Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals
    Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals
    Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

    By steve mccrossan

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Over fifty years of misconceptions, distortions and outright lies that have created a popular myth of the American Civil Rights movement as nonviolent. The myth glosses over the fierceness of white racist violence, the complicity of the federal government, and the hypocrisy of many white liberals. It confuses “rights” with power, and ignores the persistence of poverty and the endurance of entrenched racism. While this myth is comforting, it is also vacant fiction. The reality is that black civil rights were achieved through a symbiosis of actors, tactics and strategies- not nonviolence alone. It took Gospel Singers, Gun Slingers, Riots and Radicals to achieve black civil rights.
    Gospel Singers: Nonviolence acted as the moral anchor of the movement and thus offered America a safe choice over the riots, radicals and gunslingers. Without the anchoring presence of the nonviolent movement, it is likely that the other tactics would have been swiftly crushed and condemned.

    Gunslingers: Armed self-defense protected black communities, saved lives, and deterred Klan violence. Armed self-defense not only allowed the movement to survive, but allowed it to thrive, especially in the Deep South.

    Riots: Rioting, while dismissed as counterproductive, actually pressured the federal government to enact legislation and brought several segregationist cities to the negotiating table. Rioting also led to several federal programs being initiated to battle inner city blight and poverty.

    Radicals: Radicals affect the psychology of perception by making more centrist organizations seem palatable by comparison. The presence of radicals directly led to an increase in access to negotiations, power and funding among the more moderate organizations in the civil rights movement.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publishersteve mccrossan
    Release dateJan 30, 2016
    ISBN9781311950666
    Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

    Related to Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

    Related ebooks

    Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies) History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Mama Was a Number Runner: On The World According to Fannie Davis

      Mar 26, 2019

      A female entrepreneur from the Jim Crow South arrives in the 1950s industrial cauldron of Detroit, determined to figure out “how to make a way out of no way.” The post Mama Was a Number Runner: On The World According to Fannie Davis appeared first on

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology Edited by Karina Vernon

      Sep 15, 2020

      The Prairies are my home. The Prairies are not my home. I am from the Prairies. I am not from the Prairies. It has always been like this. Although I, a Black woman of varied origins, have spent a significant portion of my life living in Alberta, my r

      3 min read

    • Article

      Artists at Work

      May 19, 2021

      Artists at Work
      5 min read

    • Article

      Mumia Abu-Jamal Granted Right Of Appeal After Decades In Prison

      Dec 28, 2018

      A Philadelphia judge has ruled that Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal can appeal his 1982 conviction for killing Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Project Veritas Founder James O'Keefe Is Forced Out At The Right-wing Group

      Feb 21, 2023

      In a video, O'Keefe said he was leaving his group, known for hidden-camera efforts to embarrass journalists, after the board of directors removed his power. The board cited "financial malfeasance."

      2 min read

    • Article

      Beauty And Harmony In Diversity

      Feb 25, 2023

      THE variety of colour and culture is what makes the world a more beautiful place to live in. It is because of our diversity that our rainbow nation is so special. Differences are not only in our human family, but are apparent throughout the whole of

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Seeker

      Jul 5, 2022

      The Seeker
      10 min read

    • Article

      Abolitionists

      Jul 15, 2021

      Sojourner Truth was born into slavery, managing to escape in 1827. A devout Christian, she became a preacher, travelling around the United States speaking about abolition and women’s rights. Her most famous anti-slavery and women’s rights speech, dur

      3 min read

    • Article

      Masks and Faces

      Apr 1, 2020

      Masks and Faces
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Ku Klux Klan

      Nov 1, 2020

      The Ku Klux Klan
      1 min read

    • Article

      He Was An Architect

      Dec 22, 2020

      He Was An Architect
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Old Un’s Notes

      Jan 12, 2022

      The Old Un’s Notes
      6 min read

    • Article

      Let Freedom Ring

      May 28, 2020

      Let Freedom Ring
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals - steve mccrossan

      Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

      Steven M. McCrossan

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2014 Steven M. McCrossan

      License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

      Table of Contents

      Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

      GOSPEL SINGERS

      RIOTS

      Symbiosis in Birmingham

      The Fires Spread

      Who Rioted and Why?

