The cell phone video is just as much a part of George Floyd’s history as the riots after his death on May 25, 2020.
Those nine minutes and 29 seconds of Floyd’s life, which drew to a close under the knee of now-convicted ex-cop Derek Chauvin, helped in many ways to restart civil activism and proved more integral earlier this spring Part of Chauvin’s trial.
Its use and power are now unmistakable, but citizens and social activists have not always had the internet – and the large audiences it offers – so easily accessible.
Would Martin Luther King Jr. have broadcast his “I Have a Dream” speech on Instagram Live? Would Facebook groups have been used to organize sit-ins? Would the countless marches, demonstrations, rallies, protests and uprisings of the civil rights movement of the 1960s be topics on Twitter?
Wilfredo Rojas, a Gloucester County resident, recalls his first look at civil rights activism when he helped organize an dropout at the Philadelphia parish school he attended after a nun made racial abuse against him and others Classmates spat out.
“We didn’t fully understand why this racism came from nuns who vowed to serve the people. So we organized a walk and went to the director’s office to request that we meet with ours attending parents wanted to talk about this particular nun and her behavior towards people of color, “said Rojas.
Rojas traveled to many cities in the summer of 1968, meeting with civil rights groups such as the Brown Berets in California, the Young Lords in Chicago, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland, and even attended a rally calling for Girard College desegregation was in Philadelphia and met with Cecil B. Moore, a Philadelphia lawyer, politician, and civil rights activist who led the struggle for college integration.
He’s not convinced that social media would have been helpful back then.
“Talking on social media, it could have been bad for the civil rights movement back then, as J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, was looking for all sorts of infiltration channels, the civil rights movement, and even Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael, they would get into the organizations and use agents, and I mean, we just wanted civil rights, we didn’t want to take over government, “said Rojas.
More:Reality Column: The Role of Critical Racial Theory in the Assassination of George Floyd
Stanley Yeldell, associate professor in the Law and Studies Department of Rowan University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, grew up in Elk Township, Gloucester County and remembers the resistance fighters for equality in the 1960s.
Yeldell was exposed to racism from a young age and joined the NAACP in New Jersey as treasurer in the Gloucester County Youth Department at the age of 13. Ambitious as Yeldell was, he said the real organization during the civil rights movement was word of mouth remembering his grandfather and other black business owners talking directly to their customers about what was going on in their community.
“Social media was word of mouth back then,” said Yeldell. “My grandfather had a grocery store and a lot of people came into the store and what he did was raise the people in the community and not just that, but down the street from his was another store and he did the same and then another business. “
However, Yeldell believes that using social media to mobilize civil rights activists today is less of a hassle.
“Social media is having a huge impact as communication can spread like wildfire because of things like the Internet and Facebook,” said Yeldell. “Because of today’s internet, because of various social media, you have Facebook, you have Instagram and so on and so on and so on, you can really generate a considerable amount of support.”
More:Nonprofit leaders must face the nasty challenge of racial justice in opinion
More:Meet the women who promote inclusivity and diversity in literature
The 1960s message would have spread faster and more widely with social media, he said.
“It would have been a lot more effective. We could have mobilized more people and involved more people,” said Yeldell. “Here’s the difference, back then everyone had no vehicles and cars. If we had social media with the Internet back then, we wouldn’t have to leave home; we could communicate with you if you didn’t have one.” a phone with a computer. “
Reva Foster, executive director of Aging for Willingboro and chair of the New Jersey Black Issues Convention, recalls civil rights activists improvising their own brand of social media.
“There was a core group of people who met who felt they needed to keep moving the movement forward so that then-President Lyndon B. Johnson could see what was happening and what the people were feeling, and the March on Washington continued that in motion movement, “said Foster. “That was their kind of social media when they had this one big event.”
Foster says without this type of organization, she feared that laws like the passage of the 1965 Suffrage Act may not have come through.
Foster first discovered civil rights activism in high school.
“The reason I knew early on that I wanted to get involved with civil rights, especially in the 1960s when Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists went to Washington DC and stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial, which is a symbol of free and free Civil rights is. ” for the United States and at that time I felt why I don’t? “said Foster.
And while the civil rights activist’s tactics were effective back then, Foster believes social media helps spread the message of equality through kindness.
“I go to the grocery store. I see people helping the seniors regardless of their nationality or skin color they are going to say. Can I help you with that? And that is what we do in the first place, I think, now more than ever.” before because of the fact that we have social media, television, and even news reporters talking about kindness and mutual love as opposed to those you’ve been told don’t have the same feelings, “Foster said.
Rojas, who is a retired member of Gloucester County’s NAACP communications committee, says activists today need to find a way to continue using love and reaching people’s hearts through social media.
“In the past election, people were really connected to people’s hearts. So how do you pull people’s hearts to get people involved?” he said.
Yeldell also wants activists today to know that even in small numbers, the endeavors still matter.
“Civil rights activists today need to understand that when you organize, this is important, you don’t have to have big numbers, you can have small numbers and small numbers represent the big picture.”
Nicolette White is the Diversity and Inclusion Reporter for the Burlington County Times, the Daily Journal, and the Courier-Post. She is a Temple University graduate with roots in Dallas, Texas. Send tips to [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @nicolettejwhite.
Please support local journalism with a subscription to the Burlington County Times.
Comments are closed.