Historical Significance and the 1960s

Learning Objectives

  • Analyze the historical significance of key events during the civil rights movement

When we consider who judges historical significance, it is customarily those who live well after the event that took place. Yet this is not always the case. At times, participants in the event itself will attempt to make a case for its historical significance. In this manner, they speak not just to their contemporaries, but to posterity, or future generations who will judge their actions.

Jennifer Goodman of St. Catherine’s College in Oxford describes this phenomenon eloquently. She writes, “The individual, standing Janus-like between a lived but disappearing past, and a future that retreats as he approaches it, attempts nonetheless to fix a version of that past (whether his own, or that of another) for those to come, whose interpretations he can only guess at.”[1]

Analyzing Sources and Significance

Now, let’s look at some of the primary sources tied to this module and explore how their authors understood the significance of these events while they were happening. We will look at two primary source documents, which are closely related to the civil rights movement. One is Lyndon Johnson’s speech before Congress, encouraging the body to vote for the comprehensive protection of voting rights. The other is an oral history conducted with John Lewis, a student leader in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In reading these sources, we can begin to understand how those who take part in history understand the significance of their actions.

Source 1: Lyndon Johnson on Voting Rights and the American Promise (1965)

On March 15, 1965, Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to push for the Voting Rights Act. In his speech, Johnson not only advocated policy, but he also borrowed the language of the civil rights movement and tied the movement to American history.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress:

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy.

…

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.

There, long-suffering men and women peacefully protested the denial of their rights as Americans. Many were brutally assaulted. One good man, a man of God, was killed.

There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma. There is no cause for self-satisfaction in the long denial of equal rights of millions of Americans. But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight.

For the cries of pain and the hymns and protests of oppressed people have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this great Government–the Government of the greatest Nation on earth.

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man.

In our time we have come to live with moments of great crisis. Our lives have been marked with debate about great issues; issues of war and peace, issues of prosperity and depression. But rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, our welfare or our security, but rather to the values and the purposes and the meaning of our beloved Nation.

The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue. And should we defeat every enemy, should we double our wealth and conquer the stars, and still be unequal to this issue, then we will have failed as a people and as a nation.

…

This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: “All men are created equal”—“government by consent of the governed”—“give me liberty or give me death.” Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories. In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries, and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty, risking their lives.

Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man’s possessions; it cannot be found in his power, or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others. It says that he shall share in freedom, he shall choose his leaders, educate his children, and provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

To apply any other test–to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race, his religion or the place of his birth–is not only to do injustice, it is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

…

To those who seek to avoid action by their National Government in their own communities; who want to and who seek to maintain purely local control over elections, the answer is simple:

Open your polling places to all your people.

Allow men and women to register and vote whatever the color of their skin.

Extend the rights of citizenship to every citizen of this land.

…

So I ask you to join me in working long hours–nights and weekends, if necessary–to pass this bill. And I don’t make that request lightly. For from the window where I sit with the problems of our country I recognize that outside this chamber is the outraged conscience of a nation, the grave concern of many nations, and the harsh judgment of history on our acts.

But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

…

My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English, and I couldn’t speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast, hungry. They knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon, after the classes were finished, wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead.

Somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child.

I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and to help people like them all over this country.

But now I do have that chance—and I’ll let you in on a secret—I mean to use it. And I hope that you will use it with me.

…

[Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. Volume I, entry 107 (Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), 281-287. Available online via LBJ Library (http://www.lbjlibrary.org/lyndon-baines-johnson/speeches-films/president-johnsons-special-message-to-the-congress-the-american-promise).]

Try It

First, let’s reflect on this document.

