Listening to the Civil Rights Movement
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WHERE ARE WE in the struggle for gay rights in the United States? Are we in the early stages of what will become a successful mass movement for equal civil rights and respect? Or have we reached the highest point of advance for the time being—where we have persuaded many fair-minded people to disdain homophobia, but have lost the momentum to the well-organized and more powerful forces of conservative backlash?

I believe we are in a historic period somewhat comparable to the African-American struggle for justice in the mid-1950’s. At that crucial turning point, African Americans were enjoying some important gains but still endured blatantly discriminatory laws and practices, notably in the South. Further improvement required the skillfully planned and courageously enacted mass movement that came in the 1960’s. Although racism and homophobia are different animals, and the context now surely differs from the 1960’s, the black Civil Rights Movement has many lessons for us, whether we are GLBT movement strategists or just average people who care about equality.

What most people know about the Civil Rights Movement (if they know this much) is that in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Next, in the early 1960’s, the charismatic Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., led nonviolent demonstrations like the famous March on Washington. He spoke eloquently of a dream where black and white children could grow up side by side in a world that gave them equal opportunities. Although he encountered some virulent racism in the deep South, King’s appeals to the conscience of white Americans persuaded government officials to do the right thing, resulting in path-breaking laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Timing

Although people often point to the Supreme Court’s Brown decision as the first significant national victory of the Civil Rights Movement, it’s instructive to look to World War II, when labor leader A. Philip Randolph organized a protest against two types of blatantly unfair treatment. The first was segregation in the military, where black soldiers trained and fought in separate units. If injured, they were cared for only by black nurses; even the blood supply was segregated. The second was discrimination in war industries. Employers could and did refuse to hire people based solely on skin color and could also pay blacks less than whites for the same work. Defeating Japan and Germany, however, required a massive nationwide effort—millions of Americans serving in the military and millions more to produce the battleships, airplanes, ammunition, tents, uniforms, and bandages—and the nation was in desperate need. Recognizing that African Americans’ military service and labor were essential to the cause, Randolph proposed a massive March on Washington by blacks to protest the discrimination. His proposal alarmed officials. There had rarely been demonstrations in the capital city, and two of the most famous ones—by women’s suffragists and World War I veterans—had led to violence and embarrassment for the government.

Threatening a march was risky—Randolph didn’t know if enough African Americans would show up, and he worried that blacks might be portrayed as unpatriotic if they did—but the threat was so effective that Randolph didn’t even have to hold the march in order to win some concessions. In 1941, President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order prohibiting racial discrimination by unions and companies doing war-related work, and he created a Committee on Fair Employment Practices to enforce its provisions. Thousands of average blacks then applied for well-paying defense jobs, lodged complaints, and gained a foothold in important industries. Although Roosevelt was not quite ready to desegregate the military, throughout the war black Americans continued to demand victory both against our foreign enemies and against discrimination at home, and two years after the war, President Truman issued an Executive Order desegregating the military.

The lesson to be learned from this wartime incident is that timing matters. It is crucial for gay rights activists to be cognizant of special moments of opportunity when they have more leverage. In a fairly direct parallel today, the war in Iraq provides a perfect time to demonstrate the absurdity of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Now is the time to document the competence of homosexuals in the military, the importance of the work they do, and the support from their colleagues in arms. With the appropriate amount of pressure, there is a good chance that their patriotic service will pay off as it did for African Americans after World War II.
The Courts

The gay rights struggle most clearly mimics the black civil rights struggle in its use of the courts to effect social change. The trailblazing Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954 was the culmination of a decades-long legal struggle by the NAACP to chip away at the legal underpinnings of segregation, first by targeting the most egregiously unequal situations and then using the language of those precedents to make a frontal assault on the principle of segregation itself. One disadvantage of this strategy is that it’s very slow. Victory requires patient and courageous litigants, good lawyers who make intelligent choices about which cases to pursue, money to pay the lawyers for research, and sympathetic justices. Outweighing these costs is the enormous force of Supreme Court rulings as the final word on the U.S. Constitution. When the Court begins taking a group’s rights seriously, people listen. As a result of the Brown decision, all Southern states had to revamp their public school systems. States resisted, of course; in places like Little Rock, Arkansas, local authorities blocked the schoolhouse doors and President Eisenhower had to send in the army to protect black children from mobs.

