Title: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change
Author: Aldon D. Morris
Year of Publication: 1984
Thesis:
The origin of protest is oppression, and oppression being ever present means protest is, as well. Internal organization among Black people proved central to the ten-year Modern Civil Rights Movement, which combined legal strategies with mass protest. (xi) Takes an "indigenous" perspective, recognizing the church, as well as several local movement centers and "halfway houses": "SCLC," NAACP, CORE, SNCC, HFS, SDEF, and FOR." (xiii) Through these case studies in a ten-year period (1953-1963), Dr. Morris is able to demonstrate the origins of the movement while balancing the framework to use "bottom-up" strategies. (vi) His work also argues decisively against collective behavior theory, especially noting the planned and organized work done in a creative way that circumvents power structures designed to mitigate their efforts. Policy changes in response to indigenous efforts happen voluntarily or involuntarily, but they both rely on the work of activists to make it happen. (286)
Time: 1953-1963
Geography: U.S.
Organization:
Preface
- Morris trained in sociology
- Deal with both southern & northern forms of racism
- Compares racial apartheid in South Africa to 1950s U.S., and specifies on specific types of racial violence, esp. murder of Emmett Till & oblique reference to pre-dawn murders of BPP leaders in Chicago, 1968 (Confirm Fred Hampton assassination date (1969?))
Introduction
- Acknowledges that protest is ever-present in African American history
- Begins with Baton Rouge, LA bus boycott (1953) (ix)
- Argues there is a "protest community" that transfers knowledge from one generation to the next (x)
- Argues movement originated in the South (xi)
- Argues that Modern CRM is distinctive by pointing out three factors: how far it spread, how long it was sustained, and the use of nonviolent, direct action as a mass method. (xi)
- The SCLC functions as a good example of the connection between "indigenous church" and the movement because of its decentralized nature. (xiii)
- Here Morris intersects with Carson on the movement. I need to look back and see whether Carson leans toward spontaneity. It seems like he does, as opposed to Morris, who seems to find it rooted in connection (xiii). This is interesting - from a rank and file perspective joining SNCC, does it change the way we view an organization's history?
- Both music and church-inspired oratory fueled the energy for the movement. (xiii)
1. Domination, Church, and the NAACP
- Economic, political, and personal (tripartite system of racial domination)
- Segregation also governed behavior.
- Laws and state all supported domination - poor Black folks could be sued for strikebreaking (3)
- Forced segregation led to cross-class cooperation in the Black community (4)
- Black churches did what the white community/state did not in terms of providing social, political, & economic outlets (5)
- Connection between the Great Migration and development of urban churches (5)
- Argues church is a "convenient safety valve for the emotional release of certain dangerous tensions." (7)
- Explains why charisma and church leadership went hand-in-hand (what creates charisma is their relative experience). (8)
- Church members had a democratic process. (10)
- Groups of ministers made powerful alliances (11)
- Whites made overtures to the Black community through churches (12)
- NAACP Northern, interracial, educated professionals
- Organized from the outside, not from within the Black community (13)
- Main thrust is legal & propaganda against racism (they felt this type of suasion would work - *** Does this come from a positive working relationship between certain Black and white folk? (13)
2. Beginnings and Confrontations
- Bus commpanies - 2/3 revenue from Black passengers
- Bus drivers strike to maintain segregated buses (18)
- 1953 - Black folks organize a bus boycott
- Jemison - economically independent, well-integrated, and not tied up in local drama (21)
- United Defense League (UDL) organizes secular and sectarian groups for boycott. **importantly protects against factionism created by white supremacist interference (22)
- NAACP - asault by white supremacists - want member roles published. They have injunctions against operating (LA, AL, TX) (31)
- AK - can't employ members of the NAAC (32)
- Local chapters are church led, vs. national led more bureaucratically; can't respond quickly, creatively, or experimentationally as a rule, which leads to tensions (34-35)
3. Movement Centers: MIA, ICC, and ACHMR
- Local movement centers carried stronger appeal because decision-making was localized, they offered an emotional appeal, they could endorse mass action, and they weren't tied up in bureaucratic issues, and the need for charismatic leaders was secondary to the work. They were also financed through Black churches and not white people's contributions.
