Fighting Back
It took a lot of strength, courage and fortitude to challenge Jim Crow customs and laws. The changes occurred over a hundred-year period and battles are still being waged today for equal rights and equal opportunity. Many individuals and organizations have fought long and hard to run Jim Crow out of America. Using the anthology, Let Nobody Turn Us Around, edited by Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, I was able to read the narratives of many of these important people. People such as the early African-American leader W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), writer, scholar, and co-founder of NAACP and Fredrick Douglass (1818-1885), the writer, speaker, and civil rights leader; Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), the teacher and journalist, who so courageously fought for anti-lynching laws and co-founded the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896; Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), who was the most powerful African-American politician from the end of Reconstruction until the Civil Rights movement. 51
There were many other powerful African American leaders. A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) was the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids and organized the 1941 March on Washington Movement, which lead to the Fair Employment Practices Committee. He went on to become the Vice President of the AFL-CIO. Another strong leader was educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955). A major presence in the National Association of Colored Women, Bethune served as the director the Negro Division of the National Youth Administration in Franklin Roosevelt's administration. 52
From 1954 to 1975 the Civil Rights Movement strengthened and many other brave individuals began to step forward. People like civil rights activists Bayard Rustin, Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and let us not forget one very brave little girl, Ruby Bridges. These are the people who were fighting back and taking a stand for equality and freedom for African Americans. These courageous people will serve as an example for my students in this unit. 53
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