3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

Supreme Court case Hrown v . Board of Education (1954) through an undefined time in
the late 1960's, during which black Americans made significant strides toward political
equality with white Americans . I am aware that this periodization of the movement is
fairly arbitrary, and that other scholars have argued persuasively for a redefinition of what
the movement entails . Some have demonstrated that a "movement" existed in the 1930's
and 1940's . Others have argued that the latter sixties marked not the end but rather a new
phase of the movement . Still others have observed that what we normally consider to be
the civil rights movement was actually a series of movements by different, special-
interest groups ; but, because I am focusing largely on the trajectory of Martin Luther
King's career, as well as reactions to his value system, the definition above works well
for my purposes. As various writers have noted, King did not equal the movement ; that is,
the civil rights movement, as a bottom-up, grassroots struggle, did not rely on the top-
down leadership of one single person . But he was an important personage in it, and his
lifespan charted the peaks and valleys of public opinion regarding self-defense; therefore,
his story runs as a constant thread through this dissertation .
This study uses the years 1955 and 1968 as terminuses : 1955, because it marked
the popularization of nonviolent direct action in the Montgomery bus boycott, and 1968,
because it signified not only the symbolic death of nonviolence with the assassination of
Dr. King but also the mutation of self-defense into something terrible and strange . In
setting the period, I should make clear that Iam not wholly convinced that "thhe
movement" is over (the struggle certainly is not) ; however, it seems to me that the
organized protest, biracial unity, and spirit of reform which defined black-white relations
xiii