CIVIL RIGHTS, COMMUNITY ACTIVISM AND EMPOWERMENT WEEK 10.

CIVIL RIGHTS, COMMUNITY ACTIVISM AND

EMPOWERMENT

WEEK 10

BACKGROUND

• STORY THUS FAR……..

• Widespread exclusionary practices (in immigration policies/practices, housing, education, labour market, etc…

• Macpherson revealed institutional racism - police, criminal justice system and in other institutions across Britain

• So, what is to be done? Civil Rights and Legislation

• Start with Civil Rights………….why?

CIVIL RIGHTS - UKMany possibilities for exercise of social agency…….

• Locally-based single issue campaigns. E.g. Balsall Heath and Manningham (cf. last week), Single Homeless Action Group (Handsworth), campaigns for community centres/mosques..

• The single issue campaign which had implications far beyond the local. E.g. Doreen and Neville Lawrence

• Active involvement in local politics as a way of carrying forward an emancipatory agenda

• The formation of local community/voluntary groups defending the interests of particular sections of minority groups

• Faith based organisations• Workers’ organisations and ‘Black Sections’ within trade unions• Minority-run media organisations

UK CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT?

• Is there a civil rights movement in the UK (cf. US)?

• No but…Anti-Nazi League, Kick it Out, Rock against Racism, etc. (return to this issue later..)

Why not?• US has seen the emergence of a virtual

‘caste system’ (why?)• UK minority population formed through a

lengthy and somewhat diffuse immigration process

CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE US: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• End of the Civil War in 1860, 4.41 million out of a population of 31.44 million were Black. Out of these only 488,000 were free, and 47% of them lived outside the South.

• Gunner Myrdal – ‘American Dilemma’, but• Pierre van den Berghe – paternalist view the norm?

(racism?)• Myrdal wrong to argue that slavery generated

‘deculturation’, but right to point to the internalisation of negative values

• Problem with more conventional civil rights approach to achieving equality - explains the success of Black Nationalism(?)

CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE US: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (2)

• Reconstruction (immediate aftermath of Civil War) - period of real revolutionary turmoil as far as the Old South was concerned. Suddenly, it seemed that Blacks would make real lasting material gains. But this was a mirage: the gains were only temporary …..furthermore..

• Did not really ‘free’ formerly enslaved Blacks• And, there was a massive counter-revolution

following Reconstruction.


• Disenfranchisement • Enforced Legal Segregation – ‘Jim Crow

laws’ (N.B. segregation was a post-bellum phenomenon): strategy of ‘racial’ subordination. Supreme Court effectively gave its blessing to the doctrine of ‘Separate but Equal’ (in a ruling during the Plessey v. Ferguson case of 1896). So: de iure segregation in the South, and de facto segregation in the North

• Terrorism. E.g. rise of organisations such as the Klu Klux Klan (KKK)


POSTSCRIPT:

• After WWI - significant increase in migration from rural South to cities of the North. Here the Blacks displaced as unskilled workers the European migrants who had arrived in the first two decades of the century

• But, most people argue that it wasn’t until the 1950s that significant changes took place, and this was due to an increasing profile in the fight for equal rights.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - ORIGINS

Charles Silberman in Crisis in Black and White argued that the Civil Rights Movement was based on two premises:

• The Negro problem is predominantly a white man’s problem, and

• The problem will be solved by giving Negroes full civil rights

The ‘old’ argument was that Blacks should place more emphasis on self-improvement than civil rights. [KEY POINT] Some prominent Blacks also took this view - notably Booker T. Washington.

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - ORIGINS (2)

• Debate between Washington and W.E.B. DuBois led to the foundation of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).

• The debate effectively concluded that self-improvement and civil rights are incompatible, even opposites. DuBois, argued that self-improvement was tantamount to abject surrender, accommodationism and ‘Uncle Tomism’……

• Washington argued that, as a realist, the appropriate strategy would be for Blacks to accept the ‘caste system’ (in the short term?) and accommodate themselves to it.


• DuBois said (1903) that ‘Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitudes of adjustment and submission’, and that he:

1. Directed Black children towards ‘obsolete tools’, and

2. Failed to understand the emasculating effect of the Southern Caste system. Indeed, in pointing Blacks towards the Jim Crow system he was negating his own suggested aims (i.e. Civil Rights)

• The DuBois strategy was assimilation through self-assertion. His first civil rights organisation, the Niagara Movement, was founded in 1905.


