Building a Social Movement: What can the African-American Civil Rights Movement teach us? Pt 3: Rosa Parks sits down

And a massive nonviolent campaign strategy takes root

No 432 Posted by fw, March 9, 2012

“This is what I wanted to know: when and how would we ever determine our rights as human beings? . . . It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn’t feel like obeying his demand. He called a policeman and I was arrested and placed in jail . . .” —Rosa Parks

Back on September 11, 2011, I began what was intended to be a series of posts on the African-American Civil Rights Movement as seen through the eyes of the American historian and political activist, Howard Zinn, featured in Chapter 6 – “Or Does it Explode” – of his book, The Twentieth Century: A People’s History (2003).

The purpose of this series is to address a knowledge gap that various leftist groups seem to have in translating their “talk” about building a social movement into “effective action” towards this end.  My presumption is that a review of the successes of past social movements might help contemporary activists advance their movement-building campaigns.

Part 1, Birth Pains, my introduction to the series, sampled a selection of passages reflecting the early 1920s-30s stirrings of what is now popularly known as the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Wikipedia dates the early history of the movement from 1896-1954. Eight best-practice teachings deriving from these selected passages were presented in Part 1.

Part 2, Demands of democracy, also presented selected passages, and teachings, from Zinn’s Chapter 6, covering the period from the 1940s through the early ’50s (pages 188-191). Five best-practice teachings extracted from the passages were shared. I recommend these and the teachings from part 1 to your attention.

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This post, Part 3, reviews selected passages from Zinn’s writings from the 1940s through the early ’50s.

Early gains turned out to be empty — What to others seemed rapid progress to blacks was apparently not enough. In the early 1960s black people rose in rebellion all over the south. And in the late 1960s they were engaging in wild insurrection in a hundred northern cities. It was all a surprise to those without that deep memory of slavery, that everyday presence of humiliation, registered in the poetry, the music, the occasional outbursts of anger, the more frequent sullen silences. Part of that memory was of words uttered, laws passed, decisions made, which turned out to be meaningless. / p. 191

Trigger events of 1955 — For such a people, with such a memory, and such daily recapitulation of history, revolt was always minutes away, in a timing mechanism which no one had set, but which might go off with some unpredictable set of events. Those events came, at the end of 1955, in the capital city of Alabama – Montgomery. /p. 191

Rosa Parks sits down

Rosa Parks sits down — Mrs Rosa Parks, a forty-three-year-old seamstress, explained why she refused to obey the Montgomery law providing for segregation on city buses, why she decided to sit down in the “white” section of the bus:

Well, in the first place, I had been working all day on the job. I was quite tired after spending a full day working. I handle and work on clothing that white people wear. That didn’t come in my mind but this is what I wanted to know: when and how would we ever determine our rights as human beings? . . . It just happened that the driver made a demand and I just didn’t feel like obeying his demand. He called a policeman and I was arrested and placed in jail. . . . / p. 191

Bus boycott leads to end of bus segregation — Montgomery blacks called a mass meeting. They voted to boycott all city buses. Car pools were organized to take Negroes to work; most people walked. The city retaliated by indicting one hundred leaders of the boycott, and sent many to jail. White segregationists turned to violence. Bombs exploded in four Negro churches. A shotgun blast was fired through the front door of the home of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the twenty-seven-year-old Atlanta-born minister who was one of the leaders of the boycott. King’s home was bombed. But the black people of Montgomery persisted, and in November 1956, the Supreme Court outlawed segregation on the local bus lines. /p. 192

Massive nonviolent campaign strategy takes root — Montgomery was the beginning. It forecast the style and mood of the vast protest movement that would sweep the South in the next ten years: emotional church meetings, Christian hymns adapted to current battles, references to lost American ideals, the commitment to nonviolence, the willingness to struggle and sacrifice. A New York Times reporter described a mass meeting in Montgomery during the boycott:

