The Preamble

Today in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon talks about the rising popularity of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how, with greater visibility comes greater threat. We follow Dr. King as he and his comrades persevere through bombings, arrests, scathing rumors, wiretaps, and assassination attempts. Who was one of Dr. King’s biggest adversaries? If you’ve been following along since the beginning of the series, it may not surprise you to know it was J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.

Dubbing him the most dangerous man in the country, they often used underhanded tactics to spy on King, discredit his authority, and sway public opinion. It didn’t work as well as they hoped, and King continued to organize, act, and inspire people to join the fight for Civil Rights. Through it all, King championed the redemptive power of nonviolence, a message that was a stark contrast to the brutality being inflicted upon Black Americans in the South.

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Today in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon begins with a woman who is surely familiar to anyone who has received a crash course on the Civil Rights movement in America: Rosa Parks. While Rosa Parks earned her position in history, this story does not begin with a tired woman who simply needed to rest her feet on a bus in Birmingham, Alabama. Before Rosa Parks, there was Lucille Times. And before there was Lucille Times, there was Claudette Colvin. Before Rosa Parks, there was Aurelia Browder, and Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith. The Civil Rights Movement would be nowhere without the extraordinary and prolonged courage and efforts of women. In the words of Rosa Parks, “We must live our lives as a model for others.”

Following the Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. the Board of Education, some leaders of the Civil Rights Movement believed this was their moment. A boycott of Montgomery, Alabama buses had been discussed for months, but leaders were afraid that the wrong person would stall their efforts if they became the face of the movement. This was one of several reasons why Rosa Parks was chosen for this role. But how did a bus boycott shape Civil Rights? And what does the arrest of another household name – Martin Luther King Jr. – have to do with this? Next time, Sharon will speak more on how M.L.K. Jr. played a prominent role in this surge of momentum.

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Today in our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon begins by picking up after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision was released. The courts ordered for integration “with all deliberate speed” which meant slowly and over time. This vague order left room for schools to drag their heels or ignore the ruling all together.

A young student activist in Farmville, Virginia, Barbara Johns, organized and led a student strike, peacefully engaging with administrators to provide students with equal facilities, and later, integration. Fearing for her safety from angry community members, Barbara’s parents sent her out of town to finish high school. But Farmville wasn’t the only community that resisted integrated schools, and White Citizens’ Councils sprang up across Southern states. Many whites felt that integration was taking away states’ rights and causing chaos between the races. 

Nevertheless, integration persisted as school districts and states lost cases in courtrooms across the country. Time and again, who do we see being the catalyst for civil rights change? Who pushed for brighter futures for themselves? Children. Next time, Sharon will introduce us to another young girl whose act of defiance and bravery lead to a tidal wave of change.

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On today’s episode of Momentum, Sharon talks about America’s push to eradicate communists during the Red Scare and Korean War. Many people working toward the goal of civil rights and liberties shared links to the Communist Party, like William Patterson and Paul Robeson. In 1951, Patterson submitted a 237-page petition to the United Nations, called We Charge Genocide. After Patterson and Robeson presented their petition, the U.S. retaliated by seizing their passports, smearing their public image, and labeling the Civil Rights Commission as a communist-front organization.

Because of the country’s persecution of subversives and communists, the NAACP leaders were interested in assisting J Edgar Hoover in rooting out any “bad players” in the organization in order to protect it. In fact, Thurgood Marshall, who knew he was being spied on by Hoover, often acted as an FBI informant. He knew both the costs and benefits of cooperating. Do you think this was an effective strategy to distance the NAACP from the communist party? What about the organization’s push to rebrand themselves as an American organization? What exactly did Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. disagree about? Sharon reveals the source of their strife next time!

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On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon establishes the foundation of another man who played a pivotal role in Brown v. The Board of Education. Today, in 2022, the idea of someone serving as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court with no previous experience working in the Judicial Branch of government, would be unheard of. And it would certainly be unheard of for a gubernatorial candidate to win both the Republican AND Democratic primaries when running for office in California. However, that is exactly what prosecutor, turned Governor, turned Chief Justice did, in what would become a 50-year career of public service for Earl Warren. 

Justice Warren carried his national prominence to the Supreme Court, and was determined to have all 9 Justices agree on the Brown vs. The Board of Education decision. The makeup of the high court proved to be consequential, as the Justices brought a broad diversity of viewpoints, rather than consisting only of professional judges. While Justice Warren was ultimately successful in leading the court to making a unanimous decision, the President who appointed him – President Dwight D. Eisenhower – would come too deeply regret his decision to appoint him. How did Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall know each other, prior to meeting in the courtroom? And how do wiretaps from the FBI tie into all of this through a secret bureau program?

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On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon continues a riveting conversation with pulitzer-prize winning author, Gilbert King. We pick up with the involvement of J.Edgar Hoover and the case of The Groveland Four, including the political dance Thurgood Marshall did with Hoover to strategically move the Civil Rights movement forward. 

Often flying under the radar in history, Florida, for some years, was far worse than higher profile areas in the Cotton Belt when it came to violent acts against Civil Rights advocates and the Black community. Florida had the highest per-capita rate of lynching of any state in the country, but as the land of “surf and sun,” it did not fit the narrative of the broader movement of the Civil Rights era that followed Brown vs. the Board of Education. What does “tranquility of the South” have to do with an investigation that was quashed by a U.S. attorney? How did the momentum of a diligent author lead to the exoneration of The Groveland Four 72 years after their arrests? And how did the work of Harry T. Moore and Harriette T. Moore single handedly change the voting demographics, and sacrificed their lives for?

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On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon makes the connection between the desegregation of the United States military to the power or writing a letter. It can be hard to believe sometimes that writing a letter or contacting our representatives can make a difference, but that is exactly what one honorably discharged decorated Veteran did in 1948. The ripples of the letter written by Isaac Woodwards would contribute to a tidal wave in the Civil Rights movement. 

We can’t talk about these waves of momentum, however, without talking about the Korean War. Often a time glossed over in history classes, the Korean war at its core was a conflict about Communism vs. Democracy. This eventually led to more than 50 arrests of black soldiers in Korea who were arrested on trumped-up charges and court martialed. Who later defended them and cleared most of the charges? You guessed it: Thurgood Marshall. The war was directly related to the court case he had recently argued before the Supreme Court. How does this connect to the warrenless wiretaps? And who later received the more than 20,000 pages of information the FBI had on the Supreme Court?

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On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon guides us to a lawsuit years in the making, that shaped America. While some of the names tied with the milestone have been all but lost to history, you will hear many of those uncredited names mentioned in this episode, including McKinley Bernet, Vivian Marshall, and Lucinda Todd. The year was 1952 when Brown v. The Board of Education was argued before the Supreme Court by our friend, Thurgood Marshall. But did you know that the case was actually heard by the high court twice? You also might not know that J. Edgar Hoover, mentioned in previous episodes, was spying on the Supreme Court Justices for decades. What would Hoover have to gain from these warrantless wiretaps?

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