Black Civil Rights Movement Research Articles

Resisting Bodies: Between the Politics of Vulnerability and “We-Can”

ABSTRACT This article presents a critical phenomenology of embodiment in radical democratic struggles, focusing on racialized citizens inhabiting and navigating public spaces and on anti-racist protests. It contrasts the notion of the precarious body, central to critical theorists like Judith Butler, with an alternative phenomenological understanding, locating the political significance of the body in spontaneous movement (Arendt) and competence (Merleau-Ponty). Attending to either precariousness or mobile-capable bodies reveals distinct dimensions of radical democratic struggles. While precariousness addresses the unequal distribution of social-material conditions, it tends to overshadow the shared lived experience of freedom among citizens countering inhibitions of free movement, often motivated by their disproportionate exposure to precarious conditions in the first place. From a phenomenological perspective, public action is permitted by capable and mobile bodies. It is argued that public space opens the power of “we-can” bodies by soliciting citizens' movement among others and their engagement in shared projects, according to their bodily capacities. Pluralistic interaction, aiming to maintain or create free spaces of movement, is presented as the political practice of freedom par excellence, exemplified by radical democratic walking practices in the Black civil rights movement.

«По прозвищу Моисей»: литературные интерпретации жизни Харриет Табмен

The article is devoted to the formation of Harriet Tubman's image in the US literature. Two books belonging to the spread of Afrocentrism and the second wave of feminism — A. Petrie's non-fiction novel A Girl Called Moses: The Story of Harriet Tubman and M. Heidish's novel A Woman Called Moses — are chosen as the material for analysis. The article analyzes the main qualitative characteristics identified as early as in S. Bradford's book Harriet, Moses of Her People that form the discourse of race and gender in the mentioned narratives about Tubman, and identifies the main transformations of these characteristics. Thus, the work of African-American author A. Petrie reflects to a greater extent the sentiments of all her fellow women in the 1950s-60s Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States: while remaining within the generally accepted gender framework of feminine virtues, at the same time, the black woman was stepping out of her allotted racial limits. Furthermore, she shows that slavery is a cultural trauma that still defines how the African American community sees itself and its place in the society and how slavery is remembered as a means of self-identification within the African American community. Created by the white writer M. Heidish in the mid-1970s, during the rise of the second wave of the feminist movement, the novel reflects the very sentiments that characterized this movement and shows the view of a sympathetic Other on the issue of race. Thus, the article establishes the fact that Harriet Tubman plays a very important role in the African-American and women's discourse in the United States as an image that is given the necessary functions and qualities for its time based on the socio-cultural context contemporary to the interpreter.

미국 대중음악에 나타난 흑인 민권 운동 요소에 관한 고찰

The purpose of this study is to examine the elements of the black civil rights movement in American popular music in the 1960s. Therefore, in order to help understand popular music and the black civil rights movement, the overall flow was examined, and the form of the black civil rights movement observed through this was observed through social background and lyrics analysis. The elements of the black civil rights movement in popular music were identified as four elements: abolition of racism and equality, demand for institutional change, identity and decision-making, cooperation and solidarity, and these elements are provided as basic data to prove the characteristics of popular music used as a means of the times and civic consciousness.

CIVIL WAR MEMORY, ANTI-RACISM, AND THE AMERICAN NATION: LATE 2010s — EARLY 2020s

This article is based on materials collected by the author over many years in 28 cities and towns in 14 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. He aims to show how the historical (aka cultural or social) memory of the Civil War (War of the North and the South) from 1861 through 1865, and the corresponding abolition of slavery become a factor in the anti-racist movement that has swept the country again in recent years. Attention is drawn to transformations in the Civil War memory associated with changing perceptions of the history, essence, and sociocultural boundaries of the American nation. Th e essence of these changes is the affi rmation of a view of the U.S. nation as the entity that includes both whites and blacks on an equal footing. It has also changed the perception of the Civil War as a key moment in the formation of the American nation: whereas previously the War of the North and the South was seen as a war between Northern whites and Southern whites, it has increasingly emphasized the active role of black Americans. At the same time, the differences in the historical memory of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery that persist in the North and the South allow the author to argue that the sociocultural division of U.S. society into Northerners and Southerners has not disappeared to this day. Th e article also highlights that not just racial dichotomies, but racial inequalities were embedded in the very foundation of the American nation at the time of its formation. Th is fact raises the question of whether so-called systemic (otherwise structural, institutional, or social) racism is in principle eradicable in the United States, despite the obvious change for the better in the black community since the victory of the black civil rights movement of 1954–1968.

Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio by Felipe Hinojosa

Reviewed by: Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio by Felipe Hinojosa Kristy Nabhan-Warren Apostles of Change: Latino Radical Politics, Church Occupations, and the Fight to Save the Barrio. Felipe Hinojosa. (Austin: University of Texas Press. 2021. Pp. xvi, 238. $45.00. ISBN: 978-1-477-32198-0.) Felipe Hinojosa’s Apostles of Change is a game-changer in how we view U.S. Latina/o history. In this meticulously crafted and researched book, the author urges his reader to move beyond the single-origin narratives that historians tend to embrace and retell about movements, in favor of a more complex, multi-layered story of “the thousands of small moments that gave birth to the Latina/o freedom movement” (p. x). Rather than focusing on one movement and a handful of mostly male leaders, Hinojosa shows us that “small but politically vibrant moments” form the impetus and stuff of a broader freedom movement (p. x). Apostles of Change is a must-read for anyone interested in U.S. Latina/o history and in how Latinas and Latinos worked to raise awareness of the entanglements of [End Page 821] racism, white privilege, and institutional churches’ complicity in perpetuating broken systems. Hinojosa’s book is a call for revisionist histories that runs parallel with his interlocutors’ calls for concrete changes in their institutions and communities. The stories that Hinojosa shares with his reader are about “the struggle to wholly transform the sacred space of the church, to move it into an embrace with its community, and to liberate it from its own strictures” (p. x). The book opens by quoting a statement from the 1969 Armitage Methodist Church in Chicago on its willingness to engage with grassroots anti-poverty measures rooted in social justice. White, liberal congregations such as this one, Hinojosa shows throughout the book, were spurred by Latina/o-led church occupations and protests by that directly challenged churches’ racist theologies and actions. Hinojosa begins the book with this particular vignette, and with 1969 as the start date, when churches “became strategic sites, indeed sacred places, where radical groups staged their movements and proclaimed their message of community control and power to the world” (p. 3). As many historians have chronicled, the late 1960s and 70s were decades of protest as Black Americans across the United States called attention to the inhumane, violent, racist treatment of nonwhite people, and churches were epicenters of the grassroots and widespread Black Civil Rights movement. But what scholars have not spent nearly as much time on, as Hinojosa convincingly argues, are the parallel Brown-led religio-spiritual protests of systemic racism and oppression and of oppressive institutional religion. The four core chapters of the book are deeply researched and compelling case studies of moments and components of what Hinojosa terms the “Latina/o freedom movement” which initiated a coming together of Brown, Black, and White social justice-focused individuals in a rainbow coalition of activists. Hinojosa offers four case studies of U.S. cities that were sites of Latina/o freedom movement protests and occupations. This freedom movement gained momentum in the late 60s and early 70s, and was comprised of young radical Latina/o leaders who deployed church occupations and disruptions in order to challenge the ways that the societal status quo seeped into churches and church politics. Hinojosa convincingly shows the reader that each of these moments, while on their own seemingly small and considered by some to be insignificant, built upon each other to form a pan-American Latina/o freedom movement. Hinojosa’s first case study is the Lincoln Park, Chicago seminary occupation by Puerto Rican, Mexican, Black and White allies in the Young Lords, where de jure “urban renewal” qua de facto urban removal was directly challenged by the young activists who occupied McCormick Theological Seminary, then a bastion of white liberal Protestantism. Meanwhile, in Los Angeles Latinas/os were organizing their own protests of institutional racism and negligence of nonwhite Catholics and people. A peak moment for Los Angeles Latina/o freedom movement was Católicos por la Raza’s gathering outside LA’s wealthy St. Basil Catholic Church...

