So the other day a colleague's daughter asked me a simple enough question: As a US History teacher, who do you think are three most influential Civil Rights figures?
A simple enough question but worthy of much discussion. You can see my answer on Twitter but I decided to weed through all the options this way: I defined "influential" as having the largest impact which normally means mainstream. After all, the more extreme voices like Malcolm X are going to be tuned out by huge swaths of Americans even though his rhetoric is incredibly important. So I finished with: NAACP founder W.E.B. DuBois, SCLC member and icon MLK and SNCC founder John Lewis. The next day this spread into quite a discussion at the Social Science workroom. One teacher noted that I had no females on my list. After all, why must Civil Rights be only contained to black men? This is actually one of the main points the person asking the question is hinting at. When we think of Civil Rights in the country we think of racism but really it means every group struggling for equality. There was also a discussion about whether LBJ should be on the list since he was the President that helped implement many of the policies that were articulated by the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. There was also talk about expanding beyond America. After all, can we really have this list without Gandhi? I had considered some of these things but not all of these things when I answered a seemingly benign question. I kept it at America because I was asked as a US History teacher. Ultimately I came up with this list of American figures (not ranked). Alice Paul Bayard Rustin Betty Friedan Booker T Washington Cesar Chavez Charles Houston Daisy Bates Elizabeth Cady Stanton Fannie Lou Hammer Frederick Douglass Harvey Milk John Lewis Lucretia Mott Lyndon Baines Johnson Malcolm X Martin Luther King Jr Rosa Parks Stokley Carmichael Thurgood Marshall W.E.B. DuBois William Lloyd Garrison I'm also willing to tweak it but this is my further reflected summary. The bigger question came after this one. Her follow-up was: Who is the most influential Civil Rights figure today? I was at a loss. So was the entire Social Science department, at least initially. Look at the list above, with the exception of John Lewis they are all dead. My answer was Malala Yousafzai, I had to abandon my US-only parameters on that one. I'm curious what you guys would say to that question? Someone mentioned the "Black Lives Matter" movement but that group lacks a leader. Being an organic movement is awesome but I think it also has some negative consequences. Namely when accusations are thrown at it, the group has no solidified leader to respond. The movement can't simply go on Meet The Press and respond to allegations. It's almost like it is too democratic. So I wonder, where is the leadership? Is the era of strong civil rights figures gone? Are they going to be replaced by these grassroots movements like Living Wage, 99% and Black Lives Matters? Is this a net positive or negative? I just wonder what your thoughts are.
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May 2016
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