the origins of the civil rights movement

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement

Prof. Jeffrey D. GondaSyracuse University

September 26th, 2012

Our Agenda

I. Why Make the Civil Rights Era Long?

I. Experimentation: 1910-1940

I. New World A’Comin: 1940-1954

Part I: Why Make the Civil Rights Era Long?

The Debate

“Long Movement” Historians

“Short Movement” Historians

American Popular Memory

vs.

vs.

What Does A “Long” Civil Rights Era Do?

• Broadens the scope of our historical understanding:

– Expanding the temporal, geographic, and ideological boundaries of the Movement.

– Economic issues and housing rights.

– Contextualizes ideas, individuals, and alternatives.

– Grapples with the incompleteness of this “Second Reconstruction”

What Does A “Long” Civil Rights Era Do? (Cont.)

• Deepens our sense of the actors and agenda (even within the “Classical” narrative)

– The role of women.

Daisy Bates Ruby Hurley

– The significance of global decolonization struggles.

– Ongoing importance of legal activism.

Adding Depth and Breadth: Baker, Rustin, and Randolph

Ella Jo Baker

Bayard Rustin

A. Philip Randolph

Ella Jo Baker

Ella Jo Baker

• Southern-born political activist.

• Embraces grassroots organizing in Harlem during the 1930s.

• Works for the NAACP 1940-1946.

• Key staff member for Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

• Helps to found Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

• Works with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).

Bayard Rustin

Bayard Rustin

• Begins organizing in the 1930s.

• Works with the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR).

• First Field Secretary for Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) during World War II.

• Plans the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947 to protest segregation in interstate transportation.

• Assists Martin Luther King, Jr. with the Montgomery Bus Boycotts (1956).

• Deputy Director and Chief Organizer for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

A. Philip Randolph

A. Philip Randolph

• Publisher and political organizer.

• Organizes the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1925.

• First president of the National Negro Congress (NNC) in the late 1930s.

• Organizes the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) in 1941.

• Founds League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation.

• A key organizer for the 1963 March on Washington

What Might We Lose?

• Where do we draw the boundaries?

– Historian Leon Litwack: “The civil rights movement began with the presence of enslaved blacks in the New World, with the first slave mutiny on the ships bringing them here.”

• Sacrificing objectivity?

• Sacrificing specificity?

• Clear that the “Long” Movement concept is not without its own perils.

Part II: Experimentation, 1910-1940

Understanding the Early Era

• Characterized by experimentation

– Tactics

– Organizations

– Alliances

• Focus on economic rights as central to the needs of black citizens.

• Establishing social and political infrastructures upon which later efforts will build.

In the Shadow of Jim Crow

• Turn of the 20th Century marks the low-point of American race relations since emancipation.

• Violence, law, and custom restrict African Americans’ rights in virtually every sphere.

• The philosophy of “Accommodation” dominates the black political landscape

Finding a New Approach

• Four broad political strategies will overtake Accommodation in the coming decades.

I. Integration (1910-)

II. Nationalism (1919-1930)

III. Unionization (1925-)

IV. Communism (1929-1939)

• Represent overlapping approaches that often share constituencies and respond to changing political/economic conditions.

Integration

• Emphasis on formal mechanisms of protest (i.e. litigation and lobbying).

• Interracial coalition building.

• Internal focus on “uplift” – social and moral fitness for citizenship.

• Not seeking fundamental change to the basic structure of American society. Advocates inclusion rather than revolution.

Riot in Springfield

• August 1908 a racial pogrom in Springfield, Illinois.

• 4,000 state militia needed to quell the violence.

• 2,000 African Americans flee the city and are denied entry to neighboring towns.

• Fear that a southern race war was making its way to the North.

Organizing a Response• Oswald Garrison Villard

– Wealthy NYC publisher

– Longstanding supporter of Booker T. Washington.

• Interracial meeting of activists in 1909.

• By 1910, organized as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Mary White Ovington, co-founder

Taking Root: 1915• Three significant events in the NAACP’s

development as a protest organization:

– Guinn v. U.S. (Voting Rights Case)

– Release of D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation

– Death of Booker T. Washington

Expanding the Program• Over the next 25 years the NAACP establishes a

crucial legal and political infrastructure to challenge racial discrimination.

