How does someone know they are living in a revolutionary moment?
Essay and Curation by Kathryn Lenau (SAS'26)
As the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution approaches, fundamental questions about the nature, meaning, and legacy of the Revolution have reemerged. RevolutionNJ is a partnership between the New Jersey State Historical Commission and the Crossroads of the American Revolution nonprofit focused on educating the public about American Revolutionary history in New Jersey and beyond. To help the public think critically about the American Revolution, it has proposed a series of guiding questions to consider. Among these is the question “How does someone know they’re living in a revolutionary moment?”
The most obvious answer to this question may be “when the masses rise up and overthrow the existing government.” However, by expanding this definition to include moments in which oppressive systems were dismantled, or perhaps when existing sociocultural attitudes were challenged en masse, one can better appreciate the revolutionary character of historical events that did not necessarily involve regime change.
The Civil Rights movement is a prime example of a historical moment that fits into this expanded definition of a revolution. It was a time when steady resistance forced the promises of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution to be more faithfully upheld in a political, economic, and societal sense. In Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, he invoked the empty promises in the founding documents, thus providing an undeniable argument for racial equality so long as America claimed to be a free and equal nation:
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. . . .1
However, the significance of the American Revolution to the Civil Rights movement also goes beyond national values and American scripture. The complexities of the Civil Rights movement and the ways in which the Civil Rights movement was fought also bear a resemblance to the American Revolution. By drawing comparisons between the American Revolution and oral histories of civil rights activists, this exhibit seeks to highlight the ways– ideologically and procedurally– in which the Civil Rights Movement was a revolutionary moment in American history.
I – Revolutionary Ideals and Rhetoric
The American Revolution’s ideological legacy is its most mainstream and enduring one. The ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence and preamble of the Constitution have shaped the liberation movements of oppressed peoples and continue to echo through the American conscience. Paradoxically, the Revolution’s greatest achievements provided the foundations to correct its most glaring shortcomings. The following quotes by Bruce McLeod and Donald Van Blake demonstrate how the rhetoric of the founding documents influenced the Civil Rights Movement.
Bruce McLeod
SH: As a young gentleman who has just immigrated to this country, before we go in to talk about your induction, the Civil Rights Movement is exploding shall we say. There are riots all around the country. What did you think of that coming from what had seemed to be such a peaceful country?
BM: Well, I tell you. I don't know. … All of these things in trying to come here to talk about this, I really thought about that situation, and I had something which I thought it was going to be like an epilogue and really I think I should see if I can read this. I mean as I had stated before in Jamaica, that atmosphere, I mean, you know, people talk about a melting pot. Even though Jamaica is, I would say maybe eighty percent people of African descent, the other twenty percent is all over the place and totally integrated, and, you know, it's as good a place. … You're going to see, you know, diversity and how it works well. … So, I wrote here, it says, "When I was a boy, in the world consciousness of people of color, the US was one of the worst places on earth even worse than South Africa, during the '40s, '50s, and part of the '60s. I have been fortunate to live during a time of great waves of change that have transformed the world including the USA. I witnessed countries such as Australia and Canada that refused to allow people of color to even immigrate there to becoming countries that now embrace diversity. For many of the countries in African colonies of European power to become independent countries. From the Jim Crow and apartheid policies of the US and South Africa that became broken and is now replaced with more progressive policies, and more freedom for their black citizens, and to crown all of this off, the election of an African American President of the United States of America. This one powerful act has convinced all the American doubters throughout the world, especially the people of the Middle East who are now willing to give democracy a chance. I have always appreciated that especially native-born African Americans have never given up one inch of their ownership of the United States of America, and have a deep and abiding attachment to the values stated in the Preamble of the Constitution, which they will forever carry close to their heart, and the faith that one day it will come to pass, i.e., when you say the words you start the process that will bring that idea into fruition. I am proud to have served in an organization that has helped to pave the way to this new world as paradoxically as that may sound and that is the United States Army."
Donald Van Blake
SI: Okay. Before we turn to that, you started telling me about the March on Washington in 1963. You talked about being on the bus.
DV: Now, see, you knew better the year than I can remember the year--'63, yes, that's it.
SI: Can you tell me about the bus ride down there and what it was like to be at the march?
DV: Well, I was telling you about Mr. Liberty. He had been an immigrant from Poland. His name was not Liberty at the time he left Poland or at the time he came, but he changed his name to Liberty, so that everybody, he signed his name Mr. Liberty. I've forgotten what his first name was and he was seventy-eight, I believe it was, and I gave up my seat for him to ride down on the bus and riding down on the bus, none of us really knew where the heck we're going.
