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American Indians Dream
After World War II, a new kind of freedom struggle broke out in the U.S. The tactics were militant nonviolence as taught by Mohandas Gandhi and litigation spearheaded by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (known in the Movement as “the Inc Fund”). Indians lost the claim to greatest effectiveness they had when most resistance was violent. Most tribes had no tradition of nonviolent direct action.
Litigation was not practical when all the American Indian lawyers in the U.S. could easily meet in one phone booth. (A phone booth was a primitive shelter that held a coin operated land line telephone and a book that listed people alphabetically with their telephone numbers. It was used for communication in the days before smart phones as well as a place for Superman to change his clothes.) Violence as a political tactic had long faded, but WWII seemed to make all exploited non-whites more “uppity.”
Historically black colleges filled up in no time, and blacks demanded entry to other state institutions to use their GI Bill entitlements. Denied, they filed lawsuits that forced integration of graduate schools, undergraduate schools, and finally K-12.
Indian GIs returning from the war headed up the litigation that opened up the right to vote for Indians living on the reservations in New Mexico and Arizona and they, too, moved to use their GI Bill rights.