- MIA - Montgomery Improvement Association
- ICC - Inter Civic Council
- ACMHR - Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights
- Questions the notion of a "black middle/upper class" during this period. (41)
- Much factionalism between groups (42)
- Therefore need guiding organization to "cope with crises, direct mass insurgency, and unify the entire community." Much crossover into overarching leadership from smaller organizations (43)
- King is a good choice b/c he hadn't been courted by the white power structure & was new & not involved in the factionalim (44)
- In the local orgs, legal work became a supplement to boycotts and other forms of nonviolent direct action (48)
- Boycotts disrupt; whites with Black domestic workers threaten reprisals (49)
- NAACP vs. local - gradual and step-by-step vs. immediate (50)
- Parks' arrest - triggers mass movement because she is well-connected (52)
- Colvin mentioned on p.53
- Weber's theory of movement contested by Montgomery because it didn't rely on a charismatic leader (54)
- Finances actually come in from various sources, including white donors (for the MIA) (57)
- Tallahassee boycott begins after Montgomery (64)
4. The SCLC: The Decentralized Political Arm of the Black Church
- The SCLC "was the force that developed the infrastructure of the civil rights movement and that it functioned as the decentralized arm of the black church." (77)
- SCLC draws on church for leadership, charisma, mass base of support, social resources, readiness to engage in acts of civil disobedience.
- Dense populations easier to organize; rural more spread out & terrorism is spread out.
- Tied to international politics
- Indigenous movement in the leadership
- Buses - economic survival vs. moral outrage
5. The SCLC's Crusade for Citizenship
- Movement centers often reach for attainable goals by putting pressure on power centers, though their success should not be measured with the success of that narrow rubric (100)
- This is precisely how the SCLC voter registration campaign should be interpreted; it increased the power and number of other movement centers (100)
- Voting seen as critical by all (101)
- Personnel and Administration:
-- Ella Baker's leadership roles (she gains much from NAACP prior to this) (103)
- Baker's core beliefs: 1) that charismatic leadership should be avoided (104)
- 2) that personnel should have job descriptions and expectations of their labor (104)
- Threat of violence is high (105)
- "New Negro" concept - to educate and empower African Americans as voters (106)
- Church and existing orgs as central to the mass movement (108-9)
- Citizenship schools (114)
- Baker, in contrast to other SCLC leadership - works on developing local vs. national leaders (115)
- SCLC perceived as a threat by NAACP (115)
- Funding is at issue - raised outside of South in Northern Black churches. (117)
- SCLC's Crusade never developed into a mass movement because the organization was still building internally in terms of finances, and training (119)
6. Organizational Relationships: The SCLC, the NAACP, and CORE
SCLC--NAACP
- Much overlap in membership and even leadership (120)
- NAACP upper leadership clearly sees SCLC development as a threat (specifically a financial threat) and even honorary invitees politely refuse (122)
- Also a political threat over direction (legal vs. nonviolent direct action)
- NAACP not monolith, so many from within disagree on approach (especially women) (124)
- "The discussion so far has shown how the emergence of the SCLC threatened the NAACPs leadership structure, financial base, legal strategy, and monopolistic status as the black civil rights organization." (125)
- And NAACP folks disseminated negative information about SCLC (125)
- SCLC responds by speaking well of NAACP & shared fundraising, which helped relations (127)
SCLC--CORE--NAACP
- CORE barely known and primiarly a northern, intellectual group. (129)
- "The overriding goal of CORE members was to demonstrate that large social problems could be solved through nonviolent means." (129)
- Very attractive to middle-class whites precisely because of that (130)
- CORE emphasizes integration and therefore pulls Black folk out of communities in order to collaborate (131)
- Attacks on NAACP actually serve to liberate members to join other groups & focus on nonviolent direct action strategies (133)
- Primary funding is middle-class white people (135)
- CORE shifts to work in the South, pairing with NAACP and black churches vs. with white groups (138)
7. Movement Halfway Houses
Examples (139):
- American Friends Service Committee
- Fellowship of Reconciliation
- War Resisters League
- Mass movements can help organizations like this achieve larger recognition (140)
- Exchange of skills and training is also made possible (140)
Benefits of Movement Halfway Houses:
- Training in nonviolent direct action
- Educational training
- publicizing political action locally
Highlander Folk School - important roles:
- Brings black leadership together
- Models potential for future
- Develops mass education program
- Modeled after schools in Denmark
- "The basic philosophy of Highlander was the idea that oppressed people know the answers to their own problems and the 'teacher's job is to get them talking about those problems, to raise and sharpen questions, and to trust people to come up with the answers.'" (142)
Model:
1) Experiential education
2) Solutions embedded in community knowledge of oppression
3) People-centered & generated curriculum
4) "The task of changing society rested on the shoulders of the oppressed." (143)
- Heavily surveilled, of course (143)
- Appeal to working class whites, re: class unsuccessful (144)
- HFS brings potential leaders together to collaborate, and they develop ways to allow everyone a chance to speak & share knowledge (145)
- Idea percolates that (by Horton) Black folk would have to find ways to force white people to respect them "the burden and the responsibility is on the whites, but the burden of change is on the blacks." (146)
- See: Septima Clark
- Literacy programs designed to offer dignity to adult learners (ex: small desks, irrelevant material, etc.) (150-151)
- Hired nonteachers (they thought teachers had too much to be trained out of them to teach properly) (152)
- Also had to be Black teachers (153)
- Seen as less threatening to local whites because they were not the NAACP, though they were labeled as Communists. (155-6)
FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation)
- Origins in 1914 England - pacifist org w/support from Farmer, Rustin, Randolph (157)
1) Helps develop CORE (it's essentially its predecessor?)
