|
STUDENT SIT-INS, 1960
Objective: Desegregate downtown department store lunch counters and local movie theaters.
"The adults (mostly ministers) of the NCLC met with the students and tried to persuade them to postpone the demonstration for a couple of days . . . James Bevel said, 'I'm sick and tired of waiting. If you asked us to wait until next week, then next week something would come up and you'd say wait until the next week and maybe we'd never get our freedom.' " --Aldon Morris. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, p. 206
"Nash, Lewis, Bevel and the other students emerged from jail as heroes who had forced a southern city to grant one of the long denied requests of the established civil rights groups." --Taylor Branch. Parting the Waters, p. 280
FREEDOM RIDES, 1961
Objective: End segregation of interstate bus travel.
"CORE organized the Freedom Rides. The CORE group rode as far as Alabama, where they were firebombed. When CORE called off the rides the Nashville group immediately saw the implications of this stoppage and organized the continuation of the Freedom Rides." --Randy Kryn. James Bevel: The Strategist of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement
"Bevel became the chairman of the local group in Nashville. It was his job to appoint the people to continue riding." --Pat Watters. Down To Now, p. 102
MISSISSIPPI PROJECT, 1961-63
Objective: Desegregate public facilities throughout Mississippi and secure the Right-to-Vote.
"Bevel felt convinced to build a movement in his home state [Mississippi] and wanted to go back there to work." --James Forman. The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p. 160
"Bevel and other field workers spent much of their time canvassing: going from shack to shack, driving from one hamlet to another, trying to persuade blacks to go to the mass meeting, attend the voter registration workshops, and ultimately to go through the unnerving, often terrifying ordeal of going to the registrar's office applying for the vote. The work required stamina, persistence and nerves of steel. Bevel excelled in it." --Adam Fairclough. To Redeem the Soul of America, p. 92
BIRMINGHAM, 1963
Objective: Desegregate public accommodations and correct discriminatory hiring practices.
"In early May, at a critical juncture when King wavered because of pressure from the Kennedys to hold off further demonstrations, Bevel and [Isaac] Reynolds, ignoring King's wishes, slipped the children out of the church and marched them downtown on the most brilliant maneuver of the campaign." --Meier and Rudwick. CORE, A Study In the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968
Continued on next page
|
|
