APUSH On The Road

Happy election day!!

On April 12, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was arrested for participating in in during the The protests were part of a larger campaign to call attention to the "most segregated city in America" led by and While in jail, Martin Luther King Jr wrote his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in response to a letter written by white clergy demanding that the black clergy stop pushing for justice. responded by declaring that it is a citizen's duty to fight against unjust laws.
"But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . ." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists."

On September 15, 1963, white supremacists placed a timed bomb under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church. They targeted the church, because it had been a center of nonviolent civil rights meetings and actions. The bomb killed 4 little girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair. Four young women killed in their church. Later that day, two young men would be killed across the street while grieving their losses. 6 youth killed in a day by White Supremacists. Decades passed while their killers went free. Free to grow old, while their victims' lives were cut too short. In 1972, Angela Davis responds to a question about violence in black communities: “You ask me whether I approve of violence? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. Whether I approve of guns? I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed by bombs – bombs that were planted by racists. I remember, from the time I was very small, the sound of bombs exploding across the street and the house shaking … That’s why, when someone asks me about violence, I find it incredible because it means the person asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through and experienced in this country from the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.” We talked to a gentleman named Jessie. He told us he remembered being a young boy playing in his yard close by and hearing the bomb go off. This is not ancient history.

We had dinner at a restaurant in Winnemuca, NV last night. In the 1800's Basque shepherds took refuge in the range lands of Nevada. To this day, 4% of residents are of Basque ancestry. The meal was served family-style. We broke bread with a local miner and his visiting family. The town is home to a few gold mining companies in present day. Winnemuca was a boom town when the Transcontinental Railroad came through in the last half of the 19th century. We watched the trains roll by after dinner. This was the land of the and people. This land was annexed to the US in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.