Talk:Civil rights movement/Archive 3

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New lead and background paragraphs for this article

I've formulated a set of new lead and background paragraphs to introduce this subject. I've tried to address some of the concerns presented on the discussion page. Does anyone have any other concerns, suggestions, or ideas before I post it? - Mitchumch 10:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Given the sensitivity of this issue, and since you're apparently proposing a massive rewrite, you should probably post your proposed text in Discussion first. Simesa 12:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Merging of 1954-1968 info into Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

The 1954-1968 timeline info that user Mitchumch placed in American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) has been merged into Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement as "Unsourced/Unchecked Info". This was done because one line stated that Bobby Bland graduated from the University of Virginia's Engineering school - which was patently false. Also, there may be copyright violation concerns. I (or, hopefully other editors as well) will check each line and move the info up into the normal text as time permits. I do appreciate Mitchumch's hard work, and want to see it installed properly. Simesa 16:52, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Unclear sentence

The section Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 end with the following sentence:

"Faubus was re-elected Governor the following year and for three terms after that! and they felt that it was very improtaqnt."

Can anyone figure out what it was ment to say? And I think we should drop the '!', as it is POV. --Kristjan Wager 18:35, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

The section Desegregating Little Rock, 1957 begins with the following sentence:

"Little Rock in Little Rock, rather than in the Deep South, because ..."

How should this actually start? "Desegregating started in Little Rock "??? Dnahvalkyrie 08:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Cultural Catastrophe

An economic disaster has been fomented. Modern negroes earn less money than before 1950, percentage-wise. The 1950s percentage was about 65% of what a "white man" earned, but the percentage today is about 55% of what a "white man" earns. I've never before seen so many raggedy negroes. Superslum 16:41, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Be reasonable. Claiming that the average African American earns less today than in 1950? What planet are you on? The standard of living today is incomparably higher than fifty years ago. It makes about as much sense as comparable claims for white workers ("Employees are earning less in real dollars than in 1960...") The source of almost all such "statistics" is utterly without foundation. Ask any of your parents or grandparents. I am not going to say,"If you want more evidence, just look around: Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Andrew Young..," because in 1961, I could just as well have written Marian Anderson, Diana Ross, or James Baldwin, BUT when Diana Ross or Marian Anderson travelled around the United States, they could not stay in the same hotel as some of their staff or orchestra members who were white. I grew up in an America where such achievement and accomplishment would have been almost unthinkable. Although it is definitely true that the United States still has a long road ahead in creating a society with racial equality of opportunity, we should never deny that progress has been made. It is an insult to the many brave people, both black and white, who fought and struggled so hard, to provide the degree of equality that we do have today.

More importantly, not everything is about money. Human dignity and self-repect are also so very important. The Civil Rights movement was about these ideas, much more than about making money. Being able to sit anywhere in the bus, or being able to try on a dress in a department store are more than just about money. African Americans live in an utterly different social and cultural universe today than in 1950, 1960, and even 1970. An African American child in school today has a radically different vista open to him/her. His/Her view of the world is light-years away from what a similar child had in 1955 or 1965. As I wrote, we Americans still have a tremendously long road ahead as a nation, and I would even acknowledge that real equality is still largely elusive, but this ought not obscure the progress made. 66.108.105.21 19:32, 26 September 2006 (UTC) Allen Roth

The "utterly different social and cultural universe" includes smoking marijuana by the ton, shooting people in the head, wearing baggy unpressed garments, spitting at people, sloth, and poverty. GhostofSuperslum 18:53, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Category?

Random idea: should the American Civil Rights Movement be made into a category? There are certainly enough related articles, and if we have a list right there on the article page that links to all the major related articles, we should then be able to drastically reduce this article's size by removing the details that readers could get by going to the specific pages. --BigShock 01:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

American Civil Rights Movement

I don't know if anybody is aware but the american civil rights movement was a BIG movement in which minorities demanded civil rights, so it wasn't just about African Americans; mexican-americans, native americans, women, and prisioners were ALL part of the civil rights movement, and, to me, there is no mention whatsoever about this group. Since this article strictly discusses African Americans in the Civil rights movement, I say we change the title of this article to something like "African-American Civil Rights movement"--Vircabutar 05:55, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I think a better solution would be to create articles for the rights struggles of other groups and then reference them at the top of this article. I recommend this because 1) the American Civil Rights Movement is commonly used as referring to the struggles of African-Americans, and 2) this article is overly long already. Simesa 18:58, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes they may be commonly refered to as the african-american movement. but the problem is that it is not technically. The civil rights movement represent an era of civil rights. I say we move it to change the article's name to "African-American Civil Rights Movement." The "American Civil RIghts Movement" page could be the main page that would list all of the civil rights movement specifically: feminist movement, african americans, mexican americans, etc.--Vircabutar 08:23, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I am renaming the article; help anyone?--Vircabutar 08:28, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

This edit is a major edit. The issue of the exact meaning of the Civil Rights Movement has been constantly debated on this page beginning with the first entry on this discussion page. However, the use of the term "American Civil Rights Movement" is commonly referenced in scholarly articles, encyclopedias, and textbooks as solely referring to the struggle by African-Americans (If you want citations, I would be more than happy to provide a list for you).

