“Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement: A Comparative Analysis of Two Social Movements in the United States” by Dewey M. Clayton.

In the last five years, the Black Lives Matter movement has sought to address the systemic racial discrimination that exists in the U.S. that devalues and dehumanizes the lives of its African-American residents. According to Dewey M. Clayton, several contrasts and parallels exist between the BML movement and the Civil Rights crusade. Using data from a New York magazine content study, he contends that the BLM revolution may learn from the Civil Rights Crusade to gain mainstream political acceptance, reframe its concerns, and eventually effect change nationally (Clayton, 2018). I agree with Clayton that the BLM movement should borrow some aspects of the Civil Rights Revolution manifested in its issue framing, leadership style, and the means of delivering its message.

In the U.S., Black Americans are constantly fighting for universal human rights. The BLM Movement seeks to tackle the various concerns that preceding black liberation groups did: black bodies are considered expendable, and black people are regarded as criminals. Both groups have been vocal in their opposition to structural injustice and racism. Many think BLM will be the next civil rights revolution. From 1954 through 1965, this movement advocated fundamental equality for the black community. The focus of the BLM revolution has been on police brutality against African Americans. Hence, it is helpful to compare and contrast the Civil Rights crusade with the BLM Movement.        

Issue framing

The judicial articulation and victories of black concerns regarding racial equality created the constitutional basis for African Americans to commence their demand for change. Framing black resistance as a subject of equal treatment was a deliberate move: it offered a context for framing the plethora of concerns confronting the black community. Furthermore, the Civil Rights Crusade portrayed the clash between peaceful, nonviolent demonstrators and violent southern police commanders wielding fire hoses and dogs as a battle of good versus evil. To date, the BLM movement has struggled to appeal to the majority of America and persuade people that its issues encompass national identity.

Message delivery

Young campaigners of the BLM revolution, unlike college students of the Civil Rights Association, are being chastised by white people and African Americans alike for being too aggressive. Barbara Reynolds, a writer, and participant of the Civil Rights struggle stated that she would find it difficult to rally behind the BLM movement. Making a parallel between today’s BLM protesters and the civil rights demonstrators of the 1960s, she asserted that it is hard to separate genuine activists from crowd actors who loot and destroy property (Reynolds, 2015). Moreover, the BLM movement has been chastised for several of its brutal acts of civil unrest, ranging from ruining the Symphony at St. Louis to interjecting presidential campaigns.

Style of leadership

While perceived as picking up where the crusade on Civil Rights left off regarding black freedom, Black Lives Matter is similar in numerous aspects but drastically distinct in others. Since Black Lives Matter is still in its infancy, it is infeasible to draw a direct connection to the Civil Rights Association. However, the leadership style of the two groups is a significant distinction. Black Lives Matter has dismissed the hierarchical leadership structure of the Civil Rights Crusade with a heterosexual black man as the leader. Therefore, it is a very dispersed and unorganized movement. According to political analyst Fredrick Harris, new technological tools like Twitter and other social media platforms have introduced an upside-down insurgency steered by regular individuals and have dislodged the top-down structure of the early civil rights movements (Clayton, 2018).

Furthermore, The BLM crusade pays specific consideration to the concerns of queers of African descent, transgender people of color, undocumented black people, black imprisoned people, and others.  Three women established the movement. On the contrary, the Civil Rights Struggle was dominated by men. The BLM movement is a decentralized organization that welcomes leaders across all societies. The civil rights crusade arose from the Black American church’s governance, participated, and advocated for respectability politics.

Conversely, the BLM movement aspires to surpass respectability politics (Reynolds, 2015). In the Civil Rights Revolution era, respectability politics mandated black elites to prove to Caucasian America that African Americans deserved complete citizenship rights. They urged the unlikeable nine-tenths to refrain from ill practices and habits to achieve this. On the contrary, the BLM revolution is a social movement that would challenge conventional ideals by accepting the movement’s diverse identities, such as sexuality, class, color, and gender.

In conclusion, the BLM movement strives to address most of the systemic racial prejudice in America that is a residue of Jim Crow acts and the legacy of slavery. However, Black Lives Matter portrays parallel approaches in championing the dignity of black Americans compared to the Civil Rights revolution. Such distinctions are revealed in how the two groups drive their message and frame their issues and leadership styles. Hence, the BLM can borrow practical approaches from the Civil Rights struggle to gain broader political acceptability by restructuring its grievances and inducing change at the national level.

References

Clayton, D. M. (2018). Black lives matter and the civil rights movement: A comparative analysis of two social movements in the United States. Journal of Black Studies, 49(5), 448-480.

Reynolds, B. (2015). I was a civil rights activist in the 1960s. But it’s hard for me to get behind Black Lives Matter. Retrieved 29 June 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/08/24/i-was-a-civil-rights-activist-in-the-1960s-but-its-hard-for-me-to-get-behind-black-lives-matter/