Not Until the Millennium: 1978 and Fundamentalist Whitelash

On June 8, 1978, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints removed restrictions that once barred Black Latter-day Saints from priesthood ordination and temple entry. Most members of the Church celebrated the decision as a revelation and long-awaited answer to prayer. However, some were angry about the end to theologically-justified segregation, and many left the Church to join the Mormon fundamentalist movement that sought to retain early Mormon teachings, including doctrinal racism. While most studies on Mormon fundamentalism present the tradition as one of continuity in the face of change, this article argues that Mormon fundamentalist doctrinal racism emerged as a central tenet of the faith only when desegregation became the subject of national debate in the 1970s. Rather than view the persistence of the priesthood and temple restrictions in Mormon fundamentalism as a continuation of early LDS teachings, this article reframes the persistence of the priesthood and temple ban as a form of white backlash in response to the Black civil rights movement and integration in LDS worship.

Provider, Heal Thy System: An Examination of Institutionally Racist Healthcare Regulatory Practices and Structures.

U.S. history is fraught with examples of systemic racism—at all ecological levels and within all geopolitical contexts. Whether scholars historically punctuate these phenomena through white racial framing begun in the 1600s or the Black civil rights movement of the 1960s, research across disciplines brings into focus a twenty-generation story of injustice. These phenomena present a paradoxical struggle within healthcare systems populated by professionals who have made a “conscious commitment to equity and helping those in need.” However, both healthcare systems and embedded care providers operate in relation to organizational structures that frequently reify racist policies. As natural and professional agents of change, medical family therapists are especially positioned to examine how regulatory systems at every level influence institutional racism within the medical and mental health fields. In this manuscript we examine health system policies and practices using the lens of C.J. Peek’s Four Worlds: Clinical, Operational, Financial, and Training. Examples of institutional racism are discussed and recommendations for approaches to change are provided.

Deliberation can wait: How civic litigation makes inquiry critical

ABSTRACT Scholars of citizenship education have long regarded deliberation as the default framework for democratic discussion in the classroom and beyond. Turning to the history and theory of rhetoric, we question why the deliberative model of the Athenian assembly has been developed for social studies pedagogy without including the litigative discourse of the Athenian courts. In response, we offer civic litigation, a discursive framework that recasts public controversies from a pro vs. con to an accusation vs. defense format. By examining the role of civic litigation in a historical case study from the 1960s Black civil rights movement, along with three inquiry-based lessons concerning contemporary controversies, we argue that civic litigation plays a crucial role in the effort to make inquiry-based instruction critical when it addresses issues of injustice.

The multiple people of color origins of the US environmental justice movement: social movement spillover and regional racial projects in California

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to scholarship on the origins of the US environmental justice movement (EJM) through exploration of the early EJM in California. The national EJM is often seen as having grown out of the intersection of environmentalism and the Black civil rights movement in the 1982 protests in Warren County, North Carolina. This paper adds weight to alternate narratives that depict the EJM as drawing on a variety of racialized social movement infrastructures that vary regionally. These infrastructures, as they were built in California, are analyzed as regional racial projects responding to histories of white supremacy that are connected through social movement spillover. This conceptual framework illuminates the place-based ways in which racial oppression and racial justice responses create social movement infrastructure that persists across multiple movement formations, both across contemporary groups and through time. The paper draws on data gathered from existing case studies and oral histories, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival documents to offer a capacious view of the EJM’s origins.

Ideological Origins of the Black Lives Matter Movement

The article is devoted to the consideration of the ideology of the African American movement Black Lives Matters, which has a great impact on the modern public life in the United States. The paper analyzes the main points of the program of this movement, created under the influence of the ideas of socialism and black nationalism and aimed at a radical transformation of the American community. In order to explore the ideological continuity between African American social movements, the article compares the Black Lives Matters movement with the Black Civil Rights movement in the United States of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the radical Black Power movement, the most influential representative of which was the Black Panther Party organization, which peaked in popularity in the late 1960s - early 1970s. Particular attention is paid to the consideration of the foundations of the Black Panthers’ ideology of revolutionary nationalism, as well as its impact on the fundamental principles of the Black Lives Matter movement.

