Michael Schwerner. Andrew Goodman. James Chaney. Rita Schwerner. Viola Gregg Liuzzo. Lillian Smith. Virginia Durr. Ralph McGill. Eugene Patterson. Buddy Davis.
Do any of these names sound familiar? Unsurprisingly no, I'm sure.
These are a few of the names of white Americans that fought in the civil rights movement in favor of African Americans, and more than half of these names lost their lives in this struggle. Now why is it that these people have been lost in history? They may have fought just as hard as Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, yet they receive no recognition for their contributions. The idea of "leaders" taking it upon themselves to lead a cause and spur action and make changes that attributes to this lack of recognition. History is built upon the figures in the limelight, shirking aside all the "little people".
While many African Americans fought and were lost in the recesses of time, the White American supporters played a different, yet vital role to the movement. I'm pretty positive I paid a good amount of attention in high school (despite History not exactly being my favorite subject), and I was still left with the impression that well, white people hated blacks and never wanted to see them free. I was sure there must have been some anomalies out there, some white sympathizers, but overall I had been pretty positive that they must have been too afraid of the backlash to do much to support. A rather naive view, in hindsight.
In actuality, the white role in the civil rights movement was crucial. They were able to appeal far more to their people than African Americans. They had the innate ethos necessary to start tearing down some of the ingrained racist ideals of the majority. It is not fair to push aside their contributions when they risked so much to fight for what they believed to be moral and just, parallel to the African Americans.
Something to take away from this would be that it wasn't just the African Americans struggling for their rights. They had help from many races. I mean, I never knew Asians cared about the movement until Prof. Kelley assigned our reading on it. While the struggle was clearly a predominantly African American one, without help from all ends, who knows how it would have panned out?
"I was sure there must have been some anomalies out there, some white sympathizers, but overall I had been pretty positive that they must have been too afraid of the backlash to do much to support." I questioned the same thing! We always see the Black contributions but we never focus on the contributions made by other races. I always wanted to ask, "Why?" Is it a way for textbook writers to argue that only Blacks were in support of these movements and that they got no help from other races, because this is definitely not true. I always question were there other races living in the south during the governments introduction of the Jim Crow laws. In pictures, movies and textbooks you only hear of whites and Blacks. In the issue of whether to enter a "Colored" or "White" line, establishment, water fountain, etc, where did Asians, Latinos and Indians go?
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