Blog 4

Freedom Ride into the Future

In 1961 the Freedom Riders began there long journey toward the end of segregation. The freedom ride was about those who tried to creatively challenged segregation in the American South. Many Southern American whites were thought to be afraid of change at the time. Some even thought that integration would bring an end to the civilized world. This was a world in which whites held most positions of stature and where Blacks were seen as and often referred to as lesser beings. Blacks commonly help labor and service positions.  Integration was not welcomed in the Deep South. The Congress of Racial Equality (Core) hoped to help with the struggle of integration in the Southern America. In his struggle for recognition of the Core organization, James Farmer, hoped that the freedom riders would provide publicity, credibility and elevation for Core. Many within the organization thought the freedom ride was a bad idea and that it might even hurt or set back the struggle for equality.

Slavery was not something left far in the distant past for Blacks in America.  After the passengers of the freedom ride were terrorized and seriously beaten in Alabama, word quickly spread throughout the world about what was happening in America. The rest of the world expressed shock that such acts were permitted in a nation so civilized and powerful and cast shame at America.  Although they were present, Whites were not initially included in the news reports as accompanying blacks on this crusade. The Supreme Court, the National Guard and even President Kennedy could not force southern states to comply with the laws of the Nation.  The civil war was also still fresh in the minds of many, and after fighting in another great war, many Whites were looking for other ways to direct their anger and hostility. Though more often misguided than not, lynching’s were still carried out, although not quite as commonly as had once been the case, nor as blatantly at this time in United States. However, the threat still existed and some would say that the mobs faced by the Freedom Riders were no less uncivilized.

New policies went into effect on November 1, 1961, six years after the ruling in Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. After the new ICC rule took effect, passengers were permitted to sit wherever they pleased on interstate buses and trains; white’s only and colored signs were removed from the terminals. Racially segregated drinking fountains, toilets, and waiting rooms serving interstate customers were consolidated and the lunch counters began serving all customers, regardless of race, albeit with some trepidation.

The widespread violence motivated by the Freedom Rides sent shock waves through American society. People worried that the Rides were evoking widespread social disorder and racial divergence, an opinion supported and strengthened in many communities by the press. The press in white communities condemned the direct action approach that CORE was taking, while some of the national press negatively portrayed the Riders as provoking unrest.

At the same time, the Freedom Rides established great credibility with blacks and whites throughout the United States and inspired many persons to engage in direct action for civil rights. Possibly most significantly, the actions of the Freedom Riders from the North, who faced danger on behalf of southern blacks, impressed and inspired the many blacks living in rural areas throughout the South. They formed the backbone of the wider civil rights movement, who engaged in voter registration and other activities. Southern blacks generally organized around their churches, the center of their communities and a base of moral strength.

The Freedom Riders helped inspire participation in other subsequent civil rights campaigns, including voter registration throughout the South, freedom schools, and the black power movement. At the time, most blacks in southern states had been unable to register to vote, due to constitutions, laws and practices that had effectively disfranchised most of them since the turn of the twentieth century. For instance, white administrators supervised reading comprehension and literacy tests that highly educated blacks could not pass.

It is important to remember that from 1882-1968, 4,743 lynching’s occurred in the United States.  Of these people that were lynched 3,446 were black.  The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched.  These numbers seem large, but it is known that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded.  Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched.  That is only 27.3%.  Many of the whites lynched were lynched for helping the black or being anti lynching and some even for domestic crimes. (Chesnutt Digital Archive, 1999) There is very little record of other lynching’s which occurred within the United States (U.S.) during this time period, although others did occur.

The lynching of persons of Mexican origin or descent has been largely overlooked by historians of American mob violence. This essay offers the first attempt to construct a systematic set of data on the subject. The authors contend that between 1848 and 1928, mobs lynched at least 597 Mexicans. Traditional interpretations of western violence cannot account for this phenomenon. The actual causes of mob violence against Mexicans were several-fold: race and the legacy of Anglo American expansion, economic competition, and diplomatic tensions between Mexico and the United States. Throughout this era, Mexicans formulated numerous means of resistance against Anglo mobs. These included armed self-defense, public protest, the establishment of mutual defense organizations, and appeals for aid to the Mexican government. (William D. Carrigan, Clive Webb, 2003)

The threat of the U.S. entering another war lingered as the conflict/war in Vietnam seemed to heighten. Tensions were high in the U.S. as the entire country seemed to be protesting and or struggling for the recognition and acknowledgement of their own personal causes. The 1960’s were a time of instability for a nation that seemed to be at war with itself. Many seemed to lose hope on November 22, 1963 after the assassination of then President John F. Kennedy.

1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support or opposition to the civil rights movement, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values. (PBS)

From roughly 1964 to 1974, Cal captured the imagination of the United States in a way that happens once a lifetime, if that. Though we, for convenience's sake, group "the 60s" together, it was really two separate ideas and spirits manifesting themselves, related only in time and place.

The first of these sorts of protests, that of 1964, is now known as the "Free Speech Movement." University of California President Clark Kerr long insisted that the University wouldn't interfere with student's lives off campus, but, by the same token, that students must keep their political activities off campus. In the fall term of '64, the administration asks students to stop their political activities on the "Bancroft Strip," in front of Sproul Plaza. Some students defy it and then, on September 30th, organize a 10-hour sit-in in Sproul Hall. A few days later, however, a bigger and more significant demonstration takes place after non-student Jack Weinberg is arrested for distributing political literature on campus. Mario Savio emerges as the student leader when he jumps on top of the police car, in Sproul Plaza, in which Weinberg is sitting (and the students sitting around the car won't let drive away). 