The risk is that the courts won’t overturn discriminatory state laws, won’t see homosexuals as a class worth protecting, or won’t see the rights GLBT people ask for as rights all Americans are guaranteed. The record on gay issues is mixed so far, and the composition of the courts has changed. There’s also a key difference in the legal context between the black and gay rights movements. In their battle for justice, African Americans had a clear and obvious Constitutional provision on their side, the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868 after the Civil War and intended to protect former slaves from racial discrimination, it prohibited states from depriving blacks of equal protection of the law. GLBT people have no such protection. On the other hand, gay people don’t have to worry about the difficulty of overturning a long-standing precedent like the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which permitted separate but equal public facilities, effectively gutting the Fourteenth Amendment. Although there certainly have been state laws discriminating against gays and criminalizing homosexual behavior, GLBT people don’t have to grapple with the same centuries-long, concerted effort to reduce blacks to second-class citizens.

That said, African-American history cautions us not to believe that once we get some positive Supreme Court decisions, the war will be won. The Brown decision declared segregated school systems unconstitutional, but it didn’t say exactly what type of integration was required, or when and how it should occur. It took decades for all the legal implications to be resolved. In practice, the enactment of change depended heavily on battles at the local level, where individual families had to decide whether to petition school boards for admission, whether to appeal when they were turned down, whether to sue, and whether to complain when children were mistreated. Resistance to integration was extraordinary; some districts closed their public schools for a year or more rather than let black children in. Children were treated cruelly, and their parents were subjected to harassment. And in a white-controlled process of desegregation, many black schools were shut down, meaning a loss of traditions and a safe community and fewer jobs for black teachers, principals, coaches, and counselors. Today, many Southern schools are more integrated than those in Northern cities, and that is due to the perseverance of individual children and parents, who often partnered with civil rights organizations like the NAACP.

One lesson here is that we can’t take court victories for granted in today’s political context. Those victories we get will be valuable and hard-fought, so we must support the people and organizations that fight on the legal front on our behalf and on behalf of the next generations. We must be vigilant and continue to protect our gains as others try to counteract them. When a court says we should have the right to be married, we shouldn’t be surprised when conservative groups propose constitutional amendments that override the court’s decision, or when local groups try to avoid or delay change. In addition, we can’t simply rely on the courts—if our opponents use legislative methods, we need to be ready to do the same, and that means we have to be able to influence popular opinion.

Legislative Strategies

Black activists regularly heard from their opponents in the 1950’s and 1960’s that you can’t legislate opinions. To some degree, that’s true—laws don’t automatically change how people think. However, over time there is a powerful correlation between legal changes and attitudinal changes. Racism hasn’t disappeared, but young whites grow up with very different assumptions from those of their grandparents. It’s hard to say precisely what caused the changes in people’s minds, but it would be hard to ignore the impact of the integration of public accommodations. In a culture where every public institution stigmatized blacks—African Americans had to buy food from the back of restaurants, give up their seats to whites on trains, stay at different hotels, sit on the opposite side of courtrooms, and even attend the state fair on different days as whites—people naturally grew up assuming blacks were inferior. Even if it wasn’t possible to change the minds of many older whites, forcing new behaviors in public places was an important first step in changing the cultural mindset.

It was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that made public racial segregation illegal, forcing the “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs to come down. Equally significant, the law prohibited discrimination in employment. This landmark legislation also tried to speed school desegregation, protect black voting rights, and end discrimination in all federally assisted programs. Laying the groundwork for African Americans to gradually improve their situation in economics, education, public social life, and politics, the act is one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed.

