Civil Rights Historiography and the Nubian Message

Both of these editorials reflect recent trends in the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement. These critiques dovetail with what historian Jacqueline Dowd Hall describes as the “Long Civil Rights Movement” In Hall’s analytical framework, media narratives and neoconservative histories of the Civil Rights Movement contain King within the “Montgomery to Memphis framework” and claim King’s emphasis on not judging people “by the color of their skin” as consistent with American individualism and anti-affirmative action. Moreover, works such as Nikhil Pal Singh’s Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy, also emphasize King’s structural critique of the War in Vietnam, materialism, and poverty as examples of persistent injustice in the United States. As a result, The Nubian Message railed against similar ideas that buttressed widespread beliefs that the United States entered a “post-racial” era with the dawning of a new century.