A Protest History of the United States

Protest matters. Protests have led to changes in political will and
winds. One person chooses to courageously defy, question, or demand
change from the powerful in relative anonymity where masses of
people, with song and soulful sharing, crowds of people are moved to
stand shoulder to shoulder, chanting in unison, collectively presenting
their grievances against injustices by law or tradition. Despite any
possible consequences, they all want to make a difference. Protest, to
me, is spiritual.

My first protest outside of my family was in third grade. I marched
through the streets with classmates, carrying signs demanding that the
adults vote to pass a tax levy to finance public school renovations. We
laughed, sang a protest song I had written, and watched the sun set
feeling ourselves champions of a cause we believed all adults would be
foolish to ignore. The measure failed miserably. Some White parents
had started their abandonment of the city’s public schools in the wake
of racial desegregation. Learning in integrated classrooms, living in
mixed neighborhoods, perhaps having a person of color in leadership
who made decisions affecting their lives was anathema. They crept
away into the suburbs to create secluded White havens, taking their
children and a flawed notion of democracy with them. Now their
children and grandchildren have come to the cities as “urban settlers”
estranged from or unaware of the history of colonial settlers, redlining,
busing, or environmental racism. I am writing this book because
activists are soldiers for social justice, deserving of recognition for
their service and sacrifice, perhaps even via a special day or designated
cemetery. Far too many community organizers become elderly
without a pension, pass away without enough money for a casket,
with lives shortened by constant self-deprivation, giving their time to
the cause of others instead of to themselves or their families. Fannie
Lou Hamer was a Mississippi sharecropper, forced out of her home,
clothes thrown out on a dirt road because she had registered to vote.
As a voting activist, she was arrested then beaten after leading other
African Americans in Mississippi to the polls. Employers refused to
hire her, and death threats were constant, as were money worries and
stress. I am writing this book for her and others.

A Protest History of the United States is an interdisciplinary telling
of the obstacles, protests, and protesters that braids together law,
memoir, events, and interviews into an account of centuries of history.
This book is for you, the reader, who may remember particular protesters
and participated in activism yourself, in one form or another.
As you read this book, I urge you to think about generations of your
family and the kinds of protest and resistance they engaged in without
realizing it. Our achievements speak to their tenacity. This book is important
to me because I, like each generation of my family, have been
Davids facing the Goliaths of slavery, racism, sexism, and classism, and
have done so with tenacity, intelligence, faith, and a well-aimed rock.

Protest is an investment. My African American high school music
teacher, Mrs. Baskins, tried to explain the debt we all owe to the next
generation. I apologize on behalf of a raucous concert choir class
that failed to embrace the songs of freedom, struggle, and resistance.
Only later did I realize those songs contained history, life skills, and
protest. She, like me, had been integrated into the White school across
town. Only as a working adult did I understand the racial and gender
challenges she must have faced and how she used “Black Excellence”
as protest. My teachers gave me the gift of self-expression.
I am a playwright and writer. Music theater song dance, film, sculpture,
and drawing can all be protest. Art has long been a part of activism.
Protests can be on canvases or billboards; sung in deep-throated
jazz or opera; danced in ballet, tap, or modern; ignited in theaters
and in the streets. Do something! In art or academia, take a knee or
walk the picket line, whether lawyer or librarian, be the first or refuse
to be last but recognize a responsibility to keep progress moving. An
investment of sweat and blood allowed me the time to write and you
the time to read this book. It is humbling to realize so many made
sacrifices without ever knowing our names.

