Blog#2: Question 1

For one myth that i didn't know about that i learned from Reed's book, "The Art of Protest" from the "Singing Civil Rights" section was that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the founder of the civil rights movement. In fact, it was a black woman named Ella Baker that started the movement but has been much discredited despite her hard work among other activists. I thought that Martin Luther King was one of the few leaders in the civil rights movement when in reality he was just one of hundreds of leaders and one of thousands of activists. It also said most often he was a follower than a leader in the movements actions. Also most of the hard work was done behind the scenes by black women which men got credit for. Some of these women were Ella Baker, Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou.

Another myth that was said was the exaggeration of white people's role in the movement. It was mostly a movement of black people and some white people did help but media has exaggerated that they also did a lot of hard work in changing racism. He points out that white people said if blacks stopped talking about color that racism would disappear as if fighting for their rights wasn't crucial. Also, that the white politicians had used the Ku Klux Klan to basically do the 'dirty work' for them in an effort to continue oppression. What i have realized is that there are a lot of cover ups in history and the stories are sometimes mixed up often confusing people from what really happened in the past and thats how myths are created, because sometimes the people with power doesn't want the mass media to know the entire truth about something and controls what should be learned and what shouldn't. That's why i think some myths need to be challenged and find the real truth.