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American Literature: Pre-Civil Rights Movement 6933 Views
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The Pre-Civil Rights Movement... preceded the Civil Rights Movement. (If you got that, lucky guess.) It took place prior to the mid-1950s, and was spurred by the efforts of people like James Baldwin, whose book Sonny's Blues changed the way people looked at minorities' rights. These efforts encouraged--and eventually resulted in--the desegregation of public places.
Transcript
- 00:02
pre civil rights movement.....
- 00:19
two-four-six-eight we want love no more hate non-violent protesting is [Woman protesting]
- 00:24
one of many ways that groups of people can express their frustrations or
- 00:27
discomfort with what's going on in the world around them one of the most
- 00:31
effective and well known eras protest was the civil rights movement the era
Full Transcript
- 00:36
unlike the civil left's movement which was all about pencils and desk for South [Man scribbling on paper with a pen]
- 00:41
paws the civil rights movement was a push from people who believed that
- 00:44
everyone was entitled to basic human liberties you know stuff like voting and
- 00:48
being able to sit wherever you want on a bus you may know a little something [Woman takes seat on a bus]
- 00:52
something about the civil rights movement but do you know what happened
- 00:55
to kick start it into motion well to be fair it wasn't just one thing that
- 00:59
happened it was several decades of stuff so slavery was abolished done away with
- 01:04
in 1865 with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US [13th Amendment appears]
- 01:07
Constitution neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a
- 01:12
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall
- 01:15
exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction
- 01:19
woohoo party time everyone's free...Not so fast as soon as slavery was given the
- 01:26
boot all of the former slaves immediately went into practicing law and
- 01:30
medicine and wait that didn't happen in reality a lot of people particularly [Doctor appears with a patient]
- 01:35
southerners weren't all that stoked that slavery had left the building and they
- 01:39
took this out on former slaves in some seriously nasty ways they basically used
- 01:44
scare tactics like the threat of being lynched or even burned alive to keep
- 01:48
former slaves from owning properties becoming involved in government or even
- 01:52
attempting to challenge segregation as it had been for years
- 01:55
in the 1880s southern states came up with what are known as Jim Crow laws [Jim Crow laws meaning appears]
- 02:00
which effectively kept segregation between black and white people in most
- 02:03
every walk of life alive and thriving by the time 1900 rolled around 35 years
- 02:09
after the 13th amendment went into effect, things were
- 02:14
still really bad for african-americans about 90% of them
- 02:17
still lived in the south where living conditions were the worst but things in
- 02:21
the north weren't a whole heck of a lot better [African-american eating dinner in a poor home]
- 02:23
northerners still treated african-americans as second-class
- 02:26
citizens who didn't have any basic rights like voting and access to equal
- 02:30
housing and employment opportunities the great migration of african-americans
- 02:33
happened around the time World War one was getting hot and heavy huge numbers
- 02:37
of former slaves rushed into the cities to take factory jobs opened up by white [Former slave appears at factory]
- 02:41
men going off to the war when the war was over though African Americans were
- 02:45
sent to the back of the bus once more so to speak World War two actually enacted
- 02:50
some positive changes for racial relations in America Adolf Hitler's
- 02:54
intense racism against the Jewish population to Germany and Europe
- 02:57
resulted in roughly 6 million Jewish people being murdered during the Second [Jewish dead bodies appear]
- 03:01
World War it doesn't get a whole lot worse than that
- 03:03
Hitler was known around the world as the Time Magazine's most vile human being in
- 03:08
existence and believe it or not his racist views weren't all that popular [Hitler telling jokes on a stage]
- 03:13
this translated into civilised Americans also coming to terms with the idea that
- 03:17
racism on the homefront wasn't such a good thing either in the 1940s through
- 03:22
the 60s many formerly colonized African and Asian countries were gaining their [African and Asian woman walk out of their prison cell]
- 03:26
independence this spurred African Americans into action in the US and got
- 03:31
people thinking about what true freedom and independence might look like for all
- 03:34
races in the nation the Cold War a non-violent war that was actually more
- 03:39
of a competitive relationship between America and the former Soviet Union to
- 03:42
have the most weapons be the first nation to walk on the moon etc also
- 03:46
helped Americans become more accepting of minority races politicians understood
- 03:50
that it would look better if America appeared to be racially tolerant America [Group of people chanting]
- 03:54
would be able to get more nations on her side if she was a place of tolerance and
- 03:58
acceptance yeah that is totally superficial but that's just kind of how
- 04:02
politics works in 1954 the monumental Brown versus Board of Education case
- 04:08
effectively desegregated American schools by law a previous case Plessy
- 04:13