      GUNSLINGERS

      RADICALS

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      Gospel Singers and Gunslingers; Riots and Radicals

      For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end

      President Barack Obama's Cairo Speech, June 4, 2009

      The above remarks are both representative of, and the result of, over fifty years of misconceptions, distortions and outright lies that have created a popular myth of the American Civil Rights movement as nonviolent. Not only has violence, or the threat of it, been an integral part of numerous struggles for equal rights, it was also of crucial importance to the Civil Rights movement. Obama's speech, like so many history books, further enforces the comforting myth that moral suasion alone won African-Americans their equal rights. It further implies that through African-Americans peaceful struggle, America's morality and political system were redeemed. In Deacons for Defense, Lance Hill describes it as a,

      Reassuring myth of American moral redemption-a myth that assuaged white guilt by suggesting that racism was not intractable and deeply imbedded in American life. That racial segregation and discrimination were handily overcome by orderly, polite protest and a generous American conscience, and that the pluralistic system for resolving conflicts between competing interests had prevailed. The system had worked and the nation was redeemed.

      While the myth is comforting, it is also vacant fiction. The myth glosses over the fierceness of white racist violence, the complicity of the federal government, and the hypocrisy of many white liberals. It confuses rights with power, and ignores the persistence of poverty and the endurance of entrenched racism. It further ignores the hundreds of riots where masses of blacks took to the streets and torched buildings, looted, and fought with the police and National Guard. It also overlooks the role of armed self defense on behalf of the black community against white terrorists in the Deep South. It is with this in mind that I seek to clarify the role that black violence (or the threat of it), and armed self-defense played in the civil rights movement.

      I am not seeking to argue that nonviolence was not effective in certain instances, but rather, that its effectiveness reached its pinnacle when violence, or the threat of it, emerged in the black struggle for civil rights. Furthermore, it was often because of armed self defense that nonviolence was allowed to survive in the Deep South, rather than being wiped out by racist terror. It must be understood that the victories of the American civil rights struggle where a result of a wide spectrum of symbiotic tactics and peoples, not a few leaders and national organizations using one tactic. Indeed, the more closely one looks at history, the less comfortable one becomes with reducing the tens of thousands of people...who participated in local movements, to faceless masses, singing, praying and marching in the background.

      Both, then and now, the symbiosis of tactics has been co-opted, dismissed and erased by pacifists, progressives, and politicians, to fit their own ends. Even Martin Luther King's more radical messages have been sanitized or erased. Gone are his condemnations and criticisms of war, imperialism, capitalism and white America. His legacy has been reduced to comforting little quips like I have a Dream. Can many Americans quote anything else? As Gelderloos puts it, King's more disturbing (to whites) criticisms of racism are avoided and his clichéd prescriptions for feel-good, nonviolent activism are repeated ad nauseum.

      To treat each topic effectively, I have broken them up as Gospel Singers, Gunslingers, Riots, and Radicals. It should be understood that these are titles are used for organizational clarity and that certain actors or incidents do not fit neatly into one heading. Each topic will move chronologically within its own section and will allude to other sections, but will remain focused on its particular topic(s). The first section, Gospel Singers, will serve as a timeline of the civil rights movement and its progressions and changes. In this sense, it will act as a primer to the American civil rights movement, and lay the groundwork for the other sections. In the Gospel Singers section I will allude to all the other major topics, but will treat them in depth separately to effectively highlight the tactics, people, successes and failures within them. The second section, Gun slingers, will focus on the role that armed self-defense played in protecting black communities and the victories these actions won on behalf of the civil rights movement. The third Section, Riots, will focus on the role riots played in both shocking white America and compelling the federal government to act. It will also dispel the myth of why the riots occurred and who took part in them. Lastly, the Radicals section will analyze the bargaining power and funding given to moderate civil rights organizations by the presence of so called radicals.

      All of the sections will also analyze the role of the media, white liberals, the federal government, and moderate civil rights organizations in shaping the movement, as well as their creation of a false polarity between nonviolence and self defense.

      GOSPEL SINGERS

      America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked 'insufficient' funds...So I say to you, my friends, that even though we must face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

      Martin Luther King, Jr.

      The struggle that has become known as the American Civil Rights Movement was ignited by countless sparks, spanning decades. The movement and the ideals born within it are too prolific to have begun with one person, place or date. For the sake of this book, I will focus on post-World War Two America as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.

      Post-War America found itself entering an era of unprecedented wealth and affluence. Its infrastructure was intact and the middle class, the suburbs, and the economy were all swelling. Defense expenditures were high and technological innovation seemed to be all-encompassing. These prosperous years led to a baby boom, which would prove to be a key factor in the overwhelming prevalence of youth in all of the 1960's movements. These factors, combined with the success of American style capitalism led many to dub it the

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1