One after the other, indicted Negro leaders took the rostrum in a crowded Baptist church tonight to urge their followers to shun the city’s buses and “walk with God.” /p. 192

More than two thousand Negroes filed to church from basement to balcony and overflowed in the street. They chanted and sang, they shouted and prayed; they collapsed in the aisles and they sweltered in eighty-five degree heat. They pledged themselves again and again to “passive resistance.” Under this banner they have carried on for eighty days a stubborn boycott of the city’s buses. /p. 192

Martin Luther King at that meeting gave a preview of the oratory that would soon inspire millions of people to demand racial justice. He said the protest was not merely over buses but over things that “go deep down into the archives of history.” He said:

We have known humiliation, we have known abusive language, we have been plunged into the abyss of oppression. And we decided to raise up only with the weapon of protest. /p. 192

If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled on every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love. We must have compassion and understanding for those who hate us. We must realize so many people are taught to hate us that they are not totally responsible for their hate. But we stand in life at midnight, we are always on the threshold of a new dawn. /p. 192-93

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TEACHINGS

1. Revolt is always just a minute away for a long-oppressed, humiliated, persecuted and exploited minority.
2. Sometimes all it takes is the courageous, spontaneous, symbolic act of one person to ignite the revolt.
3. One person to ignite the revolt, and others to recognize the symbolic value of the act as an opportunity to organize members of the local community.
4. And the good fortune to a have a cohesive religious network to facilitate and expedite movement building.
5. And the wisdom of the leadership to recognize the potential power and effectiveness of a boycott as a strategic tool of economic counterpower.
6. And the wisdom to seize on the power of love and passive nonviolence as a bedrock principle of the movement.
7. Don’t overlook the unifying emotional counterpower of communal song, chanting, shouting and prayer.
8. This above all else, there must emerge from the ranks an inspirational, articulate speaker to rally the masses in building a national counterpower campaign.
9. And the tacit understanding that a multifaceted campaign is potentially more effective than a one-dimensional effort.

RELATED READING

Can past social movements inform current campaigns? Absolutely, says Tim Gee in “Counterpower: Making Change Happen” “Counterpower’s mission is to map political movements and understand how change happens, to ‘delve into the archive of history and try to learn from movements past to understand better what makes a campaign successful.’ 

Fair Use Notice: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing.

Building a Social Movement: What can the African-American Civil Rights Movement teach us? Pt 2: Demands of democracy

No 355 Posted by fw, December 6, 2011

Back on September 11, 2011, I posted Part 1 of what was intended to be a multi-part series on what could be learned about building a contemporary social movement by studying past movements. I chose the African-American Civil Rights Movement as my model past movement. As my documentary source, I selected Howard Zinn’s Chapter 6 – “Or Does it Explode” – from his book, The Twentieth Century: A People’s History (2003). (Howard Zinn (Aug 24, 1922 – Jan 27, 2010) was an American historian and political activist).

It occurred to me that a review of past social movements might inform the cause of various contemporary leftist groups who aspire to build social movements as a way to counterbalance the power of right-wing political, corporate and media elites. The showstopper, however, was that left-wing activists seemed to be at a loss to know how to translate their ambitious words into effective movement-building deeds.

In my first post, I reviewed the opening few pages of Zinn’s Chapter 6, selecting passages that reflected the stirrings in the 1920s-30s of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Here is a summary of Part 1′s teachings which might inform today’s movement-building activists –

1. Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
2. Be prepared for a long struggle
3. In strategic development planning, be ever-mindful of the significance of overarching social, economic and political context.
4. Don’t discount the importance of creative dissent in building a movement – prose and poetry, music, theatre, photos, documentary video, signs and posters, archival record, blog/website etc. — for it is in creative imaginings of those bearing witness to injustice that gives emotional and spiritual meaning to the historical moment.
5. Never underestimate the “power of one”. The Angelo Herndon story illustrates the power of one, especially one, who, in the face of oppression, summoned up the courage of his convictions and was prepared, willing and able to take a stand in a leadership role.
6. Social movements are defined by collective action. Don’t overlook the importance of building alliances and collectives, especially at the neighbourhood level.
7. Serve the needs of the oppressed, which, in Herndon’s case, were those needing rent relief.
8. Hold public demonstrations to get the attention of local politicians.

