Civil Rights Activist: Article Analysis

Payne demonstrates how progressive grassroots leaders like Baker and Clark were. However, by focusing on a small segment of the most committed and liberal activists who dedicated their lives to the struggle to educate, empower, and organize people in their communities, mostly in Mississippi or in Tennessee, he presents a rather distorted picture of grassroots activism. While their model of activism is something people should aspire to, it should not be set as a standard upon which all civil rights activists are judged. Payne, for example calls out teachers and ministers in Mississippi, groups that are commonly believed to have been in the more active ranks of the civil rights struggle for being reluctant to join the fight for equality. However, he fails to inform us about their motives. Instead, he produces a new form of moralistic leadership role model based on activists like Clark, Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer.
Instead of creating the ultimate or comprehensive history of the civil rights movement, we should focus on telling our readers that this would be hard if not impossible to achieve. Instead, we should re-examine our own motives when we speak to our sources and be upfront why we approach the history from a certain perspective. All vantage points provide us with important details. A well-researched account of the political history that fully engages the material pressures that the government faced domestically and internationally, helps us to understand that a concerted national effort at times aids in propelling important legislative and legal