versus Ferguson had allowed segregation in schools based on the concept that the
- 04:18
schools were separate but equal Shaw the court said when reviewing these facts [Judge appears]
- 04:22
during Brown separate is not equal and this ruling
- 04:25
is bunk the new ruling is that kids of all colors can go to the same schools [Judge bangs gavel]
- 04:29
case closed we talked about this case as being
- 04:32
monumental because it changed the way both white and black people in America
- 04:35
thought about race after brown and all the way up through the late 1960s
- 04:40
proponents for equal rights among races in America came together to protest [People protesting]
- 04:44
injustice and challenge the current system of politics and social relations
- 04:48
in the nation african-americans and white civil rights activists alike saw
- 04:52
that major change could be possible and they began mobilizing
- 04:56
in great numbers they fought for the right to vote equal access to public
- 05:01
facilities like lunch counters water fountains and movie theaters equal [People walking into movie theater]
- 05:05
opportunities in schools housing options and employment opportunities above all
- 05:10
though the civil rights activists fought for freedom from discrimination based on
- 05:14
a person's skin color while this notion seems simple in theory it's an issue
- 05:18
that's still a huge deal today all people over the age of 18 may have the
- 05:23
right to vote in America but the debate about whether or not rights are actually
- 05:27
equal for everyone is still a hot item on many people's minds as you might [Man's head open and inequality appears on brain]
- 05:31
imagine there are some super amazing literature music and art that came out
- 05:35
of the civil rights era there's something about social unrest that seems
- 05:38
to make people quite creative James Baldwin was an amazing figure associated
- 05:44
with the civil rights he was an African American author who wrote poetry novels
- 05:48
plays essays and more more importantly he was active in the civil rights [Baldwin protesting]
- 05:52
movement in his own ways James Baldwin born in Harlem in 1924 was the grandson
- 05:57
of a slave and the son of a single mom mom remarried a Baptist minister who
- 06:01
helped teenage James get a job as a youth minister and a church he wasn't [Baldwin appears as a church minister]
- 06:05
interested in pursuing a career in the church but James did say those three
- 06:09
years in the pulpit I didn't realize it then that is what turned me into a
- 06:13
writer really dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty
- 06:17
in high school James showed off his writing skills by publishing a whole [James writing a play]
- 06:20
bunch of poems plays and short stories in the school's magazine his writing
- 06:24
career didn't immediately take off though since James had to go right to
- 06:27
work after graduation in order to help support his huge family while working [James appears at fast food restaurant window]
- 06:31
for the US Army laying railroad tracks James tasted discrimination for real he
- 06:36
was often not allowed to go into bars or restaurants with his coworkers yes because
- 06:40
he was black he moved to Greenwich Village and landed a writing fellowship
- 06:45
that allowed him to just write even though James was pursuing his passion
- 06:49
life as a gay black man in the 1940s and 50s was not all that much fun he got hit [James walking with white man]
- 06:55
with double discrimination everywhere he went
- 06:58
James worked on getting some short stories and essays published before he
- 07:01
won another fellowship and hightailed it off to Paris during his time in the city [James by the Eiffel Tower]
- 07:06
of love James was able to view his personal history and that of African
- 07:10
Americans in a different way since he was separated from it he said once I
- 07:15
found myself on the other side of the ocean
- 07:17
I see where I came from very clearly I am the grandson of a slave and I am a
- 07:22
writer I must deal with both in 1953 James semi autobiography go tell it on [Go Tell it on the Mountain book appears]
- 07:28
the mountain was published and people ate it up he wrote about the real
- 07:32
struggle of growing up in Harlem in a way that no other author had done
- 07:36
Baldwin won even more Awards that funded more writing projects like
- 07:40
Giovanni's Room a story that focused on the topics of race and homosexuality in
- 07:44
1955 when the book was published people were not used to reading about such [Person picks up book]
- 07:48
topics and the book received mixed reviews James essay work also helped to
- 07:53
secure him a spot as a notable name in the civil rights movement
- 07:56
James writing in all forms gave him a powerful voice of protest and activism
- 08:01
why don't we take a closer look at one of Baldwin's books Sonny's blues it's a
- 08:06
really dark story but an important one that you're not likely to forget after [Person picks up Sonny's Blues book]
- 08:10
reading it Sonny is a heroin addict from Harlem who gets busted for selling drugs
- 08:14
and ends up doing time his older brother the narrator of the story reads about
- 08:19
Sonny's arrests in the paper and feels bad but doesn't do anything about it [Sonny arrested on front of newspaper]
- 08:23
the narrator loses his little girl and contacts Sonny who moves in with his
- 08:27
brother and family Sonny is a gifted piano player and his brother credits his
- 08:31
wild musician lifestyle and other musicians we're getting Sonny into [Sonny partying with musician]