Also, 1965-1968 (a three year period) is a major misrepresentation of that movement -- a movement that has consistently been cited as starting around 1954 (please read the article with dates posted to nearly every section).

No one is debating the existence of other movements around the same period, but all of those movements occured after the struggle by African-Americans -- many of those were inspired by African-Americans organizing and fighting for their rights. Check the start dates for each of the movements that is generally accepted by scholars.

Because this is a major edit that did not attempt to allow time for a discussion on this issue, a revert of user Vircabutars' rederict will occur. If sufficient time had been allowed, a revert of this edit would have proven unnecessary. I'm sorry I had to revert this edit, because is obvious that you feel strongly on this matter, but more time was needed to see how this change would play with wikipedians -- especially those who maintain this article on their watchlist. Sorry again. --Mitchumch 17:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was Move. —Wknight94 (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Requested move 2006

American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)→ African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968) – {the page exclussively talks about African Americans as being the sole participant of the civil rights movement; however, under the current title, the Civil Rights Movement era excludes other importan such as Mexican-Americans, Feminist, Native-Americans, and etc.--Vircabutar 22:37, 10 August 2006 (UTC)}

Survey

Add "* Support" or "* Oppose" followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

Support as stated above --Vircabutar 07:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

I'm abstaining. From how I understand MLK, i think he would have rather seen as one movement, independent of race. But I don't have a strong opinion about the name of this article. — Sebastian (talk) 07:27, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Add any additional comments ...

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move

Oh, dear, was this the wrong thing to do. Leaving aside the issue of scope for the moment, the term "Civil Rights Movement" or "American Civil Rights Movement" is the most common name in use for this topic. The Google test: american.civil.rights.movement nets 225,000 results, african.american.civil.rights.movement just 23,000. Thus the name violates naming policy, which calls for using the most common name for something unless it is impossible to do so with clarity.

This isn't a generic term that can be futzed with, it's the encyclopedic term. (A generic name would be, for example, Human rights activism in the United States.) It's the term that was used at the time, and it's the term that appears in hundreds, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of scholarly and academic works referencing the period. Now, I can see the urge to describe the contents of the article more accurately, but that would have required looking to a generic name as outlined. That wasn't done. The objection appeared to be that the article was not an overview of all civil rights movements in the United States. That article does not exist, and it's unclear whether anyone has proposed writing one. The question then becomes why we are disambiguating from an article that doesn't exist.

Finally, there is another problem with the name that I recall from a year or so ago, and that's the appended "(1955-1968)". Again, this was apparently done to fix the article's scope, but that shouldn't have been necessary, unless again there were an umbrella article -- History of African-American civil rights in the United States, for example. The American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954) article does exist, and now they are named differently, which is an example of narrow awareness on the part of certain editors. That's one small problem. But I, and I'm almost 100% sure that contemporary members of the movement would agree, object to the scoping of the article as a movement for African-American Civil Rights. In fact, the opening of that article states, "The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans." The very concept of the movement was to enforce civil rights that inherently existed for everyone, but were denied to one segment. The idea that this was a movement on behalf of only one segment is disturbing and offensive -- sort of the way "civil rights" have been rhetorically redefined as "special rights" that one segment is fighting to get over and above another segment. Thus, I object on the grounds of inappropriate and POV rhetoric (although I hasten to add it's not clear that there was any such intent, it is just an error).

Thus, I hope that editors involved (yes, a small number indeed, not exactly a consensus) will reconsider the reasoning behind this name change and whether it is appropriate. --Dhartung | Talk 11:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Re: "not exactly a consensus":

1. The page was on WP:RM for 6 days and then re-listed for an additional 10 days. The move tag was on this talk page itself for 10 days. The generally accepted length of a WP:RM discussion is 5 days or less.
2. There was not a single voice of opposition in that extended length of time.
3. You made around 450 edits in the final 10 days and around 700 in the overall 16 days including more than one move request vote.
4. Enough people have batted this article back and forth in the past that it must be on someone's watchlist. I take their silence as a neutral vote.

In summary, everything was done by the book in my opinion. I find it unfair to expect the original requestors and supporters to wait triple or quadruple the length of time clearly stated in WP:RM. You're free to resume discussion with the original supporters. If they all agree, I'll happily move it back.

