The Influence of Grassroots Organizing on the Federal Government
In Let the People Decide: Black Freedom and White Resistance in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945-1986 Todd Moye argues that the Black Freedom Struggle cannot be understood as a national, top-down movement. He examines the dynamics of rural struggle by placing emphasis on grass-roots organizations such as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer, the sharecropper who later became head of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Moye presents a bottom-up perspective that revolves around social movements in Sunflower County which challenged the foundation of Delta social relations. However, Steven F. Lawson takes a different perspective for ...
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My assessment is that the role of ordinary people in grassroots organizing is more plausible than the actions of the federal government. In this essay, I will discuss the importance of black and white grassroots organizations and how the actions of the federal government were derived from the development of these organizations. Also, I will elaborate on how the federal government intervened in massive situations to protect the image of the U.S on the Cold War stage.
To begin with, grassroots organizing was key to the progress of the Black Freedom Struggle. Organizations such as Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) had a tremendous influence on federal intervention as it related to the plight of ordinary people. The foundations of SNCC organizing began in Greensboro, North Carolina when a group of four college students sat down at a segregated lunch counter and refused to leave until they were served. This strategy, ...
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desegregation laws. Farmer made arrangements for several SNCC members, most of them college students that participated in the sit-ins, to be apart of interracial bus rides from Washington D.C to New Orleans, intending to desegregate waiting rooms and lunch counters in bus stations along the way. However, as the group of students arrived in Alabama, they were greeted by mobs with firebombs and harassment. The influence of grassroots movements on the federal government proved real when Attorney General Robert Kennedy made a deal with Senator James Eastland, of Mississippi, which guaranteed the passengers safe passage through the state. The Freedom Riders were accompanied by national ...
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"The Influence of Grassroots Organizing on the Federal Government." Essayworld.com. May 16, 2011. Accessed May 17, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Influence-Grassroots-Organizing-Federal-Government/99210.
"The Influence of Grassroots Organizing on the Federal Government." Essayworld.com. May 16, 2011. Accessed May 17, 2025. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/The-Influence-Grassroots-Organizing-Federal-Government/99210.
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