What Role Does Red Power Play In The Civil Rights Movement?

Many adjectives could be employed to describe the 1960s: turbulent, antagonistic, transformative, unprecedented. This was a decade of social unrest as large and diverse groups of people took to the streets in protest against wrongs and in defense of rights, their own or others’. These groups formed movements which swept through nations around the world, from France to Japan to Brazil. The United States was no exception and saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the Free Speech Movement, and anti-Vietnam protests. African Americans came together to champion “Black Power”, Latinos for “Brown Power”, and Asians for “Yellow Power”. Among all these movements there was “Red Power”, the mobilization of Native Americans, but how they came to mobilize, what actions they took once they had joined together, and the consequences resulting from these acts are more complex than the simple phrase “Red Power” conveys.

The state of affairs necessary to bring about this movement of native peoples was varied and severe. One of the most serious aspects was poverty and all that poverty entails such as a deficit of adequate housing, electricity, heat, or indoor plumbing. Half a million Native American families were reduced to living in unsanitary, dilapidated

The wide spread poverty was mainly attributable to the high rates of unemployment, which led to a high percentage of alcoholism. In 1970, the unemployment rate for Native Americans was 10 times that of the national average and life expectancy was 44 years. The excessively high levels of poverty and unemployment were at least partly due to the extremely low levels of education. On the same Navajo reservation in Arizona, an average resident only had five years of formal schooling, and fewer than one adult in six had a high school