The Voting Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was eventually signed into law by President Johnson on August 6, 1965. It was designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and sought to secure the right to vote for racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of federal civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country. It is also “one of the most far-reaching pieces of civil rights legislation in U.S. history.”[2]

The Act contains numerous provisions that regulate elections. For example, section 2 is a general provision that prohibits state and local government from imposing any voting rule that “results in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color” or membership in a language minority group. Other general provisions specifically outlaw literacy tests and similar devices that were historically used to disenfranchise racial minorities. The act also contains “special provisions” that apply to only certain jurisdictions that require permission from the course before changing certain things or require some districts to provide bilingual ballots.

Research shows that the Act had successfully and massively increased voter turnout and voter registrations, in particular among Black Americans. The Act has also been linked to concrete outcomes, such as greater public goods provision (such as public education) for areas with higher Black population shares, and more members of Congress who vote for civil rights-related legislation.[3]

Try It

In light of what you’ve ready about the Voting Rights Act and Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech about it, let’s consider its significance. According to the 5Rs, how would you rate the significance of the Voting Rights Act?

  1. The event was remarkable and newsworthy.     /5
  2. The event has been remembered.     /5
  3. The event is revealing. __/5
  4. The event is resonant and still connects to the experiences, beliefs, or situations that we experience today.     /5
  5. The event resulted in change. __/5

Summary paragraph:

There are no precise right answers to this exercise, but you can jot down your thoughts in the space below and compare with the possible response.

The Selma March

Protestors and policeman at Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Figure 1. Protestors are pushed back by police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, the first attempt to march from Selma towards Montgomery.

Now, let’s try this activity again, this time a different vantage point within the civil rights struggle, that of someone who marched and suffered violent opposition to secure Voting Rights (and served in Congress many years later), John R. Lewis. In this document, Lewis describes his experiences with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and speaks to the significance of the Selma March, which happened earlier in 1965. First, some background.

After the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the civil rights movement maintained pressure on President Johnson and Congress with its voting rights campaign. In 1965, the SCLC launched its campaign in Selma, Alabama, in a county where only 300 of 15,000 Black Americans of voting age had been allowed to register. After weeks of demonstrations at the county courthouse, on March 7, 1965, Hosea Williams of the SCLC and John Lewis of SNCC led 600 marchers across the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, spanning the Alabama River. They planned to continue the 54 miles onto the state capitol in Montgomery to present their grievances. Instead, Alabama state police and a mounted sheriff’s posse charged the peaceful demonstrators, beating them to the ground with clubs, cattle prods, and whips. Scores of marchers, including Lewis, were hospitalized, and television footage of the assault outraged much of the nation. Civil rights activist Amelia Boynton Robinson was beaten unconscious, and the media publicized worldwide a picture of her lying wounded on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The event became known as Bloody Sunday.

Link to Learning

Watch this video clip to hear John Lewis talk about the violence of Bloody Sunday in his own words.

The second march took place March 9. Troopers, police, and marchers confronted each other at the county end of the bridge, but when the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, King led the marchers back to the church. He was obeying a federal injunction while seeking protection from federal court for the march. That night, a White group beat and murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to march with the second group. Many other clergy and sympathizers from across the country also gathered for the second march.

The violence of “Bloody Sunday” and Reeb’s murder resulted in a national outcry and some acts of civil disobedience, targeting both the Alabama and federal governments. The protesters demanded protection for the Selma marchers and a new federal voting rights law to enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment. President Lyndon Johnson, whose administration had been working on a voting rights law, held a historic, nationally televised joint session of Congress on March 15 to ask for the bill’s introduction and passage (the document you read above).

With Governor Wallace refusing to protect the marchers, President Johnson committed to do so. The third march started on March 21. Protected by 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under federal command, and many FBI agents and federal marshals, the marchers averaged 10 miles (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the “Jefferson Davis Highway”. The marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24 and at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. With thousands having joined the campaign, 25,000 people entered the capital city that day in support of voting rights.

Edmund Pettus Bridge photograph with people holding hands walking across the bridge, including Presidents Obama and Bush.

