What Would You Have Done During the Civil Rights Movement?

(play^ while reading)

One possible answer: holding fixed your character, ideals, relationships and occupation, you'd probably be doing what you're doing now. So, if you're doing very little right now, that's concerning. Any heroic projection of myself as one who would have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham as an act of resistance and solidarity is probably wrong. Any justice-driven conviction that I would have resisted white-flight as my neighborhood became more diverse, that I would have petitioned local officials and State representatives to overturn unjust policies, that I would have participated in lament over racism in America, that I would have lent my attention and time to learning about racism, is probably illusory...

...if I'm not doing similar things now in our current civil rights movement

This is a point raised by Christian activist and historian, Jemar Tisby. It's a harrowing thought experiment. If our engagement with the current social justice movement is zero or converging on zero, it's not unlikely that our involvement with the civil rights movement of the 60s would have been zero or converging on zero. Or, think of it like this: if your response to the current civil unrest is mostly critical ("look at all these destructive protests. That's not good," or, "this is all just marxism and critical race theory"), it's not unlikely that your response to the civil unrest in the 60's would have been mostly critical too. If your response is mostly cautious and alarmist––to the point of being non-engaged––it's not unlikely that your response in the 60s would have been mostly cautious and alarmist too––to the point of being non-engaged. Why think your response would differ?

These counterfactuals and hypotheticals are meant to raise an important question: if my character, ideals, and relationships are not enough to empower productive engagement with racial justice today, why think these things would have been enough to empower productive engagement in the first civil rights movement (had I been around for it)? Don't miss the obvious indictment looming behind that question. Productive support for the civil rights movement of the 60's was unequivocally morally good and right, and anyone who did not productively support it (when it was within their power to do so) was guilty of moral failure. So, if my character, ideals, and relationships wouldn't have been enough to inspire productive support for MLK and his contemporaries, something is off with one or more of these things. They aren't what they should be now. I may need strengthened character, renewed devotion to my ideals, or greater attentiveness and proximity to the people whose lives are most impacted by racial injustice. Alternatively, I may need new character entirely. I may need new ideals. And maybe I need new friends and new community––ones that are less insulated, one's that will challenge me to embrace the uncomfortable journey into racial justice, one's that will journey alongside me, and one's whose racial background gives them a position to speak wisely and authoritatively into my journey. So, what's your situation? Would you have productively supported the civil rights movement? The answer (and perhaps our aversion to the question) may be telling.