Read an Excerpt
Freedom Song
Young Voices and the Struggle for Civil Rights
By Mary C. Turck Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2009 Mary C. Turck
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61374-326-3
CHAPTER 1
Sunday of Song
You are important to me, I need you to survive
During the early years of the civil rights movement, black churches were much more than religious buildings. Because of segregation, they also served their communities as cultural and political centers. Churches were where civil rights activists would come together to plan their demonstrations. In Birmingham, Alabama, these meetings took place every Monday night, moving from church to church. If too many meetings were held in one church, it would become known as the "civil rights church." It would become a target for racists, who might bomb or burn it. By moving around, people hoped to keep their churches safe.
On a September Sunday in 1963, the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham echoed with chatter and laughter. Teenagers combed their hair and checked themselves in the mirrors. That Sunday, on Youth Day, they would lead the services. They were ready to stand in front of everyone, ready to lead, ready for life.
And then life ended. A bomb blast shook the church, tumbled the walls, and killed four young girls. Their church was bombed, their lives were ended, by racists attacking black people and the civil rights movement.
Nearly 45 years later, another group of young people assembled in the same church basement. Once again, young people combed their hair and checked themselves in the mirrors. On the first day of their Freedom Tour, the Chicago Children's Choir got ready to sing in the 16th Street Baptist Church.
At this concert, the pews of the church were filled with a mostly black audience. The people listening to the choir carried the history of their church in their hearts. Many had lived through the civil rights movement. Others had parents and grandparents who had been in the movement.
They listened as the choir sang "Murder on the Road in Alabama" and cried "Deep within the sovereign state of Alabama / There's a poison pit of hate." They listened to "Strange Fruit," the song made famous by Billie Holiday that mourned murdered black men hanging from southern trees. "Birmingham Sunday," a ballad of grief, recalled the events of that 1963 Sunday when four schoolgirls were killed and one maimed. (All of these songs are on the Chicago Children's Choir CD that accompanies this book, Songs on the Road to Freedom.)
Today the four young girls who died in the Birmingham church bombing are commemorated in a memorial that bears their photos. From left, Denise McNair, 11, Carole Robertson, 14, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, are shown in these 1963 photos. Associated Press
The songs struck home. Sixteenth Street Baptist will forever be the church of four young girls killed by a Sunday morning bomb blast. In this very church, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached. In this very church, Monday night meetings of civil rights activists filled the air with song. Across the street, in the park, police set dogs on civil rights demonstrators, and powerful fire hoses knocked the demonstrators over like bowling pins.
On the July afternoon in 2007, music flowed through the 16th Street Baptist Church. The music wove a powerful connection between singers and audience, between past and present. As people listened, their hands reached up in the air, swaying in time to the songs. Then the audience rose, singing with the Chicago teens, "I need you. You need me. ... You are important to me. ... I love you, I need you to survive." They continued, closing the powerful afternoon arm in arm, singing "We Shall Overcome." In an electric moment, voices and hearts connected across the years, across the generations.
Then and Now: McComb, Mississippi
The U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s won huge victories. Despite those victories, racism continues. McComb, Mississippi, shows both the victories of the movement and the continuing struggle for civil rights.
In 1961, a teenager named Jackie Byrd knelt on the steps of the McComb courthouse. Young people in McComb had seized the civil rights movement as their own. The protests in McComb included attempts to integrate the public library, the Woolworth's lunch counter, and the Greyhound bus station. The movement in McComb included a Freedom School (in 1961 and again in 1964), and voter registration attempts at the nearby county seat of Magnolia. Freedom Schools taught adults to read and write, and to understand their rights under the Constitution.
The students who protested against segregation and prayed at the courthouse were jailed. More than 100 students were sent to jail. Then they were expelled from their high school for protesting. Jackie Byrd was among those who were expelled. They went to a black junior college in Jackson, Mississippi, for the rest of the school year.
Today Jackie Byrd Martin sits at a desk inside the same courthouse. She is the city's personnel director. The window of her office overlooks the steps where she and other young protesters prayed and were arrested over 45 years ago. The "whites only" sign is long gone from the water fountain across the hall. McComb's first black mayor was inaugurated in 2007. He held the ceremony on the courthouse steps.
McComb's population, about 12,000 in 1961, has grown little over the decades. The 2000 census showed 13,337 residents, about 58 percent of whom are black. Legal segregation has ended. That is a victory of the civil rights movement. Today black people hold positions in city government. That is a victory of the civil rights movement. McComb has come a long way since 1961.