How did such a law to protect the rights of a minority of Americans manage to pass Congress? It seemed unlikely at first. John F. Kennedy was a lukewarm supporter of black civil rights. Having won the presidency by the narrowest of margins, he was not inclined to throw his weight behind something as controversial as this bill. In an ironic twist of fate, Kennedy’s assassination meant a strong supporter of civil rights became president. A shrewd and experienced politician, Lyndon Johnson was a master at piecing together legislative alliances. Johnson seized the moment, portraying the bill as a way to honor the slain Kennedy. Behind the scenes, he and civil rights leaders tapped into the core of liberals who supported the bill on principle (including some Republicans) and fashioned a majority by adding others who could be swayed by deals or public opinion. Union leaders, liberal organizations, and progressive ministers and rabbis were among those who publicly threw their weight behind the bill early on, but Congress didn’t act until civil rights headlined the evening news every week and it became clear that many Americans wanted something to change. From 1963 to 1966, during the height of the mass civil rights movement, a strong Democratic majority in Congress initiated a host of significant policies and programs to help disadvantaged people, including African Americans. When this liberal alliance split apart over Vietnam a couple of years later, it marked the end of an amazingly productive period for progressive legislation.

One obvious lesson from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is that minorities need political allies. Politicians base their votes not simply on what they believe is right or wrong but on pragmatism—what they think their constituents, allies, and parties support. That means we have to vote in large numbers, lobby energetically, donate money to targeted campaigns, and support the individual candidates and party most likely to show appreciation down the line. We also need to get our message out more effectively—so that the general public understands exactly what injustices we face and the solutions that would remedy them, giving politicians good reason to support our cause sooner rather than later. In addition, it’s not enough to focus selfishly on our own cause. We make friends by supporting other peoples’ causes, speaking out for them in the political arena and in our personal lives. It makes sense for gay people to join hands with others who have been discriminated against, including racial and ethnic minorities, women, senior citizens, people with disabilities, and religious minorities. For legislative success, we need to lay the political groundwork, win allies, benefit from a little luck, know when to compromise, and be ready to strike when the iron is hot. Hopefully that will be soon for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and domestic partner benefits laws.

As powerful as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was, it is naïve to think that change occurred overnight once Congress had spoken. “People right now think that the white man opened up his drugstore and said, ‘Y’all come on in now, integration done come,’” recalled Black Power advocate Eddie McCoy, quoted in the book Blood Done Sign My Name. “But every time a door was opened, somebody was kicked in the butt; somebody was knocked down and refused and spit on before you went in them places. You didn’t get it for free.” In every single Southern town, there had to be people with enough nerve to walk into the restaurant that had never served them, find out if they could really sit at the front of the bus, and apply to be the first black on the police force. The names of these thousands of average people who tested and monitored the laws deserve at least as much credit as the members of Congress who passed the laws.

Direct Action

It was direct action that kept black civil rights issues on the front pages, taught white Americans about the injustices that black Americans were suffering, and convinced them that legislation was needed. King eloquently described injustice, but equally important was his shrewdness in figuring out ways to force Americans to face the issues. While we tend to remember his speeches about nonviolence, many have forgotten King’s exhortations about the necessity of confrontation. “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue,” explained King in his famous Letter from the Birmingham Jail. “It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.”

The Civil Rights Movement used nonviolent direct action very intelligently, using creative tactics that clearly dramatized the injustices African Americans were facing. When they wanted to protest segregation in restaurants, black activists staged sit-ins at lunch counters. When they wanted to protest segregation in interstate transportation, “Freedom Riders” occupied the front seats of Greyhound buses. In 1960 the sit-in tactic spread like wildfire and was adapted to particular issues and local circumstances; there were “kneel-ins” at segregated churches, “read-ins” at segregated libraries, and “sleep-ins” in motel lobbies. While many of the early protests were accomplished by small trained groups of disciplined activists, quickly over fifty thousand people in scores of Southern towns copied the methods, forcing many proprietors of lunch counters, bowling alleys, theatres, and hotels to reconsider their policies.

