Unveiling The Ignored Heroes: The Power Of Grassroots Activist

Unveiling the Ignored Heroes: The Power of Grassroots Activism in the civil rights movement There were various factors of the civil rights movement that both helped and hindered it; however, among these factors was the grassroots activism in the movement. The hard work and sacrifices of many of these everyday citizens and grassroots leaders like Fannie Lou Hamer who mobilized Black voters and E. D. Nixon who used his connection with his community to organize mass protests should receive greater attention and more emphasis than the few prominent figures that currently dominate the master narrative of the civil rights movement. In this essay I hope to prove why Grassroots leaders and activists played a vital role in the civil rights movement

Charles Payne summarizes this narrative in Debating the civil rights movement: The View From the Trenches, “Traditionally, relationships between the races in the South were oppressive. In 1954, the Supreme Court decided this was wrong. Inspired by the Court, courageous Americans, Black and White, took to the street, in the form of sit-ins, bus boycotts, and Freedom Rides.” Later Payne continues, “Once Americans understood that discrimination was wrong, they quickly moved to remove racial prejudice and discrimination from American life, as evidenced by the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965.” (“The View From the Trenches” 124-125). Payne listed many reasons why this is a problematic way to portray the civil rights movement but one specific problem that he mentions is “Placing so much emphasis on national leadership and national institutions minimizes the importance of local struggle and makes it difficult to appreciate the role ‘ordinary’ people played…" (“The View From the Trenches” 125). Like Payne says, this master narrative undermines the importance of grassroots activism and belittles their

The boycott was a remarkable example of the important role that grassroots activism played in the civil rights movement. The protests were triggered by the arrest of activist Rosa Parks who refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. (“Montgomery bus boycott | Summary & Martin Luther King, Jr.”) The role that everyday citizens played in the boycott was fundamental and the success of the boycott was entirely dependent on them. However, the role they played is usually overshadowed by prominent figures like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. While these figures were also crucial, the protest would have been impossible without the labor and sacrifices of all of the people involved in the boycott. A figure that embodies the role of rallying that often gets overshadowed by King and Parks is E. D. Nixon. Nixon was a crucial part of the protest and was the main driving force behind it. As Payne states “Nixon started organizing the first meeting of Negro leadership on Friday; by Monday they had organized a boycott that was nearly completely effective among a community of over forty thousand people. That they could mobilize the Black community so thoroughly, so quickly, is a reflection of how well people such as Nixon and Robinson knew their community, with knowledge acquired through long years of working in it.” (“The View From the Trenches” 128). This