But not everything has changed. In 2007, the schools in McComb and in nearby South Pike are at least 80 percent black. The schools in nearby North Pike are 80 percent white. A local Christian school is virtually all white.
As of this writing, McComb's tourist brochures still do not mention 1961 or the students or the civil rights movement. The pictures on the courthouse walls show only white folks and historical events from before the 1960s. The official City of McComb Web site (www.mccomb-ms.com) does not mention the civil rights movement. The unofficial McComb Web site (www.mccombms.com) includes a lengthy history page that describes railroads, oil, camellias, and azaleas — but not the civil rights movement.
Another site, McComb Legacies (www.mccomblega cies.org), tells the civil rights story of McComb. This site describes the city as "one of the main battlegrounds in the struggle for civil rights in the United States." McComb Legacies features oral histories from the civil rights era. The McComb Legacies Web site links to the official City of McComb site, but the official site does not link back. The contrasting sites show both the strength of the civil rights legacy and the continuing division between the races in the 21st century.
Jackie Byrd Martin is proud of McComb's civil rights legacy. She hands out brochures for a civil rights driving tour of McComb. She is working with McComb schools to create a model curriculum about the civil rights era. She hopes that curriculum will become a model for the entire state.
Her success shows the progress that McComb has made since the 1960s. The continuing school segregation shows how far the city still has to go. McComb is not so different from other cities, North and South. Success and struggle still live side by side. Quiet heroes like Jackie Byrd Martin continue the movement for freedom, equality, and justice.
Then and Now: Chicago
In the 1950s, racial segregation in the South was a matter of law. Discrimination against black people was not only allowed but legally required. This is called de jure segregation. De jure is a Latin phrase meaning "in law." At the time, Chicago, like most northern cities, was also segregated. But in the North segregation was usually not de jure but de facto — a term meaning "in fact." Under de facto segregation, the law did not actually call for racial discrimination, but many other practices kept segregation in place.
For example, in most northern cities, black people could only live in black neighborhoods, not because it was illegal for them to buy houses or rent apartments in white neighborhoods but because no one would sell or rent to them. Some homes were sold with restrictive covenants between buyer and seller. A restrictive covenant might say that the person who bought the home could not later sell it to black people. Some restrictive covenants said that the home could not be sold to Jews. In the 1950s, these covenants were enforced by law. Even without restrictive covenants, people discriminated. Real estate agents would only show black people homes in black neighborhoods. If a black family moved into a white neighborhood, they faced the wrath of neighbors.
Black people also faced job discrimination. Some employers would not hire them at all. Others would hire them but pay them less than white workers. Lower wages kept them in poverty. Chicago built housing projects for poor people. The projects were built in black neighborhoods, and crowded with up to 19 floors of apartments. Children played on tiny, tar-topped "tot lots" in between the buildings.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Chicago in 1966. People in the civil rights movement had decided to bring the fight to the North. They recognized that discrimination was not just a southern problem. Racism lived in the North as well.
Dr. King's project was called the Chicago Freedom Movement. In the spring of 1966, Chicago Freedom Movement sent "testers" to try to buy houses. The testers were one white couple and one black couple. They were exact matches in income and family size and background. Real estate agents sent the black couple to black neighborhoods. They would not show the black couples homes in white neighborhoods.
Dr. King began to lead protest marches in white Chicago neighborhoods. Marchers were met by screaming mobs. Angry white people threw rocks and bricks and bottles. King received death threats. He said he experienced more hatred in Chicago than he ever did in Mississippi or Alabama.
In July 1966, some 50,000 people attended a civil rights rally at Chicago's Soldier Field. The rally was followed by a march to city hall, where King nailed 14 demands to the door. The demands included open housing and jobs and better schools.
In August, Mayor Richard J. Daley (whose son Richard M. Daley was elected mayor in 1989) agreed to meet with Dr. King's Chicago Freedom Movement. They reached agreement on actions the city would take, but the city did not live up to the agreements. However, in 1968 a national fair housing law was passed that ended restrictive covenants and outlawed discrimination in housing.
Despite this progress, housing segregation continues. A 2006 study showed that 30 percent of all public schools in Chicago were 100 percent African American. Almost half of the schools were 90 percent or more African American. The median income for African American households was only two-thirds of the median for white households. A higher percentage of African Americans were — and still are — among the working poor.
