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
McGirr on the significance of the John Birch society
Suburban warriors: the origins of the new
American right
- whilst important, misleading to equate it with whole movement
McGirr on the roots of the conservative revival
Suburban warriors: the origins of the new
American right
The core beliefs and is uses that the movement embraced in the midsixties drew on older ideological inheritance
McGirr on the significance of the Goldwater Campaign
Suburban warriors: the origins of the new
American right
- The November election was, in many ways, a debacle for con ervatives. Goldwater’s defeat was monumental: a lost by a margin of 15,951,220 votes
BUT
- Nevertheless, not all was lost. Goldwater’ campaign had
other, more positive, implication for the future of American con ervatism. First, conservative had achieved a major victory in winning the 1964 Republican Party nomination,
But while national conservative elites were in disarray, southland conservatives were already gearing up for their next political battle: the gubernatorial election of 1966. And here, prospects looked brighter. …
Ronald Reagan picked up Goldwater’s mantle, sheared it of its more menacing elements, and was catapulted into the governor’ mansion of the most populous tate in the nation.
Rieder on race and the conservative revival
The Rise of the Silent Majority, Rieder
The effort to dismantle the south’s caste system catalyzsed a politics of massive resistance
Rieder on right-wing populism
The Rise of the Silent Majority, Rieder
Despite all it bathos about silent and moral majorities , the Right’s “populidm” never entirely converged with the people’s.
If the right discovered the people, it did so by fits and starts
Rebecca E. Klatch on the legacy of the 60s
New Left/Right?
Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided
- ‘When people talk about the 60s they often talk about the [left] yet the untold story of the 60s is about the New Right’
Rebecca E. Klatch on the convergence of New Left/Right
Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided
- Both, in places, divided over counterculture (clean cut new left vs hippies)
- Vietnam war opposed by both
- Internal divisions in Young Americans for Freedom and the Students for a Democratic Society
- Both SDS/YAF were founded in roughly the same circumstances (Sharon Conference vs SDS conference)
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on the Berkley Free Speech Movement
- ‘a galvanising experience after which the college campus would become the scene of bitter confrontations and escalating radical demands’
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - On the breakaway of the New Left from the Old
‘political mutation’ that ‘defied the old left, which had declared America the graveyard of radicalism’
the New Left was originally closer to the 1913 rebels than to the Marxists of the thirties’ - Old Left Lacked passion and was constrained by ideology
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on feelings of powerlessness in the New Left
- The culture of the young, especially their rock and folk music, reflected their growing mood of frustration and powerlessness.
- cultural alienation of the young also signified an increasing rejection of the values of the industrial way of life
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on the difference between the counterculture and the New Left
- Power grows out of the barrel of a gun, the New Left was conceived, not from the bud of a flower
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on the decline of the new left
- ‘…although the New Left started out as an open, democratic, and non-ideological movement, it became the opposite; by the end of the 1960s much of the New Left had reverted to the stale clichés of economic Marxism, succumbed to the curse of sectarianism, and, like the Old Left, found itself in desperate isolation’
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on the port Huron statement
’ the first manifesto in the history of the American Left to focus primarily on the problem of ethical existence’
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on why the New Left declined
Ability to identify social agent
- ‘inability to find social force that would adopt a commitment of active opposition to the existing order’ (Poor were not a solidified social class, not a majority movement, workers reacted with indifference)
Vietnam war
- New left became international in focus in 1965
- …‘the new left could never successfully organise the discontent that the war had spawned’
- By the time the violence had ended, movement didn’t ‘belong’ to the New Left anymore
Repression
- ‘outside of the sanctury of the campus, however, confrontation brought a backlash of repression’
- Evidence: failure to interrupt DNC in June 1968, violent repression by police, public supported action
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century - on why the new left/anti war movement made a differnece -
- ‘the New Left did not stop the war in Vietnam it did much to foster sentiment against escalation and to publicize…complicity
- ‘there can be no doubt that the New Left, through sustained dissent and resistance, did much to pressure a government into changing its course from escalation to withdrawal…’
- Nixon’s Class Struggle: Romancing the New Right Worker, 1969-1973
Jefferson Cowie
Did Nixon really appeal to the electorates frustration with big government reform programmes
’ The problem was that working-class voters feared that a Republican administration would do away with popular New Deal programs—from social security to collective bargaining. If Nixon could dispel the notion that his party and his presidency were anti-worker, cleverly manipulate the race issue, and peg the label of “elitism” on the liberals, it followed, he could build a post-New Deal coalition that transcended the Southern Strategy. By co-opting the northern blue-collar worker, the Southern Strategy, in essence, would become a national strategy.’
