We Will Now Rejoin Your Civil War (Already In Progress)

The long struggles started by the Civil War
continue in America's streets even today, from
St. Louis, Missouri to Staten Island, New York.
And the protest sign is still the greatest weapon,
like this example at the Newseum in Washington.

I celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day with a mouse and keyboard. I love diving neck deep in historical documentation for no good reason. Falling down the research hole can be so much fun, particularly when it's looking for one elusive piece of evidence.

This time, it was chasing an elusive section of a United Auto Workers protest sign used at the March on Washington in 1963. I found a photo of the corner, a chunk of text.

The idea that the Civil War led toward the Civil Rights movement 100 years later is almost painfully obvious. The fitful, ineffective and aborted experiment that was Reconstruction laid the groundwork upon which Randolph and Rustin erected the grand protest of 1963. Everyone on the rostrum called back to Lincoln, to the Civil War, to Emancipation.

The March on Washington was a non-violent battle in the long Civil War, just another skirmish like the ones fought in Gettysburg or Sharpsburg or Chattanooga. And everyone on the street knew it.

From what I can tell, the "official" posters produced by the march organizers, the signs announcing "We March For...Now!" and "We Demand... Now!" far outnumbered any others. But there were others. Some were hand-drawn. Some were banners brought by delegations, announcing that this church or that labor union was here to be heard.

And then there are the UAW signs. The language is far more strident than any of the others. The language is biting, snide and sarcastic. It's the language of a people oppressed for far too long to worry about being polite.

The March on Washington in August 1963 was
a definite echo of the Civil War.

The sign I went searching for underlined the 100-year disconnect in American society. And finally I found the whole elusive poster in an Associated Press photograph published by the Washington Post. "We seek the freedom in 1963," the UAW poster reads, "promised in 1863."

Emancipation was incomplete. It was never fully deployed, thanks in part to the failure of America's reconstruction experiment in 1877. And the March on Washington was just another battle of the Civil War.

I carefully traced the poster into a vector image. I'm a compulsive history. I collect things. Luckily, in this modern age, that doesn't always mean stuffing photocopied images into filing cabinets in the office. My filing cabinets are digital and they take up less real estate.

But to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday this week, I wanted to share that poster with you, along with a few more that I've been converting over. They're hosted below on Flickr, in vibrant color and at high resolution. Use them however you see fit: in a classroom, in a frame on your wall or perhaps in the streets protesting today. After all, the African-American Civil Rights movement is still going on. And so is our Civil War.

Another Real Gettysburg Address, 50 Years On

From the Gettysburg Times, buried on page seven on November 19th, 1963:

The following address, “100 Years After Lincoln's Gettysburg Address” by E. Washington Rhodes, editor-publisher of the Philadelphia Tribune and president of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, was delivered at exercises in the Gettysburg National Cemetery Tuesday afternoon:

------

PD / Abbie Rowe

“I consider it a great privilege to have been invited as a representative of the American Negro people to participate in an occasion of such national, historic importance, at this time of racial tension and unrest. This, then, is an historic moment of high honor and high drama, which will be forever cherished by the American Negro people, as they march with heads erect to the goal of full and complete equality of citizenship rights.

“One hundred years after the Battle of Gettysburg, 100 years after the Gettysburg Address, the anguished expectations and hopes of Abraham Lincoln for a united nation remain unrealized, unfulfilled in American life. The present, grave Civil Rights struggle attest to this melancholy, tragic fact.

Great Statesman

“The 'March On Washington' on August 28, 1963, ended at the Lincoln Memorial – at the knees of Lincoln – at the knees of a magnificent stone image. Today, as we evoke the living, breathing presence of Abraham Lincoln here at Gettysburg, we and the entire nation should become acutely aware of his great, compassionate heart sustained by a statesmanship unparalleled in his day. By nature, by instinct, Lincoln understood statesmanship, and became not only one of America's greatest statesmen, but also one of the world's greatest statesmen and is so recognized throughout the world today.

“It has been said that 'statesmanship is characterized by wisdom, breadth of vision or regards for the general welfare rather than partisan interest.' May God grant to us in unstinting measure both the determination and the will to substitute statesmanship for racial antipathies – statesmanship for political expediency and frivolity – statesmanship for educational, social and economic inequities – statesmanship for fragmented views of life – statesmanship for sectional hatreds – statesmanship for walls of hostile silence. Such positive, affirmative, imperative action alone can satisfy the great compassionate heart of Abraham Lincoln 100 years after the Gettysburg Address.