#BlackLivesMatter: An Analysis of the Movement as Social Drama

Scholars agree that the United States is experiencing a new black civil and human rights movement called #BlackLivesMatter and that the Internet is pivotal to that movement. Protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore, Maryland, dominated national attention for months through 2014 and 2015. Protesters have successfully gained the attention of elite power brokers, a necessary step in the social movement process. #BlackLivesMatter has many insights to provide about mobilization, if researchers take black American discursive power and intellectual production more seriously as subjects of analysis. This article argues that a dramaturgy framework reveals important meaning making that occurs on the periphery of a social movement. In this periphery, my analysis shows that black social media publics are harbingers of racial progress. Introducing the concept of a Greek Chorus to the dramaturgy framework better clarifies the role that Twitter plays in the movement as a public space where outside observers negotiate their own meaning making surrounding the movement’s claims and strategies. Conceptualizing movement mechanics in this way provides a clearer understanding of the importance of digital media in the contemporary black civil rights movement without relying on technological determinism, reducing social media to a structural component of the movement, or undermining the importance of physicality to protest.

Bound Together in Invisible Ways: Eulogising a Giant of History

SummaryThis article examines Barack Obama's eulogy on the occasion of Nelson Mandela's memorial on 10 December, 2013. Using a critical discourse analysis framework, the article demonstrates that Obama's eulogy is an act of memorialising Mandela that captures the life story of this statesman and also generates conversations about identity, participation and agency in both local and the global spaces. The eulogy privileges three qualities: making emotional connections with the audience through the use of adjectives, enhancing the ethos of Mandela by strengthening the pathos of the occasion and finally, interpolating Obama's own identity-formation by calling for action that perpetuates Mandela's magnanimous contributions. Although the word Ubuntu is only used twice in the eulogy, this article contends that it is this experience of being bound together in ways invisible to the eye that Obama focuses upon in order to make connections between apartheid and Jim Crow, the South African nationalist struggle and the Black American civil rights movement. In 1 945 words, Obama captures the complex selves of Mandela as politician, prisoner, husband, father, divorcee and sage statesman.

From Hackensack to the White House: The Triumph and Travail of E. Frederic Morrow

Four decades after arranging a historic meeting in the White House of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and African-American leaders on June 23, 1958 former Eisenhower assistant Rocco Siciliano recounted the back-story of the meeting, highlighting its inherent drama and significance. In the course of sharing his recollections Siciliano paid tribute to an African-American member of the White House staff, E. Frederic Morrow, calling him a “true pioneer in the American black civil rights movement.” Added Siciliano: “[Morrow’s] impact on civil rights progress has yet to be appreciated.” Judging “impact” by one individual on a large-scale movement is tricky business. But, as this article notes, there should be no doubt that in serving President Eisenhower New Jersey native Fred Morrow advanced the civil rights cause. The fact that his five-and-a-half-year tenure as a black man in the White House was not always happy or consistently productive of the kinds of initiatives on behalf of racial equality that he advocated should not obscure his contributions.

'A Tactical Manoeuvre to Apply Pressure': Race and the Role of Public Inquiries in the 1980 Bristol 'Riot'.

When violence erupted on the streets of England in 1981, it undoubtedly shocked the country in its scope and severity. However, such disorder had been foreshadowed when the St Pauls area of Bristol saw anti-police disturbances on 2 April 1980. This article focusses on the responses to this, from the local community and organizations as well as local and national government, which in the historiography has often been relegated to passing mentions prior to detailed discussion of the 1981 events. Utilizing recently released and understudied local records, it argues that appeals for a public inquiry from sections of the local community demonstrates the value awarded to them by this politically marginalized group, and the failings of other democratic forms of registering complaints. Public inquiries have long been a key component of the British constitutional system, allowing a unique public interaction with authorities-but it would take increased violence in Brixton the following year before establishment figures were sufficiently alarmed to grant one. This article argues that obtaining this government-endorsed response and an increased participation in the public discourse should be viewed as an aspect within a broader black civil rights movement, challenging claims that minorities played an underrepresented role in motivating advances. However, there was a clear division of attitudes towards public inquiries, demonstrating the moderate tactics utilized by local organizations and older generations, as opposed to more militant groups and the black youth who took to the streets.

