Letter from Birmingham Jail was written by Martin Luther King Jr. on April 16, 1963. King had been jailed and placed in solitary confinement as a result of his involvement in civil rights actions in Birmingham, Alabama. While in jail, he read a public letter written by eight white clergymen who criticized King’s actions on behalf of civil rights and branded him a troublemaker. His famous letter was his response to their charges.
“Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights,”
John F. Kennedy
On June 11, 1963, President John Kennedy gave a report to the American people explaining the order he had given to the Alabama National Guard to supervise the integration of the University of Alabama and admit two “qualified Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro.” Kennedy addressed the issue of inequality in America, describing the nation’s moral choice on the question of whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. Later that month, Kennedy sent a special message to Congress, calling for extensive civil rights legislation, but Congress did not act until 1964, after the president’s death.
Photograph of Cesar Chavez
Cesar Estrada Chavez, of Mexican American descent, grew up in a migrant farm family and earned only an eighth-grade education. He joined the U.S. Navy and served during World War II, then returned to Arizona and California and began organizing migrant American farm workers. In 1965, Chavez led what became a five-year strike by California grape pickers and a national boycott of grapes, winning support for the farm workers from across America. In 1962, he founded the National Farm Workers Association, which merged with the AFL-CIO in 1966 to become the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, then in 1971, the United Farm Workers of America.
Photographs of Oklahoma migrant workers in California, Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange is best known for her photographs documenting the plight of migrant workers who sought work in California during the late 1920s and 1930s. She captured in images the emotional and physical toll the Depression was taking on human beings across the country and brought much-needed attention to their plight. Her photographs were often accompanied by words of the migrant workers themselves, with whom she lived for a short time.
Photographs of Japanese Americans from internment camps
During World War II, the American government, fearing subversive activity, evacuated approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans from their homes by presidential executive order and forced them to live in internment camps. These civilians of Japanese ancestry spent from 1942 to 1945 in temporary housing and then permanent barracks in such states as California, Wyoming, Arizona, and Colorado. The first and best known of these camps was the Manzanar Relocation Center in California.
“We Shall Overcome,” developed in the folk tradition; sung by the SNCC
Freedom Singers
“We Shall Overcome” seems to have been derived from a gospel song, “I’ll Overcome Some Day,” written by Charles Tindley in 1900. It was adapted for use in the labor movements of the 1940s and then became the anthem of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Traditionally sung at mass meetings, it is performed here by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers.
“Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,” written by Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman; sung by Bruce Springsteen
Woody Guthrie reportedly wrote this song after hearing a news report of a plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon in 1948. The plane was carrying deported migrant farm workers back to Mexico when it crashed; the news report downplayed the tragedy and explained that, with the exception of the pilot and his wife, the dead were “just deportees.” In his song, Guthrie sought to remind listeners of the tragedy of migrant workers’ lives, as well as their anonymous deaths.
“My Country ’Tis of Thy People You’re Dying,” written and sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie
Buffy Sainte-Marie drew on her Native American roots to write this stinging indictment of white America’s treatment of Native Americans. The song was recorded in the early 1960s.