TURNING TO THIS POST, PART 2  and following the same process as in Part 1, here are selected passages, and teachings, from Zinn’s Chapter 6, covering the period from the 1940s through the early ’50s (pages 188-191).

The black militant mood, flashing here and there in the thirties, was reduced to a subsurface simmering during World War 11, when the nation on the one hand denounced racism, and on the other hand maintained segregation in the armed forces and kept blacks in low-paying jobs. When the war ended, a new element entered the racial balance in the United States – the enormous unprecedented upsurge of black and yellow people in Africa and Asia. (p. 188)

Action on the race question was needed, not just to calm a black population at home emboldened by war promises, frustrated by the basic sameness of their condition. It was needed to present to the world a United States that could counter the continuous Communist thrust at the most flagrant failure of American society – the race question. (p. 189)

President Harry Truman, in late 1946, appointed a Committee on Civil Rights, which recommended that the Civil Rights section of the Department of Justice be expanded, that there be a permanent Commission on Civil Rights, that Congress pass laws against lynching and to stop voting discrimination, and suggested new laws to end racial discrimination in jobs. (p. 189)

Truman’s Committee was blunt about its motivation in making these recommendations, Yes, it said, there was “moral reason” a matter of conscience. But there was also an “economic reason” – discrimination was costly to the country, wasteful of its talent. And perhaps most important, there was an international reason:

Our position in the post-war world is so vital to the future that our smallest actions have far-reaching effects. . . . We cannot escape the fact that our civil rights record has been an issue in world politics. The world’s press and radio are full of it. . . . Those with competing philosophies have stressed – and are shamelessly distorting – our shortcomings. . . . They have tried to prove our democracy an empty fraud, and our nation a consistent oppressor of underprivileged people. This may seem ludicrous to Americans, but it is sufficiently important to our friends. The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us or our record. (p. 189)

And so the United States went ahead to take small actions, hoping they would have large effects. Congress did not move to enact the legislation asked for by the Committee on Civil Rights. But Truman – four months before the presidential election of 1948, and challenged from the left in that election by Progressive party candidate Henry Wallace – issued an executive order asking that the armed forces, segregated in World War II, institute policies of racial equality “as rapidly as possible.” The order may have been prompted not only by the election but by the need to maintain black morale in the armed forces, as the possibility of war grew. It took over a decade to complete the desegregation in the military. (p. 190)

Truman could have issued executive orders in other areas, but did not. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments, plus the laws passed in the late 1860s and early 1870s gave the President enough authority to wipe out racial discrimination. The Constitution demanded that the President execute the laws, but no President had used that power. Neither did Truman. (p. 190)

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court was taking steps—ninety years after the Constitution had been amended to establish racial equality – to move toward that end. During the war it ruled that the “white primary” used to exclude blacks from voting in the Democratic party primaries – which in the South were really elections – was unconstitutional. (p/190)

In 1954, the Court finally struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine that it had defended since the 1890s. The NAACP brought a series of cases before the Court to challenge segregation in the public schools, and now in Brown v. Board of Education the Court said the separation of schoolchildren “generates a feeling if inferiority . . . that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” In the field of public education, it said, “the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” The Court did not insist on immediate change” a year later it said that segregated facilities should be integrated “with all deliberate speed.” By 1965, ten years after the “all deliberate speed” guideline, more than 75 percent of the school districts in the South remain segregated. (p. 190-91)

