HISTORIOGRAPHY Flashcards
J. O. G. Ogbar on the decline of the civil rights movement
J. O. G. Ogbar, Radical Politics and African American Identity
DECLINE
- Leadership ‘victim of its own success’
- Dismantling of racist laws allowed people to be pushed to more radical positions
Arnesen, Reconsidering the Long Civil Rights Movement, on absolving the blame of the movement for its failure
Cites external factors?
the persistence and even worsening of some problems
amid dramatic improvement in other areas may
have more to do with the political and ideological
forces that have continually vexed all social movements
in America that advance a class perspective.
Tuck on the positive effect of rioting
Stephen Tuck, Black Power and Grassroots protest
- rioting about asserting black pride, not changing white views
- pride in destroying property of ‘enemy’ said some
- Led to change? Congressman John B. Anderson on significance of 1968 act: to ‘diminish the influence of black racists and preachers of violence’
Criticism of Tuck -
R. Good Historiography
Stephen Tuck, Black Power and Grassroots protest
Conflates success of initiatives with confidence/black pride
Cites rising NAACP approval ratings, black pride, grass roots adaptability, but neglects to consider whether alliance with a centralised system would’ve further advanced successes
Was race pride, their greatest asset, also a flaw for the black radicalism movement?
What does Tuck say about the relationship between civil rights and black power?
Stephen Tuck, Black Power and Grassroots protest
– Freedom Now and Black Power not entirely different: both aware of economic injustice, both called for self-determination and self respect
Stephen Tuck, Black Power and Grassroots protest
On the decline of the civil rights movement - what does he cite as a turning point
- James Meredith’s March for freedom - SNCC/SCLC dispute over Carmichael’s request of Deacons for Defence Guards/no white marchers
- Stokely Carmichael says Freedom Now ended with Black Power rally in Greenwood
- End to nonviolence and MLK’s ‘dream of a colour blind society’
J. M. Abron on the legacy of Black Panther Community Aid Programmes
Serving the People: The survival programs of the Black Panther Party - JoNina M. Abron
- Stresses the positive work that Panthers did in increasing Black self-determination through aid programmes
HOWEVER
– Despite efforts ‘quest for “land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace” remains elusive for far too many Black and poor people in America:
Armed self defence
HISTORIOGRAPHY
This Nonviolence Stuff’ll get you Killed’ - How Guns Made Civil Rights Possible- Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
- ‘Organising tradition is much older than nonviolent protest, and the one word that is essential for connecting the elements of this tradition is “resistance”
‘long before’ 60s
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
On the causes of radicalism and the failure of the movement
‘The swing to Black Power in the Civil Rights Movement was as much a product of generational as racial conflict.’
‘By the summer of 1967, most white New Leftists would probably have agreed that the old interracial and nonviolent civil rights movement was not only over, but also had proven a failure
John A. Kirk, A Movement in Transition, on turning points for the civil rights movement
‘…Selma gave way to a period of transition’
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
Significance of May 3rd 1963
- ‘After [May 3rd] (Schoolchildren march down 16th Street in Birmingham), it was inevitable that President Kennedy would propose and that Congress would pass a major civil rights bill.’
Charles E. Jones THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY RECONSIDERED
- the vilification of the BPP has led to a scholarship ‘beset with deficiencies’
Tuck on the nature of protesting - good historiography for violence –> nonviolence shift
Stephen Tuck, ‘We aint what we ought to be’
Same argument for Civil Rights?
- ‘Black activists protested at particular times and in particular ways not just because they suddenly wanted to, but because they suddenly could’
‘In other words, student protests flourished because, for the first time, they could’
Tuck on the long civil rights movement
Stephen Tuck, ‘We aint what we ought to be’
- long movement
- not just the 60s flashpoint or a ‘culmination’ but going on before and still going on now
- broad view reveals ‘connecting patterns and themes’
- ‘still going on’ - US Sup Court 2011 case in Virginia as support?
Eric Arnesen, Reconsidering the Long Civil Rights Movement
HISTORIOGRAPHY, PERIODISATION
- Arnesen accepts the general consensus that the Civil Rights movement was
- Was it a movement?
EP Thompson said a movement had a lifespan of 5-6 years
If the ‘long’ civil rights movement goes back to slave rebellions, does the period lose its value as a tool of analysis?
Seen more as a series of patterns by Tuck
Arnesen contesting the ‘long’ history of armed resistance
Eric Arnesen, Reconsidering the Long Civil Rights Movement
Was this, in fact, the case? Did African Americans
know better? Did they “relentlessly” battle
Jim Crow after World War I? A small number of
black Southerners and an even smaller number of
whites participated in campaigns against the segregationist order, but the vast majority did not. And
for those on the front lines, activism itself came in
fits and starts.
Eric Arnesen, Reconsidering the Long Civil Rights Movement
The distinctive nature of the Civil Right’s Movement
That movement was
distinctive. It was significantly larger than its predecessors; it was visible nationally and consistently
in a way unmatched by earlier organizations; it attained
a genuinely mass character; it provoked a
violent backlash of unprecedented proportions;
and it ultimately succeeded in toppling legalized
segregation and enfranchising black Southerners.
Donald T. Critchlow in Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots conservatism
- Arguments put across in Introduction
- shift of the electorate away from the ‘liberal label’ to the right was one of ‘historic’ proportions, term ‘liberal’ on defensive
- ‘Defeated in the presidential election of 1964, purged from leadership positions in its aftermath, and then betrayed by Richard Nixon in the 1970s, conservatives were demoralised and uncertain of their futures in the 1970s - HIGH CONSERVATIVE POLITICS
- so far, intellectual roots of conservatism have been emphasised ‘but nature knows that a seed dropped on barren soil will not grow’
- -> This study finds that the postwar Republican Right finds that the foundation of the Republican Right was laid in grassroots anticommunism…
- -> Stresses importance of women in Daughters of the American Revolution/National Federation of Republican Women
Donald T. Critchlow in Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots conservatism
On the Conservative revival in the 60s
- ‘Liberalism was ascendant in the 60s, but its rise was paralleled by a growing conservative movement that was beginning to take a distinct, although not uniform, shape.’
Donald T. Critchlow in Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots conservatism
- Did Nixon ‘betray’ the Right ?
- In 1969, hope that the Republicans had elected a respectable conservative
- However, argues Critchlow, the, presidency ended in scandal and Nixon ended up being a supporter of ‘big government at home and appeasement abroad’
- Chapter called ‘NIXON BETRAYS THE RIGHT’
George Nash (1970) historiography
- Stresses economic libertarianism and religious morals (freedom vs control)
What does Reider argue about the collapse of the New Deal in the 60s?
The Rise of the Silent Majority, Rieder
-‘The New Deal Collapsed in the 1960s’
Rieder on the formation of middle America
The Rise of the Silent Majority, Rieder
What drew the disparate segments of the middle together was its restoriationist impulse, its unhappiness with the directions of change in American life. If there was a single source of displeasure that shook the New Deal coalition, it was the civil rights revolution
McGirr, The Grassroots Goldwater Campaign
Suburban warriors: the origins of the new
American right
- Grassroots action got Conservative revival going, as a response to lack of representation in washington