• DuBois and Washington in fact appealed to very different constituencies.

• Whereas Washington emphasised the gaining of a humble trade, DuBois aimed his policies at the ‘talented tenth’ (he seemed to have little interest in poor Blacks). Niagara fell apart in 1909.

• DuBois formed the NAACP in 1910 with a group of White liberals [KEY POINT] and dominated the organisation for twenty years. The problem, as with most ‘traditional’ approaches to civil rights, was that it couldn’t do anything about extra-legal rights, e.g. social acceptance.

• Hence we had de facto segregation in the North, in housing and in schools. The major problems, however, stemmed from its low profile approach and its narrow appeal [cf. CRE and RECs in the UK].

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT- ORIGINS (5)

• Marcus Garvey’s approach was very different. • His Universal Negro Improvement Association

(UNIA), founded in 1916, following his arrival in New York, made a forthright appeal to ‘race pride’.

• But this approach served only to widen the breach between the ‘Talented Tenth’ and the rest of the population.

• There was a certain distaste for his flamboyant style, but more significantly for his calls for Black separatism [KEY POINT]. This, in particular, did not go down well with Black intellectuals and the Black middle class in general, i.e. those who were making it.


• Garvey’s style and approach (especially his ‘Back to Africa’ campaign) led to UNIA’s demise and a certain distaste for mass movements.

• NAACP remained low profile and retained its narrow appeal. More significantly, housing, low pay and police brutality were seen as class issues rather than race issues – and therefore beyond the remit of the NAACP!

• Most Blacks therefore saw NAACP as an irrelevance (assuming that they had heard of it).

BIRTH OF MODERN CRM

• Landmark judgment in the Supreme Court - Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) ruled for the desegregation of schools. [N.B. No immediate effect]

• But, birth of CRM normally associated with the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955). Blacks had to sit at the back of local buses. Then, a local Black woman Mrs. Rosa Parkes refused to move from her seat in the front section, and was arrested. The man who had been chosen to lead the resulting boycott was a young preacher, Martin Luther King Jr. On 5 June 1956, the Federal District Court ruled that segregation violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.

• [N.B. Despite this legal judgment most Blacks continued to sit in the rear of local buses. WHY?]

CRM – EARLY YEARS

• This ‘success’ provided an impetus to other organisations committed to non-violent action, e.g.

• Congress of Racial Equality- CORE (established in 1943)

• Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - a direct outgrowth of the Montgomery bus boycott (elected MLK as its President in 1957).

• There was also a rapid growth of civil actions (civil disobedience), including the development of the ‘sit-in movement’ and the ‘Freedom Riders campaign’. [N.B. both Blacks and Whites took part].

• But, why was there a need for them? It was clear that court decisions had been coming down firmly on the side of de-segregation.

CRM – EARLY YEARS (2)

The Law is one thing: practice another matter entirely. Two examples will suffice here:

• Little Rock, Arkansas (1956). Attempt by a small group of Black children to enter a junior school were thwarted by local people. As the police and local State Troops refused to move in Eisenhower was ultimately forced to Federalise State Troops [EXPLAIN].

• University of Mississippi (1961). Here, a Black man, James Meredith, was refused registration. The Principal personally prevented him from doing so. Once again troops were required.

State governments, especially in the Old South, openly defied Court rulings. [N.B. role of politicians like George Wallace.]


Key event in ‘racial politics’- major demonstrations and outbreaks of urban unrest in Birmingham, Alabama (1963). First time that the mass of poor Blacks had been directly involved in the struggle against injustice and oppression. Significance?

1. Level of protest, and 2. Wider political impact (in terms of its legacy)3. Led to a decision by the Kennedy administration to

press for a Federal Civil Rights Bill. [NOTE: agency – legislative change.]

[N.B. Kennedy was very concerned to appease racist White Democrats in the South, thus effectively forced to act as he was in the Meredith case.]


• Now recognised that militant action was likely to produce results for US Blacks.

• Thereafter - marked shift in political mood, towards Black Nationalism and Black Separatism. Reflects once again the tension between Civil Rights and Separatism.