Still, it was a dramatic decision – and the message went around the world in 1954 that the American government had outlawed segregation. In the United States too, for those not thinking about the customary gap between word and fact, it was an exhilarating sign of change. (p. 191)

PART 2 TEACHINGS for movement-building activists –

1. A nation’s actual social, cultural, and economic practices often fall far short of its espoused values. In the context of this discussion, America maintained racial segregation practices while simultaneously denouncing racial inequality.
2. Relentless pressure from underprivileged minority groups can create a discomforting and embarrassing national public image, undermining the government’s political and moral power and influence at home and abroad.
3. Depending on its mandate, government’s appointment of an independent commission to investigate a social problem can be a beneficial first step in addressing social injustice. Government legislative action is one thing. Executive enactment in a timely manner, followed by robust enforcement quite another. Governments do what the public inspects, not what it expects. Therefore, public vigilance and pressure must be relentless.  In the words of the fictitious Amazing Mrs. Pritchard, TV’s UK Prime Minister: “You haven’t just voted for me. You voted for yourselves. You must no longer allow yourselves to feel left out from the decision-making process. You must no longer allow yourselves to assume that other people know best for you, better than what you do. You know best what you want for your children, for your elderly parents and relatives. You know best what you want from your schools and from your hospitals. You put your faith in me. Now I’m putting mine in you. This can only happen, it will only work, if you take responsibility too, if you make your voice heard.” Admittedly, easier said than done, even by those who enjoy a livable wage, the luxury of leisure time, and enough education and motivation to remain responsibly informed.
4. Effective social movements use the courts to effect change. But laws alone, without adequate enforcement, may not be enough to change entrenched social norms, values and behaviour.
5. Don’t overlook the symbolic value of legal gains as a motivating force and source of significant leverage.

RELATED READING

• Can past social movements inform current campaigns? Absolutely, says Tim Gee in “Counterpower: Making Change Happen” “Counterpower’s mission is to map political movements and understand how change happens, to ‘delve into the archive of history and try to learn from movements past to understand better what makes a campaign successful.’ 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing

Building a Social Movement: What can the African-American Civil Rights Movement teach us? Pt 1: Birth pains

No 273 Posted by fw, September 11, 2011

There’s much talk these days – particularly from the left — about the need to build “a social movement”. Different groups espouse different demands, so we have, for example, calls for a social justice movement, human rights movement, environmental movement, eco-socialist movement, workers movement, and more.

But beyond calling for “a movement” advocates seem uncertain how best to translate their noble words into effective action, especially when it comes to building and maintaining their movements. There are exceptions to this generalization: Leadnow.ca exemplifies an organization on the right path towards building an effective, goal-direced people’s movement across Canada.

As a contribution to the various and sundry “movement” discussions breaking out globally, it might be instructive to look to past movements for clues about what worked or didn’t work. This is the first in a series of posts recounting best practices of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.

Our guide on this journey into the past is the late, great American historian and political activist, Howard Zinn, drawing on selected passages from Chapter 6 – “Or Does it Explode” – of his book, The Twentieth Century: A People’s History (2003), which is from his major work A People’s History of the United States

This first post samples a selection of passages reflecting the early stirrings of what is now popularly known as the African-American Civil Rights Movement, which Wikipedia dates from 1896-1954. When I first read the passages presented below, I thought again of William James’ inspiring “Act as if . . .” quote: “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”

Zinn begins Chapter 6 this way –

The black revolt of the 1950s and 1960s – North and South – came as a surprise. But perhaps it should not have. The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface. For blacks in the United States, there was the memory of slavery, and after that of segregation, lynching, humiliation. And it was not just a memory but a living presence – part of the daily lives of blacks in generation after generation.

In the 1930s, Langston Hughes wrote a poem, “Lennox Avenue Mural”

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore –
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over –
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

In the 1920s, Claude McKay, one of the figures of what came to be called the “Harlem Renaissance,” wrote a poem that Henry Cabot Lodge put in the Congressional Record as an example of dangerous currents among blacks [Click here to read the complete poem]:

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot. . . .
Like men we’ll face the murderous cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back.