This moment is the most perfect microcosm of the Free Speech movement. After Savio jumped on the police car, the students, almost 10,000 of them, sitting around the car, passed around a collection to pay for the repair of the police car. These Cal students, in other words, wanted to prove above everything that they are good Americans, and fighting for these liberties only as part of their duty as citizens.

Vietnam quickly became a reality for Americans. As the fighting between the Viet Cong and the South Vietnamese continued, the U.S. continued to send additional advisers to South Vietnam. When the North Vietnamese fired directly upon two U.S. ships in international waters on August 2 and 4, 1964 (known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident), Congress responded with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. This resolution gave the President the authority to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. President Lyndon Johnson used that authority to order the first U.S. ground troops to Vietnam in March 1965.

President Johnson's goal for U.S. involvement in Vietnam was not for the U.S. to win the war, but for U.S. troops to bolster South Vietnam's defenses until South Vietnam could take over. By entering the Vietnam War without a goal to win, Johnson set the stage for future public and troop disappointment when the U.S. found themselves in a stalemate with the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.

From 1965 to 1969, the U.S. was involved in a limited war in Vietnam. Although there were aerial bombings of the North, President Johnson wanted the fighting to be limited to South Vietnam. By limiting the fighting parameters, the U.S. forces would not conduct a serious ground assault into the North to attack the communists directly nor would there be any strong effort to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail (the Viet Cong's supply path that ran through Laos and Cambodia). (Jennifer Rosenberg)

U.S. troops fought a jungle war, mostly against the well-supplied Viet Cong. The Viet Cong would attack in ambushes, set up booby traps, and escape through a complex network of underground tunnels. For U.S. forces, even just finding their enemy proved difficult. Since Viet Cong hid in the dense brush, U.S. forces would drop Agent Orange or napalm bombs which cleared an area by causing the leaves to drop off or to burn away. In every village, U.S. troops had difficulty determining which, if any, villagers were the enemy since even women and children could build booby traps or help house and feed the Viet Cong. U.S. soldiers commonly became frustrated with the fighting conditions in Vietnam. Many suffered from low morale, became angry, and some used drugs.

The Free Speech Movement had changed character. No longer were young, idealistic citizens fighting for their rights, but the demonstrations turned into parties. It was fun, it was cool, it was now the time of Haight-Ashbury and the hippies and drugs and rock-and-roll. Idealism -- how it all began -- was quickly forgotten when the first cast of characters were graduated. The student protests still had political purposes, of course -- and powerful ones, at that -- but the movement became increasingly radicalized.

We see the first glimpse of this new character in 1965 with the so-called "Filthy Speech Movement," when nine people shouted some dirty words, nearly toppling University's administration. But then, the Vietnam War came to Cal's attention. With the Vietnam War demonstrations, the character of the protests had changed, just one manifestation of the new spirit of these later protests. The nonviolent, peaceful spirit of student activism of 1964 had given way to violent and confrontational politics. The students were now looking for riots. Marches into Oakland ended in riots. (The Bancroft Library)

From here, the demonstrations only get more violent. In 1967, the police have to use, extensively, Chemical Mace to control the crowds which, though increasing in size, include fewer and fewer Cal students and more outsiders attracted to Berkeley looking for a good time. Campus buildings begin to get firebombed over ROTC crisis and soon the Free Huey movement (fighting for Huey P. Newton, arrested for shooting a police officer) begins. By 1969, students are demonstrating -- and still being arrested by the hundreds -- demanding the creation of a "Third World College." 

On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese surprised both the U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese by orchestrating a coordinated assault with the Viet Cong to attack about a hundred South Vietnamese cities and towns. Although the U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese army were able to repel the assault known as the Tet Offensive, this attack proved to Americans that the enemy was stronger and better organized than they had been led to believe. The Tet Offensive was a turning point in the war because President Johnson, faced now with an unhappy American public and bad news from his military leaders in Vietnam, decided to no longer escalate the war.

In 1969, Richard Nixon became the new U.S. President and he had his own plan to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam. President Nixon outlined a plan called Vietnamization, which was a process to remove U.S. troops from Vietnam while handing back the fighting to the South Vietnamese. The withdrawal of U.S. troops began in July 1969. To bring a faster end to hostilities, President Nixon also expanded the war into other countries, such as Laos and Cambodia -- a move that created thousands of protests, especially on college campuses, back in America. To work toward peace, new peace talks began in Paris on January 25, 1969.

When the U.S. had withdrawn most of its troops from Vietnam, the North Vietnamese staged another massive assault, called the Easter Offensive (also called the Spring Offensive), on March 30, 1972. North Vietnamese troops crossed over the demilitarized zone (DMZ) at the 17th parallel and invaded South Vietnam. The remaining U.S. forces and the South Vietnamese army fought back. (Jennifer Rosenberg)

After the U.S. had withdrawn all its troops, the fighting continued in Vietnam. In early 1975, North Vietnam made another big push south which toppled the South Vietnamese government. South Vietnam officially surrendered to communist North Vietnam on April 30, 1975. On July 2, 1976, Vietnam was reunited as a communist country, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. 

Vietnam War: By Jennifer Rosenberg

The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928

William D. Carrigan, Clive Webb

John Lewis, Walking with the Wind, A Memoir of the Movement (1998).

Raymond Arsenault, Full Version: Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Oxford University Press, 2006).

Raymond Arsenault, Abridged Version: 'Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice' (Oxford University Press, 2011)

http://www.harvard-magazine.com/nd96/right.lynch.html 

http://ernie.bgsu.edu/~wgrant/1890's/lynching/lynchiing.html 

http://www.abc.net.au/compass/series/1997/lynching.htm 

http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/CalHistory/60s.html

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/1964/player/