Simon Hall on the contrasting effectiveness of the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti War Movement
This essay will show that while both marches
failed to achieve their immediate political goals the civil rights protest…helped win favourable media coverage and secured broader public support for the cause
The anti war demonstrations, in contrast, adopted tactics that alienated media and public alike, thereby helping to restrict their popular appeal and political influence
Edward Bacciocco, The New Left in America - How was the Anti War movement linked to the failure of the New Left?
- ‘For better or worse, the fate of the SDS was linked to opposing the Vietnam War. At the end of 1965 its Vietnam program was ambiguous, inneffectual…
Unsure how to oppose - from leaders? individual chapters? draft resistance?
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall,
- King is the protagonist of the ‘classical’ (Bayard Rustin, 1965) narrative; focusing on it too much undervalues his later work fighting northern segregation
‘prevents one of the most remarkable mass movements in American History from speaking effectively to the challenges of our time’
Tuck on the Significance of the Woolworths sit in, Greebsboro
We aint what we ought to be: The Black Freedom Struggle from emancipation to obama
- ‘Whereas African Americans in Montgomery had protested by staying away, this was protest by confrontation’
Tuck on the significance of civil rights movement to the student movement
We aint what we ought to be: The Black Freedom Struggle from emancipation to obama
- Aside from race protest, the sit ins marked the re-awakening of college campuses after the quiet years of McCarthyism
Tuck on why the Civil Rights Movement came when it did
ECONOMIC CHANGE
- ‘The key change, then, was that those still defending total segregation had less power to do so…The southern economy was modernising out of recognition…The dethroning of King Cotton and the decline of sharecropping meant that the need for cheap, controlled black labour was in decline. The South’s growing dependence on northern and federal investment meant that insistence on “the southern way” had potential costs’
- Economically determinist?
INDIFFERENCE OF WHITE ELITES
- court rulings in early 60s changed electoral districts ‘to reflect urbanisation’
- city dwelling urban elites preferred to desegregate for stability than to not, and did not need to fear integration in their elite circles
Tuck on the significance of King to the movement in the early 60s
We aint what we ought to be: The Black Freedom Struggle from emancipation to obama
- ‘he was something of a peripheral figure to the surge of protest’
Tuck’s less king-centric narrative of early campaigns in Birmingham?
- King invited to lead the movement by a friend
- King got ‘lucky breaks’ in Birmingham jail when Eugene Connor remained in office, and, when his team (NOT KING) asked schoolchildren to march on may 2nd.
Presidential Decision Making and Leadership in the Civil Rights Era, Ronald D. Sylvia
American Presidents have found themselves at the center of the struggle whether or not they choose to be there. In some instances, presidents chose proactive policies aimed at specific changes. Others chose to hold back, enforcing the law when possible
Presidential Decision Making and Leadership in the Civil Rights Era, Ronald D. Sylvia - on Kennedy
- Genuine desire to push forward, coupled with desire to maintain healthy democratic coalition
- prepared bill outlawing segregated housing months ahead of issuance, waited till thanksgiving when nation distracted
- Oxford was a turning point for the administration. Events would no longer permit a political straddle on the issue of civil rights. (Integration of Uni of Mississippi, riots 1962)
Presidential Decision Making and Leadership in the Civil Rights Era, Ronald D. Sylvia - on Johnson
- No other political leader played as active a role in the passage of civil rights legislation as Lyndon Johnson.
As of 1992, 68% of the 7,552 black elected officials in the United States were in the South.
