Literary Pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement.

In the last year, we have watched the world join hands in solidarity for the black community and in support of Black Lives Matter. There has been a rise in activism through social media and international protests that have connected people across the globe, and finally last week we got the guilty verdict and saw the American legal system side with what was right and not racism. It is undeniable that it was through the world uniting against a common evil that is what brought us this justice. If it had not been for the universal outrage and activism, we may not have been able to get the guilty verdict.

The way that communities united in support of the Black community is something that has occurred very far and few between in history. However, the most influential example of it is seen through the American civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Movement was a decade long fight for freedom by the African-American community and their allies and resulted in new protection under federal law protecting the human rights for black people in America. While equality is still a far way off the movement was a fundamental first step to equality and put emphasis on community and unity.

When thinking about the Civil Rights Movement we often talk about the most well-known figures such as Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr. However, there are so many influential activists from the era that aren’t always mentioned. In light of this, this post is dedicated to three literary pioneers that were using their talents in writing to fight for human rights.

James Baldwin

James Baldwin is personally one of my favourite writers. Baldwin not only an activist he was a novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist. Baldwin explores the complex crossovers between race, sexual orientation, and class discrimination within the western world during the 20th Century. During the movement, he wrote a series of essays that got published on a large scale in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's magazine, and Mademoiselle. Baldwin also joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which allowed him to tour the South, where Jim Crowe and segregation were the harshest in the country, where he lectured at colleges to students and white liberals on his ideas on race in America. James Baldwin was such an influential writer at this time that the FBI had a file of 1,884 pages on him from ten years of surveillance. Some of his works include I Am Not Your Negro, Giovanni’s Room, and The Fire Next Time. These are all great texts to dive into to get a great introduction to his works.

Ida B Wells

This is a woman who I hadn’t come across during my studies and that I found in my research for this post, and I am so glad I did. Born into slavery in Mississippi, Wells lived as a slave until she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the American Civil War at the age of 16. Wells went on to find her calling in activism and journalism, she co-owned and wrote for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight Newspaper and covered incidents of racial segregation and inequality. She later went on to write for The Evening Star in Washington DC under the pen name Lola where she continued to attack racist Jim Crowe laws. Amongst all the other associations she was involved with Ida B wells was one of the founders of the NAACP (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) which is still thriving today, 112 years later. While Ida B Wells died 30 years before the Civil Rights Movement reached its peaks, she was still an influential figure and her writings paved the way for those, later on, to continue fighting. Her pamphlets can still be accessed today online.

W.E.B. Du Bois

Here we have another one of the founders of the NAACP and prominent writer. W.E.B Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a Doctorate when he graduated from Harvard, he then went on to be a professor of history, sociology, and economics. Asides from teaching Du Bois was an author, writer, and editor on issues surrounding sociology, socialism, civil rights, and Pan-Africanism. On civil rights, his main ideology was that full civil rights and increased political representation would come from increased numbers of African-American intellectual elites. He also actively protested lynching, Jim Crow Laws, and discrimination in education and employment. He was also heavily involved in the Harlem Renaissance which was the revival of African-American intellectual and cultural music, art, dance, fashion, literature, theatre, and politic. In response to the Harlem Renaissance, he published articles that celebrated and urged black creatives to promote black causes. This is a man who was heavily political and heavily involved in African-American rights and has a history and a body of work that influenced every black creator that came after him.

These three writers are a few of many influential creatives from the Civil Rights Movement and are fundamental parts of Black history. While we commemorate figures such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. it is important to also give the same respect to other great writers and activists that risked their lives to start the process of equality for African-Americans. During these times where we have protests, social media, and Black Lives Matter it is important to look to those who came before us to see what we can achieve with solidarity and the persistence to do what is right.

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