Figure 2. On the 50th anniversary of the Selma March in 2015, President Obama and other leaders march across the Edmund Pettus bridge. You can see Obama holding hands with John Lewis and Amelia Boynton Robinson (in the wheelchair at age 103) in the center, and President George Bush to the right.

Source 2: John Lewis and the SNCC

Below is an excerpt from John Lewis as he describes his time as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the passage, he supports the significance of the Selma March in 1965.

 

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How would you describe the major activities of SNCC, especially when you were present?

JOHN LEWIS: The major effort of SNCC during the period of 1963 to the early part of 1966 are probably the most significant effort, I think, was probably the Mississippi summer project of 1964. and the Selma effort. You see, SNCC first went into Selma, for example, in 1962. The first SNCC organizer went into Selma with just trying to make some contacts based on a limited amount of research. In 1962, only 2.1% of the black people in Selma were registered to vote…So, SNCC people working in Selma in 1962 and in Mississippi and also in Albany and southwest Georgia, did receive some sort of funding from Voter Education to try to help organize local voter registration…

That’s when we started this whole idea of one man, one vote is the African cry; it should be ours too. It must be ours. And that became a slogan of SNCC. It was on our literature on our letter-head, on posters, on everything. And in late September of ’63, after the bombing in Birmingham of the church—September 16th was the day of the bombing—some of us went straight from the funeral of the four girls in Birmingham to Selma where we started organizing the whole push around the right to vote. On October 18th, 1963 we had one of the first, what we call “Freedom Day”, in Selma. For more than eight hundred Black people stood in line all day at the County Court House to register to vote. By the end of the day only five people had passed through that line…

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: When was the confrontation in Selma?

JOHN LEWIS: March 7th, 1965. We had what had been a series of . . . .

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You said that the voting rights act resulted directly from this?

JOHN LEWIS: If there is any single event that gave birth to the Voter Rights Act, it was the Selma effort. March 7th was just sort of a combination of things. We had had a series of protests, organizing efforts in Selma in late ’63 and some in ’64 and ’65. I will never forget when there was some attempt on the part of SNCC as an organization not to bring SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led by Dr. King] in. But the local people-Mrs. Boynton head of Dallas County Voters’ League, Rev. Frederick Reid, who is now a member of the Selma City Council-these two emerging local leaders of Selma wanted to bring Dr. King in. Some of the people in SNCC felt that Martin King shouldn’t come into Sema and some of us felt that he should. I was one of the ones that felt that he should, that he would bring some attention to the problem and help dramatize the problem.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What was the opposition’s feeling?

JOHN LEWIS: Well, some people felt that, you know, SNCC had been there since 1962 working and organizing and we have a vital local movement going and why, at this, should an organization like SCLC come in. Some people felt that SCLC operated on one level and sort of a crisis oriented and a mass effort for a particular day or a particular week to dramatize and then they were gone. People in SNCC felt that you stay there and you work and you organize and you bring the community along. That you don’t go in and do for the community but you bring the community to a point where it can do for itself. The people did make a decision to invite SCLC in and they came and joined in. And they started a series of dramatic demonstrations which culminated in the March 7th…

In the meantime, it was not just a demonstration going on in the city of Selma. There were many SNCC people and SCLC people working out in the rural part of the country organizing a community group trying to get people to come down to the Court House to register. After the violence in Selma, and the violence in Perry County and Merrian, Alabama where Jackson was shot, some people felt that we had to march on Montgomery. Made a decision to march. Some people opposed the march and some people supported it. We decided to march on March 7th, ’65, but when I look back I’m really not sure on that particular day when a group of us about six hundred of us decided to march, whether we were literally prepared to march from Selma to Montgomery that day. Because we hadn’t really made any plans as to where to stop along the way. We did have bags and knapsacks and that type of thing, but we hadn’t made any plans to have food and necessary supplies along the way. We gathered together at Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church that Sunday afternoon about two o’clock. Dr. King for some reason didn’t come to Selma that day. Andy Young, Hosea Williams, James Bevel from SCLC-they had to draw to find out what person from their organization would lead the march. I was leading the march from SNCC and Hosea represented SCLC, and we started marching. After we crossed the bridge, Governor Wallace in the meantime warned us that the march would not be allowed. But we insisted that we had to the right to march. We crossed the bridge and we met a sea of State Troopers. One of the State Troopers identified himself as Major Cloud and said on the bullhorn, “This is an unlawful march and it will not be allowed to continue. I give you three minutes to disperse.” We waited the three minutes and just stood and when the three minutes were up he told the Troopers to advance and they had the helmets and the gas masks on and the bull whips and clubs. And they came in.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How did you feel at that moment when you saw them coming?