Black from White

Drawing on primary and secondary sources on the nineteenth-century U.S. labor movement both nationally and in Chicago, I argue that the major postbellum labor federations foundered on the shoals of racial exclusion and evolved into a segregated movement; from there, black labor leaders took their appeal for civil rights to the Republican Party. The separation unfolded in three interrelated processes. The first was discursive: white labor leaders framed the civil rights struggle as past or already accomplished by the Civil War, and the fight against wage slavery as the natural successor struggle. The second was institutional: the labor movement split into white and black unions; black leaders then shifted strategy to focus on achieving civil rights through partisan channels. The third was local in nature: black workers were systematically excluded from the member organizations of the National Labor Union and Knights of Labor, and socially by white workers in general. Together these processes conspired to fracture the initially biracial labor movement into a white labor movement and a black civil rights movement.

The Black Civil Rights Movement on the Border

The Black Civil Rights Movement on the Border

Reshaping Southern Identity and Politics: Indian Activism during the Civil Rights Era

Reshaping Southern Identity and PoliticsIndian Activism during the Civil Rights Era Denise E. Bates (bio) When asked to summon a set of images from the civil rights era in the South most scholars and students of history invoke such iconic images as lunch counter sit-ins or impassioned speeches delivered by a leader like Martin Luther King Jr., who dominated headlines with his antisegregation campaign. Still others may point to the multiple cases of violence inflicted upon civil rights workers by a group such as the Ku Klux Klan, which regularly made national news. Whatever comes to mind—whether it involves brave young activists, articulate leaders, or race-based violence—these images clearly portray a period that provokes strong emotions tied to the movement for equal rights for black southerners in the face of a long and stable system of white supremacy. This narrative, however, is incomplete. Although the black civil rights movement did indeed capture national attention and spur a revolution in race relations, it was not the only movement that contributed to the reshaping of southern identity and politics during the civil rights era. Things are not that simple. In fact, where civil rights era scholars are generally falling short is in the consideration and incorporation of the political activities and economic development efforts of southern Indians who, in addition to having to navigate a system of racial segregation in a region where they were often overlooked, went on to launch a distinct movement of their own—one that also proved critical to the South’s shifting political and social terrain during the second half of the twentieth century. Beginning with localized efforts in the 1950s and gaining momentum by the 1970s, charismatic Indian activists across the Southeast leveraged the politically precarious positions of southern politicians as they [End Page 125] came under intense scrutiny and were looking for opportunities to improve their images. This opened the door within many southern states for historically significant relationships to be developed between Indian groups and state governments. At the same time, the national Indian political environment was also undergoing dramatic shifts, serving as a prominent catalyst in further shaping the direction of the movement. As a result, southern Indian leaders and activists became heavily involved in intertribal coalitions and alliances, previously unorganized groups developed tribal governments, tribes embarked on new economic ventures, and petitions for federal recognition were submitted by the dozens by groups hailing from the South.1 The southern Indian movement, like the black civil rights movement, was complex and dynamic. The diversity of the South’s Indian populations, which are identified by such characteristics as their locale and political status, dictated the roles that different groups played within the larger movement. The strategies and messages between Indian leaders who served as activists in promoting change also varied, generating some lively debates and offering some great insight into the ideological distinctions present within the movement. While a drive for tribal self-determination framed Indian activism on a national scale, distinguishing it from the mainstream activities of civil rights activists, Indian leaders were influenced by a variety of intellectual traditions.2 There is a great deal of scholarship on the South’s Indian population following World War II that focuses on revitalizing efforts, identity issues, recognition, and tribal development, serving as a strong basis for reimagining the dominant civil rights narrative.3 The diversity of the South makes it impossible to generalize the experiences of southern Native Americans, which is evident in the tendency of the scholarship to focus on specific groups or states. There is a need, however, for a more aggressive assessment of southern racial discourse and how it intersects with the political activities of Indians—much in the manner that the scholarship on black civil rights activism does.4 These narratives are two pieces of a whole that can provide a better understanding of the larger political and economic shifts that characterize the post–World War II South. So how do we unpack such a complex story? The goal of this essay is to contribute to an ongoing conversation that scholars have been engaging in for decades about the broader role of Indian activism during...

