On July 2 in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The important act, which had survived heated discussion in the Senate and the House of Representatives, made racial segregation in public places illegal.
The law had an even broader impact. It also prohibited discrimination on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin in schools and in employment.
The Signing
President Johnson, who worked hard to push through the legislation after President John F. Kennedy’s death, used more than 75 pens to sign the legislation. He gave out the pens to many people who helped with the bill, including Martin Luther King, Jr. King later said the pen was one of his most cherished possessions.
The video below features President Johnson giving the pen to King. It also includes some of Johnson’s speech before the signing.
“We Shall Overcome”
One of the songs that played a significant role in the civil rights movement was “We Shall Overcome.” The song developed from an African-American hymn first used as a protest song by striking tobacco workers in 1945.
“We Shall Overcome” grew to help inspire changes that shook the world. Many continue to recognize its importance. In recognition of the song’s role in the civil rights movement, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, members of Congress joined hands and sang the song.
The video below is from a recording by a number of artists — including John Legend, Joss Stone and The Blind Boys of Alabama — for Soundtrack for a Revolution (2011), an album of songs from the civil rights movement.
One of the artists who helped popularize the song was folksinger Pete Seeger. In this video, Seeger explains the history behind the song.
Of course, the Civil Rights Act did not end racial discrimination. But it was an important step in the ongoing process.
One of the reasons “We Shall Overcome” is a great song is its timelessness. It is not a song of “we have overcome” about past accomplishments. It is a song that reminds us that there are always more struggles ahead of us to overcome. And we shall.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers traveling in Mississippi disappeared. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been working in the state as part of efforts by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to do civil rights work and help register African-Americans to vote.
Goodman and Schwerner had originally traveled from New York and were working with Chaney, a young black man who lived in Mississippi. One afternoon, after the three were driving back from investigating a church burning, Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested them. The sheriff arrested the driver Chaney for speeding, and he arrested the passengers for “investigation.”
The sheriff took the three men to jail, where they were booked by 4:00 p.m. Late at night after almost seven hours at the jail, the three were released. Then, they disappeared.
Disappearance & Discovery
The disappearance of the three men created a national outcry, focusing attention on what was going on in many places in the South. Others previously had disappeared and been murdered. But this case likely garnered more attention because two of the civil rights workers were white.
Below is a 1964 NBC News Special Report about the disappearance that occurred during Freedom Summer. The show aired on television while the men were missing and before their bodies were found. As you can see, after the three disappeared, some white officials argued that the missing men were pulling a publicity stunt.
More than a month later on August 4, 1964, FBI officials found the remains of the three men buried in an earthen well. Goodman and Schwerner were each shot in the heart, while Chaney had been beaten and shot several times.
Investigators concluded that after authorities released the three civil rights workers from jail, KKK members pulled over the car. Then, the KKK members shot and killed the three men and also beat the African-American Chaney.
The murders had been planned and organized while the three men were held in jail. And, in fact, the KKK had been tracking Schwerner’s activities in the South for some time.
The country focused its attention on the murder, the investigation, and numerous other instances of violence during Freedom Summer. This national attention energized the civil rights movement, and helped bring about some changes.
“Here’s to the State of Mississippi”
The investigation into the case also affected pop culture. For example, the crime inspired a fictionalized account of the events in the movie Mississippi Burning (1988), starring Gene Hackman.
The murders also inspired singer-songwriter Phil Ochs to write one of his most controversial songs, “Here’s to the State of Mississippi.” Ochs came up with the idea for the song while he was traveling through Mississippi to promote voting registration with the Mississippi Caravan of Music.
During that trip, Ochs encountered threats firsthand and also learned about the discovery of the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. As a result, Ochs wrote one of his most scathing songs, indicting the state of Mississippi as a proxy for the perpetrators of racial violence.
Oh, here’s to the land You’ve torn out the heart of, Mississippi find yourself Another country to be part of.
According to Michael Schumacher’s excellent 1996 biography of Ochs, There But for Fortune: The Life of Phil Ochs, some of Ochs’s friends criticized the song for attacking Mississippi so directly. They told Ochs that he was wrong to single out a single state because racism flowed across all states, including ones in the North.