At the time of the Scottsboro Boys incident, Countee Cullen wrote a bitter poem noting that white poets had used their pens to protest in other cases of injustice, but now that blacks were involved, most were silent. His last stanza was [Click here to read the complete poem]:

Surely, I said
Now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why.

Angelo Herndon

In Georgia, in 1932, a nineteen-year-old black youth named Angelo Herndon, whose father died of miner’s pneumonia, who had worked in mines as a boy in Kentucky, joined  an Unemployment Council in Birmingham organized by the Communist party, and then joined the party. He wrote later:

All my life I’d been sweated and stepped-on and Jim-Crowed. I lay on my belly in the mines for a few dollars a week, and saw my pay stolen and slashed, and my buddies killed. I lived in the worst section of town, and rode behind the “Colored” signs on streetcars, as though there was something disgusting about me. I heard myself called “nigger” and “darky” and I had to say “Yes, sir” to every white man, whether he had my respect or not.

I had always detested it, but I had never known that anything could be done about it. And here, all of a sudden, I had found organizations in which Negroes and whites sat together, and worked together, and knew no difference of race or color. . . .

Angelo Herndon petition

Herndon became a Communist party organizer in Atlanta. He and his fellow Communists organized block committees of Unemployment Councils in1932 which got rent relief for needy people. They organized a demonstration to which a thousand people came, six hundred of them white, and the next day the city voted $56,000 in relief for the jobless. But soon after that Herndon was arrested, held incommunicado, and charged with violating a Georgia statute against insurrection. He recalled the trial:

The state of Georgia displayed the literature that had been taken from my room, and read passages of it to the jury. They questioned me in great detail. Did I believe that the bosses and government ought to pay insurance to unemployed workers? That Negroes should have complete equality with white people? Did I believe in the demand for the self-determination of the Black Belt – that the Negro people should be allowed to rule the Black Belt territory, kicking out the white landlords and government officials? Did I feel that the working-class could run the mills and mines and government? That it wasn’t necessary to have bosses at all? I told them I believed all of that — and more. . . .

Herndon was convicted and spent five years in prison until in 1937 the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the Georgia statute under which he was found guilty. It was men like him who represented to the Establishment a dangerous militancy among blacks, made more dangerous when linked with the Communist party.

Campaign to free Herndon organized by Communists

TEACHINGS

These are some of the “best practices” that I derived from the selected passages:

1. Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
2. Be prepared for a long struggle.
3. In strategic development planning, be ever-mindful of the overarching social, economic and political context.
4. Don’t discount the importance of creative dissent in building a movement – prose and poetry, music, theatre, photos, documentary video, signs and posters, archival record, blog/website etc. — for it is in creative imaginings of those bearing witness to injustice that gives emotional and spiritual meaning to the historical moment.
5. Never underestimate the “power of one”. The Angelo Herndon story illustrates the power of one, especially one, who, in the face of oppression, summoned up the courage of his convictions and was prepared, willing and able to take a stand in a leadership role.
6. Social movements are defined by collective action. Don’t overlook the importance of building alliances and collectives at the neighbourhood level.
7. Serve the needs of the oppressed, which, in Herndon’s case, were those needing rent relief.
8. Hold public demonstrations to get the attention of local politicians

RELATED READING

• Can past social movements inform current campaigns? Absolutely, says Tim Gee in “Counterpower: Making Change Happen” “Counterpower’s mission is to map political movements and understand how change happens, to ‘delve into the archive of history and try to learn from movements past to understand better what makes a campaign successful.’ .

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog, Citizen Action Monitor, may contain copyrighted material that may not have been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material, published without profit, is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. It is published in accordance with the provisions of the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling and its six principle criteria for evaluating fair dealing.