Progress comes from public pressure creating equality under law,
because for most of this nation’s history the Rule of Law was a grand
idea whereby every person was equal under law. However, historically,
the “role of law” is to control the labor class, people of color,
women, the poor, immigrants, the marginalized, and their allies until a
critical mass of people rise up and convince stakeholders, influencers,
attorneys, and politicians to join their fray. For most, there is little
connection between the freedoms they enjoy and the protests needed
to make these rights a reality. For example, the eight-hour work week
was not readily handed to workers; lives were lost to achieve it. The
US Constitution may provide the right on paper, but I was able enter
the once segregated main library in Kansas City, Missouri, because of
protests against discrimination. A source of pleasure for me during hot
Midwestern summers was taking the bus downtown and nurturing
my curiosity and love of books at the library or walking to the local
museums that would have turned me away a generation before.

Protest is primal. This book expands protest and resistance to
include the precisely planned labor protests by the mill girls in the
nineteenth century, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,
the 1975 Chinatown protests in New York City, and the Women’s
March of 2017. Protest includes the spontaneity of slave uprisings,
West Virginia coal mine gunfights, anti-war marches, and urban rebellions.
Protest can be the act of doing one small thing: refusing to
move, standing up or staying seated, speaking up or remaining silent
with one’s fist in the air, signing a petition or taking a knee, waging a
sit-in or a boycott. Protest can mean resistance or surviving horrendous
wrongs. This book is an extension of my research, writing, and
speaking on protest, law, and violence in colonial America and the
United States from 1607 to present.

Indigenous peoples studied the colonial statutes and treaty laws,
as did some fugitives from slavery, newly arrived immigrant workers,
women seeking the vote, and those not formally educated learned to
bend the power of law to their needs. The rule of law is an American
ideal, that everyone is equal under law. For much of this nation’s history,
the role of law has been to oppress and restrict people of color,
women, the poor, and immigrants, as well as queer and disabled people
and their allies.

Unfair laws are usually at the heart of protests, triggering demonstrations,
civil disobedience, strikes, rallies, and sometimes armed
combat. Wealthy people have learned how to command the necessary
laws and politicians to protect their positions and business interests.
But the unified power of the people is a force strong enough to battle
tycoons, slaveholders, industrialists, magnates, billionaires, and the
One Percenters, and this book shows the laws and social conditions
confronting the common person before they gather with others and
channel rage, frustration, and desperation into strategy and action.
“Your silence will not protect you.” Audre Lorde’s words sing
with a burning truth. Silent good people allow bad things to happen
as they try to wait out the controversy—until it comes for them.
Women in human resources offices across the nation know that female
employees earn less for the same job, but they remain silent. Police
officers know that fellow cops spew racism and assault civilians, but
they say nothing. Bank employees watch qualified lenders be denied
loans or get hit with higher interest rates and poor terms, and they
only complain privately. Realtors quietly watch prospective tenants
and homebuyers get steered to marginalized communities. Courage is
being afraid but acting anyway. Protests need not be mass meetings,
bull horns, and big painted signs. That is fine and necessary. However,
sometimes activism means one just needs to act.

I have stood in the cold, marched in the heat, and been drenched
in the rain for issues concerning African American voting rights, women’s
pro-choice rights, police-involved civilian deaths, book banning,
housing rights, and gun violence. I have marched sometimes and
written letters to the editor other times, filed complaints, boycotted
stores, spoken up, remained vigilant, donated funds, stopped donating
funds, joined a group, quit a group, signed petitions, or simply avoided
businesses that offer second-class service, and you can do so as well.
“Do not spend money in places where respect is not served” remains
my motto. This can be a personal everyday act of protest. Use your
power within your sphere of influence to start a ripple effect that
brings social change.

The Ancestors gave their livelihoods, and some their very lives,
without ever knowing our names. Protesters, as warriors, are marching
to a different drummer and are drawn to a light just beyond the horizon, some pushing forward despite personal fears and possible professional suicide. Courage is a superpower. Rest in power, ancestral
protest leaders, rabble-rousers, conscience raisers, advocates of
change, martyrs for equal rights, and conscientious objectors who built
the freedoms about which this conflicted country boasts and blindly
enjoys. For those who fought the good fight, finished the race, and
kept the faith, thank you for your service.