Title: I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle
Author: Charles Payne
Year of Publication: 1995
Thesis:
The organizing tradition in Mississippi was invested in long-term strategies such as the development of leaders. Prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Freedom Summer, an underfunded population of local people made later forms of protest possible. By looking closely at the biographies of specific people, Payne shows how later activists stood on their shoulders and recovers them from the annals of history. In doing so, he argues that one cannot expect to understand how less than 2% of Black folks in Mississippi developed a strong voting base along with a more independent, empowered, and sustainable movement.
Time: 1930-1960s
Geography: Mississippi
Organization:
Acknowledgments
- Acknowledges many people, but especialy SNCC interviewees, noting that the interviewer was often being interviewed, as well. (xiv)
Introduction
- Fact: by 1960, less than 2% of Black folk were registered to vote. (1)
- Most students reaching out to urge folks to vote either in or aligned with SNCC (Ella Baker & 1960s founding) (2)
- Local folks not too excited about risking their lives and livelihoods to vote, but a great number did (2)
- Notes that an emphasis on top-down approach poorly explains how voting increased (3)
- Cites Garrow - most folks who did stuff, we'll never hear about (3)
- Borrows from Bob Moses bifurcated interpretation:
a) "large-scale, relatively short-term public events." (most popular in public memory - the King thing)
b) Ella Baker (& Septima Clark) highlight the long-term investment and training of leaders(4)
- Pre-1962 - Movement had few resources & FBI did not protect civil rights workers (4)
- 1964 Civil Rights Act & Freedom Summer - big shift - see ch.10 (4)
- Movement becomes sustainable in Greenwood by mid-1960s -local folks more empowered & more independent (4)
- Ends with decline and the invisibleness of the organizing tradition (4-5)
- Title comes from "This Little Life of Mine" (Otis Redding sings this, just saying)
One - Setting the Stage
- ARG: Describes both horror of the existing social & political order along with "systemic changes" that paved the way for later progress. (4)
Two - Testing the Limits, Black Activism in Postwar Mississippi
- ARG: Whatever was possible in the 60s was directly tied to actors who have been made invisible.
Three - Give Light and the People will Find a Way, The Roots of an Organizing Tradition
Four - Moving on Mississippi
Five - Greenwood, Building on the Past
Six - If you Don't Go, Don't Hinder Me, The Redefinition of Leadership
Seven - They Kept the story Before me - Families and Traditions
Eight - Slow and Respectful Work - Organizers and Organizing
Nine - A Woman's War
Ten - Transitions
Eleven - Carrying On, The Politics of Empowerment
Twelve - From SNCC to Slick, the Demoralization of the Movement
Thirteen - Mrs. Hamer is no Longer Relevant, The Loss of the Organizing Tradition
Fourteen - The Rough Draft of History
Epilogue
Bibliographic Essay: The Social Construction of History
Notes
Interviews
Index
Type:
Methods:
Overlapping chronological and thematic
Sources:
Oral history
Historiography: Dittmer
Keywords:
SNCC
COFO (Council of Federated Organizations)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"Part of the legacy of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark is a faith that ordinary people who learn to believe in themselves are capable of extraordinary acts, or better, of acts that seem extraordinary precisely because we have such an impoverished sense of the capabilities of ordinary people. If we are surprised at what these people accomplished, our surprise may be a commentary on the angle of vision from which we view them. That same angle of vision may make it difficult to see that of the gifts they brought to the making of the movement, courage may have been the least." (50
Notes: