Intellectual Courage In The Civil Rights Movement

The civil rights movement was a crucial period in American history; the movement was responsible for arguably the most extensive expansion of civil rights and civil liberties in the United States’ history. The movement was so diverse that no one person, organization, or strategy can be credited for its success, but the movement itself was united by two fundamental principles: liberty and justice for all. The courageous within the movement stood by those principles, and in doing so they challenged a nation to question the very foundation of its beliefs. Intellectual courage is a trait that requires each to look inside themselves, question their own beliefs, and when prudent have the readiness to stand up for what is right.
While many find it

Those who fear ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints that do not conform to their own exercise not intellectual courage but intellectual cowardice. Intellectual courage requires a self-examination that seeks the truth—not comfort. Malcolm X was an African-American human rights activist, and for most of his career, he was a Muslim Minister for the Nation of Islam (NOI)—a movement famous for its controversial beliefs. Among them was the belief that black people where the original race while white people, on the other hand, were a race of devils; consequently, the NOI called for complete separation in a state or territory of their own—pitting them against the mainstream movement. Malcolm X also championed the belief that the African-American community should defend themselves by “any means necessary,” a belief directly opposed to the mainstream movement’s strategy of nonviolence. Towards the end of his life, Malcom X became disillusioned with the NOI—primarily due to his growingly contentious relationship with the prophet Elijah Muhammad. After his Hajj, which

Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, such as Malcolm X, were perhaps most revolutionary for the beliefs that they stood for—beliefs that mobilized a nation into action—but there is a great deal to be said about the intellectual courage of those whose daily lives are themselves a testament to their beliefs. The Little Rock Nine, as history remembers them, were a group of nine African-American students who following the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education, registered to attend Little Rock Central High School, the previously all white school. On their first day, they were greeted not by friendly faces but by the Arkansas National Guard who were sent by the Governor to support the apoplectic segregationist protestors. Stopped by a human blockade, the Little Rock Nine were helpless, unable to enter the school. Weeks later President Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to Arkansas to escort the Little Rock Nine safely into the school. But their trials didn’t end at the school door. For the next year the Little Rock Nine would endure verbal and physical attacks; they endured for something far greater than their own educations—they endured for the integration of schools and for the generations to come. They were children and had every reason to let adults worry