• The assimilationist approach, implicitly advocated by MLK and the ‘non-racial’ civil rights movement, was challenged by ‘racial separatism’ and the rise in Black Nationalism.

• Onto the stage at this point came the Nation of Islam (the Black Muslims).

NATION OF ISLAM• Origins in 1930, but re-emerged under Elijah Mohammad• Joined by a young man called Malcolm Little (later Malcolm X),

who founded Mohammad Speaks. • Under his influence organisation took on a Pan-Africanist

character. Drew support largely from dispossessed urban Blacks – criminalised ‘ghetto’ dwellers.

• The Muslims preached Black pride and the rejection of integration with White society, seeing middle class Black integrationists as selling out.

• In articulating anger and hatred, they also proposed revenge. • Weakness of MLK’s movement: asked for too much – non-

violence plus non-hatred and maybe even the love of one’s oppressor.

• Elijah argued that Blacks could look to noone but themselves for salvation, and that their real problem was self-hatred instilled by Whites (cf. the ‘Negro’s Negro problem’) – recurrent theme..

NATION OF ISLAM (2)• In the case of the Muslims, the irony is that whilst criticising

everything White, middle class and Christian they seemed to be offering a middle class future, and above all a life of purity and austerity.

• Some key converts: Cassius Marcellus Clay. Mohammed Ali, as of course he became known, refused to be drafted to Vietnam on the grounds that ‘Blacks shouldn’t fight the infidel’s war’.

• [What’s rather less known is that MLK also condemned the War, though in rather different terms.]

• Malcolm broke with Elijah in 1964 - wanted a more immediate, mass appeal/image [Back to Africa is fine for the future, but there are battles to be fought here first.]

• Crucially, by 1965, Malcolm had moved away from Black Nationalism as his sustaining goal, and had replaced it with a focus on revolutionary change. [Was shot dead within months of expressing these views.]

CRM – the 1960s

• Key issue became: did whites have a role in the Black cause?

• Constant harassment of urban Blacks by the police led to the formation in September 1966 of the Black Panther Party. Founded in Oakland, California by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale.

• To the nationalists all whites were evil, the Black Panthers accepted non-racist whites as allies.

• A self-defence organisation, but it worried whites because of the adoption of paramilitary uniforms and the open display of guns. [Also had a social welfare programme – why?]

CRM – the 1960s (2)• But……….what was happening to the non-violence movement?

MLK had become prominent as its spokesman.• He led the major Freedom March to Washington DC in 1963 -

made his famous ‘I have a dream………..’ speech.

But, was the event, as has often been portrayed, a defining moment in the fight against ‘racial’ injustice? Not really, but there were positive changes in the legislative sphere:

• 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed Jim Crow in public accommodation. The Act was soon to be followed by

• 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Civil Rights Act.

[We saw earlier that following the Civil War and Reconstruction (in the mid-19th century), moves had been taken to disenfranchise Blacks.]

DEATH OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

• Major blow to the non-violence campaign on 4th April 1968 - the violent death of Martin Luther King. Shot on the balcony of his Memphis motel room (now incorporated into the National Civil Rights Museum).

• In one way, his death invoked a common sense of loss amongst both white and Black communities. The white establishment had appropriated the King image by expressing an identification of it.

• Blauner’s poignant words- The living exploit the dead, and White Power exploits Black leaders and their philosophies.

[Media, as with wider white establishment, avoided MLK’s attack on racism, poverty and war and concentrated instead on non-violence as an end in itself. King was seen as the voice of sanity in an increasingly violent world. To more radical Blacks, however, King stood accused of ‘playing the white game’ by reducing radicalism and also for ‘keeping LBJ sweet’.]

THE LATE 1960sGains in the political sphere –

• Election of the first Black mayor of a major city in 1967 – Carl Stokes in Cleveland, Ohio.

• Two months later Richard Hacker was elected mayor of Gary, Alabama.

But, as in the period after the Civil War, progress was met with retrenchment from whites:

• Increased level of urban violence. • Election of Richard Millhouse Nixon as President in 1968

reinforced the white backlash. He said, ‘look what happens when you give rights to people, you get violence and unrest’. So, Blacks were blamed, their punishment being two-fold: cutbacks in urban spending and attacks on the Panthers and other Black organisations. The violence intensified.

