Department of History

The Long Movement

Hasan Karayam

Spring - 2011

The civil rights movement changed the United States forever and mobilized a generation to activism. Work on Civil Rights, which is profuse and growing fast, has led to a much deeper understanding of black protest throughout the twentieth century and thus of American and African American history. Early historian of Civil Rights were sometimes participants and, like subsequent historians, always sympathetic with the movements goals. In this large sense, there have been no central debate about the Civil Rights Movement, although there have been diverse lines of investigation, a remarkable expansion of the historical canvas on which scholars analyze the movements, and controversies about aspects of the movements.1 The Civil Rights and Black Power movements are different, despite of different interpretative schools and conflicting theoretical frameworks. In this essay I will challenges those studies which were advocated2. I will explain that thesis through what I did study in this semester and other studies, and bolster that by my perspective and I will use Sundiata Keita Cha-Juas The Long Movement as vampire: Temporal and Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies3 as guide here.

Francis G. Couvares, Martha Saxton, Gerald n. Grob, and George Athan Billias (editors), Interpretations of American History: From Reconstruction(Boston: Bedford/St.Martins,2009), 287. 2 Charles Eagles, Toward New Histories of the Civil Rights Era, Journal of southern History 66 (2000):815-48 3 Sundiata K. Cha-Jua and Clarence E. Lang, The 'Long Movement' as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies, Journal of African American History 92 (2007): 265-88

The points that differ between the movement phases are their specific characteristics, strategy, and tactics, depend on the effects around them, such as political, religious, and culture factors, especially their interactions within the developments inside American history. The long movement interpretative framework consists of four

interrelated conceptualizations that challenge the previous interpretations of black freedom movements, which were misinterpreted by many historians from different schools and ages. The four propositions are: locality, the modern Civil Rights and Black Power movements was a series of local struggles rather than a national social movements; Reperiodization, the modern Civil Rights and Black Power movements transcends the historical period 1955-1975; continuity, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements are not distinct social movements, but rather single continuous struggle for black freedom, and the South was not distinct, and racism is not nationwide.4 in the origins of Civil Rights movement, Robert Norrells Reaping whirlwind located the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in Tuskegee, Alabama, in1941, but traced its roots as far back as 1870 white Democrats began their campaign of violence to reverse the gains blacks had a achieved in Reconstruction, particularly in holding political office. Norrell championed an indigenous perspective which was attentive to local people, the movement base. 5

4 5

Sundiata K. Cha-Jua and Clarence E. Lang, 265. Francis G. Couvares, Martha Saxton, Gerald n. Grob, and George Athan Billias, 292.

Martha Biondis book in 2004 also located the origins of the Civil Rights movement and particularly Black power in New York where African Americans from 1945- to 1955 battled for better jobs, an end to police brutality, access to new housing, more representation in government, and access to colleges for black student, and against existing legal racial barriers to blacks betterment. This movement got the city and the state to pass antidiscrimination laws that became the model for national legislation. The New York movement, which was not for formal civil rights alone but for complete equality, clearly joined the civil rights and Black Power fights as African American in New York articulated what would become urban black political demands across the country, including criminal justice reform and affirmative action.6 For the view Civil Rights and Black as successive waves of a broader black Liberation Movement, differentiated by strategy and tactics, organizations, leadership, membership, ideology, symbols and practices, Long Movement advocates aggregate them into one undifferentiated mass of characteristics. Such formulations distort the historical process. Timothy Tysons Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power is an appropriate example. Through the life of Williams, Tyson averred, Illustrates that the civil rights movement and the Black power movement emerged from the same soil, confronted the same predicaments, and reflected the same quest for African American freedom Tyson rendered Williams thought static. In arguing that Civil Rights and Black Power grew out of the same situation, encountered the same condition and
6

Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge: Mass, 2004)

problematic and embodied the same search for freedom, Tyson freezes history and blurs different conceptualizations of black freedom. The Civil Rights Movement was an earthquake, an eruption whose seismic eruption shattered the legal foundation of American apartheid. It shifted the social relation between African American and whites, transformed the black political terrain, and created new possibilities that were seized by the advocates of Black Power. Tysons analysis sucked the life out of Williams unprecedented odyssey and bled dry the differences among the various sociohistorical contexts Williams confronted.7 Many of the historiographical developments associated with turn toward the Long Movement are corrective and spotlight the ideological and tactical heterogeneity of the Civil Rights movement. Perhaps the most important contribution of fourth wave scholarship has been its re-centering of African American women and gender into Civil Rights and Black Power narratives. In contract to older male-focused histories.8 Such as Bettye collier- Thomas and V.P Franklin have documented the multiple roles of African American women activist and the centrality of gender to the movement more broadly. Their study consists of three parts, each part has some essays. Part I is Laying the Ground Work: African American Women and Civil Rights Before 1954 explores the civil rights activities of African American women prior to launching of the modern phase of the Civil Rights movement. The first chapter in this part is Closed Doors by Mary
7

Timothy B.Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: North Carolina, 1999); Sundiata K. Cha-Jua and Clarence E. Lang, 275 8 Sundiata K. Cha-Jua and Clarence E. Lang, 268-69. Bettye Collier-Thomas and V,P Franklin(editors), Sisters in Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001)

