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