The Civil Rights Movement is considered the pivotal moment of the 20th century.
1963 is considered a turning point of the Civil Rights Movement.
There are many reasons why:
On April 12, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is put in a Birmingham city jail. His arrest and the critique from fellow clergymen urging protesters to take change "slow," prompted Dr. King to write the now widely known, "A Letter from a Birmingham City Jail." This letter, in short, advocated for Dr. King's philosophy of nonviolent direct action. In the opening pages he writes:
“I
am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot
sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an
inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Today, Levine Museum begins hosting an artistic response exhibit that bears the title of "Network of Mutuality: 50 Years Post-Birmingham," as an homage to Dr. King's words. The exhibit looks forward to the state of civil rights today; 50 years later. However, in 1963, as a direct result of this
letter, one month after his arrest, groups of school children committed their
bodies for civil disobedience.
The Children’s March of May 1963, was a symbolic
and awful moment in Civil Rights history. Eugene “Bull” Connor, then the Public
Safety Commissioner of Birmingham, let loose his anger in the form of dogs and
the dousing of the children with powerful fire hoses. Televised nightly on the
news, the callous nature of his violence immediately shook the world including
a statement by President John F. Kennedy saying this “made me sick to my
stomach.”
Dr. King’s statement about the inter-relatedness of all people resonated in the
reactions to images from Birmingham.
 |
Police turned attack dogs and fire hoses on Birmingham city
protesters, many of them children and teens in May of 1963.
The horrific images were captured by news cameras and
covered all over the world. |
Other dates important to the
Civil Rights Movement in 1963 included:
·
May 29-31, after the
threat of protest from Reginald Hawkins, Charlotte business and
government leaders stage biracial eat-ins to desegregate dining in Charlotte’s
leading restaurants
·
June 11: Alabama
Governor George Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door to prevent Vivian Malone
and James Hood, two black students, from enrolling in the University of
Alabama. President Kennedy orders him aside with federal integration orders and
later appears on television condemning segregation and discrimination while
expressing his intent to submit a new Civil Rights Bill.
·
June 12: Medgar
Evers, NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, is murdered outside his home. No
one is convicted until 30 years later.
·
On August 28, 1963, 250,000 people all of them very different in many ways gathered for one
singular cause: equality. Whether it was equality in schools or in the
workplace the overarching theme was the liberation of colored folk from the
fetters of Jim Crow. Dr. King, after his tumultuous year, came to Washington
DC with his “I Have a Dream Speech” prepared. The speech, along with many
others in history, has stood the test of time.
·
September 15 marks one of the most somber events of the Civil Rights Movement when an
average Sunday turned for the worst. A bomb was placed in the foundation of the 16th
Street Baptist Church and the explosion left four little girls dead. Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole
Robertson and Addie Mae Collins were killed on that
infamous day. The church had been a hotbed
of meeting grounds during the 1960’s which was why it was a prime location for
the firebomb.
·
A final major event
of 1963 was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who was then a big
proponent of the passage of a civil rights bill. He was murdered on November 22nd
while in Dallas, Texas, on a presidential campaign visit. After his assassination his plan of passing a
civil rights legislation was continued and finally enacted by Lyndon B. Johnson,
first with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 then by the Voting Rights Act of
1965. The former outlaws the
discrimination in schools and the workplace that ran rampant during the era of
Jim Crow and the latter prohibited the discrimination at the polls.
As we look back at the
events of 1963, they leave room to consider how our issues “then” coincide with
issues “now.”
Are
we living in a post-racial society?
Is
there no more discrimination in schools? At the polls?
Is
“Jim Crow” really gone?
For some artists’ answers to
these questions, come view the exhibit Network
of Mutuality: 50 Years Post-Birmingham among other exhibits, opening today at Levine Museum.
Share your thoughts with us
on Facebook, and on Twitter @LevineMuseum. Follow along with the hashtag #DestinationFreedom
Today there will also be a commemorative march
in Washington, DC honoring the landmark March on Washington which took place on
August 28, 1963.
