I visited the International Civil Rights Centre & Museum on Tuesday 16 November 2010. From the one-hour tour guided by a very experienced museum staff, I have learned many facts, both hidden and exposed.
I learned that people are selfish. They would take advantage of the weak by enslaving them, even though those they enslaved are no different than themselves other than the color of their skin. The slave market was a great pillar of the US economy when some people voiced out that slavery should be abolished. This selfish nature was so powerful and hard to change that people resisted by military force against their fellow citizens and even their President. The US Civil War would not have happened if people were not so selfish about their economic and social interests.
I learned that the supreme document of a state could fail to guide people's behaviour when they are overwhelmed by selfishness and emotions. The US Declaration of Independence explicitly states that 'all men are created equal' and 'they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness'. But at the time when slavery was still legal in the US, the Negros were definitely not equal with the Whites. The rights of the Negros to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness were alienated (by other men). Even after the abolition of Slavery and the Negros were called African Americans, the country continued to witness segregation and discrimination against their black fellow citizens. The Constitution was there, but people acted their own way as if it did not exist.
I learned that making change to a society to suppress people’s selfishness and bring them back to their behavior-guiding document is not easy and is a lesson of blood and pain. Lots of anti-slavery activists were brutally, innocently and inhumanely treated. They were coerced and criminalized, beaten and burnt and murdered. These activists were not limited to the black activists but also included the white ones. I was startled when I saw the picture of which a white activist was murdered with his eyes cut out and limbs dismantled. I was even more upset and angry when the murderers were caught but not convicted guilty by a jury of the same kind. The legal system corrupted and the social order collapsed due to an ill-founded attitude—racism. When the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, I could not imagine how much blood had been lost to bring a stop to the society’s selfishness-driven slavery movement.
The U-turn, however, did not come until the presence of a few courageous leaders who used a very practical and sensible way of struggle to gain public support. I was surprised that it was four college students who initiated the U-turn. Their campaign of ‘sit-down and demand for service’ in lunch counters was practical because other black (and white) students could easily join them by spending their time studying there during the ‘sit-down’ period. It was also sensible because the loss of white customers and hence loss of revenue would eventually leave the owners of the restaurants no choice but to accept African Americans as their customers and provide services to them to avoid business closure. If you asked me why these few student leaders succeeded but their other predecessors failed, I would say it is the combination of courage, wisdom and the firm belief that small-potato individuals can make a difference to the society—lacking any of these factors would inevitably lead to failure.
The segregation and discrimination against African Americans were manifested from nearly every aspect of social life. For example, African Americans were only allowed to sit in the back of a bus, where the facilities were poorer and the location was less convenient for boarding and de-boarding. Also, black people were not allowed to vote and hence participate in administering public affairs. The most impressive example to me is the Coca-Cola vendor machine which sold a same drink to white people for 5 cents but to black people for 10 cents. Other examples include the lack of schools, restaurants, hotels and hospitals for the black community.
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