Payne, Charles M. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 2007.

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:

Norrell, Robert J. Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee. 1st ed. New York: Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1985.

Title: Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee

Author: Robert J. Norrell

Year of Publication: 1985

Thesis:

Norrell argues that African Americans in Tuskegee in the 100-year period between 1870 and the 1970s demonstrated how political power could not engender economic power, even though he sees evidence of the reverse. Booker T. Washington's efforts to get Tuskegee Institute off the ground created an unstable peace built on white anxiety and violence in contrast to Black political acquiescence. As Black elites encroached into the political realm, whites responded with a combination of violence, repression, and concessions to keep Black populations subordinated but to keep them from leaving. Norrell offers excellent examples of how whites tried to exploit Black elites' favorable relationships with the Federal Government to further their own racially exclusive goals, such as the decision to build the Veterans Administration Hospital for Black veterans in Tuskegee and whites' failed attempt to hire only white clinical staff. Charles Gomillion features prominently as an integrationist as well as a stern advocate for justice, evidenced by his suit against gerrymandering. As elite African Americans continued to gain economic concessions in exchange for political ones (such as Black mayor Ford's support of Richard Nixon and George Wallace), a newer generation of African Americans sought to decenter integrationism as a goal and emphasize Black political power, which, according to Norrell led to white flight and did not lead to the wide economic gains sought.

Time: 1870s-1970s, more weight from 40s on

Geography: Tuskegee, Alabama

Organization:

Acknowledgments

Foreword

- Civil Rights Movement begins in 1870 (at least, the origins) 

1. Perfect Quiet, Peace, and Harmony

- This chapter describes what a paternalistic compromise looks like in the Jim Crow South, with education and economic advancement (for some African Americans) in exchange for the abdication of political power.  

- James Alston's house shot up, protected by freedmen; he is run out of town and his defenders jailed and put into convict leasing

- Whites' fear is strong - they burn out and shoot other Black folk (then act surprised when they want to leave)

- Uneasy peace rises as policy and legislation kick in (crop liens and convict leasing)

- Tuskegee Institute as a compromise on education but also as attempt to keep Black folk from emigrating

- Washington's speech the most powerful assuager of white fears

2. The Model Community

- Disfranchisement is huge (they force re-registration - Black voters go from 2k to 65)

- University creates outward appearance of harmony

- Educational disparities remain huge, regardless

- Poor Black sharecroppers forced to cash their federal aid checks and give to their landlords (at least one example of this).

3. Keep Everlastingly At It

- Focuses on Gomillion's story

4. The Voice of Jacob, the Hand of Esau

5. Something Good from Nazareth

6. More Ways Than One to Kill a Snake

7. Sop in your Own Damned Gravy

8. The Invasion of Injustice

9. Hardboy Prepares

10. The End and the Beginning

11. Let the Children Lead

12. The Grass Roots Take Hold

13. Civic Memory in Macon County

- See critique below

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Type:

Methods:

Sources:

Historiography:

Keywords:

Themes:

Critiques:

The last chapter is a catalogue of corruption and violence carried out by African Americans with little context, so even in Norrell's attempts to offer a balanced reading, the reader is left with an interesting early acknowledgment of the long Civil Rights Movement with an aftertaste that the Black Power Movement crushed these integrationist efforts, and therefore engendered missed opportunities.

Questions:

Quotes:

Notes:

Morris, Aldon D. The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press, 1986.

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.