Why were the sit-ins so successful? In part it was because they affected merchants where it mattered most—at the cash register. White customers had difficulty buying food at Woolworth’s lunch counters when non-paying blacks were occupying the stools. Other store patrons were scared off by the possibility of trouble. Indeed, the early sit-ins worked well precisely because they provoked a reaction from racist observers, some of whom threw mustard on them, burned them with cigarettes, and spat at, cursed, hit, and kicked them—all of which the demonstrators accepted without a word or gesture. Consistent with the Gandhian techniques of passive resistance taught by leaders like Bayard Rustin, the manner in which activists protested was as important as the cause. Counteracting the stereotype of blacks as poor and ignorant, the sit-in demonstrators wore their best Sunday clothes and politely requested service. After they were refused service, they simply stayed put, sitting with quiet dignity. If they were arrested, they accepted the penalty for breaking the law—while calmly explaining the reasons they broke unjust laws. They tried to assume the moral high ground, making a point of criticizing practices rather than people, and tried not to express hatred toward those who advocated outdated practices. They believed that both their means and ends had to be ethical.

Initially, reporters were enticed by the creativity of the sit-ins, but frequently it was the violence perpetrated against the demonstrators that held their interest. Again and again in the early 1960’s, the contrast between the dignified black activists and the angry, violent racists was stark. Mobs in Little Rock featured white housewives seething with rage and screaming epithets at black school children; young white thugs in Alabama greeted God-fearing Freedom Riders with bombs, bats, and bricks; sadistic white police in Birmingham turned high-powered water hoses and German Shepherd dogs onto nonviolent marchers. Seeing it on the nightly news, northern white citizens were appalled by the extreme hostility. Nonviolent demonstrators kept up the pressure—despite calls for a cooling off period—long enough to convince Congress it should consider the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Later in the movement, Black Power advocates gained the upper hand. These activists had grown tired of demonstrators being harassed, jailed, and beaten simply for asking for their rights. Angrier and more militant, they emphasized cultural pride rather than integration, and demanded rights rather than politely asking for them. Advocating self-defense and change “by any means necessary,” they were blamed when urban riots erupted in the late sixties. Historians are divided over the impact of this branch of the movement—whether detouring from King’s path resulted in the loss of crucial allies, or whether the threat of violence actually helped convince white authorities that they should make reforms. Either way, it’s clear that movement activists disagreed about the best direction to go, and only slowly did they realize that publicly criticizing one another over inevitable divisions was self-defeating.

There are many lessons to be taken from the direct action campaigns of the 1960’s. First, they effectively dramatized the types of oppression blacks endured and did so in creative ways that resulted in consistent media attention. They did so in part by bringing to the surface the ugly, irrational hatred of their opponents. Gay people are well aware that an equally virulent homophobia exists—certainly there are nasty incidents and hate crimes—but many middle-of-the-road Americans are not aware of its extent. James Farmer, a key Civil Rights strategist, observed that activists could “count upon the racists of the South” to create a crisis that would force the government to act. It shouldn’t be too difficult for the gay rights movement to find ways to provoke homophobes into showing their true colors. Some might think we’re better off letting hatred stay beneath the surface whenever possible, but the fact is that oppressed peoples don’t get rights just handed to them on a platter; they have to push for them, which inevitably causes a negative reaction from some quarters. In the sixties many whites criticized King for stirring up trouble. But King knew that tension was frequently the precursor to negotiations and progress. “I have earnestly opposed violent tension,” he declared, “but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.”

At the same time that black civil rights activists tried to expose the ugliness of racism, they themselves strove to be viewed in a positive light. They carefully considered the ways they dressed, behaved, and spoke about their opponents. It can be dangerous to worry about public perception to the point where we contradict our own values or alienate our own community, however. For example, some in the black movement wanted strategist Bayard Rustin to stay in the background because he was gay. We should avoid criticizing elements of the GLBT community that disturb mainstream America. Still, it never hurts to dispel stereotypes, and it pays to be savvy in thinking about how the movement will be perceived. In particular, we need to be careful about ridiculing entire groups of people (such as born-again Christians) in ways that might lose us allies. Similarly seizing the moral high ground poses a special challenge for us when our opponents have characterized themselves as the “moral majority.”

