Protest Against the Legal Status of the Negro

Abstract

The tradition of protest has been present in every generation of Negroes since the seventeenth century. During slavery hundreds of petitions for freedom were appealed through the courts to the highest tribunals of the states. Free Negroes also resisted discrimination and segregation before the Civil War through court action as well as more direct methods. Contemporary protest is a culmination of this tradition and has reached a climax after a century-long effort to implement the constitutional guarantees of full citizenship in the Civil War Amendments. The massive nature of resistance to discrimina tion is due in part to a changing self-image and in part to a redefinition of constitutional rights by the Supreme Court. The failure of legal processes in parts of the South to facilitate these changes has led to the growth of militant protest move ments and to new forms of expression of protest. The most significant of these movements is nonviolent action in the face of terrorism, calculated to arouse the national conscience and bring about increasing federal intervention to ensure the pro tection of constitutional rights. Events in Alabama and Mis sissippi vividly illustrate the breakdown of legal processes and the need for more vigorous action by the federal government.