In BEARING THE CROSS, David Garrow's Pulitzer prize-winning history of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the strategic importance of using enthusiastic junior/high school black teenagers as "shock troops" in civil rights protests and demonstrations, to gain the victory over Bull Connors and segregationists in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, is especially highlighted. Similarly, the importance of what the author euphemistically calls "...black onlookers" who were not marching, but who were shadowing the marchers along the route, and who were hurling not just brickbats, but real bricks, rocks, and bottles, at dog-wielding, club-swinging, waterhose-spraying police and firemen, is also emphasized. Both groups, black teenagers and pool-hall/nightclub habituees, “onlookers,” were outside the usual arc of SCLC'S adult "nonviolent resistance-trained" participants. But, both groups were vitally important to victory. Herein lies a lesson for our era and for its issues. Infusion and inclusion of "onlookers"-- the deemed too young, and the too violent and the "untrained”--can suppply the means to success in combatting today's foes and woes, in similarly strategic circumstances.
Sunday, March 9, 2014
BEARING THE CROSS
In BEARING THE CROSS, David Garrow's Pulitzer prize-winning history of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the strategic importance of using enthusiastic junior/high school black teenagers as "shock troops" in civil rights protests and demonstrations, to gain the victory over Bull Connors and segregationists in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, is especially highlighted. Similarly, the importance of what the author euphemistically calls "...black onlookers" who were not marching, but who were shadowing the marchers along the route, and who were hurling not just brickbats, but real bricks, rocks, and bottles, at dog-wielding, club-swinging, waterhose-spraying police and firemen, is also emphasized. Both groups, black teenagers and pool-hall/nightclub habituees, “onlookers,” were outside the usual arc of SCLC'S adult "nonviolent resistance-trained" participants. But, both groups were vitally important to victory. Herein lies a lesson for our era and for its issues. Infusion and inclusion of "onlookers"-- the deemed too young, and the too violent and the "untrained”--can suppply the means to success in combatting today's foes and woes, in similarly strategic circumstances.