"We Were Trying to Just Be": Black Youth Participation in the Americus Movement

• In Event: 56.028 - Our Bodies, Our Diction: Educational Equality Articulated Through the Activism of Youth After Brown

Abstract

Introduction and Purpose: On February 12, 1971, Life published an article, “Discovering One Another in a Georgia Town” depicting how race relations in Americus, Georgia had improved since the upheaval of the 1960s. The primary contributor to the upheaval was the treatment of blacks as second-class citizens. Consequently, by the time the Civil Rights Movement made it to Americus in the early 1960s, by way of the Albany and Sumter County Movements, several things were clear: (1) a number of black youth were ready and excited to join and (2) integration was not their chief concern. Black youth in Americus were motivated by a right to just be. They wanted to be treated fairly; they wanted to be treated like citizens. They constantly dealt with educational and social injustices which fundamentally affected crucial periods of their lives. As Wilma King noted, “the inhospitable environment that a number of black youth experienced gave rise to mass action.” Therefore, this paper interrogates how essential black youth participation was to the Americus Movement by elevating how the Americus Movement came into existence and focusing on events that garnered national attention.

Methodology and Framework: This paper utilizes a case study design, oral history and archival data as the primary methodologies. Georgia was ideal for a case study because of its opposition to Brown and its political and social influence during the 20th century. Oral history and archival data served as valuable data sources that allowed me to verify my findings. In addition to employing multiple methodologies, I used various theoretical frameworks—social movement theory and rhetoric of social protest—which strengthened my findings because I was able to align my participants’ activism with their epistemology and how they articulated their justified beliefs.

Significance: The opposition to black student activism is not limited to the fight to enter white schools. Nearly twenty years after the passage of Brown, school boards often refused to fund black schools equally to whites. Whether in black or white schools, black youth participated in a scurrilous fight that, as Thurgood Marshall inadvertently predicted, heightened when the country decided to pay its long overdue commitment to providing equal education. Therefore, this paper is significant because it elevates how opposition intentionally created barriers to prevent educational equality from being reached. Furthermore, it shows how youth challenged those barriers by fighting for the recognition of one’s humanity as a vital component to fulfilling the promise of equal education.

Author

• Vincent DeWayne Willis, University of Alabama