From the Digital Crate: What If the
Greensboro Four Had Twitter?
February
1st marks the anniversary of what I like to refer to as one of the
greatest days in American History.
On that day in 1960, four young Black men—Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair,
Jr., and David Richmond—all first year students at HBCU North Carolina A&T,
sat at a Whites only lunch counter at a
Woolworth’s department store in Greensboro, North Carolina.
This
protest—formally known as a sit-in—began weeks of similar protests, that went
viral throughout the American South in ways that mirror the functions of today’s
social media. The Greensboro
sit-ins are widely remembered as the moment of activism that gave renewed
energy and vigor to a Civil Rights Movement that was sputtering after the
success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
The
Greensboro Four, of course, did not have access to social media such as Twitter
and Facebook, but nevertheless utilized what would have been the accessible
technology of the days like land-lines, good-old fashion word of mouth, and
what was really the cutting edge technology of the day: a mimeograph machine. Those young folk, who would months
after Greensboro, go on to create the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), under the watchful eye of Ella Jo Baker, understood
technology, including television, as simply one of the tools they employed to
make their case.
Civil
Rights activist brilliantly exploited television cameras, helping to bring the
marches in the streets straight into the living rooms of average Americans,
whether they wanted to see it or not.
Many activists from the era point to the role that televised footage of
young Black Americans being hosed down and attacked by police dogs played in
generating sympathy for a nation that had been largely indifferent.
The
spirit of the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960s and the role that
technology played during that time has been recalled in the last year with
regards to the Georgia Prison Strike, the Arab Spring, the #Occupy Movement and
the State murder of Troy Davis.
Whereas
prisoners in Georgia State prisons used disposable cell phones to organize non-violent
protest via text messaging, Twitter and Facebook have been critical tools for
the largely young folks taking to the streets in the Middle East. In these cases, the ruling governments
responded by shutting down internet access and eventually cell phone and
traditional land-line coverage when protestors resorted to old-school forms of
communication.
Among
Black social media users in the United States, Twitter and Facebook were
utilized by those who created
on-line petitions to protest an Ohio court decision to convict Kelly Williams-Bolar
of “fraud” in response to her attempt to establish a second residency in a
better school district for her two daughters, as was also the case with the
highly visible efforts to save Troy Davis’ life The efforts among, Black “digital natives” and “digital
immigrants” (like myself) mirror recent advocacy efforts for the Jena 6, the
Scott Sisters, and Haitian Earthquake relief—efforts that challenge perceptions
that social media only has a
mind-numbing effect on young people.
Recalling
the efforts in support of Williams-Bolar, critic and scholar Kyra D. Gaunt acknowledged that “Twitter
came along it felt like a change to me.”
Still it’s important to remember that, Social Media is simply a tool
that connects to the long established human desire to resist oppression and
suppression.
As
young folk, in particular, find more innovative and effective forms of Social
Media, there will be those who seek to co-opt it for other designs. 50 years ago, Black radio was an
important cog in the ability for organizers to get their message out to the
Black masses, yet one would be hard pressed to think of Radio One—the largest
Black-owned radio company—playing such a role in this environment.
As
the events quickly unfold throughout the world, it will become clear that many are
looking at Social Media in a new light, whether its Twitter, Facebook or the
memories of four young men sitting at a lunch counter in Greensboro, NC.
***
Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming
Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University
Press) and Professor of African & African-American Studies at Duke
University. He is founder and managing editor of NewBlackMan and host
of the weekly webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter
@NewBlackMan.
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