I Am a Man is a declaration of civil rights, often used as a personal statement and as a declaration of independence against oppression.
I Am a Man is a declaration of civil rights, often used as a personal statement and as a declaration of independence against oppression.
Historically, in countries such as the United States and South Africa, the term "boy" was used as a pejorative racist insult towards men of color and slaves, indicating their subservient social status of being less than men. [1] In response, "Am I not a man and a brother?" became a catchphrase used by British and American abolitionists. In 1787, Josiah Wedgwood designed the Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion. He copied the original design from the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade as a cameo in black and white. It was widely reproduced and became a popular fashion statement promoting justice, humanity, and freedom. [2]
The question "Am I not a man?" was brought up again during the Dred Scott decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857. [3] During the Civil Rights Movement at the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, "I Am a Man!" signs were used to answer the same question. [4] On trial for bringing his son back to Nebraska for burial, from a forced march to Oklahoma, in 1879 Ponca Chief Standing Bear spoke to Judge Dundy in his Omaha trial, "That hand is not the color of yours, but if I pierce it, I shall feel pain. If you pierce your hand, you also feel pain. The blood that will flow from mine will be the same color as yours. I am a man. God made us both." Standing Bear (and Native Americans) were granted habeas corpus meaning that they had status in the court and were indeed human beings. [5]
"I Am a Man!" has been used as a title for books, plays, and in music [6] and film [7] to assert the rights of all people to be treated with dignity.
"I Am a Man!" was a foundational reference in Derek DelGaudio's theater show "In & Of Itself." DelGaudio created 1,000 "I AM" cards, each with a different descriptor. Before each show, audience members were instructed, "Choose how you wish to be seen." [8]
"I am a man" is one of the many pre-approved social justice messages the NBA allowed their players to display on the back of their jersey during the remainder of the 2019-2020 NBA season. Additional messages include: "Black Lives Matter; Say Their Names; Vote; I Can't Breathe; Justice; Peace; Equality; Freedom; Enough; Power to the People; Justice Now; Say Her Name; Sí Se Puede (Yes We Can); Liberation; See Us; Hear Us; Respect Us; Love Us; Listen; Listen to Us; Stand Up; Ally; Anti-Racist; Speak Up; How Many More; Group Economics; Education Reform; and Mentor" according to the NBAPA. [9]
Untitled (I Am a Man),1988 painting by Glenn Ligon as a reinterpretation of the signs carried during the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968.
The Memphis Grizzlies are an American professional basketball team based in Memphis, Tennessee. The Grizzlies compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The Grizzlies play their home games at FedExForum. The Grizzlies are currently the only team in the major professional North American sports leagues based in the city of Memphis, and the only professional basketball team in the state of Tennessee.
Frank Oz is an American actor, puppeteer, and filmmaker. Oz is best known for his involvement with Jim Henson and the Muppets, as well as his directorial work in feature films and theater.
The Commercial Appeal is a daily newspaper of Memphis, Tennessee, and its surrounding metropolitan area. It is owned by the Gannett Company; its former owner, the E. W. Scripps Company, also owned the former afternoon paper, the Memphis Press-Scimitar, which it folded in 1983. The 2016 purchase by Gannett of Journal Media Group effectively gave it control of the two major papers in western and central Tennessee, uniting the Commercial Appeal with Nashville's The Tennessean.
Standing Bear was a Ponca chief and Native American civil rights leader who successfully argued in U.S. District Court in 1879 in Omaha that Native Americans are "persons within the meaning of the law" and have the right of habeas corpus, thus becoming the first Native American judicially granted civil rights under American law. His first wife Zazette Primeau (Primo), daughter of Lone Chief, mother of Prairie Flower and Bear Shield, was also a signatory on the 1879 writ that initiated the famous court case.
Hunter is a 1989 novel written by William Luther Pierce, a Neo-Nazi and the founder and chairman of National Alliance, a white nationalist group, under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. Pierce also used this pseudonym to write the better-known The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel with similar themes. Some consider Hunter a prequel to the Turner Diaries, detailing the rise of the racist paramilitary group termed 'The Organization', which would play a dominant role in the book.
Henry Loeb III was an American politician of the Democratic Party, who was mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, for two separate terms in the 1960s, from 1960 through 1963, and 1968 through 1971. He gained national notoriety in his second term for his role in opposing the demands of striking sanitation workers in early 1968. A segregationist, he opposed civil rights for African Americans and promoted white supremacy, continuing former Memphis mayor and political boss E. H. Crump's legacy.
The Memphis sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, in response to the deaths of sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. The deaths served as a breaking point for more than 1,300 African American men from the Memphis Department of Public Works as they demanded higher wages, time and a half overtime, dues check-off, safety measures, and pay for the rainy days when they were told to go home. The Memphis sanitation strike was led by T.O. Jones and had the support of Jerry Wurf, president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The AFSCME was chartered in 1964 by the state; the city of Memphis refused to recognize it. This resulted in the second sanitation Worker Strike in 1968 which began because of several incidents that led the employees to strike. Mayor Henry Loeb refused to recognize the strike and rejected the City Council vote, insisting that only he possessed the power to recognize the union. The Memphis sanitation strike prompted Martin Luther King Jr.'s presence, where he famously gave the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech a day before his assassination.
"I've Been to the Mountaintop" is the popular name of the last speech delivered by Martin Luther King Jr.
Chitto Harjo was a leader and orator among the traditionalists in the Muscogee Creek Nation in Indian Territory at the turn of the 20th century. He resisted changes which the US government and local leaders wanted to impose to achieve statehood for what became Oklahoma. These included extinguishing tribal governments and civic institutions and breaking up communal lands into allotments to individual households, with United States sales of the "surplus" to European-American and other settlers. He was the leader of the Crazy Snake Rebellion on March 25, 1909 in Oklahoma. At the time this was called the last "Indian uprising".
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
Echol Cole and Robert Walker were sanitation workers who died accidentally in Memphis, Tennessee at the corner of Colonial Rd. and Verne Rd. on February 1, 1968. While working that day, the pair sought refuge from a rainstorm in the compactor area of their garbage truck. The two African American men were prevented from seeking shelter from the rain inside a building due to segregation laws. They were killed when the compactor accidentally activated. Their deaths were a precursor to the Memphis sanitation strike, during which the prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
Clayborn Temple, formerly Second Presbyterian Church, is a historic place in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 for local architectural significance. It was upgraded to national significance under Clayborn Temple in 2017 due to its role in the events of the Sanitation Workers' Strike of 1968. The historic structure was sold to the A.M.E. Church in 1949, which named the building after their bishop.
The Frisco Five, also known as #Frisco5, are a group of protesters who went on hunger strike on April 21, 2016 in San Francisco, California in front of the San Francisco Police Department Mission Station to demonstrate against episodes of police brutality, use-of-force violations, and racial bias. Specifically the deaths of Alex Nieto on March 21, 2014, Mario Woods on December 2, 2015, Amilcar Perez Lopez on February 26, 2015, and Luis Gongora on April 7, 2016.
The 49th NAACP Image Awards ceremony, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), honored outstanding representations and achievements of people of color in motion pictures, television, music, and literature during the 2017 calendar year. The ceremony took place on January 15, 2018 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, was hosted by Anthony Anderson and broadcast on TV One.
Hambone's Meditations was a comic strip produced from 1916 to 1968, and syndicated initially by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate and later by the Bell Syndicate. Produced by two generations of the Alley family, the one-panel cartoon originated with the Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper The Commercial Appeal, where it ran on the front page. The title character was a stereotypical African-American man with wide eyes and exaggerated large lips. He dispensed folk wisdom in caricatured dialect.
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968 is a 2018 children's picture book told in poetry and prose by writer Alice Faye Duncan and illustrator R. Gregory Christie, published by Calkins Creek.
In 2019, the U.S. state of Nebraska donated a bronze sculpture of Standing Bear by Benjamin Victor to the National Statuary Hall Collection. The statue is installed in the United States Capitol's National Statuary Hall, in Washington, D.C.
On August 26, 2020, some professional athletes in the United States began to go on strike for their respective sports contests in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. After the video of Blake's shooting in which he was seriously injured went viral, protests and riots broke out in the city of Kenosha and elsewhere. As a result of the shooting of Blake and the protests which followed, on August 26, professional athletes refused to play in their scheduled sports events, beginning with the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
Bear Witness, Take Action is a pair of American livestreams, the first one streamed on YouTube on June 13, 2020, as part of a YouTube Original programming supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in correspondence with the George Floyd protests. It gathers notable people of color in the United States such as Patrisse Cullors, Rashad Robinson, Alicia Garza, Prince Ea, John Legend, etc., and hosted by Keke Palmer and Common. It centers around the history and experiences as people of color in America, as well as exploring ways to raise awareness and end the long inequality. On November 17, 2020, it was announced that a sequel titled Bear Witness, Take Action 2: Continuing The Movement will premiere on December 5, 2020. It lasted for two hours.
The Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion was an abolitionist symbol produced and distributed by British potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood in 1787 as a seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The medallion depicts a kneeling Black man in chains with his hands raised to the heavens; it is inscribed with the phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?"