Why is the civil rights movement still going on?

In my blog post for this week I would like to talk about music and the civil rights movement. This week we have been focused on artists such as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, two black female civil rights activists who used their platforms as famous singers to show how poorly black people were being treated down south during the civil rights movement. But even more than just the civil rights movement I would like to talk about how the same songs are being sang right now by current artists.

However, before we get into current affairs we should take a look back at activists and artists such as Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Starting with Billie, she sang a song called Strange fruit which was originally a poem written by a white teacher who spent some time down in the south. This song pretty obviously addresses the issue of the black lynchings in the south during the 1960s, with lyrics such as “Black bodies blowing in the southern breeze”. At first after Billie had recorded this song it was hard for her to find a record company to make records of it and sell them because they were scared of the backlash from the whites down south but then a company finally picked it up and sold it. There were obviously mixed reviews but it ended up selling over a million copies and addressed a huge issue at the time which was overall a good thing because it called attention to an issue.

When it came to Nina Simone the story was just a bit different because her song Mississippi Goddam was a tad more aggressive and didn't exactly address a specific issue rather than help express her and the other colored people of the south's frustrations. This was one of the first songs to have curse words in it even though it was just goddam, wow what a long way we’ve come. Anyway she goes on in the song to talk about how she can no longer stand the riots, lynchings, protests, segregation, and overall injustice that all black people were facing everyday.

What is so crazy to me is that when most people hear the term “civil rights movement” their heads will drift off into the 1960s and the black and white films of the horrible riots and speeches by activists such as MLK Jr. and Malcolm X. But the sad truth is the civil rights movement is still going on today, with police brutality and overall injustice towards black people. I mean Police brutality against black people  has been going for the past 60 or so years and truly it still doesn't really show signs of stopping. Which is why celebrities such as Colin Kaepernick, Kanye West and many other celebrities are still advocating for black people.