Bethune who described the conditions under which African Americans were forced to live and work, and the barriers they confronted in their effort to achieve first- class citizenship. The second chapter is For the Race in General and Black Womens Organizations, 1915-1950 by V.P Franklin and Bettye Collier- Thomas describes how black womens organizations attempted to pry open the Closed Doors confronting African Americans. The third chapter, in the first part is Behind- the Scenes View of Behind- the-Scenes Organizer: the Roots of Ella Bakers Political passions by Barbara Ransby. Ransby presents an intimate portrait of Bakers early years in North Carolina and explains bakers experience in the 1930s with the Workers Education Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Young Negroes Cooperative League, and other leftist groups introduced her to economic alternative to the capitalist system, while her travels throughout the South in the 1940s as field secretary for NAACP provided her with the personal knowledge needed for organizing the black working class. The second part Presents excerpts from the life stories of Rosa Parks, Charlayne Hunter Gault, and Dorothy I. Height. Each of these women wrote about important events in the Civil Rights Movements in which they were intimately involved. As eyewitnesses, they chronicle their own motivations and involvement and the impact that these events had on their lives, the larger society, and the course of American history. The third part is Women, Leadership, and Civil Rights, includes biographical studies of the leadership provided by Septima Poinsette Clark and Fannie Lou Hamer to civil rights campaigns. The third essay examines the roles and contributions made by

African American women in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the 1960s. the fourth part is From Civil Rights to Black power: African American Women and Nationalism describes the conditions and circumstances for African American women in the transition from civil rights to Black power in the black freedom struggle. There are two biographical studies in this section. One essay examines the leadership provided by Gloria Richardson for the civil rights campaigns in Cambridge, Maryland in the early 1960s, and the other focuses on Ruby Doris Smith Robinsons activities as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. African American womens responses to Malcolm Xs promise of protection are the subject of analysis in this section as well as gender ideologies and the multifaceted roles of women in the Black Panther Party. The fifth part is Law, Feminism, and Politics includes an essay that examines the impact of the free Joan Little Movement on the development of a black feminist consciousness in the mid-1970s. Another essay compares black feminist consciousness exhibited by the black women appointed to President John F. Kennedys Commission on the Status of Women in 1960 to that of the members of the National Black Feminist Organization and Combahee River Collective in the 1970s. The final essay provides a comprehensive overview of African American women in elective office at the local, state, and national levels. Green Christinas Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina also document and highlights womens involvement in the civil rights struggle in Durham, North Carolina. While her focus is on gender issue and

womens part in the struggle, she deftly tackles the class division in the Durham movement as well. In addition her analysis of class division, Green incorporates many vignettes of women of different races and classes, highlighting the extent to which women were able negotiate different spaces in order to take action. Her strategy makes it virtually impossible to talk about monolithic movement. Greene has managed to raise a number of interrelated issues that defy the conventional historiography of the Civil Rights Movement.9 Belinda Robnetts How long? How long? African- American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights is a sociological analysis of black womens leadership in the various civil rights campaigns. Robnett argued that African American in leadership positions often served as the bridge between local civil rights struggles and notional protest organization. Charismatic figures, Such as Martin Luther king Jr., and James Farmer, set the notional civil rights agenda and moved from coast to coast generating moral and financial support for civil rights campaigns.10 Joseph peniels Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America11 is extensive study of Black power, an agitation for change that existed in tandem with the Martin Luther King Jr. led Civil Rights Movement. Joseph traces the history of the Black Power Movement from its beginning, or rather, its
9

Christina Greene, Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 10 Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long: African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 11 Joseph E. penile, Waiting Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (Holt Paperbacks, 2007)

reawakening in African American communities in the 1930s, to its decline in the mid to late 1970s. He argues that Black Power existed before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement. Josephs history of Black Power is similar to traditional civil rights narratives in that it explains a complex social struggle by noting its themes, events, organizations, leaders, and then grouping them all into a linear narrative. Waiting Til the Midnight Hour is partly characterized by its establishment of who the national leaders and organizations of the Black Power Movement were. The author places the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X early in the Movement. To Joseph, at the beginning of Black Power, it was Malcolm who best articulated the frustrations of African Americans towards the social, political, and economic inequalities they faced. It was through Malcolm that the frustrations and anger of African Americans in urban centers like Harlem were most forcefully and coherently laid out and argued before the American public. After Malcolm came SNCC, Stokely Carmichael, and the beginning of the maturation of the movement. After SNCC and Carmichael, during the last phase of Black Power, 1969-1977, appeared Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and the Black Panthers. Joseph argues that the ideas, themes, and goals of Black Power, while in some aspects similar, were often in conflict with the King led movement. Most glaringly different was the acceptance of armed self defense. Black Power was also marked by its early recognition of the need for blacks to hold more economic power in the United States and the world. As a result, many advocates and followers of Black Power were highly critical of capitalism, and were likewise drawn to certain aspects of socialism. The

Black Power movement, according to Joseph, can also be characterized by its acceptance of the idea of Black Nationalism and Pan- Africanism.