Another lesson of the black movement’s successful direct action campaign is that it requires many brave and dedicated people on the front lines. There must be people willing to endure being cursed, arrested, or even harmed. After the successes of the early sit-ins, the black movement had no shortage of volunteers to make such sacrifices. Of course, many of the demonstrators were energetic young people who had little to lose—they didn’t have life partners, careers, car payments, kids, or houses—and in the idealistic sixties, they found a short stint in prison to be cool. Standing behind those young people were organizations like SNCC, CORE, and SCLC, funded by people less willing to put their bodies on the line, but ready to support activists with bail money, legal defense, and personal appreciation. Eventually the young people were joined by people less likely to take to the streets: their parents, conservative ministers, sharecroppers, and school teachers; in addition, they were joined by white students in droves, plus white priests, nuns, ministers, and rabbis. The media seemed to pay even more attention when whites would sacrifice for the black cause. These black and white activists changed the world, and they were changed, too. Protestor Diane Nash, quoted in Voices of Freedom, explained, “The movement had a way of reaching inside you and bringing out things that even you didn’t know were there. Such as courage.”

While the principles behind the nonviolent direct action campaign are well worth emulating, we can’t simply mimic tactics of the black civil rights movement and expect the same dramatic results. Our problems are different. Gay people don’t encounter signs segregating them in every public space, so sit-ins forcing integration aren’t likely to be the most appropriate tactic. The Montgomery bus boycott was another successful method, but boycotts only work in the right circumstances; the protesting community must have obvious economic clout in the product or company being boycotted. For example, in Montgomery blacks constituted eighty percent of the riders of the buses and their absence caused a significant financial impact.

In the same vein, gays should not assume that copying the movement’s famous marches will work. Certainly A. Phillip Randolph’s threatened march on Washington in 1941 led to important gains. Then, in 1963, Randolph resuscitated the idea, and some 250,000 people gathered beneath the Lincoln Memorial to listen to King and other speakers eloquently describe the society they dreamed of achieving. This image is still so prevalent that one could easily conclude that marches are the ideal form of protest. However, it is hard to pinpoint anything concrete that the March accomplished. Its organizers hoped to convince Congress to pass the proposed Civil Rights bill, but the bill didn’t pass for another year, and most historians think that the shocking photos of black protestors being attacked by police dogs in Birmingham, and the terror suffered by black and white college students in Mississippi, won many more supporters than did the D.C. march.

Today, marches tend to be much less effective. Marches made more of an impact in racist Southern cities that discouraged or prohibited them, making the march itself an act of defiance that sometimes led to arrests or violent confrontations. These days, city officials simply give minority groups a permit for a march in the downtown business district on a weekend morning when no one’s there—and then ignore them. Often a march is a one-time event with no follow-up. In addition, marches have become so commonplace that they make less of an impression on the public. Television cameras might show up, leading to fifteen seconds of footage on the local news, but that’s hardly sufficient to explain injustice. To be truly impressed by a march, a person must be present at it. That’s why local pride parades invite politicians, so they can see the presence of thousands of dedicated voters.

While marches usually have little political impact today, they can be quite important to the marchers themselves, who may experience an unparalleled sense of unity, energy, and power. Seeing the growing number of participants lets GLBT people know they’re not alone, and can inspire them to be out. If the organizers of such events intend them for celebration, raising morale, and building community, they serve those purposes well. But if the primary goal is promoting social change, they should consider other tactics.

While we can’t simply imitate the direct action tactics of the black civil rights movement, we can learn from the larger principles behind them. Black strategists chose targets wisely, figuring out exactly what sort of pressure (economic, legal, or social) they would be sensitive to. They designed creative direct action campaigns that provoked a reaction from their opponents and gained media attention. They trained committed demonstrators to maximize their positive image, and once they’d gotten their message out, they welcomed huge numbers of sympathizers. The gay rights movement requires some creative thinking. While we’ve already got dedicated professionals and advocacy groups using the legal and political methods that led to important victories for blacks, there is only a handful of ACT-UP and Lesbian Avenger chapters practicing direct action.

