Class Notes 3/26

Here are my class notes from today's discussion on Freedom Riders (2010).

3/26 Class Notes

  1. Preliminary Discussion Notes
    1. Each group needs to send 12 events by Monday
      1. 6 events must have occured between 1893 and 1954
        1. The other six can be from after that or whenever
          1. Central high school integrated 1957
  2. Discussion of Freedom Riders
    1. First half of the height of the Black freedom struggle
      1. Period dominated by non violent protest
        1. Freedom rides, march on washington, march on Selma, etc
      2. Dominated by black church and non violent pacifism
      3. Heading next week into black power movement
        1. Different perspective and actions
    2. Discussion Questions to carry forward
      1. Why does non violent protest give way to something different? Why do we move from nonviolence of SCLC fading by mid to late 60s and the rise of a more militant freedom struggle? Why and how does it happen?
      2. How do you evaluate the effectiveness of nonviolence as a method? Did it achieve the goals that the freedom riders had? Then why does the shift happen? Is it possible to say that nonviolence is not effective?
      3. How specifically did the freedom rise illustrate the rise of nonviolence that King writes about in Why We Can’t Wait?
      4. How do you assess the impact of the freedom rides? Was it positive or negative? Did it accomplish what it wanted to?
      5. How should we assess the success of nonviolence bringing about social change? Did it bring about sustainable, meaningful social change?
    3. Writing activity
      1. How did the Freedom Rides deploy the theory of nonviolent protest that King describes in his book? What were these methods intended to bring about, and how effective were they? What scene or moment in the film best illustrates this? Can you connect it to a particular passage from Why We Can’t Wait?
        1. It gained the national attention that it desired to garner from the Kennedy administration as well as the international media
          1. Other countries talking about what is going on in Alabama and that USA can’t even handle its own problems
        2. Freedom Riders willing to give up everything, many admitting they were scared to die but knew it could possibly happen
        3. The girl near the end of the film that told her parents one morning that she was leaving to be a Freedom Rider just like that
          1. Said that it wasn’t like anyone asked her to join, but she knew it was her calling and that she needed to be there
            1. Something that was in the air or wind at the time
    4. Class Discussion notes
      1. It was interracial
        1. Brought more attention to it
          1. Turned up the heat
        2. Showing change is coming which many whites feared
        3. More disruptive
        4. Whites as non-racist allies
        5. Citizenship
        6. Not only a black problem
        7. Something that incites the passion of these racist southerners
      2. Non-violent?
        1. How do we think through the dimensions of non-violent and history of racist anxiety? Was this protest intentionally designed to provoke violence?
          1. Intended to create chaos
          2. Young early 20s college kids from the north
            1. Local vs national
          3. They thought getting arrested, maybe ruffed up a little bit, maybe insulted some
          4. “To dare the federal government to do what they are supposed to do and see if their constitutional rights would be protected”
            1. Objective to get the feds to do what they said they would do
            2. Kennedy administration was about freeing people in every other country besides U.S. in some ways
            3. International media attention
              1. Big contradiction “paradise of freedom”
              2. A big point in the Cold War
                1. Southern racism is a major problem on a global scale
                2. It is no longer a domestic issue
          5. Systematic vs social change
          6. Desegregation vs human rights
          7. Common southern argument was change takes time
            1. “You cannot change a way of life overnight, the more they try to force into doing something, the worse the reaction will be.”
            2. Racist southerners at the beginning of the film
          8. “these people are going from town to town and getting off the bus, and seeking through mixed groups of Negro men and white women to force themselves into situations that tend to inflame local people, in such a manner to incite them into local acts of violence. that's what they are doing here.”
          9. What do the freedom rides accomplish?
            1. To draw attention and be so loud that they couldn't be shushed
            2. Impossible to ignore
          10. King ignited the white moderates out of their slumber in Why We Can’t Wait
            1. Page 97 “I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate….outright rejection”
              1. Shallow misunderstanding means that you are being ignorant to what you know what is wrong to keep negative or positive peace
              2. Not directly affected so why would you stir the pot instead of jumping into this cause
          11. Do the freedom rides that create the white moderates to be roused out of their complacency?
            1. It is now becoming a problem for them
            2. Forcing people into a position where they have to act it is impossible to ignore
          12. What made it impossible to ignore?
            1. Bull connor gives the KKK fifteen minutes to do what they wanted before they showed up
            2. Willing to accept the violence and the willingness of the violence to be acted upon
            3. Highlights the level of resistance
            4. James Peck not willing to give up
              1. "we are past fear, we can't stop. If one person falls, another takes their place.".
          13. Martin Luther King view
            1. He doesn’t go on the buses
              1. What do we make of this?
                1. Why isn't he willing to take part in the action?
                2. He is a target

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