Keep Your Eyes On What Prize?

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” was one of the leading anthems of the civil rights movement. An article in the Washington Post today on the 40th anniversary commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington demonstrates the degree to which the civil rights movement has disintegrated.

The article is built around one of the organizers of the current gathering, Malika Sanders, 30, of Selma, Ala. But Selma, like the rest of the country is not what it was in 1963. Malika’s parents, for example, are both Harvard lawyers, one of whom is a state senator.

“Civil rights,” today, is also not what it is was then. In fact, it’s not at all clear what it is. The message of the 1963 march was clear: racial discrimination and segregation are wrong.

By contrast, the 2003 anniversary of the march is squishy, a stew of issues brought forward by a broad-based coalition, including gay and lesbian rights activists, affirmative-action champions, feminists and organizations rallying against the occupation of Iraq. Instead of a march, they are organizing five tented teach-ins addressing six themes: economic justice and jobs; 9/11, Iraq and global peace; education; criminal justice; civil rights; and voting. The event is intended to kick off a 15-month effort to get more people to register and vote in the next presidential election.

According to Ms. Sanders (who was awarded a $50,000 Reebok Human Rights Award last year), the civil rights issues of 1963 were “easier to frame” because “they were still generally focused around race.” Well, yes. Nowadays, as the article summarizes her views,

[t]here are many special interest groups, and there are many struggles, as recent anti-globalization protests (with their anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-aid-to-Israel and anarchist contingents) can attest. And then, there is the complicated war on terrorism.

“The goal that I’m most excited about is uniting progressive forces,” Ms. Sanders says.

That’s fine, but calling such an effort “civil rights” is rather like looking for something where the light’s good rather than where you lost it. A measure of how far today’s “civil rights movement” has come from the orginal civil rights movement is suggested by the following well-known (in civil rights circles) exchange between Diane Nash, a student leader at Nashville’s Fisk University and Mayor Ben West of Nashville in the spring of 1960:

“Mayor West, do you think it is wrong to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race or color?”

Diane Nash to Nashville mayor Ben West

“And I found that I had to answer it frankly and honestly – that I did not agree that it was morally right for someone to sell them merchandise and refuse them service. And I had to answer it just exactly like that. Of course I received considerable criticism for it, but if I had to answer it again I would answer it in the same way again because it was a moral question and it was one a man has to answer and not a politician.”

Ben West, describing his response to Diane Nash

How many civil rights activists today think it always wrong “to discriminate against a person solely on the basis of their race”?

Say What? (7)

  1. Laura August 22, 2003 at 4:57 pm | | Reply

    The evolution of civil rights is an interesting study.

    Several years ago, the city I live in had black people’s day at the zoo. I think it was Thursday. All other days were white-only. Of course there were white-only water fountains and bathrooms. Public swimming pools were white-only, and so on and so forth. Obviously these were terrible wrongs that needed to be righted, and righted they were. Hurrah for the civil rights struggle.

    Now civil rights seems to be about what ratio of black kids you wind up with when you manage magnet school admissions using colorblind criteria. Or having city contracts go to minority-owned firms, even if they are out of state, rather than to local white-owned firms that employ black citizens.

    It’s like the sorcerer’s apprentice found – some things you can’t turn off.

  2. Gil Huhlein Jr. December 26, 2003 at 5:28 pm | | Reply

    I am researching a book on civil rights & would like to contact Diane Nash. Could anyone help me to do this. It would be much appreciated

    Thank you

    Gil Huhlein Jr.

  3. Gil Huhlein Jr. December 26, 2003 at 5:28 pm | | Reply

    I am researching a book on civil rights & would like to contact Diane Nash. Could anyone help me to do this. It would be much appreciated

    Thank you

    Gil Huhlein Jr.

  4. Gil Huhlein Jr. December 26, 2003 at 5:28 pm | | Reply

    I am researching a book on civil rights & would like to contact Diane Nash. Could anyone help me to do this. It would be much appreciated

    Thank you

    Gil Huhlein Jr.

  5. sheila anne jones August 2, 2004 at 4:45 pm | | Reply

    I am now 53 years old, and on October 7th, I will be 54 years old, (as is my husband of 24 years) (Smile) I am the Illinois Representative for the Lyndon H. LaRouche Political Action Committee here in Chicago. I am sort of known around Chicago and Illinois through my political campaigns for Mayor of Chicago (three times), Congressman in the 1st C.D., after Harold Washington became Mayor; Congressman for the 9th C.D. In 1994 I became the first Black American woman to run for the seat of Governor on the Democratic ticket. I am a Chicago “Dawson”. I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the age of 5 years till graduation from the Mount Mary Catholic Girls College, with a major in Music Education (Voice & Piano & String Major). I taught at Roosevelt Jr. High School in Milwaukee creating one of the largest and most awesome Jr. High School Choruses in the urban area. Bringing them the Negro Spirituals, with J.S. Bach and Brahms. My family were leaders of the NAACP Youth Council in those days of 60’s, in Milwaukee, when Dick Gregory and all, came to help us in our Open Housing demonstrations and the fight against old Police Chief Breire, around the police brutality cases. My mother created a wonderful Freedom Singers group, which my sisters and I were the lead singers. This fed my love more for Music, such that I am presently working on a Vocal Recital somewhere in the Chicago area, featuring Brahms & Schubert Lied, Handel Arias and Hall Johnson & Margaret Bonds arrangements of Negro Spirituals.

    What’s all this about! Diane Nash was one of the role models I saw when I was singing and marching in those days in Milwaukee, when glasses and bottles and rocks were rained down upon our heads, when integrated Milwaukee, with a march from the North side of the city to the Southside, over the Viaduct, equivalent to the Selma, Edmund Pettus bridge march.

    P.S. I just spent two months in Tuskegee Institute, Alabama with Mother Amelia Boynton-Platt Robinson.

    So, I hope that Ms. Nash will see this.

    Have Fun. Sheila Anne Jones, Chicago.

    (E-Mail: email hidden; JavaScript is required.)

  6. Emily Moore March 10, 2005 at 1:57 am | | Reply

    Does anyone have any information on how to reach Diane Nash? I am writing a paper for my Master’s on her leadership and the SNCC and am having trouble filling in the holes.

  7. Kimberly Oglesby March 19, 2005 at 4:06 pm | | Reply

    I am also trying to contact her. If you have received a response to your request could you assist me as well. I am conducting a seminar in Chicago and we are using the SNCC as a case study in developing Mastermind groups.

    Kimberly M. Oglesby

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