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| The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. addresses crowd during the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy National Archives |
In 1961, 57 percent of Americans thought sit-ins and freedom
rides hurt rather than helped the civil rights movement.
Any guesses where public opinion on climate action is polling
today?
Daily Climate Staff Report
Editor's note: This is
the first installment of a new feature looking at trends behind the headlines.
Wednesday marks the
50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech
during the civil rights march in Washington, D.C.
60 percent of Americans oppose "non-violent civil
disobedience" protesting government or business actions contributing to
climate change. That's about where the nation was in 1961 on civil rights.
As the nation marks
that landmark, it's worth a moment to contrast public opinion in the 1960s on
civil rights sit-ins against the public's view today concerning civil
disobedience on climate change.
Last week researchers
at Yale and George Mason universities released survey results showing that 60 percent of Americans
opposed "non-violent civil disobedience" protesting government or
business actions contributing to climate change.
That's about where
America was in 1961 when a Gallup Poll asked whether "'sit-ins' at lunch
counters, 'Freedom Buses,' and other demonstrations by Negroes will hurt or
help the Negro's chances of being integrated in the South?"
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| Author and activist Bill McKibben is arrested at the gates of the White House in 2011 during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline (bottom). Civil rights and climate action – a generation apart – are polling about the same. Photo courtesy Jay Mallin |
But while black elders
tried to control the sit-ins, black youth formed the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee and took the movement to the "most violent reaches
of the Deep South," Lewis noted.
"Aggressive
tactics – the courting of arrests and the willingness to risk beatings – forced
the confrontation with racial segregation that compelled congressional
intervention," Lewis wrote. "The great milestones of the movement –
the freedom rides, Freedom Summer, Selma, Birmingham – grew from the tactical
innovation of the sit-ins. King may have stirred the nation's soul with the
movement's poetry, but [the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] moved it
to action with the prose of its grass-roots organizing."
With the civil rights
anniversary, Theophilus Eugene "Bull" Connor is back in the news
again.
There's an argument to
be made that the former Birmingham public safety commissioner, an outspoken
advocate for segregation, did more to advance civil rights than almost any
other.
It was Connor who set
policemen and firemen with nightsticks, fire hoses and attack dogs upon
hundreds of African American marchers in May, 1963. The resulting national
uproar prompted President Kennedy to address the nation on television, where he
promised to send a tough new civil rights bill to Congress. That legislation
became the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
"The Civil Rights
movement should thank God for Bull Connor," Kennedy reportedly said.
"He helped it as much as Abraham Lincoln."
In that same vein,
Jeff Welsch of the Bozeman, Mont.-based Greater Yellowstone Coalition praises
former Interior Secretary James Watt as "the signature force behind a
generation of astonishing accomplishments" in Yellowstone National Park
and beyond.
Writing in High Country News, Welsch says an entire generation of
conservationists mobilized in response to Watt's double-barreled attack on
federal lands during his three-year stint as President Reagan's top lands man.
"There is something to be said for a man whose vision of an industrial
juggernaut throughout the West galvanized millions," Welsch said.
Bull Connor and James
Watt left a mark in history by extreme overreach and ended up having impact
opposite what they intended. It will be interesting to see, 40 or 50 years from
now, who fills their historic niche for climate change.
The Daily Climate is
an independent, foundation-funded news service that covers climate change. Find
us on Twitter @TheDailyClimate or email editor Douglas Fischer at
dfischer@DailyClimate.org