– Anti-lynching.

– Housing rights.

– Voting rights.

– Educational discrimination.

– Employment litigation.

Nationalism

• Longstanding political tradition.

• Reinvigorated by militancy and disillusionment of World War I.

• Economic self-determination

• Racial pride

• Black separatism

• Pan-African identification.

World War I

• WWI appears to be a unique opportunity for black empowerment.

– Scale of the involvement – more than 350,000 African American troops.

– Expansion of officer training for black soldiers.

– Contact with European troops.

– The War’s stated objectives (democracy and freedom).

369th Infantry March to Harlem, February 1919 – 250,000 New Yorkers gather to watch

Bloodletting: America’s Red Summer

• The summer of 1919 explodes in racial violence.

– Mass violence in Chicago, Washington, Omaha, Knoxville, and Arkansas (and 20 other cities and towns)

– Spike in the number of lynchings, including returning black soldiers in uniform.

Up, You Mighty Race!

• Marcus Garvey (1887-1940)

• Born in Jamaica.

• Trained and worked as a printer.

• Founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 in Jamaica.

• Comes to America in 1916.

The UNIA and Economic Empowerment

• Garvey embraces the capitalist spirit of the 1920s.

• Emphasizes black economic self-help through cooperative ventures.

• His signal program: The Black Star Line

– Shipping company funded by $5 stock certificate purchases.

– Opportunities for black employment.

– Exchange of ideas and global transportation for black communities.

Unionization

• First major breakthrough with Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) in 1925.

• Bolstered by the reforms of the New Deal.

• Single-industry or single-occupation organizing.

• Focus on opportunity and equity in employment.

• Both intra- and interracial efforts.

• Positions economic rights as essential parts of full citizenship.

Communism

• Toe-hold in black communities like Harlem in the mid-1920s.

• Gains traction during the Great Depression.

• Emphasis on interracial cooperation of laborers.

• Reliance on confrontation through mass protest tactics (strikes, demonstrations, rallies).

• Seeks to change the fundamental political and economic structure of American society.

African American Unionization

A. Philip Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (1925)

A New Deal for Unions

• The National Labor Relations Act (1935)

• The option for workers to unionize and bargain collectively become a federally protected right.

• Spawns a new wave of union organizing.

• The Committee for Industrial Organization breaks from the AFL (1935).

• The CIO begins interracial organizing for Steel Workers, Packinghouse Workers, Automotive Workers, and Mining.

Red Tide Rising: The Growth of Black Communism

• By the late 1920s, the Communist Party begins to see an American black constituency as a powerful tool.

• A commitment to racial equality as key to the class struggle.

• The Sixth Congress (1928) marks a shift in Party policy.

– Emphasizes “self-determination” for African Americans

– The Party turns southward, begins organizing in the black belt.

Rise and Fall: The Black Communist Trajectory

• 1929 Gastonia, NC Textile Mill Strike establishes a lasting southern presence.

• Economic desperation in the Depression gives a wave of new recruits.

• 1931-1936 “Scottsboro Boys” Case builds a national following for the Party.

• 1934-1939 “Popular Front” encourages coalition building and expansion of the Party base.

• 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact dramatically weakens the Party’s standing among African Americans.

The Era of Experimentation

• Accommodation gives way to a variety of tactics/organizations/demands:

– Inclusion (integration, unionization)

– Revolution (nationalism, Communism)

• Economic rights will remain the primary focus for most of these approaches.

• These organizations establish networks and provide experience that activists will build upon in future endeavors.

Part III: New World A’Comin, 1940-1954

Workplace Discrimination

• African Americans only make up 3% of defense industry employees.

• Exclusion by employers, unions, federal agencies.

• “Hate Strikes” in response to black hiring.

March and Response: Randolph’s March on Washington

• A. Philip Randolph organizes the March on Washington Movement (1941)

• Builds a coalition of supporters.

• Prompts Federal intervention: Executive Order 8802

– Prohibiting discrimination by defense contractors

– Establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee to oversee enforcement.