2) Helps promote nonviolent protest to Black community
3) Coordinates information about white community during MIA/bus boycotts
4) Dispenses leaders to work with MIA
5) Provides literature & film (157)
- Important: Nonviolent philosophy initially not a thing in the Black community, even a little bit (158)
- King taps FOR & ends up changing his own philosophy there (according to Morris)
- Reverend Smiley - white reverend thought of as "a man of struggle" vs. a "white man" whose job it was to spend 15min at the outset of each meeting to discuss the principles of nonviolence (160)
- They did trainings (162)
- Smiley acts as spy & transmits info from the KKK & White Citizen's Council (162)
- Movement Halfway Houses function sometimes as information depots for how-to on strategy (162)
- Cartoon featuring King designed to promote nonviolent strategy (166)
Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF)
- Offspring of the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW)
- - Goal: antipoverty, pro labor, antiracism, antisegregation, pro voting rights (167)
- Began and ended as an interracial organization (168)
- SCEF useful for communicating what is going on in the South & for attracting white people to join the movement." (172)
8. Internal Organization and Direct Action
Focuses on movements in Nashville, Petersburg (VA) and Shreveport. Moves from SCLC developments to local, then national sit-ins. (174)
- Nashville - NCLC fundraising, training leaders, promoting shift in rhetoric in the church (sinful conditions and to raise their own money to protest) (178)
- Sponteneity as an outward strategy (inward planning) (180) UCMI - United Christian Movement
9. 1960: Origins of a Decade of Disruption
10. Birmingham: A Planned Exercise in Mass Disruption
11. Theoretical Overview and Conclusions
Notes
Appendix A - Data and Methods
Appendix B - List of Persons Interviewed
Appendix C - Sample Interview Questionnaire
Appendix D - Sample Fundraising Statements
Bibliography
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Interviews (both leaders and rank and file), internal documents.
Historiography:
Morris sees the long durée, but marks the Modern CRM as distinct by pointing out three factors: how far it spread, how long it was sustained, and the use of nonviolent, direct action as a mass method. (xi)
Keywords:
Local movement center - "exists in a subordinate community when that community has developed an interrelated set of protest leaders, organizations, and followers who collectively define the common ends of the group, devise necessary tactics and strategies along with traiing for their implementation, and engage in actions designed to attain the goals of the group." (40)
Movement Halfway House - "...an established group or organization that is only partially integrated into the larger society because its participants are actively involved in efforts to bring about a desired change in society." Also lacking a mass base & generally systems for PR, etc. (139)
On nonviolent strategy:
"The question, then, is: How did Southern black Americans suddenly become nonviolent when the civil rights movement unfolded? The answer, of course, is that they did not. Rather, through continuous non-violent workshops and constant appeals to the nonviolent tradition rooted in the black church and in the life of Jesus, blacks were persuaded to accept nonviolence as a tactic to reach a specified goal. It was a remarkable feat, and FOR had an important hand in the process." (158)
On threat to a system engendered and supported by slavery and oppression:
"The facts of life are that this society that we happen to live in was built on lsavery basically--and the slavery of blacks. This si built into the very structure of it. Therefore, it's just natural that when black people move to change this, it shakes up the whole society, you see. It's like the foundation stone of the building shifts, and the whole structure shakes. . . that ought to be very obvious, but sometimes it isn't. But once people understand that, they understand a lot of other things, too." - interview with Anne Braden (168-9)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
Notes:
This book was his dissertation.