1970s: the legacy• Under Nixon policies took a sharp turn to the Right.• In the Presidential election of 1972, two-thirds of whites voted

for Nixon, 87 per cent of Blacks voted against him. But, in terms of general political representation the Black voice was increasing.

Two major policy developments are worthy of particular mention: • development from the mid-1970s of the Affirmative Action

Programme (cf. next term).• Increasing prominence of Black Studies as a discipline. Rather

like the MCE approach in the UK - simply grafted onto the curriculum, rather than being part of a much more general overhaul of the system.

[NB. Many Blacks were effectively in a ghettoised discipline.) And, as we’ll see early next term, there was increasing opposition from whites to what they saw as ‘reverse discrimination’]

The 1980sEnd of the 70s - the clock was being turned back. Affirmative

Action was being weakened. Bussing, as a ‘solution’ to educational inequality, was met with hostility from Whites, and a Supreme Court ruling excluded suburbs from the policy. This meant that schools effectively intended ‘for whites only’ could be built there.

Two major incidents in 1980:

1. The Miami Riots2. Election of Ronald Reagan - resulted in: – massive cutbacks in urban grants– strengthening of the ‘color blind’ approach to spending [N.B.

‘special relationship’ with Margaret Thatcher] – political shift to the Right gave a stimulus to extremist

organisations such as the KKK. Its membership grew threefold during the 1980s. [Again, echoes of the 1860s?]

Achievements of the Civil Rights Struggles: an assessment

Two key debating issues (linked): achievements of the CRM and the relative importance of ‘race’ and ‘class’ in explaining remaining inequalities.

• As to race/class debates, the book that really stirred up a storm was William Julius Wilson’s book The Declining Significance of Race.

• A neo-conservative Black sociologist, Wilson argued that although Black life chances were formerly determined by ‘racial’ stratification, since 1965 they’ve been shaped by ‘class’ stratification. But – was he right?

CONCLUSION. The undoubted gains of the CRM have

to be seen against the background of massive inequalities yet to be addressed.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN BRITAINIn the US, then, there has been more than a century of struggle for

civil rights: a struggle which in some ways can be seen as a struggle between two philosophies, integrationism and separatism.

• Ultimate achievements - major changes in the legislative framework. But changes in de iure citizenship rights do not necessarily translate into de facto improvements.

• And, legal challenges have undermined some positive developments. There have been significant material gains for some, but for the mass of poor Blacks the gains are less certain.

In Britain - more difficult to assess the factors behind the changes that have occurred…….but the influence of US movements has been noticeable at various points, e.g. UK branch of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA opened in the 1930s.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN BRITAIN (2)Following a visit to London by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964, the

Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (CARD) was founded - established as a national pressure group, but with local branches to give it a much more directly grassroots presence.

Two forces which were to have a major impact on the CARD:

• Influenced by the success of direct action and the rise of Black Nationalism in the US, there were disputes about who should be involved in the struggle against racism, in particular, whether whites had a part to play in this

• With the simultaneous rise of pan-Africanism, again in the US, there were concerted attempts to widen the organisation’s goals to encompass a much more radical internationalist agenda

Matters came to a head in 1967……………

CIVIL RIGHTS IN BRITAIN (3)

But was the real reason for CARD’s demise that it had in a sense done its job?

• The Wilson government had introduced the first

piece of anti-discrimination legislation, the Race Relations Act 1965.

• The Race Relations Board was established and local voluntary bodies were to act on behalf of minorities around the country.

Further political pressure came from PEP - made the

case for strengthening the legislation by publishing the first national survey of the material position of minorities.

CIVIL RIGHTS IN BRITAIN (CONCLUSION)

Few national grassroots organisations of the sort seen in the US.

In Britain, the promotion of social change has been complex, with a myriad of actors adopting a variety of strategies.

• We’ve seen national research, lobbying organisations, local single issue groups, faith-based institutions, cultural groups, minority trade and business collectives, women’s groups, youth groups and so on - mirrors the fragmentation of Britain’s minorities?

• Only major generic ‘pressure group’ has, in fact, been a quango, the CRE (Now replaced by the EHRC)

CIVIL RIGHTS, COMMUNITY ACTIVISM AND EMPOWERMENT WEEK 10.

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