GAMES IN DEVELOPMENT

The Struggle for Civil Rights: Birmingham to Memphis, 1963-1966
E-mail reacting@barnard.edu for availability

The Struggle for Civil Rights plunges students into two of the many important moments of creative tension in the civil rights movement, in which key debates and decisions about the goals and means were being addressed. The first is based on the Dorchester Retreat (Dorchester, Georgia; 1963) and the second is based on the Meredith March (Mississippi; 1966). Taking on roles in Civil Rights organizations including the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), students discuss and debate the worth and cost of nonviolent action, in the context of previous and upcoming protests. They contend with the question of whether nonviolent protest is one means to achieving civil rights, or the only means: In what circumstance can violence be allowed, if at all? To what extent should nonviolent protest parallel the NAACP’s legal challenges to Jim Crow laws? Should labor unions and European-Americans be involved with the effort? Which forms of nonviolent action should organizations of limited means pursue: sit-ins, voter registration drives, boycotts, freedom rides, marches? They also consider whether civil rights is the only goal of nonviolent protest, or whether it can and should be applied to other issues that society was facing at the time: e.g., poverty in America, the Vietnam war. Key texts include the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Franz Fannon, and Malcolm X.

About the Authors:

James Highland teaches in the Department of Philosophy at Northern Michigan University. His teaching and research interests include Ancient Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Aesthetics, Ethics and Islamic Philosophy, especially the religious and philosophical foundations of nonviolent action in the work of figures such as Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Khan, King, and Hanh. Harold McDougall is Professor of Law at Howard University. His legal interests include the areas of urban social and economic development, civil rights, and the workings of state, local, and federal government. He was also a civil rights organizer and voter registration worker in his early years and served the NAACP from 1994 to 1997.