People to pay attention to:
- James Farmer
- Bayard Rustin
- E.D. Nixon
Research Questions: (quoted directly from p.xii)
- What were the basic social dynamics of the modern civil rights movement that made it a force to be reckoned with?
- Did the major events and confrontations of the movement arise from spontaneous explosions, or were they they products of skillfully organized efforts and preexisting institutions?
- How was the movement financed and sustained?
- What were the basic strategies and tactics of the movement?
- Were they used effectively against the opposition?
Review for Coursework - submitted 1/9/2018
As one might imagine from the title of his monograph, sociologist Aldon D. Morris uses the records of various organizations and personal interviews to establish the social and institutional origins for the modern Civil Rights Movement. Additionally, he thoroughly interrogates the notion that African Americans sat idly by waiting for a savior before taking action. However, the social, political, and legal pressure applied was not the spontaneous eruption of misplaced black anger that has become a popular trope (among other significant misconceptions) about the origins of the Civil Rights Movement. In fact, he argues, that it was precisely timed, skillful organization that helped gather the movement, spread its message, increase its followers, and ensure its longevity even in the face of the most abhorrent violence.[1]
Morris seems to have answered the call of Robert Harris, who two years prior to Origins, published an article lamenting the wasted time African American historians had spent correcting “the errors, omissions, and distortions that had been generated about black people.”[2] He called for African American history to conduct itself “with black people as its primary focus to reveal their thought and activities over time and place.”[3] While not a strictly historical work, one of Harris’s major theoretical influences is an “indigenous perspective,” which assumes that “mass protest is a product of the organizing efforts of activist functioning through a well-developed indigenous base.”[4] Throughout his book, Morris is dedicated to this principle.
In the beginning of Origins, Morris argues that oppression is the root of protest.[5] In his first chapter, he sets in motion another theoretical paradigm aiming to reveal the economic, political, and personal—what he calls the “tripartite system of racial domination.”[6] Relief from this system was often found in the Black church, an organization that not only psychologically affirmed Black people’s humanity and dignity, but it also served as a social safety net and a site of training and resistance. This is where the reader expects a common presentation of a church-trained Civil Rights leader. However, each chapter offers a new way of thinking. In this case, his results put into question Max Weber’s popular position that charismatic leaders develop outside of institutions, showing in the Civil Rights Movement, leaders developed inside Black, institutions, particularly, but not limited to, the church. Additionally, in comparing the church’s role and efficacy alongside organizations such as the NAACP, he demonstrates how a large, bureaucratic organization with mixed interests cannot respond with the same level of intensity, flexibility, and creativity as the church.
Morris further develops this line of thinking in subsequent chapters, showing how as a host of legal quagmires, terroristic threats, and closing of offices resulted in gargantuan losses in membership and legitimacy in the South, that African American churches filled the void and funneled their leadership into decentralized organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Providing not only leadership, but organizing people and training them to commit acts of civil disobedience are also part and parcel. Most surprising is his discussion of the appearance of spontaneity. In pointing out the dangers associated with large organizations such as the NAACP that are made targets, he demonstrates the strengths of marches that appear spontaneous. First, opposition can’t be organized quickly, and second, “mass activities are less open to charges of conspiracy.”[7] He does not, however, explore the double-edged sword of spontaneity that has been used against Blacks, which feeds into existing racist tropes about their intelligence and leadership skills.
Morris’s use of the indigenous perspective effectively argues against the idea that outside elites should be credited with an undue role in the successes of the Civil Rights Movement.[8] In exploring case study after case study, he demonstrates how “local movement centers” and their coordination were instrumental in the Civil Rights Movement, and that the key to their success was a deep level of organization based in Black communities.
Morris’s Origins would be a boon to any student of sociology. However, its structure and format yield more possibilities. By introducing chapters with a substantive themes and theoretical angles within historical contexts, Origins will appeal to students of U.S. History, African American History, and interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies. At the undergraduate level, the short chapters can be used as background information to support lectures, and as a graduate text, encourage both broad and deep coverage when paired with other historical works. For any reader seeking to lift the thick, watered-down veil lain over the Civil Rights Movement by common and sensational stories, this work should occupy a prominent place on the shelf.
[1] Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1986): xii.
[2] Robert L. Harris, “Coming of Age : The Transformation of Afro-American Historiography,” The Journal of Negro HIstory 67 (1982): 107.
[3] Ibid., 118.
[4] Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, xii.
[5] Ibid., ix.
[6] Ibid, 1.
[7] Ibid, 75.
[8] Ibid, 280.