- 08:35
drugs in the first place which Sonny argues is ridiculous
- 08:38
the two come to terms with each other and life when Sonny plays a show at a club
- 08:42
and the narrator has an aha moment of getting what Sonny was telling him about
- 08:46
life being tough and all... one of the things that makes this such an awesome
- 08:50
story about race is that Baldwin never comes out and whacks us over the head [Hand with hammer whacks girl on the head]
- 08:53
with it all of the major themes addiction family suffering have ties to
- 08:58
race or racism Sonny admittedly feels out of control in his own life he doesn't
- 09:03
have a lot of hope for a positive future as a young poor black man in Harlem and
- 09:07
he turns to heroin it makes you feel in control sometimes you've got to have
- 09:13
that feeling Sonny saw drugs as his only coping mechanism and it's not like he [Sonny with a syringe and man hands him a spoon]
- 09:18
was alone lots of people in desperate situations
- 09:20
find solace in using drugs and alcohol the way Baldwin writes about Sonny
- 09:25
situation makes the reader understand that life for black people in 1950s
- 09:29
Harlem is no picnic he personifies the setting of busted up housing projects
- 09:34
and hopeless people showing us how segregation tears down the black [Page turns over from book]
- 09:38
community we hit a hundred and tenth Street and started rolling up Lenox
- 09:42
Avenue and I known this Avenue all my life but it seemed to me again as it had
- 09:46
seemed on the day I'd first heard about Sonny's trouble filled with a hidden
- 09:50
Menace which was its very breath of life yeah Harlem doesn't exactly sound
- 09:55
inviting the racism becomes more blatant when the narrator's mother tells him the [Narrator and Mum appear together]
- 09:58
story about how a car full of white men killed her brother her sadness and
- 10:03
terror are obvious when she explains how her husband handled the situation till
- 10:07
the day he died he weren't sure but that every white man he saw was the man that
- 10:11
killed his brother boom this murder only perpetuated the existing culture of fear
- 10:17
that African Americans in the early 1950s were living in and while Sonny's
- 10:21
blues might be fictional work the parallels to real life are all too real
- 10:25
this passage also connects family to the overarching concept of race there is a [Passage in novel appears]
- 10:29
personal history of violence against the family by white people this cuts even
- 10:34
deeper than the bigger picture of racism that happened against black people as an [Scissors cuts a picture of African-American family]
- 10:38
entire race because of the incident with her brother-in-law the narrator's mom
- 10:41
tells him you've got to hold on to your brother and don't let him fall no matter
- 10:45
what it looks like is happening and no matter how evil you gets with him she
- 10:49
might not come right out and say it but Ma expects the narrator to protect her
- 10:52
baby Sonny from the evils white men cause because that's what mothers do [Mum appears with bright shining light behind her]
- 10:56
the theme of suffering is tied back to race as well every single character in
- 11:00
this story suffers in some way and a lot of it has to do with their race the
- 11:04
narrator sees his young students suffering in the same way he and his
- 11:07
brother did these boys now were living as we'd been living then they were
- 11:12
growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling
- 11:16
of their actual possibilities for young men in Harlem in the 50s there weren't a [Young men together in a street in Harlem]
- 11:20
ton of options they were broke black and held down by society who didn't want
- 11:25
them Sonny expresses not just his own suffering but is the voice of pain for
- 11:30
many you don't know how much I needed to hear from you I wanted to write you many
- 11:34
a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you us and so I didn't write but
- 11:37
now I feel like a man who's been trying to climb out of some deep real deep and
- 11:41
funky hole and just saw the sun up there outside I got to get outside it's a
- 11:47
vicious cycle Sonny was suffering so he turned to drugs the drugs got him locked [Sonny running down a street and police car appears]
- 11:51
up which caused his family grief and Sonny was too ashamed to get into touch with
- 11:55
his family when he needed them the most seriously heavy stuff and Baldwin really [Baldwin typing at his desk]
- 11:59
knew how to take real-life suffering and turn it into fiction while keeping the
- 12:03
important essence of realism in place this was how he could be an activist
- 12:07
just by evoking the power of words words can be weapons of change if you know how [Man holding dictionary protesting]
- 12:12
to wield them properly and James Baldwin sure had the gift of word wielding at his
- 12:16
fingertips with words no one has to get physically hurt though their effects can
- 12:20
be even stronger than guns or knives or bazookas though the civil rights [Soldier fires bazooka]
- 12:24
movement has changed we still see remnants of it in modern society as long
- 12:28
as people feel oppressed by society there will be struggle and not that fun
- 12:32
hey I think I might like you do you like me how do we do this kind of struggle
- 12:37
though heartbreak is certainly no laughing matter [Man in bed crying]
- 12:40
sorry just got dumped not everyone can handle a strong independent protester
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