The GLBT community should be good at direct action—we celebrate the Stonewall rebellion, have foremothers who led the women’s liberation movement, and are known for creativity. The AIDS Quilt has been extraordinarily powerful, and the Day of Silence in schools dramatizes how gay students often find themselves alone and unprotected. But what methods are next? Same-sex couples could pack courthouses and apply for marriage licenses in places where they are not permitted to marry. As they delay the licenses of straight couples, they could hand out the lists of the rights and benefits that same-sex couples are deprived of. Devout gay Christians (and their allies) could hold pray-ins outside churches that don’t welcome homosexuals. What about kiss-ins at straight clubs? Some straight people are revolted by public displays of affection by same-sex couples, so this action might tap into the sort of rage that makes our opponents look bad.

And when will there be masses of GLBT activists? For blacks, the mass movement started around 1960 when large numbers became fed up with growing white resistance to integration after the Brown decision. We seem to be in a similar historic moment when opponents of equality are organizing very effectively. If the historic comparison is accurate, we could be living in a moment of “relative deprivation” when GLBT people are disappointed relative to their rising expectations. It is in these moments—when oppressed people possess the necessary combination of anger and hope—that mass movements tend to develop.

UNFORTUNATELY, there’s no formula for social change. We can’t assume that if we add just the right combination of direct action, legal appeals, political organizing, positive cultural images, and economic pressure, then our society will transform itself into a more just place. Still, we can adapt methods and principles from the Civil Rights Movement, and we can draw some inferences about how change will not occur. It’s not going to be enough for GLBT organizations to take one significant case to the Supreme Court and expect that a Republican-appointed Chief Justice will announce a decision that puts an end to discrimination without any struggle by the rest of us. Nor will it be enough for hundreds of thousands of GLBT supporters simply to show up at a march where charismatic leaders speak so eloquently that conservative Americans suddenly find their hearts and minds changed and they pressure Congress to pass a law that remedies inequality overnight.

If we want meaningful and lasting change, we need to participate in every area of society: corporations, the courts, Congress, state legislatures, neighborhoods, schools, churches, the health care system, the military, cyberspace, sports, television, Hollywood, music, art, families, and private clubs. Our leaders must be flexible and shrewd in recognizing which branches and levels of government are most appropriate for particular issues, and which sorts of pressure different people and institutions will be likely to respond to. Though we certainly need to support advocacy organizations with our money and time, we can’t just wait for them to do the work for us. Fundamental change isn’t likely to come without a mass movement and efforts by many people all across the nation. Their actions can’t just imitate the sit-ins of the 60’s; we must create our own methods that directly target injustice, gain a forum to plead our case, and demonstrate our convictions. All of us can make a difference somewhere. We certainly need to be “out” and influence everyone we know. Although we may be working in different arenas and have philosophical and political differences, we should view one another as partners—in a struggle where the front lines are Congress and the Supreme Court and also local school boards, employers, and acquaintances.

We need to be wise in choosing our methods, making sure they are creative and effective and consistent with our principles. If we’re lucky enough to win that elusive landmark court decision or gain passage of a significant civil rights bill (which our advocacy organizations are working very diligently on), we’re the ones who will have to make sure it’s implemented. We need to be impatient and get both our neighbors and our nation to confront our issues. We also need to be patient and recognize that there will be backlash and defeats along what is a very long—and most definitely not straight—path to justice. We need to appreciate and support our allies. Especially in difficult times, we need to be careful to nurture ourselves and our loved ones. If we are in a period comparable to the one African Americans faced in the 1950’s, we should be angry when our expectations aren’t met and ready to seize opportunities as they arise.

Mary Jo Festle teaches U.S., African-American, and women’s history at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina.