Many years before the Arab Spring there was Mississippi Summer. Mississippi Summer came after years of struggle. The campaign against the flagrant violation of the civil rights of in the U.S. developed over many years and in many ways. The Niagara Movement of DuBois, the separatism of Garvey and the Nation of Islam, labor organizing in the industrial cities north and south all chipped away at defacto and dejure discrimination. From the mid fifties extending the late seventies it was the Civil Rights groups like SCLC, CORE, SNCC who time in which the U.S. Civil Rights movement. We were faced with a supreme challenge, state governments were using their police at every level to harass and intimidate the movements for social change. It is of course a documented fact that these same police and militia had been thourouly infiltrated by the Klan and the White Citizen Councils and other racist paramilitary forces. Our churches were being bombed, Civil rights Workers were being assassinated, interstate buses were being set ablaze and their occupants set upon by mobs. State sponsored terrorism was being unleashed in waves, supiror force and fire power had always been used to keep southern blacks in line. Through all this the movement maintained a disciplined focused adherence to peaceful protest.
Yes it is true that the usually unorganized mainly young and mainly urban lashed out out in a series of riots from the middle to the end of of the decade. It is also true that shadow groups of armed black men like the Deacon's for Defense guarded some of the young organizers and leaders as they slept. There was also armed resistance in Natchez Mississippi which will be chronicled in the forthcoming bl=ook "We Will Shoot Back." Fannie Lou Hamer head of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Confided that she slept with a gun under her bed.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
-Nelson Mandela
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I have been interested in the symbol of "the white hands". I found this article that offers an explanation. I hope that a Spanish member of Flickr or anyone else for that matter, will tell us more
From the English version of SUR
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The “white hands” (“manos blancas”) symbol did in fact originate in Spain, when students in Madrid used it in 1996 as a sign of innocence and of their revulsion at the murder, by the ETA terrorist group, of Francisco Tomás y Valiente, Professor of Law at the city’s Universidad Autónoma. Since then it has been used in numerous demonstrations, mainly against ETA. It was later associated with the “Spirit of Ermua” - the resounding “Enough is enough” response by Spanish society to the cold-blooded murder of Ermua Councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in July 1997. There is now also an association, the Asociación Manos Blancas, which gives awards to those who are outstanding in their defence of the principles of freedom.
-Nelson Mandela
- MORE -
I have been interested in the symbol of "the white hands". I found this article that offers an explanation. I hope that a Spanish member of Flickr or anyone else for that matter, will tell us more
From the English version of SUR
--
The “white hands” (“manos blancas”) symbol did in fact originate in Spain, when students in Madrid used it in 1996 as a sign of innocence and of their revulsion at the murder, by the ETA terrorist group, of Francisco Tomás y Valiente, Professor of Law at the city’s Universidad Autónoma. Since then it has been used in numerous demonstrations, mainly against ETA. It was later associated with the “Spirit of Ermua” - the resounding “Enough is enough” response by Spanish society to the cold-blooded murder of Ermua Councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in July 1997. There is now also an association, the Asociación Manos Blancas, which gives awards to those who are outstanding in their defence of the principles of freedom.
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