Mendes, Gabriel N. Under the Strain of Color: Harlem’s Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Title:

Under the Strain of Color: Harlem's Lafargue Clinic and the Promise of an Antiracist Psychiatry

Author:

Gabriel N. Mendes

Year of Publication:

2015

Thesis:

Argues that Richard Wright and Frederic Wertham were among the first to claim that racism worsened Black folks' mental health and that the field of psychiatry was obliged to do something about it. Their position both as marginalized outsiders, as well as their relative fame fueled their ablity to develop creative solutions and keep the clinic running. The LaFargue Clinic represents Harlem as the epicenter for progressive reforms and a challenge to the "race-neutral" psychiatry developing. (9). Runs on volunteers & sliding scale for payment. "larger campaign for racial justice" (16)

Time:

1920s- (Cold-War Era) 

Geography:

Organization:

Acknowledgments

- Finishes acknowledgments with a map of "the Harlems" - Spanish (SW), Italian (E), and African American (NW)

Inroduction: A Deeper Science

- Brewer - killed wife, spent 19 years in jail, reads Wright's book & writes to him, Wright advocates on his behalf (Brewer became an artist). Gets out, joins Count Basie's orchestra, then murders a mother of two.

- Wright believed psychotherapy could reduce strain (4)

- In 1932, Wertham notes that "racism, violence, mental disorder are linked (5)

- Argues that therapeutic service should be located within the Black community & inexpensively (7)

- Shelton Hale Bishop - Reverend who provides the basement rooms

- Lafargue a social justice activist

- Mental health of individuals is important for the social order during this period (10)

- Shift from view of Black people as inherently inferior to their degradation. (10)

- Black migrants seen as a threat - concern over their being able to integrate socially (10)

- Rhetoric of difference couched in psychological terms in this period

- Shift in psychiatry from beyond the somatic means also a shift in gathering info about treatment to the environment/social milieu as well (12)

- Article looking at racism as a problem (Ray Cremin) in the military extended to general African American experience

- ***** Economic opportunity was thought to solve the problems of mental illness for African Americans, which meant little attention was developed toward serving their mental health needs. (13-14)

- Not attempting to "adjust" Black folk but to give them strength against the conditions of racism. (14)

- T.H. Marshall - civil, economic, social rights links with citizenship (15)

- Alondra Nelson - "citizenship contradiction." Rights recognized in law but daily experience does not reflect it. (15)

1. "This Burden of Consciousness": Richard Wright and the Psychology of Race Relations, 1927-1947

- Biographic of Richard Wright

- Wright as sociologist & interviewing Communists in Chicago

- Focuses on Wright's early work on anti-racism "The Conquest of Ourselves"


2. "Intangible Difficulties": Dr. Fredric Wertham and the Politics of Psychiatry in the Interwar Years

- Biographic of Wertham

3. "Between the Sewer and the Church": The Emergence of the Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic

- Sketch of Harlem

- Located in the basement of a Church

- Shows how social psychiatry in this context aimed to link mental health and social justice together (19)

4. Children and the Violence of Racism: The Lafargue Clinic, Comic Books, and the Case against School Segregation

- Psychiatry and NAACP join to create legal arguments against segregation

- Wertham argues that comic books also fed into racism & that it was bad for both Black and white children

Epilogue: "An Experiment in the Social Basis of Psychotherapy"

Notes

Index

Type:

Social/Intellectual History

Methods:

Sources:

Historiography:

"Moral treatment" from Summers - the individual

Dynamic psych - dealing w/underlying causes

Universalist psychology

Keywords:

- "Negro Problem - 10 - Pathologizing black people to explain, for one reason or another, their real and apparent inequality

Themes:

Cultural competency (Freudian) vs. personal histories that intesect class & race

Psychodynamic psychiatry (12)

"Psychodynamic psychiatry sought to redirect the study and treatment of mental health and illness from the primarily somatic or bio- logical orientation that marked psychiatry as a specialty within the field of medicine. A new generation of psychiatrists, fresh from their work in the war, envisioned the psychodynamic paradigm as capable of account- ing for multifarious sources of mental disorder, many of which exceeded the grasp of somatic psychiatry" (12)

Social Psychiatry

"“Social psychiatry,” Wertham declared, “affirms that in the historical development of society and its use or abuse of science, periods may occur where seeming adaptation becomes maladaptation; adjustment, maladjustment; normal- ity, a burden; vaunted health, insidious disease. In short, where the physi- cian may be sicker than his patient." (17)

