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There's a weird revisionist history that a lot of folks buy into that erases the tactical genius & detailed planning that the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement engaged in. The principle of redemptive suffering was key to exposing the cruelty of the Jim Crow south https://twitter.com/ChaseMadar/status/1333958531343519745
Times have changed and now the suffering is captured on cell phone videos instead of in newspapers, but the principle remains the same https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/opinion/john-lewis.html
First, civil rights leaders won over hearts and minds through putting their bodies on the line. To actually change policy required both a broad-based moral mandate and shrewd political operators who knew how to work within the entrenched system
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/what-the-hells-the-presidency-for/358630/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/what-the-hells-the-presidency-for/358630/
Obama's recent comments on policing seem like advice on how he thinks to build that broad-based moral authority. Activists are justifiably frustrated that they don't have an LBJ-like figure that fought like hell for them & could get results. There's probably some truth to both
DuBois and his writings on double consciousness will always be essential readings to help understand the uneven standards that Black activists have to navigate. It was a defining characteristic of Obama's time in office and he reflects on it in his books https://www.ajc.com/news/black-double-consciousness-bois-century-plus-concept-still-valid/s9AL4esocCSXE3ULTvle9J/
A really good thread on the strategic thinking of behind the Montgomery bus boycott, how Rosa Parks became the face of it, and the theory of change that served as the foundation for many Civil Rights leaders https://twitter.com/BlueSteelDC/status/1334551051639402496?s=20