Corroborate with I+k, who showed LBJ’s treatment of Wallace/Connor to be with skill
Boccaccio on the New Left as elitist?
- Says it permitted ‘elitism’ in the way that people of higher social class went to ghettoz to ‘help’ them/teach them how to live
- Herbert Marcuse ‘One Dimensional Man’ ‘nourished seeds of elitism in the New Left’: Americans indoctrinated into society controlled by buisiness interests through marketing. Can’t make own choices, and can’t claim thoughts as their own - adds to elitist incentive.
- PL accused Carl Davison of elitism in his message calling New Leftists to help the oppressed at time of Ann Arbor National Council Meeting
CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORIOGRAPHY
10…
CIVIL RIGHTS
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
Arnesen, Reconsidering the Long Civil Rights Movement
John A. Kirk, A Movement in Transition,
We aint what we ought to be, Tuck
Simon Hall, March on Washington
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, The Long Civil Rights Movement
and the Political Uses of the Past
Presidential Decision Making and Leadership in the Civil Rights Era, Ronald D. Sylvia
Lawson, Steven F., ‘Mixing Moderation with Militancy: Lyndon Johnson and African-American Leadership’
John White Black Leadership
Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters
-But to focus too much on the historical king, as generally affected by his impact on white society, would exclude much of the texture of his life, which I believe makes for unsustainable history and collapsable myth
This text moves from King to people far removed, at the highest and lowest stations
Primary Sources, Civil
Primary Sources
Kennedy addresses the Nation on Civil Rights
LBJ addresses the nation on Civil Rights
Letter from Birmingham Jail
PRIMARY SOURCE: Betty Friedman in ‘The Feminist Mystique’ compared to Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’
Compare well known photo of sit in with lesser known mississippi photo
Historiography of Black Radicalism (6)
BLACK RADICALISM
Historiography
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
We aint what we ought to be, Tuck
This Nonviolence Stuff’ll get you Killed’ - How Guns Made Civil Rights Possible- Charles E. Cobb, Jr.
J. O. G. Ogbar, Radical Politics and African American Identity
Serving the People: The survival programs of the Black Panther Party - JoNina M. Abron
The Black Panthers Reconsidered, Charles E. Jones
Primary sources black radicalism (6)
Primary Sources
Letter from Malcolm X to MLK on conference, 1962
Black Panther Party 10 point plan
Stokely Carmichael on Black Power
Malcolm X bio + MLK bio
Various quotes from contemporaries
Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, April 1964
New Left historiography
6
Simon Hall, March on Washington
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided
Robert P. Diggins, The American Left in the 20th Century
Edward Bacciocco, The New Left in America
SDS: A Hard Rain Fell., D. Barber
David Barber:
SDS: A Hard Rain Fell.
SDS: A Hard Rain Fell. ‘Could not escape the white, middle class worldview’ Main example - Black Power theorists argued for white mobilisation of other rights, SDS instead calls for ‘interracial movement of the poor’ (Todd Gitlin, historian himself and former activist)
New Left Primary (7)
Primary Source Material Port Huron Statement Mario Savio on the steps of Sproul Hall SDS/SNCC messages opposing war MLK, why I am opposing the Vietnam War Weathermen, so you want a revolution? Various quotes/sources Newspaper coverage of movement
THE NEW RIGHT
New Right historiography (7)
Nixon’s Class Struggle: Romancing the New Right Worker, 1969-1973, Jefferson Cowie
Izzerman and Kazin, America Divided
Rebecca E. Klatch, A Generation Divided
The Rise of the Silent Majority, Rieder
McGirr, Suburban warriors: the origins of the new American right
George Nash (1970)
Donald T. Critchlow in Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots conservatism
Primary Sources New Right (8)
Primary Sources
The Sharon Statement
National Review founding statement
A Choice Not an Echo/The Betrayers (Schlafly)
The Conscience of a Conservative (Goldwater)
Nixon’s speech on winning Republican Primary
Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (1968)
American Bar Association report, Report on Communist Tactics, Strategy and Objectives (1958)
Gallup Poll of voters in 68 election