Black Movements Need Black Theorizing: Exposing Implicit Whiteness in Political Process Theory

The history of racism in the United States has produced a paradox in social movement literature: blackness shaped the character and substance of black antiracist mobilization, but whiteness shapes most analysis of their efforts. Despite frequently using the black Civil Rights Movement for theory development and testing, leading theorists have yet to identify a specific theory of race undergirding their analysis or explaining how racism impacts the trajectory of antiracist social movements. Instead, theorists rely on common white-privileging notions of race that hinder analyses of black movements. I critically analyze political process theory (PPT) from a racial perspective, showing that the dominant critiques of PPT stem from PPT creators’ failure to critically theorize race while analyzing the Civil Rights Movement. Theorists implicitly adopted white-centered perspectives that ultimately undermined PPT’s development. I conclude with a call to simultaneously theorize collective action and the system of inequality with which a movement is engaged.

(White) Tyranny and the Democratic Value of Distrust

This paper makes an argument for the democratic value of distrust. It begins by analyzing distrust, since distrust is not merely the negation of trust. The account that it develops is based on Martin Luther King Jr.’s work in Why We Can’t Wait . Distrust is the confident belief that another individual, a group of individuals, or an institution will not act justly or as justice requires. This paper argues that distrust’s democratic value lies in its ability to temper tyranny. The main example discussed is King’s involvement in the Birmingham Campaign during the Black Civil Rights movement in America.

The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith. By Adam L. Bond. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2013. xi + 245 pp. $29.00 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith . By Adam L. Bond . Minneapolis, Minn. : Fortress Press , 2013. xi + 245 pp. $29.00 paper.Book Reviews and NotesThe contribution of the black pastorate to America's social conscience is surely incalculable. Apart from the countless Sunday sermons preached from the pulpits of African-American congregations since even before the founding of the first African-American church in Philadelphia in 1787, the history of the black clergy has extended beyond the pulpit to include a public presence and social activism that emphasized black personhood from within the community and challenged the larger culture to reflect on, reassess, and ultimately reject its own prejudices, biases and, indeed, its racism. The civil rights era of the 1950s to 1960s represents perhaps the most visible era for the leadership of black pastors with names like King, Lowery and Abernathy proclaiming the gospel of social justice and driving the public dialog. And yet other voices unquestionably did contribute to the dialog and our understanding of the importance of the black civil rights movement in America is enriched that much more when such narratives emerge. Adam Bond's The Imposing Preacher: Samuel Dewitt Proctor and Black Public Faith presents the reader with just such a narrative, engaging the life and work of one of the more influential but less well-known figures in the modern post-civil rights era. Proctor's name emerges in only the most thorough analyses of the civil rights movement in America. And yet, he was close to Martin Luther King, Jr., served in the administration of the Peace Corps during the Kennedy administration, and was an advisor to Lyndon Johnson's Office of Economic Opportunity during his administration's War on Poverty. Proctor's was indeed a public faith and Bond contributes significantly to the scholarship providing a comprehensive study of the theological and ideological foundations to his thought and life.Bond introduces the reader to Proctor in fairly straightforward fashion. Key to his analysis is that Proctor represents a departure from the more frequently chronicled expressions of black theology. As such he positions him along a spectrum of more well-known figures and systems of thought. The writings of James Cone, for instance, represent the left on Bond's conceptual spectrum. Cone's is a black public theology steeped in the language of power and emancipation, advocating a strong emphasis on black consciousness and the right for blacks to free themselves from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary (12). The other end of the spectrum is represented the black evangelical and biblical literalist E.V. Hill who opposed the sometimes confrontational methods and aims of Cone, describing his work as blackism and deeming it essentially idolatrous (21). Proctor viewed himself as something of a bridge figure or pragmatic harmonizer (10) who aimed to uplift the condition of the black community in America, a condition he saw to be largely the byproduct of white privilege. Yet at the same time he saw that within the great documents and best spirit of the American system there existed the best possible means for bringing about this much-needed change.Chapters 2 and 3 are largely biographical in nature, chronicling the cultural and intellectual soil from which Proctor's ideas about the public nature of faith first took root. …