Fear keeps people apart, too. People of different races have little contact with one another. They rarely socialize. They hear stories about other races that are simply untrue. Because they have little contact, they often believe what they hear. People of all races experience this separation.
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Robert Williams, a black Alabaman who was part of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, says that "everything has changed — and about 70 percent for the better." In 1969 or 1970, he says, "doors to the real world and corporate America opened for young black people."
For him, the civil rights movement ended in 1969, after the assassinations of Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. "We lost too many people at one time," he says. "Vietnam had a lot to do with it, too. There was too much pain, too much struggle, and we didn't want our children to feel that."
The older generation protected their children from the pain and struggle. By doing so, they also lost a vital connection. "We thought our children would feel what we felt about the movement, and they don't," Williams reports, with regret. "They've missed that connection. ... This is all ancient history for our grandchildren."
Robert Williams brought his grandchildren to a concert on the Freedom Tour. He talked with the Chicago teens in the choir, telling stories of the movement. For him, the civil rights movement will always live. His stories and their songs brought the movement back to the Unitarian Church in Birmingham on a Sunday morning.
Birmingham's Unitarian Church is mostly white. Robert Williams is one of its few black members. (He jokes that his family cannot understand how a good Baptist could become a Unitarian.) This congregation has been committed to civil rights for over 50 years. The church was integrated back in the 1950s. It received bomb threats from time to time. The threats were frequent enough for the church secretary to develop a standard response. She would tell threatening callers that they would have to "stand in line."
David Baker is a white member of the church. He lived in Birmingham in 1961. He remembers when the city closed its parks. It chose to keep everyone out, rather than let black people in. He was active in opposing the closure.
Joe West, another white church member, returned to Birmingham in 1989. He says that today black people can work and live on a better basis than before — even if not on a completely equal basis. "There is still discrimination," he insists. "But there is discrimination throughout the country. Remember, women earn only two-thirds of what men earn. Black people are in the same kind of situation."
The civil rights movement was about justice. Black people were treated unjustly. They suffered discrimination in schools, jobs, housing, and more. The law allowed injustice. Sometimes the law was the injustice, ordering segregation and inequality.
The civil rights movement changed laws. The movement won victories. But the struggle for justice and equality continues.
CHAPTER 2
Rooted in Africa
Children, run, you got a right You got a right to the tree of life
The music of the civil rights movement has many flavors. Some of the old spirituals sung by slaves in the South became part of the civil rights tradition. Jazz musicians composed music for the movement. Other civil rights music came from gospel songs. In the 21st century, some rap musicians contribute songs with messages of justice and equality. But all of these distinctively American musical forms — whether spirituals, gospel music, jazz, blues, soul, rock 'n' roll, rap, or hiphop — have their roots in Africa.
African rhythms and words and instruments came to North and South America with kidnapped Africans crowded in the bellies of slave ships. In the Americas, African music mixed with music of other places and peoples. After surviving slavery, the music of Africa became part of a rich stew of sound and song and dance.
The Music of Africa
In Africa, music was part of life. It flowed through daily routine as blood flows through the veins. Songs marked special events, from weddings to a child's first tooth. Warriors sang battle songs. People sang as they cooked or harvested or cared for children. Music did not belong to musicians. Music was not experienced as a performance with performers and audience — everyone sang, everyone danced, everyone made music.
And when they made music, they used many kinds of instruments. One African instrument was the djembe, a kind of drum. Another was the banjo. Gourds and sticks and tambourines also had their roots in Africa. Juba — using your body to make music — is also part of the African tradition. Singers clap, tap their feet, and slap their thighs to accompany their voices.
African music and European music are similar in many ways — they both use melody, harmony, and rhythm — but some of the rhythms sound quite different. African music is more polyrhythmic, which means that it emphasizes combinations of different rhythms. Syncopation — stressing a beat that is normally unstressed — is a characteristic African rhythm. Today syncopation is widely used in popular music.
Different areas of Africa have different kinds of music. Because most of the people sold into slavery came from the region of West Africa, African American music basically has West African roots. In West Africa, as in the country of South Africa (see chapter 7), much of the singing is a cappella. This means that people sing without instrumental accompaniment. Some West African singing is nasal, and uses shouts and groans and falsetto. A lot of South African music is choral, sung in four-part harmony.
Physical movement is an important part of both West African and South African music. Clapping hands and stamping feet add to music. Dancing is part of some songs. Some movements tell stories.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Freedom Song by Mary C. Turck. Copyright © 2009 Mary C. Turck. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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