II – The Centrality of Resistance
In a 1787 letter to William Stevens Smith, John Adams’ son- in- law, Thomas Jefferson rhetorically asked “And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?” He then posited the more famous line “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”2 Jefferson’s quotes speak to the eternal struggle of dismantling oppressive systems. In the course of human history, powerful people have seldom voluntarily relinquished their power, hence the need for resistance. In the quotes below, Walter Alexander and M. William Howard reflect on the fundamental importance of unwavering resistance to the Civil Rights movement.
Walter Alexander
SH: You talked about how your father had been protective of you, such as when you came to Rutgers and you wanted to get into campus housing. Did you find yourself doing the same for your two daughters twenty years later during the Civil Rights Movement?
WA: Yes, … you had to be protective of them enough to make them aware of what you expect, what you think ought to be and what you know there's going to be, in spite of what there's supposed to be, so that they can be prepared for it. … Under the best or worst of circumstances, they will be protected from it and that they know what they're entitled to; doesn't mean they're always going to get it, but it means they know that they have a right to certain things and that if they push for them, they have a chance of getting them and that, in a situation where things are done properly, they can get things corrected, but it doesn't always happen right away.
M. William Howard
MWH: Now, the movement is a dynamic, yin-yang, you might say. What began to build the movement was not just our initiative, but what? Can you think?
SI: Well …
MWH: Resistance.
SI: Resistance, okay.
MWH: Resistance.
In some ways, we were innocent, you understand? "Yes, every citizen should have a right to vote," we'd been reading in our civics class, and so on. That's the level at which we were operating, but, when the resistance came, "Whoa."
I can remember one of the scariest scenes of my young childhood. We were driven to Leslie, Georgia, twelve miles away. Our job was to canvass in Leslie. Now, in Americus, we were more segregated, definitively, than Leslie could be. It was too small, you see. You couldn't have a section here, a section [there], because the little town was just a section itself. So, [in towns like Americus], you could go to a black community and walk around all day and never be seen by any white authorities.
We arrived in Leslie, five, six, seven of us and, within minutes after we were dropped off, down in the little town, "Whoosh," police, [asking], "Who are you? Why are you here? I know about what you're up to, so, get on out of here." I remember, the next town was one mile away, De Soto, Georgia, and they were connected by one straight road.
The fear that we had was, once we walked over the city limits of Leslie, we'd have the better part of a mile walking before we would get to the next town, and the lines between vigilantes and true deputies of the sheriff were very blurred. So, we didn't think the chief of police would harm us, but he had people who knew his sentiments who would take care of it.
So, as we began to walk on that one-mile road, fearing that once we got about midway, we were going to have trouble, there was an elderly black woman sitting on her porch. She said, "Where do you think you're going? You're not going to make it down that road. Come on in here." She took all of these young African Americans, two of whom were from the North, one Philadelphia and one white guy, who I think was from Hartford. He was at Trinity College, anyway, in Hartford. Ralph Allen was his name, and John Churchfield was the Temple student from Philadelphia. She brought us into her home.
She's sitting on the front porch, rocking, and the police--no, a car, truck, whatever--came up. We could hear them, "Auntie, you've seen any kids, children," referencing us, "walking along here?" "No, sir, boss. I ain't seen nothing." Do you understand? The commitment of elders who were fearful of what could be done to them, the courage to do something like that, it was everywhere you turned, playing the role, not appearing menacing, but taking a relevant action. So, the resistance, the response to voter registration, was really what gave energy and purpose to our early work.
…
MWH: One day, somebody said, probably my good friend Sam Mahone, who was perennially jailed-- I'm still close to him--said, "Why are we going all the way around there when we should be walking right off the street into the theater?" Then, that's when the movie house came under pressure. They began to arrest people for going into the front door. In some ways, the eagerness to go into the place would not have been so strong if the resistance hadn't been the way that it was. So, the movement began as an indigenous, kind of modest resistance to things. The resistance gave it more energy. Eventually, it attracted national, regional attention and that was, [Reverend Howard claps his hands], it was full on. Then, it sort of went to things like grocery stores that didn't hire black people to work at the register. I mean, in those days, segregation worked this way. Black people could work in a grocery store, but they couldn't handle money.
