The national education project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance, publishes the magazine Teaching Tolerance semiannually. Its aim is to support and aid Kindergarten through twelfth-grade teachers and others in promoting diversity. Organizations like the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the National Urban League have initiated programs like the Hip-Hop Summer Action Network (HSAN) Summit to promote understanding and collaboration among diverse groups. Russell Simmons and Ben Chavis founded the HSAN Summit, which, among other concerns, focuses on racial equity and empowerment. The Council of Bishops in the United Methodist Church has created dialogues to ascertain what can be done to eradicate racism within the church and the community. There are also groups that focus on bridging racial disparities in education, health issues, and technology. Reports like the CLD’s show the need for these groups in the workplace, school, places of worship, the media, and in entertainment.
In addition to recognition on the part of organizations that there is a need for racial reconciliation, individuals have come to realize that they too can effect change. For example, Tim Wise, an activist and director of the Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE) in Nashville, Tennessee, is the author of Beyond “Diversity “: Challenging Racism in an Age of Backlash and a contributor to White Men Challenging Racism: Thirty-Five Personal Stories. He has lectured and held workshops on such topics as institutional racism, gender bias, and the growing gap between rich and poor in America. Racism, Wise believes, is a problem both whites and nonwhites must work together to solve.
Rabbi Marc Schneier and Joseph Papp are two other people active in bridging the racial gap. They founded the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which is “committed to the belief that direct face-to-face dialogue between ethnic communities is the most effective path towards the reduction of bigotry and promotion of reconciliation and understanding.” The ongoing work of organizations and individuals such as these indicate that, even though the Civil Rights Movement resulted in laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there remain many racial, ethnic, and religious issues to solve in America.
Helen R. Houston
Speeches
Atlanta Compromise (1895)
The “Atlanta Compromise” is the common name given to Booker T. Washington’s September 1895 address delivered at the opening of the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, before a predominantly white audience. Because of his popularity as founder and principal of the Tuskegee Institute, his conservative views, and his rise as a black leader, Washington was asked to deliver the address. His speech was given at a time when violence and hostility toward blacks was intense and blacks were pushing for equality. The speech was a statement of his public philosophy on race relations, one that he espoused throughout his life. In his speech, he offered a compromise between the demands of whites for segregation and the demands of blacks for civil and political equality. Washington said, “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly,” thereby allaying white concerns. He urged African Americans to “Cast down your buckets where you are” and to pursue economic enterprises, not to seek social relationships. “In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers.” He advocated a gradual advancement of the race through hard work, economic improvement, and self-help. Even though the speech addresses both races, it was seen as telling black people to maintain the status quo. Whites accepted Washington’s speech in good spirits, and many blacks approved it, as well. It led to Washington being recognized as the spokesperson for black people.
“With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”
Helen R. Houston
“I Have a Dream” (1963)
The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., minister, non-violent advocate for freedom, and the most prominent leader of the modern Civil Rights Movement, gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963. Speaking before a crowd of 250,000 who joined the March on Washington in support of civil rights legislation, he said, in part: “Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our Northern cities knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood; I have a dream—That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character; I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers; I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, and rough places will be made plane and crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. This will be the day…. This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning ‘My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.’ And if America is to be a great nation—this must become true. So let freedom ring—from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, let freedom ring; from the mighty mountains of New York, let freedom ring—from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, From every mountainside, let freedom ring, and when this happens …
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white man, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’”
Colleges and Universities
Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University (est. 1875)
This higher education institution was organized after an 1873 act of the Alabama State Legislature and the efforts of William Hooper Council, an ex-slave