| The Do the Right Thing Tour crew had a great — really great — time in Atlanta on Wednesday, a day that traced a line straight from Atlanta’s proud Civil Rights history to the battle for Fair Food today. One elemental similarity between the two movements in particular became manifest over the course of the day in Atlanta, and that was this: Any movement for long-overdue freedom is as much about the journey that takes place in the hearts and minds of those with power as it is about winning respect and dignity for those without.
That insight — courtesy of an unforgettable tour of Atlanta’s Civil Rights landmarks given to the CIW crew by Mr. Charles Black, a veteran of Atlanta’s student movement of the early 1960’s — gave rise to the powerful new video above. Please take a couple of minutes to watch the video, and then check out the full Day 4 Photo Report. |
Click here to see the Day 4 Report, including photos, video, and press links from Wednesday’s unforgettable visit in Atlanta!
Healing Publix : On Day 4, the CIW crew was given a tour of Atlanta’s rich history of involvement in the Civil Rights movement by Mr. Charles Black, a Morehouse College student and Civil Rights activist in the 1960’s whose central role in Atlanta’s student movement provided him a front row seat for some of the most important moments in Civil Rights history.
During the tour, Mr. Black reflected on the many impacts of the Civil Rights struggle in Atlanta and around the country. But after touching on several of the more immediately obvious changes — on the end of legal segregation, on the establishment of social and economic opportunities never before possible for millions of African Americans — Mr. Black settled on what he considered to be one of the most important, and most overlooked, changes won through the innumerable sacrifices of the Civil Rights pioneers:
| “When you really look at it,” he said, “we freed the black people of the time, but we freed the white people, too.” |
That insight — that by relieving white people of the burden of having to defend a patently unjust system against the inevitable march of freedom with physical force, of having to buttress that system with laws and customs that flatly violated fundamental principles of justice and human rights, the Civil Rights movement freed white people, too, from the abominations of racism and economic injustice — is captured in a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the power of nonviolent protest that is engraved on a statue of Dr. King on the Morehouse campus:
| “Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon. It is a weapon unique in history which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.” |
As you can imagine, this notion provoked a profound reflection within the CIW crew, too.
The video above is a product of that reflection, of the lessons drawn from 50 years ago that still ring true today in the movement for Fair Food. It is itself a reflection on how the ultimately unwinnable task of defending a patently unjust farm labor system against the growing call for fundamental human rights in the fields is clearly starting to wear on the men and women who run Publix.
Following the tour, CIW members joined with Fair Food allies from Atlanta for an exceptionally lively protest at a local Publix. Check out the Day 4 Report for pics from that rally, too, and for a closer look at a truly moving day.