March Book 1&2 Essay
"I know now that Uncle Otis saw something in me that I hadn't yet seen" (Lewis and Aydin 1: 37). All of us have a certain purpose in life, whether we have found out exactly what that is yet or not. Sometimes we won't even know ourselves that is until someone sees it spark within us first. In the book of March. John Lewis was a man that was a part of the Nashville student SNCC Organization, whose purpose was to help end segregation as much as possible during the Civil Rights era in the 1960's. Taking these first steps have become major turning points in his life that will forever stick with him. Steps like joining the First Baptist Church, getting arrested for the first time, joining the freedom riders, and taking action
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Lewis states, “February 27, 1960 was my first arrest. The first of many” (Lewis and Aydin 1: 103). (See figure 1) John Lewis was not afraid of being arrested for doing the right thing. At this moment, the Nashville students were still trying to desegregate the department store lunch counters. Lewis says, “We wanted to change America-- to make it something different, something better” (Lewis and Aydin 1: 103). All of the students were willing to do what it takes to make a change happen. 82 students went to jail that day alongside with Lewis, they were offered bail however they refused. They did not want to cooperate with the system in any way because the system is what was allowing segregation in the first place. At around 11 p.m. they were all released and had to attend court the next day. They found the students guilty and ordered them to either pay a fine of 50 dollars each, or spend 30 days in jail. Of course they didn’t pay the bail and did their time in jail. As a result, when John Lewis’s parents later on found out he had gone to jail. They were devastated and he had become an embarrassment and a source of humiliation and gossip to the
Throughout the American South, of many Negro’s childhood, the system of segregation determined the patterns of life. Blacks attended separate schools from whites, were barred from pools and parks where whites swam and played, from cafes and hotels where whites ate and slept. On sidewalks, they were expected to step aside for whites. It took a brave person to challenge this system, when those that did suffered a white storm of rancour. Affronting this hatred, with assistance from the Federal Government, were nine courageous school children, permitted into the 1957/8 school year at Little Rock Central High. The unofficial leader of this band of students was Ernest Green.
The book, “My Soul Is Rested” by Howell Raines is a remarkable history of the civil rights movement. It details the story of sacrifice and audacity that led to the changes needed. The book described many immeasurable moments of the leaders that drove the civil rights movement. This book is a wonderful compilation of first-hand accounts of the struggles to desegregate the American South from 1955 through 1968. In the civil rights movement, there are the leaders and followers who became astonishing in the face of chaos and violence. The people who struggled for the movement are as follows: Hosea Williams, Rosa Parks, Ralph Abernathy, and others; both black and white people, who contributed in demonstrations for freedom rides, voter drives, and
There are many symbols in the reading March that have a significant value. Throughout the graphic memoir, John Lewis shows there are certain symbols that are very common. Sorted in categories, each concrete object given in the photos provided are modified by their mutual abstraction.
Moody’s “nonviolent” sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter may be her most famous act not just during the Movement, but possibly her life. The idea behind the sit-in was to request service at the segregated lunch counter of Woolworth’s. As the sit-in progressed, the white population became more aware of what was happening, and they started heckling and threatening Moody and her fellow activists. Nonviolence turned to violence when a white man rushed Memphis, one of the sit-in members. He was beaten up and arrested. Moody was dragged out by her hair, and her friend was taken from her seat by force. A few days after the sit-in, a group of Negro ministers went to the mayor with demands. The mayor ignored them. The nonviolent sit-in was supposed to be a message to the community and the country. Unfortunately, the sit-in, in the eyes of Anne Moody, was a failure because it had accomplished nothing. ...
On the date May 26, 1956, two female students from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Wilhelmina Jakes and Carrie Patterson, had taken a seat down in the whites only section of a segregated bus in the city of Tallahassee, Florida. When these women refused to move to the colored section at the very back of the bus, the driver had decided to pull over into a service station and call the police on them. Tallahassee police arrested them and charged them with the accusation of them placing themselves in a position to incite a riot. In the days after that immediately followed these arrests, students at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University organized a huge campus-wide boycott of all of the city buses. Their inspiring stand against segregation set an example and an intriguing idea that had spread to tons of Tallahassee citizens who were thinking the same things and brought a change of these segregating ways into action. Soon, news of the this boycott spread throughout the whole entire community rapidly. Reverend C.K. Steele composed the formation of an organization known as the Inter-Civic Council (ICC) to manage the logic and other events happening behind the boycott. C.K. Steele and the other leaders created the ICC because of the unfounded negative publicity surrounding the National Associat...
John Lewis is an African American man born on February 21st, 1940, into a sharecropping family in Pike County, Alabama (Moye, 2004). He grew up on his family's farm, and attended segregated public schools as a child. Even when he was just a young boy, Lewis was always inspired by the happenings of the Civil Rights Movement. Events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott or hearing the wise words of Martin Luther King Junior over the radio stimulated his desire to become a part of a worthwhile cause, and was a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement ever since ("Biography," para. 3). Lewis went to school at both the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tennessee. He graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary, and received a Bachelors degree in religion and philosophy from Fisk University. While at Fisk, he learned the philosophy of how to be nonviolent, and would soon incorporate that into his civil rights work ("John Lewis Biography," para. 3). While he was a student at Fisk University, Lewis began putting together sit-ins at local lunch counters to protest segregation. Many...