“House Divided”

"Abraham Lincoln prior to his election as President, quoting from Holy Writ, declared with the wisdom of the ages that 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' He continued: 'I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free.'

“With all the vigor at my command and the great esteem which I have for my beloved country, I am respectfully urging my fellowmen to take note that this is as true today as it was centuries ago – a house divided against itself cannot stand.

“Second – class citizenship with all of its attendant evils must end. Unless men of substance and creative minds take positive action, move forward with alertness and stout hearts to remove this injustice, I fear that government of the people, by the people and for the people, will soon be endangered beyond repair.”

Rhodes visiting Kennedy's Oval Office in 1962.
PD / Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

George C. Wallace: Schoolhouse Door to Gettysburg

George Wallace as he appeared on the
Huntley-Brinkley Report in 1963.

In the days after his famed stand in the schoolhouse door, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace attended to the business at hand on his desk in Montgomery. Wallace served as chief executive in an office in the first home of the Confederacy. One of the things awaiting Wallace on his return from Tuscaloosa was a letter from Paul L. Roy of Gettysburg.

Roy was editor of the Gettysburg Times, and was endeavoring to get letters from each governor sending their tidings of goodwill to Gettysburg on the hundredth anniversary of the momentous battle. The idea was pure. And most governors responded with purity.

Governor Endicott Peabody of Massachusetts wrote to Paul about how, "All Americans look to the green meadows of a peaceful Gettysburg today and pray for the continued and strengthened union of all the states." Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton chimed in, noting that, "Our American family is the family of mankind, and our neighbors are our brothers, whatever race or accent. Those who fought at Gettysburg waged their lives in a bloody tenant of this democratic maxim. It prevailed, and America has grown great under its guidance."

In Montgomery, George Wallace prepared to write his own letter. In Tuscaloosa, he had just made a potent statement about his vision for America. "The unwelcomed, unwanted, unwarranted and force-induced intrusion upon the campus of the University of Alabama today of the might of the Central Government," Wallace read to a crowd gathered in front of the University's auditorium, "offers frightful example of the oppression of the rights, privileges and sovereignty of this State by officers of the Federal Government."

In his own letter, Texas Governor John Connally wrote to Editor Roy that, "Today we live in a changing world which generates perplexing problems. We must not condemn these changes, nor attempt to still the hands of the clock."

On televisions around the country, Americans were still watching Governor Wallace speak his words in the schoolhouse door. "My action," he told the nation through the sleek television microphone hanging from his neck, "seeks to avoid having state sovereignty sacrificed on the altar of political expediency." Americans were hearing the rhythmic harping of Wallace against, "the might of the Central Government," and, "unwarranted actions of the Central Government," and, "illegal usurpation of power by the Central Government."

Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus wrote to Editor Roy before Wallace made his stand, before Kennedy made his speech that same night, before Medgar Evers lay in a pool of blood in his driveway just a couple hours later. But his state had known strife over school integration as well. "I think it is also an appropriate time to re-dedicate ourselves," he assured the editor and his readers, "to those principles of freedom and democracy which Abraham Lincoln so aptly expressed in his now famous and immortal Gettysburg Address." If America was to deal with the real enemy, the world's, "external dissension," it would mean quitting petty squabbles and realizing together that , "we must remain united if we are to endure as a nation."

Letterhead for the State of Alabama rolled through a typewriter in Governor Wallace's office. Hammered out on that 26-key-piano was a familiar tune.

"We must do our part to see that we remain a nation united in peace, retaining individual rights and liberties." Individual liberties, that was, save for those of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood when they wanted to register as students at the University of Alabama. "Individual liberties must be safeguarded, for without freedom and liberty for each of us, we are traveling down the dead-end road of destructive centralization."

Wallace made a second stand in June of 1963, this time in the pages of the Gettysburg Times. And it wouldn't only be in the folds of the newspaper that Wallace would make his stand. The Governor had plans to make a special trip to Pennsylvania the first week of July.

In the Times' press room in the borough, Governor George C. Wallace's words rolled off the line inside the newspaper's anniversary edition. There his words were printed for all to read in stark lines of black and white, much like the nation that his words envisioned.