MLK panel talks civil rights

According to Jeffrey Ogbar, the utility of nonviolence involves the tenacity of human spirit and the power of moral suasion. Ogbar, director of the Institute for African-American studies and associate professor of history voiced this dogma during a Martin Luther King panel discussion on March 3 in the Women's Center in the Student Union.

Supported by the Office of Diversity and Equity, the event panel also included Bandana Purkayastha, associate professor of sociology and Asian-American studies, and Shayla Nunnally, assistant professor of political science and African-American studies.

As the panel's moderator, Ogbar began the discussion by explaining that the aim of the panel was to examine Martin Luther King Jr.'s historical and contextual background in order to understand his significance.

"I'm struck by the sanitized way Americans see the civil rights movement. The segregation of water fountains and bathrooms does not illustrate the gravity of that historical moment," Ogbar said.

Ogbar presented an analogy in which he asked the audience to visualize an iceberg as a model for understanding the civil rights era. The top portion of the iceberg represented the mild discrimination including segregated bathrooms and buses, while the submerged portion of the iceberg represented the deeper, underlying challenge of achieving basic human rights for all. To outline this challenge, Ogbar cited examples such as people getting turned away from hospitals because of their race and FBI agents specifically instructed not to give CPR to black people.

"It is amazing the utter barbarity of it all," he said.

Purkayastha furthered the discussion by explaining that "politics is not enough to bring about social change." She noted that King's legacy is a deep history that began in India with Mohandas Gandhi who encouraged a love for the enemy.

"Taking action was something I grew up with and it was a central idea," she said. "Gandhi's method was engaging in certain kinds of politics. King talked about the methods you used to engage."

She also stressed the importance of virtue and social space in contemporary politics.

"We are a product of managed messages, political attempts to control how we think," she added. "It is this way that social hierarchies and political messages get generated. The question is: Are young people getting involved in politics that are addressing this kind of meaning-making?"

Purkayastha clarified that Gandhi, King, and other activists of their stature had to actually understand what was going on.

"How do you turn developing ideas into mass movements of ideas?" she questioned.

Nunnally continued the discussion by charting the historical rise and fall of black rights from the institution of slavery in the South to the hallmark decision resulting from the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling. She placed particular emphasis on how context played an important role in gaining racial equality during the civil rights era.

"Race and place is very much part of the reason African-Americans overcame the oppression against them by way of the government," she said. "In the redemptive South, defying racial etiquette caused a stringent repercussion of one having lost one's life. Over time, African-Amerians resisted being second class citizens."

Nunnally continued, saying that the movement involved not only the actions and beliefs of a single person, but those of everyday citizens.

"Our memory of King focuses on the reconciliatory King who incorporated this whole notion of more individuals and institutions being incased in this movement. These people and institutions are often overlooked," Nunnally said.

She also pointed out that the actions of young people over time have been crucial in blurring the racial barrier.

"The young people involved in SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee] tried to sway the larger American population to let them know what was going on in the South amid having a federal government," Nunnally said.

The recent presidential election was a critical event in political history that Nunnally used to demonstrate the effect young people have on politics today.

"Young people have become more interactive in political involvement," she said. "By making a difference across racial lines, they have been integral in how the movement of black politics has changed."