Also, some blacks in Mississippi reminded Ochs that they were a part of Mississippi too. But Ochs believed it was his obligation to report what he saw.
Quest for Justice
While the murders motivated many people to work for change, it took longer for the state of Mississippi to accomplish some individual justice. In 1967 a federal court jury convicted several men of conspiracy for their involvement in the murders. But Mississippi did not convict anyone for the crime until June 21, 2005 — the 41st anniversary of the day the three young men disappeared.
On that date in 2005, a Mississippi jury convicted white supremacist Edgar Ray Killen of three counts of manslaughter. Killen was sentenced to sixty years in prison.
Although authorities did not believe Killen did the actual killing, they thought he was a significant organizer of the murders. It had been the policy of the KKK for organizers and leaders to avoid actual killing.
It is too bad that Phil Ochs, who passed away in 1976, was not around to see the conviction. I wonder what type of songs Ochs would write if he were still alive. And I also wonder what the three brave men who were killed in 1964 would think of our country today.
You may not have heard of Manal al-Sharif, but Time Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2012 and The Atlantic Monthly included her among the Brave Thinkers of the year.
Al-Sharif started a movement by a simple act that we take for granted here in the U.S. She got into a car and went for a drive in 2011. But she did her drive in Saudi Arabia, where women are forbidden from driving.
Along with a friend, she posted a video of her trip online and drew a following on a Facebook page called “Teach Me How to Drive So I Can Protect Myself” and through a Women2Drive campaign. Although she was arrested for a few days, her acts inspired other to protest the discrimination against women in Saudi Arabia.
The prohibition is one of many types of gender discrimination in a country where girls need a male guardian’s permission to go to school. But al-Sharif’s choice of using a car for the protest touched on an international feeling about the road and what it represents.
Singer-Songwriter Martin Sexton sings about “Freedom Of The Road” from another perspective. Although the title sounds like the song is a tribute to the joys of travel, the beautiful song is really about the weariness of living on the road. In the song, the singer reveals:
Now I’ve had enough of this freedom of the road; Never was good with decisions that’s what I’ve been told; I’ve been holdin’ on to this ticket cause one day I’ll pass this toll; Magic road grant your freedom to someone else, for I’ll be comin’ home.
We often forget that freedom is not just about fun and joy. Our freedom to choose gives us the power to choose wrong just like the freedom of the road gives us the power to be weary of our travels.
Our freedoms — whether it be to drive, to marry, to have children, to work, to speak, to vote, etc. — come with no guarantee of happiness. They only give us a chance to try to find happiness.
And al-Sharif knows that women everywhere should be given these chances and to discover the freedom of the road for themselves.
What is your favorite story about the freedom of the road? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Most today are familiar with Martin Luther King Jr. giving powerful speeches, but it is rarer to see clips of him engaged in conversation. For MLK Day this year, check out the following video when King appeared on Meet the Press on March 28, 1965.
In the video, King discusses voting rights, police brutality, the civil rights movement, and recent nonviolent protests. The interview took place one week after King led the five-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to push for voting rights and raise awareness about civil rights violations. A transcript of the interview is available at the King Center website.
It is interesting to see the long interview in context as in the above video. We see another side of King. . . and the media.
Recently, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes analyzed King’s appearances on Meet the Press from 1960-1966, noting that the questioning often shows that the mainstream media seemed at war with King.
What do you think of King’s appearance on Meet the Press? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On New Year’s Eve in 1862, people held in slavery in the American South waited to see if President Lincoln would fulfill a promise to issue an order of emancipation the next day.
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln
On December 31, 1862, people held in slavery in the American South and black churches around the country awaited news whether President Abraham Lincoln would issue the final Emancipation Proclamation. He had issued a “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation” on September 22 warning of the coming emancipation to the states in rebellion.
Thus, on December 31 as a nation waited for Lincoln to fulfill his promise, was born Watch Night.
The Emancipation Proclamation
The next day, on January 1, 1863, despite speculation to the contrary, Lincoln released the Emancipation Proclamation. The document technically only freed the slaves in the Confederate states fighting against the Union. But it sent a symbolic message to all of the nearly four million slaves. The message was that the war that began out of a battle to preserve the country would eventually bring an end to slavery.
