For us to proceed forward in winning the war for gay rights we need to peer back to the last successful civil rights movement. Lessons learned in the past can be practical solutions for today. The topic of gay rights, including gay marriage, continues to be a conundrum for most of the current crop of republicans and a great many democrats as well. This was one of John Kerry’s Achilles Heels in the 2004 Campaign. Kerry did not endorse gay marriage; rather, he endorsed civil unions. Even that was political suicide against with the current crop of republicans in power. So, let’s look back in time to see how the last civil rights struggle came to fruition.
On February 1, 1960 four black students from North Carolina A&T University went into a Woolworth Department Store in Greensboro, North Carolina, bought a few items, and then sat down at the all-white lunch counter. (Now raise your hand if you remember those old Woolworth lunch counters!)
They weren’t served. The lunch counter was just for white people. But they weren’t forced out, either. They sat at the all-white lunch counter for the next hour – until the store closed – and then they left.
The next day 30 students sat down, and the following day all 66 seats were taken by the students. From Greensboro the protests quickly spread to Raleigh. And from Raleigh the protests quickly spread to Nashville, Baltimore, and across the South. Within a few weeks more than 50,000 people had participated in lunch counter sit-ins. Next came standing at movie theaters, and kneeling at church. There were even “wade-ins” at white-only beaches!
Many restaurants in the South ended their policy of segregation within a few months, and the Civil Rights Movement was born. There was a sense of empowerment within the black community, many of whom felt that the power for change lay within their hands and not with the federal government.
The Democratic Party had a solid lock on the South, and it was an election year. The last thing these so-called “Dixiecrats” wanted to hear was a presidential candidate embrace civil rights. And it just happened that the Democratic nominee for President was a Catholic Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy.
Now this wouldn’t be a Snapcat thread without some sort of surprise or plot twist, and here is where some people may find that surprise. As a presidential candidate, JFK avoided being associated with the Lunch Counter Sit-Ins. Northern Democrats, such as himself embraced the notion of civil rights, but such policy was political suicide for Southern Democrats – and JFK needed the South for him to win the election. The Kennedy Campaign used “code words and phrases” to alert the black community that he was with them. And that policy worked when Kennedy narrowly beat Nixon in November, largely due to the overwhelming support JFK received from the black community in northern states. But the black community soon wondered if they had indeed put a “friend” in the White House. And, indeed, President Kennedy would never sign any significant civil rights legislation during his presidency. As a Senator he had, in fact, refused to sign Eisenhower’s 1957 Civil Rights Act.
Although President Eisenhower was not a vocal supporter of Civil Rights, he did have to respond when the State of Arkansas “declared war” against the Eisenhower Administration. It was a media circus. Eisenhower had shown that he had little faith in measures to support the African American community in the South simply because he believed that a change of heart was required and that enforcement would not work - if anything, enforcement would make matters worse.
The 1957 Civil Rights Bill was already considered “mild” and “not enough” to many people. And Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (Surprise!) would water it down even further so that it could win passage. 72 Senators voted for its passage, 14 Senators, including Senator John F. Kennedy, opposed it. The Bill barely changed anything, but it was the first civil rights legislation to be passed by Congress since Reconstruction.
The Lunch Counter Sit-Ins gave way to the Freedom Rides, in which civil rights activists tried to integrate interstate buses. Southern mobs attacked those buses. Attorney General Robert Kennedy met with student protesters and was quoted as saying "Why don’t you guys cut all that shit, freedom riding and sitting-in shit, and concentrate on voter registration. If you do that, I’ll get you tax-free status."
It took the Kennedy Administration too long to embrace the notion of a civil rights movement. And in all fairness JFK did have a lot on his hands internationally with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Still, the movement became too large and too great to ignore. The national media often reported on Freedom Riders being attacked and murdered by Southern mobs.
Still, our Nation would have to wait until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 for the first nails in the coffin of segregation to be hammered. And it is President Johnson, and not President Kennedy, who should deserve the credit for openly embracing the last successful civil rights movement in our country.
So, what have we learned from history? Not enough, in my opinion. If we, the gay community, expect any real change we must be willing to act. We must be willing to sit down at our equivalent of the Woolworth Lunch Counter and ask for service. We must be willing to make the sacrifices that other groups have made in the past in order to achieve equality. I don’t think we’re there yet.
Cites:
Social List Worker
African American Odyssey
The Learning Site & The Learning Site & The Learning Site
Stanford University
The Jackson Sun
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