African Americans had been struggling to obtain equal rights for scores of decades. During the 1960’s, the civil rights movement intensified and the civil rights leaders entreated President Kennedy to intervene. They knew it would take extreme legislature to get results of any merit. Kennedy was afraid to move forward in the civil rights battle, so a young preacher named Martin Luther King began a campaign of nonviolent marches and sit-ins and pray-ins in Birmingham, Alabama to try and force a crisis that the President would have to acknowledge. Eventually things became heated and Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor released his men to attack the protesters, which included many schoolchildren. All of this was captured and televised to the horror of the world. Finally this forced the President into action and he proposed a bill outlawing segregation in public facilities. The bill became bogged down in Congress but civil righ...
The year of 1963 had an extreme amount of racial tension and arguments about the rights of African Americans. The white people were vastly prejudice towards the blacks and used all kinds of falderal. Several people began to stand up and show their opinions about the civil disobedience that the laws stood for. Many did this in a public manner therefore they were arrested and sent to jail. An example of this was Martin Luther King, Jr. when he wrote “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” during the time of the protests. All of the people’s opinions are what led to the March on Washington. “In the summer of 1941 A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Broth...
On a hot summer day in August 1999, Nashville police officers arrested William Ware on the basis of state sedition charges that two white citizens had brought against him. Night judge Draper? swore out the warrant against Ware after the two citizens, who also happened to be lawyers, had consulted with each other after. Both had seemingly taken issue with a statement that Ware had allegedly made during a visit to the city’s controversial Liberation School: “black people should try to achieve political, social, and economic power by any means necessary, including violence.” The basis for the sedition charges that the unequal pair of lawyers filed seemed to be taken right out of the coverage of the Ranner, the city’s evening newspaper
Success was a big part of the Civil Rights Movement. Starting with the year 1954, there were some major victories in favor of African Americans. In 1954, the landmark trial Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas ruled that segregation in public education was unfair. This unanimous Supreme Court decision overturned the prior Plessy vs. Ferguson case during which the “separate but equal” doctrine was created and abused. One year later, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. launched a bus boycott in Montgomery Alabama after Ms. Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat in the “colored section”. This boycott, which lasted more than a year, led to the desegregation of buses in 1956. Group efforts greatly contributed to the success of the movement. This is not only shown by the successful nature of the bus boycott, but it is shown through the success of Martin Luther King’s SCLC or Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The conference was notable for peacefully protesting, nonviolence, and civil disobedience. Thanks to the SCLC, sit-ins and boycotts became popular during this time, adding to the movement’s accomplishments. The effective nature of the sit-in was shown during 1960 when a group of four black college students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in hopes of being served. While they were not served the first time they commenced their sit-in, they were not forced to leave the establishment; their lack of response to the heckling...
John Lewis was born on February 21, 1940 in Troy, Alabama to Willie Mae and Eddie Lewis. Lewis was raised on his family’s farm and he also attended public school in Pike County, Alabama. The schools that Lewis attended were segregated. During his time spent in public school, a major event took place. On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks, an African American woman, refused to give up her seat to a white man. This started the 13 month Montgomery Bus Boycott. This movement resulted in a very significant victory for the Civil Rights Movement. Growing up, Lewis was inspired by and admired Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. It was in these important years, that John Lewis made the
Eyes on the prize: Ain’t Scared of Your Jails (1960-1961) shows the importance of students during the Civil Rights Movement. The first part of the episode shows black college students who staged sit-ins in Nashville, refusing to leave lunch counters until they were served. When those students were arrested, other black residents began boycotting other places to eat, shops, and buses to protest. They also refused bail and packed Nashville’s jails to full capacity. During the lunch counter movement, livid mobs attacked the student protesters with taunts, physical intimidation, and arrest. Though somehow, in spite of it all, the students refrained from fighting back. Soon afterwards, students began to challenge segregation in other college towns throughout the South. Ben West, Nashville’s mayor, called for “law and order” when the students arranged a boycott of the city’s downtown shops and gained a lot of attention from the national media. There was then a march on city hall, where students challenged Mayor West to openly acknowledge the wickedness of segregation and lift the segregat...
John Lewis was suggesting to all the people that they should not give up hope, despite the suspicion that the march isn’t enough, but to continue doing more for their freedom, and he does this by connecting it to a revolution in 1776 that was left unfinished, according to him. For instance, Lewis states “We must get in this revolution and complete the revolution”(para 8). He doesn’t mean an actual revolution, but it is a fight for their freedom that they are facing. Lewis is only suggesting that the people should do more for their freedom, he isn’t demanding, but by comparing it to the revolution, it makes it sound important to be apart of this battle. Additionally, Lewis says “For in the Delta in Mississippi, in southwest Georgia, in… and
After reading this week’s study material, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wanted to increase his non-violent protest because he believed that there is injustice in Birmingham. Birmingham is known for one of the most racially segregated city in America. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr believed that “non- violent tension is necessary for growth” (Rawls, 2016, p. 450). This was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr way of showing his beliefs and freedom. There are two values that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr felt that were worth giving his life for; those two values are his freedom and his beliefs. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had gotten the chance to talk with the leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr had requested “to move the stores
There he protested of the high level of segregation and violence against the black. However, he was arrested since he was not allowed to protest in Birmingham, Alabama. While he sat in his jail cell, he wrote a letter, “The Negro is your Brother” better known as “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The letter was written to answer the Statement by Alabama Clergymen. He explained why he was there in the first place: “I am here in Birmingham because injustice is here” (3) Plus, he answers their criticism: “But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms”