How We Should Re-Evaluate the Civil Rights Movement

Charles M. Payne presents several revisionist arguments regarding how we should change our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in his essay "The View from the Trenches." The first argument he makes is that we need become aware of the other figures who impacted the Civil Rights Movement because if we continue to view the movement with a narrow lens we will continue to overlook the complexity of it and ultimately fail to see the whole picture of what exactly happened (Payne, 198). Payne notes that there were so many different people that came from different backgrounds to fight for a variety of aspects of the Civil Rights Movement (Payne, 198-199) and discusses many of the lesser-known figures and their contributions and philosophies regarding the Civil Rights Movement, including Septima Clark and A. Philip Randolph. Clark actively believed that individual participation and activism was the key to democracy and she even developed a program to help teach Black adults how to read and write and then register to vote so that they could participate in elections (Payne, 194-195).

Randolph became the president of the Black union the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and "his style was to threaten, to embarrass, and to put the masses to the street" in order to accomplish his agenda for change. He threatened President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a mass protest in Washington D.C. unless he tackled the major issue of discrimination of Blacks in World War II defense industries, which Roosevelt did oblige. Additionally, Randolph specifically believed that in order for Blacks to gain the civil rights they desired, they had to take actions into their own hands and not call upon Whites to be a part of their cause or their protests (Payne, 197).

Payne argues that if we neglect to see these other activists, especially if their philosophies or methods of action were different than those we normally associate with the movement, we are only hiding history and that there needs to be an emphasis on local events and individual actions (Payne, 199). He also reasons that this further expands our understanding of the different motivating factors for the movement and the different leaders, including women and the well-educated, who were involved in the cause (Payne, 200). Consequently, Payne makes the very important argument regarding Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy in the movement: "In some top-down treatments, of course, King comes to be almost equated with the movement…In fact, what we see in Montgomery was that King was the inheritor of momentum that other people established, a pattern that was to be repeated often over the next several years" (Payne, 200).

Aside from using the stage that other activists helped create, King's message of peace and brotherhood was not permanent in his vision. Payne states that our general historic understanding that King's message was focused solely on peace and brotherhood is also narrowly focused and disregards King evolving his message to become more pessimistic in the ability of America to achieve equality. Similarly, King was unable to avoid and even refused to condemn the growing Black power movement and instead used his platform to attempt to create a compromise between the two separate schools of thought, but namely to make the Black power movement seem less threatening to the mainstream (Payne, 200). King was also not unconditionally loved throughout his time as the face of the Civil Rights Movement. He made certain statements that cost him his favor with both the media and the White House, despite being in harmony with his specific position, which included his open opposition to the Vietnam War when it was still widely supported in the country (Payne, 201).

Payne closes his essay by saying that we need to change our historical understanding of the Civil Rights Movement because the way we look at it now, similar to how we view King's legacy, is such to "make us feel good but that also obscures much of what the movement was trying to say" (Payne, 202). We cannot, as Payne argues, keep our narrow perspective and must expand our understanding of the events, even if that causes the positive light to fade on the movement. We have to see the struggle, including conflicts over ideologies on how to accomplish civil rights and the many lives lost fighting for the cause. By viewing it as only positive, we fail to see the real conditions and motivations of the movement and consequently the real lessons and questions, both good and bad, that were a result of the struggle that was the Civil Rights Movement (Payne, 202).

Vincent Gordon Harding's essay "King as Disturber of the Peace" also seeks to change our historical understanding of King and his vision for equality and a better society. One of Harding's most important statements is that by simply remembering King as a great leader of the Civil Rights Movement and failing to recognize what his exact vision was and what was left to accomplish as part of his vision does more harm than good. This powerful statement from Harding is perfectly summed up in a quote from Black poet Carl Wendell Hines, who says "it is easier to build monuments than to make a better world" (Harding, 266). He asserts that our general understanding of King has been altered and shaped by the mainstream and through this we are forgetting King's messages that have the ability to shape and better our world today. Harding argues that we need to revise our understanding of King's visions by looking at the statements he made and the activist events that occurred despite their challenges to the "comfortable images."

King was influenced by Malcolm X's commitment and compassion to the urban black community and believed that extending his vision and the movement to these people was key to addressing the specific racial problems that affected them. Because of this, in 1966 King left the South and headed north to Chicago, an event that made him commit to helping fight poverty and give a voice to the poor (Harding, 267). Harding also states that King often faced pressure the Black Power movement, which criticized his methods of nonviolence and involving Whites in the movement, and refused to disregard the statements of those involved in the movement: "From then on the issues of black self-love, of black and white power, and the need to develop a more militant form of nonviolence that could challenge and enlist the rising rage of urban black youth were never far from King's consciousness" (Harding, 268).

King's commitment to the fight against poverty and refusal to reject the Black Power movement, as Harding argues, are what often makes it difficult for mainstream America overcome its amnesia. Harding also offers the revisionist argument that we need to alter our historic understanding to include King's increased criticism of mainstream American society and values, which led to him adopting more radical criticisms and views on the country's economic system that excluded and harmed the poor, as well as criticizing the Vietnam War. Additionally, Harding notes that King was not just committed to giving these people a voice, "he was committed to mobilizing and organizing them for self-liberating action" (Harding, 268).

Most importantly, Harding argues that we must change our historical understanding of King as a crusader for black equality to remember that he had a vision beyond his "I Have a Dream" speech, specifically that he saw the Civil Rights Movement as the path to correct the social and systematic problems in America: "the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together" (Harding, 269). Harding closes his essay with calling upon us to remember and reflect on the less-praised aspects of King's vision towards creating a better society and says, "Clearly we serve our scholarship and our citizenship most faithfully when we move ourselves and others beyond amnesia towards encounters with the jagged leading edges of King's prophetic vision" (Harding, 270). Harding emphasizes that by changing our historic understanding in these several different ways, we can see where King's vision of change applies to the current problems we face in America today and be conscious of these problems instead of ignoring them by masking and manipulating the image of King.

In analyzing Payne's and Harding's arguments against one another, it is clear that there are points of overlap and difference. Harding certainly gives much more credit to King than Payne does. Throughout his essay, Payne comments on the other lesser-known individuals and their important contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and argues that King used the momentum that many of these people had built in order to become the movement's voice. Harding focuses only on King's contributions. Despite these differences in content, both authors agree that King adopted more radical views and refused to disregard the Black Power movement or downplay his views on the war in Vietnam, which created a tension between him and mainstream white America. Both authors also agree that the mainstream's criticism of King and this aspect of his vision and the tension it created are essential in revising our historic understanding and overcoming the "amnesia" created through the manipulation of his legacy since this has greatly obscured the real lessons and real problems raised, especially those still in existence today, by King and the Civil Rights Movement.

"A Senate Committee Reports on the FBI's Campaign Against Martin Luther King, 1963-1968 (1976)," which details the measures the FBI took to try and sabotage King and lessen his support, offers additional insight that helps support some of the arguments presented by both Payne and Harding. The document does support the argument Harding makes regarding King's shift in a vision of black equality to that of reforming the American way of life and value system. Harding contends that the white mainstream objected to King's shift in views, including failing to reject the militant Black Power movement, and he was viewed as being more radical and a threat to the mainstream (Harding, 268). Evidently, the FBI saw his message and large amount of support as a dangerous combination that could threaten the American systematic and economic order and the White House agenda, including the Vietnam War.

In addition, it is possible the FBI saw King's vision, especially of that presented by Harding, as a threat to democracy in general. In the midst of the Cold War and the lingering memories of McCarthyism, was the FBI all too familiar with the end result of a lower-class uprising, one that was being led by a man who called for "a reconstruction of the entire society, a revolution of values"? (Harding, 269). The FBI also attempted to defile King's legacy even after his death (188), which provides some supports Harding's argument that the mainstream has manipulated King's legacy to only focus on certain aspects and hide others. The FBI may have feared that King's message could have evoked radical change further down the road and defiling his image could suppress that change.

The document also supports Payne's arguments presented in his essay. Payne argues that the Civil Rights Movement is viewed in too narrow of a scope and in the fact that the FBI focused so much of its efforts on King shows just how narrow that scope was at the time if the FBI believed the Civil Rights Movement could have been suppressed by bringing down only one man. Despite the fact that King became a voice for the movement, the FBI in believing it could bring down the movement through King was ignorant, especially since, as Payne argues, there were so many more lesser-known people fighting and if the FBI was able to bring down King, it would not extinguish the foundations and motivations for the movement.

Sources:

Harding, Vincent. "King as a Disturber of the Peace."

Payne, Charles. "A View from the Trenches."

"A Senate Committee Reports on the FBI's Campaign Against Martin Luther King, 1963-1968 (1976)." Major Problems in American History Since 1945.