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Friend,
In 1971, soul singer Marvin Gaye released a plaintive, riveting song called “What’s Going On” on an album of the same name.
The album was unlike any Gaye had ever recorded. The title song made a plea for love and understanding as it rebuked the nation’s leaders for the deep problems still plaguing the U.S. nearly two decades after the Civil Rights Movement began.
Institutional racism, disenfranchisement and police violence against people of color remained entrenched, and tens of thousands of Americans were dying in the Vietnam War, catalyzing widespread social unrest. “What’s Going On” captured progressive Americans’ frustration and weariness with the racial oppression and brutality of the times.
By the time Gaye recorded the song, the Civil Rights Movement had already energized artists across the creative spectrum and produced an extraordinarily fertile collaboration between them and civil rights organizations. Visual and musical artists, actors, filmmakers, poets and writers – working both independently and in collaboration – played a major role in advancing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Langston Hughes wrote in a foreword to the 1966 student poetry anthology “Freedom School Poetry.” Established by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi, Freedom Schools were intended to empower the state’s Black youth politically through art and cultural education.
The anthology was dedicated to the memory of Emmett Till.
These books, songs, poems and other artistic expressions have effectively advanced the cause of civil rights and racial justice. That’s why conservative efforts to ban such creative ventures from schools and libraries are troubling, advocates for the free expression of ideas say.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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