…
MWH: The dynamic was action and reaction. Every time their reaction became more and more brutal and unyielding, it elevated the pressure.
…
MWH: See, the thing about black people in the South, despite how mean some white people were--and not all of them were. Let me just say, like I said, if you didn't appear to be challenging the status quo, you didn't see the mean side, you see, but, when you were, if you were thought to have in your mind that you were a fellow American, you were an equal, then someone who was relatively kind to you could change personalities pretty quick.
III – The Sacrifices of Ordinary People
Though the history of the American Revolution and Civil Rights movement is often told through the philosophies of their most prominent leaders, the sacrifices and solidarity of ordinary people who transformed dreams into reality should not be forgotten. In his book The Will of the People : The Revolutionary Birth of America, historian T.H. Breen eloquently describes the fundamental importance of the non- elite to the success of the American Revolution:
Although many communities contributing to the success of the Revolution took no direct part in the major military campaigns, we should not allow their distance from organized combat to conceal their fundamental importance in mobilizing resistance to Great Britain and continuing the war effort when battlefield reverses and internal disputes eroded public morale. It was in these settlements—in towns, county seats, or crossroads marked only by a courthouse, church, or tavern—where people swept up by political passion made choices that changed their lives: decisions about political allegiance, about policing domestic enemies, about supplying scarce funds and resources to advance what became known as the country’s common cause, about maintaining solidarity during a period of hyperinflation, and about other Americans who had aided the British during the war andafter the peace wanted to return.3
Just as the success of the American Revolution depended on the war efforts of ordinary citizens, the following quotes by M. William Howard, Donald Harris, and Deborah Shefford speak to importance of everyday efforts across disparate towns and populations to the success of the Civil Rights Movement.
M. William Howard
MWH: That really is the story of the movement, meaning, in isolated villages and towns and communities, people, as Dr. King would say, the zeitgeist was present and it was the sign of the times. We didn't know what they were doing. It was like the Great Migration. The time came, and there was no definitive leader, see. Then, as we began to grow and began to face public pressure and some arrests, people used to, began to, reach out to SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference] in particular.
Donald Harris
SI: When you would talk to these people, how would it usually go? Were they receptive or did you have to convince them?
DH: Oh, people were receptive, but they were reluctant, because they would lose their jobs. They would be physically threatened. They couldn't read or write. There were all manner of reasons why, rationally, they shouldn't try to register to vote. … The conversation wasn't so much about, you know, what I did two months ago, [Mr. Harris knocks on the table], "Hi, I'm from the Obama Campaign. Are you going to vote next Tuesday?" It was, "Hello. How are you?" I mean, it was a conversation where you may talk for an hour before you even [say], "You know who I am? I'm from the movement. What are you growing?"
You know, it's a whole conversation to try and get to know people, reduce people's anxieties and fears, begin to see where they're at in terms of, "Could they read or write? Had they ever tried to register before? Are they in a situation where whoever they work for is going to fire them if they go and try to register?" So, you try and get a sense of what is the situation this person's in and what kind of jeopardy may I, we, be putting them in if we're asking them to, fundamentally, join the movement. "We've got to change things. We're adults who are sixty percent black in this county and you're getting screwed hand over fist." So, it wasn't just a perfunctory kind of, "Yes, no, boom, move." It was, "Okay, well, maybe we're going to talk about it today and we'll come back … next week." I mean, … you're building long-term, hopefully, trust and, hopefully, the development of a process, so that those people could take control of their lives and situations, as opposed to, you're doing something, right.
Deborah Shuford
KR: I want to ask a question.
DS: Sure.
KR: You were talking about your paternal grandmother sewing.
DS: Yes, sewing.
KR: She was lining the coffins in order to smuggle people to safety.
DS: Absolutely.
KR: What were those people doing that they had to be smuggled to safety?
DS: Well, Lowndes County, that part of Alabama [is] very rural. In fact, some of the first African Americans who registered to vote, with Stokely Carmichael there, were told that if they got involved or engaged in those types of activities, as they were called then, that they could lose their land and they could lose their lives. We had family members who were activists, and my grandmother was an activist herself. My grandfather, I know, during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, my grandfather told her not to go and not to get involved because he feared that we would lose our property. So, my grandmother was fearless for some reason. She always said that she was doing the right thing, and it was more about human rights than civil rights. [Editor's Note: In response to the violence inflicted upon civil rights demonstrators by local authorities on the Pettus Bridge in early March 1965, 25,000 people marched from Selma to Montgomery several weeks later.]”
