The Fourth of July: Honoring Civil Rights Leaders

While most people celebrate the Fourth of July with hotdogs, barbeques, and fireworks, few forget the significance of this holiday. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence. Thus, America was free from British tyranny and a democratic nation was born.

But all the rights we enjoy today were not instantly granted to the people. They were fought for with great sacrifice by courageous individuals. Some of these individuals were little more than college students. Let's give credit where credit is due.

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821-1910) became the first woman to attend medical school. Graduating in 1849, Ms. Blackwell became the first woman doctor. His sister, Emily Blackwell, became the second woman doctor. But Ms. Blackwell was not accepted with open arms. She fought against sexual discrimination in housing and in the classroom. Although accepting her into its medical program, the Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York, did not grant her all the instant rights of its male student body. She fought to allow the school to sell her textbooks and then to attend medical demonstrations. She was told that medical demonstrations were "inappropriate" for women. She never gave up fighting for her student rights. She is a true inspiration for students, for women, and advanced medicine in many ways such as hygiene, sanitation standards, and services to poor patients. Ms. Blackwell was eventually commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.

On December 1, 1955, a 42-year old African American woman, Rosa Parks (1916-2005), helped to launch the civil rights movement by refusing to relinquish her public bus seat to a white person. At the time, instead of being heralded for this courageous act, she was arrested. Her crime was violating a racial segregation law. According to the police report, Ms. Parks was cited as "refusing to obey orders of bus driver." A peaceful 381-day bus boycott, aided by Martin Luther King, Jr., was highly successful. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation was unconstitutional. Ms. Parks, now deceased, is known as the Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.

If Ms. Parks was the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, the late Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) became its father. Although Dr. King stated, "There comes a time when people get tired of being kicked around by the brutal feet of oppression," he did not advocate kicking back. Instead, he championed non-violent resistance such as demonstrations and marches. His "I Have A Dream" speech is legendary. Like Ms. Parks, Dr. King also endured arrests and jail time for standing up for the rights of others who were discriminated.

While leading a Freedom March in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. King was arrested. He wasn't even allowed to make a phone call to his wife or have visitors. The police found other petty excuses to arrest him. Dr. King stated: ""I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice." When Dr. King's brother decided to visit him in jail, to allegedly pray for him, he also was arrested.

Other members of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) were also harassed, threatened, arrested, and thrown in jail. Dr. King was also arrested along with approximately 36 students simply for entering a well-known segregated department store in Atlanta and requesting service at the lunch counter. John F. Kennedy intervened in the matter. However, the famous 1960's sit-ins at lunch counters by African American and white students and their sympathizers could not be easily quelled. The Freedom Ride Coordinating Committee was formed with Dr. King at the helm. This group took their sit-ins to the road on public buses and again faced violence by white supremacists and arrest by police.

On or about May 1962, the police went so far as to arrest 959 children for participating in a march against school segregation. Police went one step further in their abuse and barricaded a church where student protesters had gathered, using fire hoses and police dogs against them. Was there no end to the violence used against those who wished to exercise their constitutional rights to redress grievances through participation and free speech?

Dr. King risked his life for his beliefs. His home was bombed twice and he received numerous death threats verbally and in writing. Eventually, he was assassinated in January 1968 as a means to silence him and his efforts to end police brutality, intolerable school conditions, unequal pay, discrimination, and segregation . However, the Civil Rights Movement continues to this day. Here's an excerpt from Dr. King's March 25, 1965 speech entitled "Our God is Marching On!" in Montgomery, Alabama:

Somebody’s asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody’s asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody’s asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak, speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir) I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir) ... How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Yes, sir)

Mario Savio (1942-1996), a University of California Berkeley student, is best known as the founder of the Free Speech Movement (FSM). The FSM became the springboard for future student protests on campuses across the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s. The arrest by campus police of student Jack Weinberg led to widespread student protests and sit-ins that almost completely shut down the operations of the school. On December 3, 1964, at the Berkeley administration building, Sproul Hall, approximately 800 students were arrested for participating in the sit-in. Here's an excerpt from Mr. Savio's now famous speech:

We have an autocracy which runs this university. ... There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the Center for Individual Rights, Students for Academic Freedom, and the California First Amendment Coalition all continue the fight for our student rights and civil rights. Rights that continue to be grossly violated on our college campuses include those under the California Public Records Act, the Ralph M. Brown Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the free speech clauses of the First Amendment. Several of these organizations have successfully litigated cases in favor of students as well as working with the media to expose violations for public scrutiny.

At Santa Monica College, students such as Jeff Higley, Nehasi Lee, Lindsay Berkovitz, Dustin Curran, and myself have worked tirelessly over the last year to fight for the rights of students and to stand up against violations in peaceful non-violent ways such as exercising our rights to free speech and free press. As our student rights forefounders of the 1960s have realized, our struggles have been met with police intimidation and interrogation, falsified campus police incident reports, wrongful disciplinary measures, discrimination, denial of equal educational access, threats, coercion, harassment, blackmail, and extortion. However, as has previously been shown, even one single student can make a difference for all of us. With that in mind, I will not give up fighting for our rights to freedom of speech and access to information that is vital to our very existence as an educational institution that is allegedly a "marketplace of ideas" belonging to the faculty, the students, and the taxpayers and not to the tyrannical administration who continues to rule with an iron-clad fist in conscious disregard of our rights.

Happy Fourth of July!

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP

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