Top Down Bottom Up

Question 1

What is Top Down and Bottom up?

Answer 1

Bottom up - Looks at longer - argues grass roots activists were more responsible than national leaders
Top Down- Short civil rights - national leaders impact

Question 2

What does Harvard Sitkoff argue?

Answer 2

• CRM started during the 1929-39 Great Depression - AA unemployment tripled and spurred activism
• 1929 Chicago Whip editor Joseph Bibb organised boycotts of city department stores that refused to hire AA - Grassroot protests worked and 2000 AA employed
• By 1940 AA believed a page in American history had been turned

Question 3

What protests were before Civil Rights?

Answer 3

• 1930s saw first meeting of National Negro Congress an umbrella movement of AA organisations that fought anti-lynching legislation, elimination of poll tax
• 1937 Southern Negro Youth Congress SNYC - registered voters and organised boycotts
• 1940 NAACP increased from 50,000 to 450000

Question 4

What does Korsted argue started CRM?

Answer 4

early 1940 labour radicalism when lots moved to urban areas

- 1/2 million AA workers joined CIO union

Question 5

What dies Fairclough say about such broad definitions of CRM?

Answer 5

• in stressing history’s web they turn history into homogenised mush, without sharp breaks and transformations

Question 6

What does Hugh Murray say?

Answer 6

• Lpeople in the 1950-60 called it CRM so historians should not try to rename it

Question 7

McCoy and Reutten say

Answer 7

• View WW2 as crucial

1940s ushered in a new age of race relations because war years loosened grio of white racism

Question 8

What does Sitkoff and Finkle say about WW2 and 1940s

Answer 8

• Wasn’t a breakthrough
• Blacks didnt turn to A. Philip Randolphs programme of nonviolence - concessions like the Fair Employmen Practices Commission proved meaningless
• White supremacy snd segregation remained intact

Question 9

What did Fairclough say about emergence of mass nonviolent direct action?

Answer 9

• Signalled start of a new struggle

- 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott

Question 10

what did A Morrison say about the movement?

Answer 10

The boycotts represented genesis of a new movement indigenous to the south, based on independent local centres

Question 11

What doe some say about the problems of top down approach?

Answer 11

• By focussing on MLK biographies it generally obscures on the ground where the CRM derived its dynasism thus recen years see growth in local studies

Question 12

What does S Lawson say about Top Down?

Answer 12

• It’s right
• The federal government play an indispensable role in shaping fortunes of CR
• Its impossible to understand how blacks achieved first class citizenship rights in the South without knowing what national leaders did to influence events leading to equality
• Also emphasises SC - Brown v Board

Question 13

Whats C Payne view on Bottom up?

Answer 13

• It’s right
• analysis during WW2 - generation far more rigid and ordered = passed down then to Montgomery boycott
• Discussed grass roots organisations like SNNC (student nonviolent coordination committee) and CORE
• Course of movement was influenced by many people
• Argues it doesn’t dishonour MLK work but corrects history- Separate from Lawsons he clearly shows the importance of grassroots activists in CRM as without them there would be no national leadership