JOHN LEWIS: I felt frightened. I felt that we had to stay there. I felt that we had to stand there. There was something that was said and you couldn’t turn back. We had to stay there and I didn’t believe that the Troopers would do what they did, for some strange reason, but I felt that we had to stay there. And we stayed there. I remember, we were beaten.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You got a fractured skull in that?

JOHN LEWIS: Yes, I did.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Was that a single blow from a Trooper?

JOHN LEWIS: A single blow apparently from a club, I guess, of a Trooper, but I felt like when that whole thing from the gas that this is really the end. I guess the greatest concern was also for the people. Most of the march was made of young teen-agers and women. A lot of the people had just left the church and came straight to Brown Chapel A. M. E. Church. It was a frightening moment, really terrifying.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Was that the most frightening moment you have ever had?

JOHN LEWIS: Yes, without question. I think we were literally lucky, all of us, for no one to be seriously hurt or killed. You know, Sherrif Clark had a posse that he had organized. He had people with bull whips, with ropes running through the marchers on horses beating people. But people got together and I think that helped to electrify the black community in Selma and the whole area of Alabama. It had a tremendous impact on the country. People couldn’t believe that that could happen. And the response of people, particularly people who had supported SNCC and SCLC all across the country . . . A series of demonstrations took place, I think, by that Tuesday by friends of SNCC in different cities. There were about eighty sympathy marchers. Protests had been organized; some people slipped into the Justice Department in Washington. The year that President Johnson served, his daughter couldn’t sleep because people had been singing, “We shall overcome” all around the White House.[4]

Try It

Activity

How would you, in your own words, define the significance of the civil rights movement? Explain your answer by relying on either the NAME mnemonic (novelty, applicability, memory, effect), or the 5 Rs (remarkable, remembered, revealing, resonant, or resulting in change). Be as specific and provide as many details as possible.

Pick another event from the 1960s and argue its historical significance in a similar manner.

Just as President Johnson and Mr. Lewis have their own contexts informing their sense of historical significance, so do you! Consider where you are– the time and the circumstance that you live in. How do you think that context may have influenced your understanding of the historical significance of the civil rights movement?

Remember, historical significance isn’t always clear cut. It can be made by participants in a historical event; it can also be determined by historians or learners like yourself many years later. It is an ongoing conversation among those who make and those who study history. It can–and should–change over time, and respond to the questions we here today can ask of the past. As such, historical significance is not something that is learned or memorized, but is argued, revised, and edited over time.

  1. Jessica Goodman (2018) Introduction: What, Where, Who is Posterity?, Early Modern French Studies, 40:1, 2-10, DOI: 10.1080/20563035.2018.1473065 ↵
  2. "Voting Rights Act of 1965". History.com. November 9, 2009. Archived from the original on January 21, 2021. Retrieved January 24, 2021. ↵
  3. Schuit, Sophie; Rogowski, Jon C. (December 1, 2016). "Race, Representation, and the Voting Rights Act". American Journal of Political Science. 61 (3): 513–526. doi:10.1111/ajps.12284. ISSN 1540-5907 ↵
  4. Oral History Interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973. Interview A-0073. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ↵