—Wknight94 (talk) 13:09, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

One can only notice so much. In any case, my objections were not procedural, but speak directly to the rationale. --Dhartung | Talk 18:02, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I for one am convinced of Dhartung's rationale. — Sebastian (talk) 17:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Then maybe you guys should have voted and voiced your oppinion when I put the "move" request; it is very unacceptable to invalidate a procedure that was formally done and approved. --Vircabutar 02:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you feel disappointed. But what do you expect? I came here on your invitation, and your argument was the only one I saw. At that time, I abstained, but I raised a concern. Without answering that concern or any other further discussion, only 4 days later the move was performed, as if there was nothing more urgent to do. Now my concern was substantiated, and my opinion is much firmer. What's "very unacceptable" with that? — Sebastian (talk) 02:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying that your oppinion or your concern is unacceptable; I'm saying what Dhartung is requesting is unacceptable. The procedure has been done (as wknight94 stated above). Just because people didn't have enough time to respond to the discussion (which wasn't the case here) doensn't give them excuse to invalidate the move. --Vircabutar 06:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Unilateral nonsense such as this is what I get for taking a wikibreak during classes. I note that "American Civil Rights Movement" redirects here - who do you think you're kidding? Simesa 21:35, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Non sequitur?

Re:

Cities such as Detroit, Newark, and Baltimore now have a less than 40% White population as a result of these riots. To this day, these cities contain some of the worst living conditions for blacks anywhere in America.

The second sentence doesn't seem to follow logically - it may be true, but it's not quite clear why it's stated in this context. --Singkong2005 ^talk 12:23, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Unitarian Universalists

This article covers Jewish participation in the movement, but no other white religious support. Here's a quote from [1]: "Many Unitarian Universalists became active in the civil rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he and twenty percent of the denomination’s ministers responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call to march for justice." From [2]: "The instructor, the Rev. Dr. Gordon Gibson, first encountered issues of race in the South as a Unitarian teenager. As a newly ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, he was a participant in the early phases of the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, and served a jail sentence in Selma. From 1969 through 1984 he was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Mississippi, where the previous full-time settled minister was shot and critically injured by the Klan in 1965."

Although I don't have a source for the statistic, a Unitarian Univeralist minister who had marched with Rev. King once told me that half of all the white clergy who did so were Unitarian Universalist. Surely this is worth a mention? Durova 17:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

As a white UU myself, I'd say it seems extremely unlikely that UU clergy formed even close to half of the white clergy in the civil rights movement as UU is such a tiny denomination. It's possible that in one movement location (there were a group of Boston UU's at Selma in 1965) or on one march in which white clergy were a small group that half could be UU (for instance, if there had been a total of 20 white clergy and 10 were UU) but this doesn't represent a significant fraction of civil rights activists much less a significant impact on the movement, even if they were disproportionately involved for whites. Although UU's were allies, there were no UU leaders of the movement and UU congregations didn't play a prominent role. My UU congregation, for instance, did not take an abolitionist stand but did become very involved in civil rights in the 60's once the movement was already well underway spearheaded by African Americans. Jews, however,(who can of course be UU as well, but presumably weren't in these cases) were involved in ways that made a broad-based difference (perhaps because of shared oppression and a commonality of purpose--African American newspapers took an early stance opposing anti-semitism when mainstream white periodicals were silent--and/or because Blacks have identified with the Jewish experience. Blacks compared their situation in the American South to that of the Jews in Egypt, appropriating Jewish cultural references in movement songs, churches, and terminology. Black nationalists also used the Zionist movement as a model for their own Back-to-Africa movement): participating in founding National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and A. Philip Randolph's Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, plus providing substantial funding and support for SCLC, CORE and SNCC, and Jews were part of King's inner circle of advisers.

However, since the civil rights movement was led almost entirely by African Americans and by far the largest majority of the masses of participants were African Americans, I think both the section on the Jewish community in civil rights and the suggestion on UU clergy support should either (1) only be included in a section on white (or nonblack) participation giving a short overview and perhaps mentioning a few leaders (such as Rabbi Heschel), martyrs (such as Rev. Reeb), advisers such as Stanley Levison, and organizational support. At the same time, as an African American movement, it bears discussion of the tension within the movement (particularly in SNCC) on the role of whites. or (2) the role of religious institutions in support of (and perhaps in resistance to) the movement. Clearly this would primarily be about black Christian leadership, churches as centers of activism, SCLC, the Black church, even J.H. Jackson and Baptist antagonism but could mention National Council of Churches, American Jewish Committee, etc.

If your main point is to mention Rev. Reeb, then ALL 40 or more martyrs for civil rights (again the large majority were black, but whites were disproportionately targeted (Jews Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner; Viola Liuzzo, William Moore, Harry & Vivian Moore, Jonathan Daniels, and maybe others I'm forgetting) should be mentioned, because that's why he's a hero. Of course, Rev. Reeb's participation in Selma was courageous and his death brought media attention, but there were hundreds if not thousands of blacks who were equally courageous facing bombings, beatings, threats, violence, intimidation, loss of jobs, evictions, homelessness and even starvation day in and day out sometimes for years due to their participation, while the only ones of these white martyrs to devote years of their lives (actually decades in their case) to civil rights are Vivian and Harry Moore.108.1.110.7 (talk) 15:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

The Mecca of silliness

This particular article contains the most-concentrated batch of silliness that I have seen in any single article in Wikipedia. Who wrote all of it? Silliness pervades it throughout. Even the title of the article is creepy. Velocicaptor 11:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)