IV – The Diversity of Revolutionary Philosophies
Revolutions are often characterized by mass resistance. The larger the resistance, the more likely it is to include people with different philosophies, experiences, and incentives. As a result, revolutionaries are unlikely to be monolithic in their approaches to resistance and visions of the future. Between the end of the War for Independence and the ratification of the Constitution, there were disagreements among the founding elites about how the new republic ought to function. In the quotes below, M. William Howard, Kent Hatfield, and Arnold Byrd reflect on the different approaches and visions of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.
M. William Howard
MWH: Martin King was so arguably--his vision was so beyond what most of us were capable of thinking at the time. His concept of what--and we had seen him evolve--his concept of what America is had become more glaring by '68. By '67, April 4, 1967, one year to the very day of his assassination, he gave this prominent speech at the Riverside Church in New York on Vietnam. That speech is so fresh to this moment. A lot of the national struggles we're having right now is foretold in that speech, right, a failure to address "the giant triplets”...We've come to understand his vision was so far out beyond what we could imagine at the time.
Kent Hatfield
GC: What were those riots?
KH: The shooting of Martin Luther King was one of them.
GC: The city just rioted over that?
KH: All the cities, all over the nation rioted, because they just killed a man who believed in peace and all they wanted was equality. He was nonviolent. Malcolm X’s group, in that they were the more violent ones, the Black Panthers, yes, they were the violent ones, but not Martin Luther King. All he wanted was equality for everybody. He felt that it could be achieved in a nonviolent way. He basically was the symbol, the focal point, the glue that held the black community together. Because of that, the blacks said, “Okay. No, you ain’t going to do this and get away with it.” So, they rioted.
Arnold N. Byrd
JB: We wanted to ask you about some other historical developments that you lived through. So, the first one is 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. You were a young man at the time. Wondering if you could talk about what you remember.
AB: At the time, there was several things happening and of course, you know, Martin Luther King with SCLC or whatever, but Malcolm was also busy. So, I was more a follower of Malcolm than Martin Luther King. Obviously, you know, the assassination of both of them was just horrible. Horrible. Both King and Malcolm. But as far as being on the ground, doing certain kinds of things, I was more a follower of Malcolm than I was of Martin Luther King. I mean, this area with the Black People's Unity Movement and so forth, I think we just kind of took to Malcolm. He was a demigod. The words he would say, and how they was said. And then you know, the Muslims, the so-called Black Muslims, they became very popular. And as a matter of fact, as an organization [OEO], we took over one of their buildings that they used as a mosque, and we converted it into an office building and rebuilt it and everything. So you know, of course I love Martin Luther King and I love Malcolm. But I think we patterned ourselves more after Malcolm than we did Martin Luther King. That nonviolence approach, you know, wasn't one that I really advocated for. And I think one of the reasons that it was like that is because I grew up being an athlete. And as an athlete, you ran into some tough times, and it became physical combat. It was called athletics, but sometimes it was just pure physical combat. So, this nonviolent approach and turning the cheek the other way, that wasn't something that excited the folks that I was with. But I mean, obviously, I respect Martin, and recognize the good he did, and how it took more nerve for him to practice nonviolence than it did for somebody else to practice whatever we was practicing. H. Rap Brown, have you ever heard of H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael and stuff like that? Well, they were in my house when they came to Camden to talk. You know, so I had a relationship with them. One organization that I was very close with it’s called, BPUM, Black People’s Unity Movement. And a person that kind of ran that movement was named Poppy Sharp. I don't know if you've ever heard of Poppy Sharp. Well, we were friends. You know, as a matter of fact, I think we’re related because my mother's maiden name is Sharp. Poppy was a local guy. He was a Camden guy, down-to-earth guy, you know. And his brother who's older would come watch us play softball and stuff like that. But until we talked to him, my leaning there, I was usually more violent than nonviolent. [laughter] Does that make sense?
Footnotes
1. King, Martin Luther, Jr. "I Have a Dream." Speech, Washington, DC, August 28, 1963. Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.https://www.gilderlehrman.org/sites/default/files/inline-pdfs/king.dreamspeech.excerpts.pdf
2. Jefferson, Thomas. Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, November 13, 1787. In Thomas Jefferson: Establishing a Federal Republic.https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/105.html
3. T. H. Breen. The Will of the People : The Revolutionary Birth of America. Belknap Press, 2019. EBSCOhost.
