Oral History Benchmark - Calvin

Calvin - Hey Jed, the topic is about the Civil Rights Movement

Jed - I remembered it was a defining moment in the United States in which working class people  stood up against the bosses and fought for against rascal discrimination.

Calvin - Did you participated in it?

Jed -  I participated in the laters years. in the earlier years I was too young to participate

My sister - How old where you uncle Jed?

Jed - in 1964 I was ten years old by the time the urban riding started in 67 and 68 I was 14 years old. And we began to participate in the Civil Rights Movement. We were marching against the war with Martin Luther King, and we were involved in the poor people marches in Washington D.C. And that's when Dr. Martin Luther King started to pull the anti war movement and the labor movement and the Civil Rights Movement together, and that's why the government killed him. He was lead marches that I participated in. For instant when he was gunned down, he was supporting a garbage men strike in the south. He was standing up for a group of workers who wanted to organise a union. The bosses were ok if people drank out of the same water fountain, but the bosses were not ok if you interfere with their imperialistic wars or the ends of rights on the job. And he pulled all those movements together. He spoke against the vitamin war he started to stand up the rights of labor. At that point he became to trouble some for the bosses and was necessary for the boss to kill him.

My sister - Even know all his movement were peaceful.

Jed - Yes, he was a peaceful non-violent man.

Calvin - Did this affect you and your family while all of this is happening?

Jed - We'll it all affected us; I grew up outside of New Jersey in 1967 during the urban riding I was 14 years old, and for instant a lot of people don't understand this, but in New York, New Jersey, a hundred and sixty seven people were killed by the national guards. One national guardsman, most of the hundred sixty seven people that were killed were unarmed and that happen across the United States. People were marching and protesting.

My sister - Did you get to see the violence?

Jed - Oh yes I did when I was 14 years old, the high school I've when to was occupied by the national guards we had no after school activity. And my señor year of high school was occupied by the state's police. My mother and father were  anti racist and were very supported in the Civil Rights. But those issue affect everybody. And changed everybody and the turbulence in this country is hard to describe unless you're in it or part of it, because the bosses own and they stamp out that history, because in the last 30 years they were able to transfer the greatest amount of welf for those who work for a living and for those who welfare living and that resulted there ability to stamp out those movement in the late 60s and the early 70s, and even rewrite the history so you didn't even know it happened.

Calvin - So at school we talked about how African American were affected like how they didn't have rights and stuff.

Jed - The bosses would like you to believe the Civil Rights Movement was the ability the drink out of the same water fountain and Civil Rights Movement was  much broader than that.

Calvin - Did it affect more than that?

Jed - Yes it did Martin Luther King considered the United Stats to be to be the most violent on the face of the earth and actively worked to change those policy at that time was vitamin and so from his prospected you could not have equality from drinking from the same water fountain if you were bombing Asian people in south East Asia simultaneously he saw the two movement as linked and as a result that's what he did.