Civil Rights 1960

In the long fight for civil rights, two events in the spring of 1960 led to a turning of the tide of world opinion against the segregation of black and white people where it was still occurring. On February 1, four black students sat down at a segregated lunch counter at Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina. According to Connie Curry, “The sit-in movement spread like wildfire during the spring of 1960. … By Easter, more than 70,000 mostly black southern college students were involved in demonstrations.”

March 21 in Sharpeville, a South African township, police opened fire on peaceful demonstrators against the hated passbooks which were used to enforce segregation, killing 69. Life magazine for April 11, 1960 reported on “South Africa Torn by Fury”, and noted that “The United Nations took a hand and white South Africans began to realize how isolated they are at the bar of world opinion.”

In the corner of northeast Iowa where Line, Marty and Paul live, these events didn’t make much of an impact. At that point, they had only met one black person, a black pastor from Madagascar who spoke at their church. But these events did foreshadow the social change that would affect the years in which the kids came of age. The last two chapters of “The Pastor’s Kids” are set in 1960.

Ella Baker

For years now, I’ve been reading memoirs by young people who helped effect this social change. I keep coming across the name of a woman whom everyone speaks of with love and respect, and whom I didn’t even know about. Her name was Ella Baker. She was a bit older than most of the young people she influenced. She had begun her work in New York in the Harlem Renaissance, and worked with the NAACP and the SCLC. But she resisted the messianic leadership which she saw in the black churches, where the pastors were men and the members women. She thought that “strong people don’t need strong leaders” and developed an idea about participatory democracy. Tom Hayden says, in his book Rebel, “Such decentralized and essentially voluntary forms are inevitable whenever movements erupt with the seemingly endless energy as they did during that decade.”

The early workers in what everyone called “the Beloved Community” formed by civil rights workers, all knew Ella Baker. Connie Curry recalls her “deep friendship with Ella Baker” and Casey Hayden writes, “Whether Ella Baker was shaping the direction of the civil rights movement by advising the southern student movement to remain independent of adult organizations or listening to the dream of one child, her whole being was concentrated on and dedicated to the struggle of eliminating the barriers and injustice of racism. Being around someone like Ella Baker put me in contact with focused purpose and true greatness.”

The Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, also begun in 1960, was the result of Ella Baker trying to get various students she knew who were working on civil rights all over the country together. She thought they should have their own organization. A wonderful article which traces the legacy of this group fifty years later can be found at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/25/860631/-Never-Turn-BackReport-on-SNCCs-50th-Anniversary. "For all of the youthful energy and commitment to challenge and change that erupted in 1960," said Charlie Cobb, a SNCC Field Secretary, "the reason for SNCC's existence comes down to one person - a then-57-year-old woman, Ella Baker, one of the great figures of 20th-century struggle. In a deep political sense, we are her children and our 50th anniversary conference is dedicated to her."