MURFREESBORO — Two
of the founding fathers of the modern civil rights movement capped off
Constitution Day festivities at MTSU with lessons from the past for the benefit
of future generations.
The Revs. C.T. Vivian and James Lawson Jr. made their points
in a panel discussion called “No Voice, No Choice: The Voting Rights Act at 50”
before a packed house of several hundred attendees inside MTSU’s Tucker
Theatre.
With MTSU public history doctoral student Aleia Brown as
moderator, topics ranged from the unfulfilled promise of the U.S. Constitution
to the impact of income inequality on social justice movements.
“Our Constitution … is the most daring document ever written
in human history, because it was written in the midst of a world system that
was largely top-down,” Lawson said.
As for the present day, Lawson faults the intellectual
community with failing to create a climate that would foster more progressive
social change. He also blamed what he called four main types of “spiritual
wickedness” for the stagnation — racism, sexism, violence and what Lawson referred
to as “plantation capitalism.”
Vivian also attacked the chasm between the economic elite
and the rest of the country.
“My fear right now is that the billionaires of this nation …
are going to make it seem as though we have a democracy, where, in fact, that
is in doubt,” he said.
In response to a question about the Black Lives Matter
movement and its involvement in public events that’s often characterized as
“disruption,” Lawson observed that disruption is a legitimate nonviolent
tactic. He cautioned that it works best, however, when it is part of an overall
strategic plan.
“We have too much activism in the United States and too
little visionary, strategic thinking,” Lawson said.
“They (Black Lives Matter organizers and participants) will
be coopted by the Democratic Party. They will be given jobs to run the
presidential campaign in 2016 so that the evolvement or emergence of Black
Lives Matter as an effective movement of change will be temporarily halted.”
Both activists bemoaned Americans’ lack of risk-taking today
compared with the 20th century demonstrators who were jailed, beaten and, in
many cases, murdered as they struggled to eliminate barriers to the ballot box.
Vivian observed that, after all that effort and terrible cost, most eligible
Americans don’t even exercise their right to vote.
“Having the ticket in your pocket won’t get it if you don’t
use it,” he said.
The 91-year-old Vivian participated in his first civil
rights sit-in in 1947 in Peoria, Illinois. He helped the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. create the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and was a veteran
of the Freedom Rides.
Lawson, 86, served a 14-month prison term, instead of taking
a student or minister’s deferment, after he refused to report for the draft in
1951. He also organized the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins of 1960 during his
divinity studies at Vanderbilt University, was a Freedom Rider and was part of the
1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches.
The MTSU forum concluded two days of public readings of
segments of the U.S. Constitution in various locations around campus in
celebration of the nation’s foundational legal document.
Sponsors for “No Voice, No Voice” include MTSU’s American
Democracy Project, the Center for Historic Preservation, the College of Liberal
Arts, the University Honors College, the John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence
in First Amendment Studies, the College of Media and Entertainment, the
Jennings A. Jones Chair of Excellence in Free Enterprise, the Office of the
University Provost and the League of Women Voters of Murfreesboro/Rutherford
County.
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