Asia Muhammad - Timeline #3 lyrics

After freedom from slavery African Americans in Southern states still faced inequality, segregation and oppression, including violence. “Jim Crow” laws banned them from cla**rooms, bathrooms and trains. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that formed the basis for discrimination, drawing national and international attention to the struggle of Blacks. Civil rights activists used nonviolent protest and civil disobedience to bring about change, and the federal government made legislative headway with initiatives such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Many leaders from within the African American community and beyond rose to prominence including Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcolm X. The Civil Rights Era lasted from 1940 to 1980 and towards the end began the rise of the Black Power Movement. 1941- Melvin B. Tolson publishes Dark Symphony "They tell us to forget The Golgotha we tread. . . We show are scourged with hate, A price upon our head. They who have shackled us Require of us a song, They who have wasted us Bid us condone the wrong." -Melvin B. Tolson "Dark Symphony"(1941) 1942 - Margaret Walker published her Poem, "For My People" "For my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power"-Margaret Walker-"For My People"(1942) 1952 - Ralph Ellison writes Invisible Man "The point now is that I found a home--or a hole in the ground, as you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a "hole" it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole."-Ralph Ellison -"Invisible Man" 1963-March on Washington D.C. “The revolution is at hand, and we must free ourselves of the chains of political and economic slavery. The non-violent revolution is saying, “We will not wait for the courts to act, for we have been waiting for hundreds of years. We will not wait for the President, the Justice Department, nor Congress, but we will take matters into our own hands and create a source of power, outside any national structure that could and would a**ure us a victory.” - John Lewis, "We Must Free Ourselves" 1964- Civil Rights Act of 1964 “Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. Why, if birth made you American, you wouldn't need any legislation; you wouldn't need any amendments to the Constitution; you wouldn't be faced with civil-rights filibustering in Washington, D.C., right now. They don't have to pa** civil-rights legislation to make a Polack an American.”-Excerpt from Malcolm X- Ballad or the Bullet 1966-The birth of the Black Panther Party “We are oppressed as a group because we are black, not because we are lazy, not because we're apathetic, not because we're stupid, not because we smell, not because we eat watermelon and have good rhythm. We are oppressed because we are black."-Stokley Carmichael 1969- Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are k**ed by Cops “We want poems like fists beating n******gs out of Jocks or dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-j**s. Black poems to smear on girdlemamma mulatto b**hes whose brains are red jelly stuck between 'lizabeth taylor's toes.”-Amiri Baraka 1978- Louis Farrakhan leaves Al-Islam and becomes the leader of the Nation of Islam. "Poems are bullsh** unless they are teeth or trees or lemons piled on a step. Or black ladies dying of men leaving nickel hearts beating them down. f** poems and they are useful, wd they shoot come at you, love what you are, breathe like wrestlers, or shudder strangely after pissing."-Amiri Baraka "Black Art"