APUSH Podcast #4: The Civil Rights Movement

In Clarence Taylor’s speech, he started by pointing out how the popular view of the Civil Rights Movement isn’t completely accurate, and I can definitely say that I originally had this view myself. I too thought that most of the civil rights issues were focused in the South since slavery was previously concentrated there, but the North needed to make some changes as well. Abolitionism may have begun there, but discrimination towards African Americans was also extremely prevalent. When we watched the documentary about the problems with desegregation in South Boston, I was completely shocked and ashamed by what happened there. Although learning about the unbelievable racism in America made me upset, thinking that it was mostly in the South made me feel slightly better, but after learning more about it, I lost that tiny bit of solace because African Americans struggled everywhere, including Massachusetts, a seemingly liberal state. I also previously thought that the Civil Rights Movement was mostly in the 60’s, when really it could be argued that it started as early as the 1890’s with the end of reconstruction. It is absolutely appalling and pathetic that it took America so many years to finally give African Americans the rights they deserved.

What ended this movement was ultimately the backlash from the spreading of the black power ideology. Things simply seemed too “crazy” at that time, so white Americans began to become more conservative, and a division between the different civil rights groups made them weaker. The black power movement allowed violence, which angered both whites and other African Americans working for the same goal in a non-violent way. Although I am not necessarily against violence in self-defense, to me it is very unfortunate that this is what caused the Civil Rights Movement to gradually disappear. There was still work to be done (as I’ll talk about later), yet their campaign lost the support it needed to be completely successful because they couldn’t agree on how exactly to win the rights that they all wanted. Even groups that both supported non-violence such as SNCC and SCLC were rivals to each other because they couldn’t agree on who would lead the movement, the group or specific individuals, as Taylor briefly talks about. The competition and lack of cooperation (which I understand was basically unavoidable) lead to too much disunity for the movement to continue on.

A major debate that I wished Clarence Taylor addressed further, was “phase four” of the Civil Rights Movement: “post-civil rights era”. Was the Civil Rights Movement successful? Before this class, I believed yes, but now I definitely believe we still have a ways to go before completely achieving racial equality. Many people believe it was a success because they ended legal discrimination, but Taylor argues that the movement had other goals as well such as ending economic and social discrimination for African Americans. This even today has not been accomplished, although America has made great progress. Taylor also reasons that although they did finally legally have rights, those rights were still commonly violated. Racism also still prevails in America, as much as we try to ignore that fact, or even deny it. For these reasons I have to say that I side with Clarence Taylor; it is the unfortunate truth that we cannot label this current time period the “post-civil rights era”. A positive from this though, is that it “helped spark other social protest movements” such as trying to obtain equal rights for all genders and sexual orientations.  The Civil Rights Movement should have continued though, as African Americans still face challenges because of their race that they shouldn’t have to.