and injustice were methodically broken, both the oppressed and the oppressor were released from the legally binding bonds of racial exclusivity.

Racial injustice in America was blatantly contradictory to the values of democracy that the nation’s leaders espoused to the world. Images depicting separation of the races, lynching and other violence against blacks, active protests, and economic and social inequities were transmitted and published around the globe. Such philosophical hypocrisy, revealed in America’s duplicitous perpetuation of the legalized caste system, caused international outrage and undermined America’s image abroad. It also reinforced anti-American propaganda promulgated by the then-extant Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The international attention given to the racial division solidly entrenched in the United States was both embarrassing and politically problematic. As affirmed by Mary L. Dudziak in Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy:

Domestic racism and civil rights protest led to international criticism of the U.S. government. International criticism led the federal government to respond, through placating foreign critics by reframing the narrative of race in America, and through promoting some level of social change. While civil rights reform in different eras had been motivated by a variety of factors, one element during the early Cold War years was the need for reform in order to make credible the government’s argument about race and democracy.

The nonviolent black freedom struggle compelled America to live up to its professed democratic principles of freedom, equality, and justice for its black citizens. From civil rights organizations to everyday people, from dedicated workers to student activists, from organizers of the various local struggles to those who battled on the national front, all persevered. Despite violence, intimidation, and hostile governmental policies, all fought long and hard to ensure that African Americans gained their constitutional rights.

As discerned by a critical number of the movement’s leadership, including the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., non-cooperation and nonviolent insistence—the methods used in the modern Civil Rights Movement—were ways to try to awaken the moral truths in one’s adversary and evoke the humanity that existed in both the oppressor and the oppressed. Despite the fact that racial segregation had been an ongoing injustice in the daily lives of American blacks for numerous generations, they gained the courage to cross the Red Sea of segregation and overcome the fear of retribution, even it became apparent that the movement might cost their lives.

What began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in December of 1955 must be connected to the earlier, prolonged tradition of localized struggles against racial oppression. The media coverage given to the protests and demonstrations, including the bus boycott of 1955, the lunch counter sit-ins of the early 1960s, the Freedom Rides of 1961, the 1963 confrontations with the police in Birmingham (which at the time was reputed to be the nation’s most segregated city), and the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March, as well as perpetrated acts of violence by white supremacists in between these events, played a substantial role in exposing racial injustices to public scrutiny.

These events, the participants, and the public outcry marshaled widespread support that pressured the administration of President John F. Kennedy to propose sweeping civil rights legislation. Under the subsequent leadership of President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968: three comprehensive acts that took African Americans a significant distance toward “We the People.” These and other events, including the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954, have been commemorated during the first decade of this century.

Due to the dedicated efforts of African Americans and their allies during the decade of the 1960s to secure the rights of freedom, equality, and justice within American society through nonviolent direct action, both philosophical and tactical, these commemorations were celebrated as reminders of the black freedom struggle. King and other practitioners of direct nonviolent resistance understood that the oppressor did not render freedom willingly. To overcome injustice with justice, freedom had to be demanded by the oppressed.

As a student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, where I first encountered racial segregation, I came to understand that basic to the civil rights struggle was the presentation of a way in which Africans Americans could affirm their sense of worth against laws and customs that abrogated human mutuality and, consequently, undermined their dignity as human beings. In order to “redeem the soul of America,” there had to be an infusion of radical love. Using Christian precepts as the guiding force, Reverend James Lawson educated a core group of student and citizen activists in Nashville, of which I was a part, in the philosophy and strategy of nonviolent direct action. Our commitment was unwavering, even when the possibilities of violence and death loomed. Admittedly, some committed to nonviolence for tactical purposes, while others committed to it as a way of life. Yet we found a common ground in our shared struggle and ultimate vision for the forging of a better city, nation, and world.

Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience offers a wide-ranging historical narrative portraying African Americans as they struggled toward freedom, equality, and justice. However, it was not the struggle of African Americans alone; it also was America’s collective struggle. This encyclopedic compendium will assist the reader in understanding the emotional, mental, physical, economic, familial, and social strains of men and women, boys and girls, blacks and whites, who courageously gave their hearts, minds, bodies, and, in some instances, their lives to the freedom struggle. The text acknowledges the veracity and timbre of the times for those who participated in the freedom movement, while available references for those who seek to learn from the freedom movement.

Although America has made societal progress from its days of overt racial intolerance and legal segregation, the true spirit of the civil rights struggle lives on in efforts to eradicate poverty; in campaigns for improvement of public education; in attempts to end unjust and disproportionate incarceration of blacks in the prison system; and in endeavors to obtain health care for every American. Until these and other civil rights are fulfilled, the struggle continues in every community, town, city, and state in our nation.

Diane Nash

August 2008