The proclamation also told the public that the Union military could enlist blacks into the Union’s armed forces. In reality, many already had been serving in some capacities. (James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 563.)
The language of the proclamation is less poetic than many of our nation’s great documents like the Declaration of Independence, probably because the lawyer president knew it was a legal document written to have legal effect. Nevertheless, the meaning of words such as “forever free” in the following opening paragraph are beautiful:
“That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
In the tradition of Watch Night, often there are scheduled events in the nation’s capital and around the country. The National Archives in Washington, D.C. has hosted a midnight display of the Emancipation Proclamation along with other national documents and readings, songs and bell ringing. President Lincoln’s Cottage in Washington, where Lincoln started writing the proclamation, also has held special midnight events. The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in D.C. holds midnight services. In 2013, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled an Emancipation Proclamation stamp.
“Mary Don’t You Weep”
I have been reading John W. Blassingame’s excellent book about American slavery, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (1972). In the book, Blassingame tells how slaves created songs with coded messages. Several of their songs were about Egypt because the American slaves could sing about slavery from another time under the noses of the slaveholders.
The passage made me think of one of my favorite songs on Bruce Springsteen’s CD tribute to Pete Seeger, “Mary Don’t You Weep.” Hearing the reference to Exodus and the parting of the Red Sea — “Pharaoh’s army got drown-ded!” — has a different meaning when you think of slaves in the fields of the South singing the song. It is a song of uprising, hope, and freedom. And they got away with singing it.
The song is not about Jesus’ mother, but about Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, who Jesus raised from the dead. “Mary Don’t You Weep” can be joyful, defiant, spiritual, comforting or all of those things combined. One of the most popular versions of the song was the version recorded by the Caravans in 1958.
Other Versions of “Mary Don’t You Weep”
The following version features Georgia field workers singing “Mary Don’t You Weep.” It was recorded around the late 1920s or early 1930s.
Thus, this version by the field workers is separated by decades from slavery. But you can still hear the connection of an earlier time. It’s beautiful.
In the video below, a young Aretha Franklin performs a short version of the song on Soul Train. In her more sorrowful version of “Mary Don’t You Weep,” which she had recorded on her 1972 live gospel album Amazing Grace, she plays down the defiance of the song and focuses on the comforting aspect.
“Mary Don’t You Weep” has been recorded through the years. It was popular during the 1950s and 1960s during the Civil Rights movement, when it also provided the music for another Civil Rights anthem, “If You Miss Me From the Back of the Bus.”
One of the most popular versions was by the Swan Silvertones. Lead singer Claude Jeter’s additional line in the song, “I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name” inspired Paul Simon in writing his classic “Bridge over Troubled Water.”
So every New Year’s Eve, as you celebrate the incoming year and say goodbye to the last, take a moment to remember Watch Night and a time in midst of misery and war, when a nation found a great reason to celebrate a president’s promise fulfilled. And have a safe and happy new year.
Well, one of these nights around twelve o’clock, This old town’s gonna really rock. Didn’t Pharaoh’s army get drowned? Oh, Mary, don’t you weep.
What’s your favorite version of “Mary Don’t You Weep”? Leave your two cents in the comments. Heading Photo via: First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln by Francis Bicknell Carpenter (public domain).
On July 2 in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The important act, which had survived heated discussion in the Senate and the House of Representatives, made racial segregation in public places illegal.
(1988), starring Gene Hackman.
, some of Ochs’s friends criticized the song for attacking Mississippi so directly. They told Ochs that he was wrong to single out a single state because racism flowed across all states, including ones in the North.
” from another perspective. Although the title sounds like the song is a tribute to the joys of travel, the beautiful song is really about the weariness of living on the road. In the song, the singer reveals:
, p. 563.)
(1972). In the book, Blassingame tells how slaves created songs with coded messages. Several of their songs were about Egypt because the American slaves could sing about slavery from another time under the noses of the slaveholders.
, she plays down the defiance of the song and focuses on the comforting aspect.