March and Response: Randolph’s MOWM

• A. Philip Randolph organizes the March on Washington Movement (1941)

• Builds a coalition of supporters.

• Prompts Federal intervention: Executive Order 8802

– Prohibiting discrimination by defense contractors

– Establishing the Fair Employment Practices Committee to oversee enforcement.

Nobody’s Closing Ranks

• African Americans have significant reservations about the war effort.

• Take a more militant stance regarding domestic civil rights demands.

• In 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier gives a name to the campaign: The Double V

• “Victory at home, Victory abroad.”

Black Military Service

• Nearly 1,000,000 African American men and women serve during WWII.

• The vast majority in the Army.

• 500,000 serve overseas. Most continue to be relegated to labor battalions.

Turning the Tide: The Military

• Pressure on the Federal Government leads to “integration” of all military branches by 1943.

• Elimination of racial segregation at base facilities.

• But still segregated by units.

• Introduce literacy education.

Turning the Tide: The Military (Part II)

• Most famous of the new units … the Tuskegee Airmen

Turning the Tide: The Homefront• New opportunities and protections in employment.

– Defense industries: Black workers from 3% (1942) to 8.3% (1944)

– Skilled work: Black men 4.4% (1940) to 7.3% (1944)

– 1943 War Labor Board bans race gap in wages.

– U.S. Employment Service bans race-specific job advertisements

– National Labor Relations Board denies certifications to unions that openly discriminate.

– Strengthen the FEPC. (Philadelphia Transit Strike 1944)

Turning the Tide: The Homefront (Part II)

• Newly strengthened FEPC opens Federal employment opportunities.

• 1938 – African Americans are 9.8% of Federal workforce.

• 1944 – rises to 12%.

African American Federal Employment by ClassificationYear Custodia

lClerical Mechanical Professio

nal

1938 90% 9.5% 0% 0.5%

1944 39.6% 49% 9.9% 1.1%

Working for Democracy

Turning the Tide: The Homefront (Part III)

• Voting rights expand.

• Soldier Vote Act (1942)

– Poll-tax provisions eliminated for all servicemen regardless of race.

• Smith v. Allwright (1944)

– Elimination of the “White Primary” by the Supreme Court.

• Registered black voters in the South increase:

– 1940: 250,000 (5% of eligible black voters)

– 1947: 600,000 (12%)

Turning the Tide: Public Opinion• Nazi racial ideology spawns a pro-civil

rights shift in public attitudes.

• Interracial coalitions boom:

– NAACP goes from 54,000 members (1939) to more than 500,000 (1945)

– Growing cooperation of NAACP and Jewish civil rights groups.

– Founding of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942.

Turning the Tide: Public Opinion (Part II)

• The growth of “Scientific Anti-Racism”

• 1944 – Gunnar Myrdal’s American Dilemma

• 1939 poll – more than 70% believe blacks are less intelligent than whites

• 1946 – 57% believe the races are equally intelligent.

The Truman Show: Postwar Progress• President Harry S. Truman (1945-

1953)

• December 1946 – Executive Order 9808 – establishing the President’s Committee on Civil Rights (PCCR)

• To Secure These Rights (1947)

• January 1948 – Special Message to Congress outlining Civil Rights Program

• July 1948 – Executive Order 9981 – Desegregating the military.

Building Momentum at the NAACP

• Flurry of new court cases.

– Morgan v. Virginia (1946) – Interstate transportation

– Sipuel v. Board of Regents (1948) – Education

– Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) – Housing discrimination

– McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents (1950) – Education

– Sweatt v. Painter (1950) – Education

Shelley v. Kraemer (1948)

• Shelley signals important shifts in the NAACP’s litigation strategy.

• Sets the course towards a confrontation with “separate but equal” in the courts.

America’s Long Civil Rights Era

• Instead of a sudden and surprising explosion of protest in the 1950s, we can see continuities.

• Long history of activism in black communities.

• Established legal, political, and social infrastructure for the mass movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

• Steadily built a record of achievement that spurred more far-reaching efforts and set the stage for success.

Our Ongoing Questions