Essay about Civil Rights Historiography - 3569 Words

The Civil Rights Movement is often thought to begin with a tired Rosa Parks defiantly declining to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She paid the price by going to jail. Her refusal sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which civil rights historians have in the past credited with beginning the modern civil rights movement. Others credit the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education with beginning the movement. Regardless of the event used as the starting point of the moment, everyone can agree that it is an important period in history. In the forty-five years since the modern civil rights movement, several historians have made significant contributions to the study of this era. These historians†¦show more content†¦Whites were afraid to be labeled as racially moderate, and typically had to join the side of white supremacy for many reasons, among them the fact that class had previously aligned African-Americans and poorer whit es in a fight against poverty, Brown elevated racial status above class. Also, the decision made those in power in the South exert their disproportionate political power to keep the state government in their hands. Finally, some Southerners who normally would not care about race were swayed by the fact that the federal government was trying to impose a decision in education—an arena typically reserved for state government. This made the fight one of states’ rights versus federal decree. Klarman’s argument claims that this mobilization of white resistance in the South led to increased tension and violence against African-Americans. For example, the bitter protests in Birmingham and Selma, along with the violence in the Black Belt areas of Lowndes County, where police dogs, fire hoses and lynching were used came as a result of this massive resistance movement. This violence, when media attention was paid to it, â€Å"converted northern whites to the civil ri ghts cause by exposing the true evils of the Jim Crow system.† Civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King, played on that knowledge and specifically targeted cities where the most powerful backlash would occur, gaining them media air time and allowing the Northerners toShow MoreRelatedThe Civil Rights Movement By Charles W. Eagles780 Words   |  4 Pages Ten years after Fairclough article, another author continues the discussion of historians and their attempt to analysis the civil rights movement. Charles W. Eagles’ article â€Å"Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era† provides further supporting evidence that scholars fail to analyze the movement to its fullest potential. Eagles utilizes diplomatic historian John Lewis Gaddis analogy of historians studying the cold car. According to Gaddis, cold war scholars â€Å"reflected the contemporaneousRead MoreThe Agrarian Myth Of The South929 Words   |  4 Pageshistories of rural sout hern women blend to reveal narratives about the region and nation that were silent in the historiography. Following in the steps of Tera Hunter, Walker and Sharpless accentuated how vital women were to the construction of Southern history and society. They even touched upon the experiences of rural African American women, often over-looked in the historiography due to their race, gender, or socio-economic status. They do support a distinctive South and base it on some specificRead MoreThe Movement Of The Chicano Movement1412 Words   |  6 Pagesin the 60’s and 70’s came out during the same time of the Civil Rights Movement. It was about fighting for social, political, and economic justice for Chicano people. The issues that were highlighted in the movement were; restoration of land grant rights, fair treatment of farm workers, educational access and dismantling racial discrimination for Chicano youth, and pushing for voting rights. Common historiographies of the Chic ano civil rights movement in the 60 s and 70’s center men as the sole contributorsRead MoreSlavery And The Civil War1641 Words   |  7 PagesThe American civil war was in no doubt the most crucial event in history. No other war compares or even comes close to the casualties suffered. It helped conserve and maintain the Union, drastically changed the relationship between the federal and states government, and led to slavery’s abolition. This war has also stirred up many conflicts until this day about the conflicts and causes. Among the countless and even undiscovered questions comes the most common as being why the Southern states wereRead MoreHistory And History Of Haiti810 Words   |  4 PagesJoseph, a professor at Indian River State College, best explains the modern scholarship in historiography of Haiti with his following statement, â€Å"The scholarship that does exist focuses on class and race structures, resistance of the enslaved and marronage, economic and political forces, and Toussaint Louverture.† Professor Joseph is recognizing the modern development by historians concerning the historiography of Haiti unlike the past, where Haiti was ignored and downplayed as an important event ofRead MoreSouthern Secession and the Causes for the Civil War1025 Words   |  4 Pages The issue of Southern secession and the causes for the Civil War have been immensely debated, researched, and written on. An analysis of just a small portion of these historical and sociological works reveals that just about every approach and position on the topic has been explored. Yet still today, nearly 150 years later, historians continue to find new ways to answer this age old question—why did the South secede? The debate continues as authors seek to make sense of the primary documentationRead MoreThe Main Objective Of A Historiography Paper Is To Research1459 Words   |  6 PagesThe main objective of a historiography paper is to research and de fine the distinct evolution of a historical viewpoint on a certain event or subject matter. Historical perceptions of the Ku Klux Klan as an organization have been greatly modified over time. Beginning in the Reconstruction as an organization rich in justice and phenomenal, effective social work, the Klan has become the face of various historical interpretations. The three groups of sources that follow are categorized by the historicalRead MoreThe War Of The Civil War1522 Words   |  7 PagesAbout 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery. During the Civil War, sentiment concerning slaves, enslavement and emancipation in the United States was divided. In 1861, Lincoln worried that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that to lose Kentucky is nearly the sameRead MoreThe Influence Of The Great Mans Impact On History908 Words   |  4 Pagestheory. Whilst unfashionable in current historiography I feel it is naà ¯ve to dismiss its significance. Carlyle’s ‘On Heroes’ opened my eyes to the thesis and drove me to obtain greater insight into this now frowned upon school of thought -with Machiavelli’s The Prince and Hobbes’ Leviathan providing contextual knowledge on the role of the powerful in addition to igniting my interest in intellectual history, since supplemented by Bentley’s Modern Historiography. Hobbes’ statement that the sovereignRead MoreThe Poster, By Judith Giesberg1574 Words   |  7 Pagesthat the Civil War allowed Ame rican women to traverse the social boundaries that reserved wars for males and home for females. Instead, marginalized working-class, rural, minority, or immigrant women actively defied such gender demarcation by replacing males in fields and arsenals, confronting state officials in acquiring resources, joining political activities on streets, or travelling to battlefields to retrieve their loved ones’ bodies (9-10). Challenging the established historiography assuming