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civil rights

Recy Taylor, Rape Survivor and Civil Rights Activist, Dies Days Before 98th Birthday

by Melody Gulliver 01/11/2018

written by Melody Gulliver

Recy Taylor, daughter of Alabama sharecroppers, passed away ten days before her 98th birthday in her Abbeville nursing home. Taylor had become a prominent civil and women’s rights activist after surviving a traumatic rape during the Jim Crow era.

In 1944, 24-year old Recy Taylor was brutally raped by six white men while walking home from church in Alabama. With the aid of the N.A.A.C.P, Taylor fought to have the men prosecuted for their crime. Despite Taylor’s efforts and the confession of one assailant, the attackers were not indicted.

The injustice against Recy Taylor mobilized individuals to protest and continue seeking justice for Taylor and other victims of sexually violent crimes.

In 2010, historian Danielle L. McGuire prompted further discussion of the crime in her book, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance — a New History of the Civil Rights Movement From Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power.” In the novel McGuire underlines the complicated and unspoken ways Black women resisted sexual violence during the Civil Rights Movement.

“It seemed as if every front page of every black newspaper between 1940 and 1950 featured the same story: a black woman was walking home from school, work or church when a group of white men abducted her at gunpoint, took her outside of town, and brutally assaulted her,” stated McGuire in a discussion with The Huffington Post.

Most recently, Oprah Winfrey urged Golden Globe viewers to learn Recy Taylor’s name and story during her powerful Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech.

“[Taylor] lived, as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men,” said Winfrey, “and for too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dared to speak their truth to the power of those men. But their time is up.”

Taylor transformed her pain into the revolutionary movement that we now call “#metoo.” As the movement develops and pervades modern dialogue, we must not forget how it started.

It began in Abbeville, Alabama after a humble, underprivileged Black woman refused to stay silent. In fighting for her own justice, Taylor demanded that the experiences, pain, and sexual trauma endured everyday by women of color be recognized and validated.

Thank you, Recy Taylor, for your bravery.

Thank you for your fight.

01/11/2018 0 comments

Guest Lecturer Discusses ‘The Rebellious Life’ of Rosa Parks

by Briana Tracy 05/05/2016

written by Briana Tracy

In elementary and high school we are told the brave and historic story of Rosa Parks and how her refusal to move from her seat on the bus changed the course of history. On Wednesday, April 27th visiting lecturer Jeanne Theoharis from Brooklyn College spoke about her biography, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks which was published in 2013.

Theoharis’ goal for her biography was to challenge representations and to clear political excuses that were made about Parks’ actions that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Theoharis began writing Parks’ biography in 2005 after Parks’ funeral as well as her discovery that there were no full biographies on Parks, except for ones you will find for elementary kids. The information she compiled together consists of both NAACP papers and Parks notes from Highlander Research and Education Center as well as oral histories, many being done in Detroit.

The Montgomery City Code required that all public transportation be segregated, and that bus drivers had the powers of a police officer while in actual charge of any bus for the purposes of carrying out the code. When an African-American passenger boarded the bus, they had to get on at the front to pay their fare and then get off and re-board the bus at the back door.

A misconception of Parks is that the refusal to move from her seat was her first instance of being politically involved, when in actuality she had been involved for many years, beginning in the 1940s, as well as that she was kicked off the bus a few times prior to the boycott for refusing. Another is Parks’ being the first African American to refuse, except there were three other women who also refused to move from their seats: Viola White, Helia Brookes, and Claudette Coleman.

Parks was actively involved in civil rights issues after she joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP in 1943, serving as the chapter’s youth leader as well as secretary to NAACP President E.D. Nixon—a post she held until 1957.

On the morning of the boycott leaders from the African-American community gathered at the Mt. Zion Church in Montgomery to discuss strategies, and determined that their boycott effort required a new organization and strong leadership. The group therefore formed the Montgomery Improvement Association, where they elected newcomer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as the group believed that Parks case provided an excellent opportunity to take further action to create real change.

Theoharis’ book, The Rebellious Life of Mrs.Rosa Parks, documents Parks’ life from the time to she met her husband Raymond, who was also politically active, to the end of her life where she was still honored for her achievements and persistence for change. On February 4, 2013, what would have been Parks’ 100th birthday, a commemorative U.S. Postal Service stamp debuted, and later that month, President Barack Obama unveiled a statue honoring Parks in the nation’s Capitol building.

Theoharis’ lecture was not only informative, but enlightening for she had done extensive research on Parks’ life through different avenues and having to carefully fact check her information. With having to look thoroughly for information, Theoharis spent eight years writing the biography because there was not enough information about Parks’ life in books which led her to discover the NAACP documents and interviews that Parks had done.

For this lecture to be given on campus spoke volumes as to how Black history is not fully discussed, unless it is a specific course, and that only one side is typically spoken about.

05/05/2016 0 comments

John A. Powell Presents the UCLA Bunche Center’s 25th Thurgood Marshall Lecture

by 04/07/2014

written by

Photo courtesy: AdonaStudio

On April 1, the UCLA Bunche Center held its 25th Thurgood Marshall Lecture on Law and Human Rights to honor the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall.

In past years, the annual event featured distinguished figures who had a substantial impact on the struggle for civil rights. Past speakers include Elaine Brown, the former Chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, and Harry Belafonte, a prominent member of the civil rights movement.

Photo courtesy: AdonaStudio

john a. powell, a UC Berkeley professor and the Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society, delivered the 2014 address. powell is a internationally renowned civil liberties expert who prefers for his name to be written in lowercase letters because he believes in being “part of the universe, not over it, as [capital letters] signify.” He has also greatly shaped race research and policy.

Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, the Vice Chancellor of Graduate Studies at UCLA and co-founder of the lecture series, stressed that despite the momentous gains we have obtained since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, “The dark past is not fully behind us.”

Speaking to an audience of nearly 80 people, powell seconded her assessment as he discussed the current state of race in America. He asked, “How do we make sense of a Black president, but an administration that does not want to talk about race?”

The widespread notion of “color-blindness” has contributed to a lack of discussion on the intersection of disparities and race. According to powell, pressing issues such as homelessness and mass incarceration not only disproportionately affect Afrikan-Americans, but also interfere with the exercise of citizenship rights; however, these concerns rarely garner national attention.

Professor powell also spoke about how the present concept of race stems from the 17th century. Whiteness was defined as “not black” and Blacks were deemed the “infinite other”. Hence, our country was built on the idea of a White benchmark. As the demographics of America shift, this standard is becoming a relic of the past; powell thus characterized the contemporary period of “heightened racial anxiety” as a product of a movement toward increased multiculturalism and diversity.

Photo courtesy: AdonaStudio

Such angst is causing Whites to vote in terms of race and not self-interest; this is demonstrated through their fervent objections to government programs due to misconceptions that nonwhites are the primary beneficiaries—despite the fact that Whites constitute nearly 70% of welfare recipients. “It’s not that they hate public housing, they hate who is in them,” stated the keynote speaker.

The idea of a “post-racial” society simply is not viable for countless reasons, many of which include lingering racial prejudices and inequalities. As powell asserted, “We need a new language where we talk about race.”

04/07/2014 0 comments