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Distrust In The Civil Rights Movement

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There isn’t one person who hasn’t felt in complete disagreement with a statement someone else has made. At one point or another, we have all been moved enough to state our opinion. This is what starts wars on comment sections of various social media platforms today. Disagreements even happened in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s. In the March trilogy by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, you see these differences of opinion play out. Although the Civil Rights Movement resulted in desegregation, which wouldn’t have been possible without the contribution of its leaders and organizations, there were still divisions within the movement. There were disagreements between those who wanted a multi-racial movement and those who didn’t, those who wanted …show more content…

This problem was definitely present in SNCC as Lewis writes, “By the end of 1962, you heard people questioning whether SNCC should even be a multi-racial organization.” (Lewis and Aydin March 2:123). This was another problem that arose because of the growing number of people joining SNCC. Even more aspects of the organization were being questioned as time went by. In Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, he writes “I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure…But again I have been disappointed.” (King). King was disappointed in the white church because they just supported the civil rights movement because segregation was against the law, but not for any other reason. This was perhaps why some didn’t want white people to join in the fight for civil rights, as they might’ve not done it for the right reasons. On the surface it looked like the white church really supported people of color, but deep down, they supported the civil rights movement because they wanted to follow the law. As the freedom riders are pressured to stop the freedom rides by Robert Kennedy, Dr. King tells him, “It’s difficult to understand the position of oppressed people” (Lewis and Aydin March 2: 95). This would be another reason that some people didn’t want white people to be a part of the movement, they felt that white people would never be able to fully understand the position people of color were in. They had never lived as they had and therefore couldn’t see the urgency and desperation the African American community had of gaining civil

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