The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation

The civil rights movement is the struggle against racial oppression and discrimination that emerged in the American South during the 1950s and grew through the 1960s. African Americans in the Southern states organized against racial segregation and demanded equal civil rights through nonviolent demonstrations and protests. The movement gained momentum in 1955 after Rosa Parks, a grassroots activist and organizer in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man. Her resistance and subsequent arrest initiated the Montgomery Bus Boycott that lasted more than a year. As one of the first major demonstrations, the boycott resulted in the desegregation of public transportation, and it sparked a mass movement for civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr. emerged as a leader and spokesperson of this freedom struggle.

In 1957, King and other civil rights activists formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organize and support demonstrations. Using sit-in protests and marches as key nonviolent tactics, Black people demanded the desegregation of public schools and lunch counters as well as voting rights and jobs. Simultaneously, young activists and students formed their own group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which emphasized grassroots activism and self-reliance. Major demonstrations of the period include the March on Washington in 1963, where King gave his emblematic “I Have a Dream” speech, and the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. The collective struggle for equality led to monumental constitutional changes with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite these social changes, racial unrest persisted, with the assassinations of civil rights leaders like King and Malcolm X, and race riots in Northern urban communities. The turmoil led to a political shift within the struggle that sparked the Black Power movement in the late 1960s, a movement that centered on Black racial pride and cultural celebration.

Garveyism is an aspect of Black nationalist and pan-Africanist ideology that emerged in the 1920s through the work of Marcus Garvey. Garvey was a Jamaican political activist and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He advocated for Black independence and the economic autonomy of the African diaspora, embracing Christianity as the key to his movement. Garvey also supported the ideology of Black separatism and the need for Black racial purity to counter Eurocentrism and white supremacy. Garvey promoted a form of activism that emphasized Black pride and self-determination, influencing subsequent Black nationalist movements.

The Great Migration refers to one of the largest migration movements in American history when African Americans fled from the racism of Jim Crow South, relocating to Northern urban communities. As legalized segregation and persistent racial terror and violence threatened Black people’s lives in the South, they sought new life opportunities in Northern cities. Despite their hopes, Black migrants struggled financially and encountered widespread racial discrimination in the North. Many white people resented the increase of Black communities and the settlement of Black people in more deprived urban areas created interracial tensions that sparked race riots across the country. As a result, Black people began to form their own neighborhoods, giving rise to a new urban Black culture in the North, such as Harlem. This area of New York was transformed by the arrival of Black migrants from an all-white neighborhood to a center of Black culture. The community sparked the Harlem Renaissance, an artistic movement that reinforced a new form of Black cultural and literary expression.