Damage imagery

Critiques:


Questions:

Curious if I will find reference to these clinics in Black Panther Party literature

Quotes:

Notes:

Clinic runs from 1946-1958

LaFargue was Karl Marx's son-in-law

"Under the Strain of Color tells the story of how Richard Wright and Fredric Wertham, along with an interracial group of intellectuals, doc- tors, clergy, and artists, attempted to establish a progressive model of men- tal health care as an integral part of the struggle for racial equality in the United States in the early post–World War II era. And it reveals the La- fargue Clinic to be a unique prism through which to navigate the contours of race on the unsteady terrain of the midcentury U.S. urban North." (4)

On "The Negro Problem"

By the end of World War II, social scientific thought and research on African Ameri- cans focused not on the bioracial but on the psychological and cultural obstacles to full immersion, assimilation, and integration into American society." (11)

On Lafargue's aims:

"Yet they resisted the general aim of the behavioral sciences to help the putatively abnormal to adjust to the norms of society. Instead, they sought to develop psychiatric knowledge and therapy that might aid every- day people in confronting the social order of white supremacy and capitalist exploitation." (16)

Discussion here: https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCcynwmhWnF/?igshid=z5b262wa04z4

McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Title: Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow

Author: Neil R. McMillen

Year of Publication: 1989

Thesis:

For students looking into the nuance of structure and agency, this is one of the better books attempting to describe the imposition of violent white supremacy on African Americans in Mississippi and their push for autonomy and citizenship from Reconstruction to World War I.  McMillen takes more of a thematic approach, but describes the development of Mississippi's racial caste system and those who would oppose it in three general phases: Black republicanism culminating in a failed 1904 bus boycott, accommodationism a la Booker T. Washington, and a more militant stance heading into The Great Migration. The combinations of segregated and impoverished education, unevenly applied criminal law, sharecropping and debt peonage created a racial caste system that was leveraged by disfranchisement and backed by the constant threat of violence. Despite McMillen's claim that Black folk in Mississippi never mounted a "sustained" attack on white supremacy, he is careful about putting a close eye on ways African Americans resisted these impositions and carved space and meaning for themselves.

Time: 1890-1940

Geography: Mississippi

Organization:

List of Tables

Preface

- Struggle for autonomy and citizenship

- Top down & bottom-up approach (elements of "new" social history)

- Attempts to balance imposition and autonomy

- African Americans as both subjects and objects

- Topical vs. chronological

- WWI not as pivotal as one might imagine in Mississippi

PART I - The Black Place

CHAPTER 1 - Jim Crow and the Limits of Freedom, 1890-1940

- Jim Crow is strong even DURING Reconstruction

- White nostalgia, agricultural depression, fear of populism, ideas of Social Darwinism

- Segregation rampant (but Black servants & barbershops were acceptable)

- ***** Mississippi had fewer laws, not more

- MORE segregated housing in post-bellum vs. slavery

- Sexual relations between white men & Black women acceptable but not for Black men & white women

- Elite African Americans often white & Black heritage, with accompanying colorism in the Black community

- Jim Crow was mostly about behavior vs. space (and enforced by violence)

- No Foolish Consistency Here

- The Logical Extreme

- "Blood Will Tell"

- The Etiquette of Race

- The Instrument in Reserve


PART II - Separate and Unequal

CHAPTER 2 - The Politics of the Disfranchised

- Nothing new about "race neutral" language (43)

- White people delude themselves in thinking Black people did not want to vote (48)

- Theme here is blaming the victim

- Racism and racist violence lead to loss of vote and high profile jobs for African Americans (63)

- *****White supremacists actually prefer to have Republicans in office to demonize the party


- Legitimate Interlude

- "We Came Here to Exclude the Negro"

- My People Cannot Vote Down Here"

- Blacks and Tans

- Expecting Little, Getting Less


CHAPTER 3 - Education: The "Mere Faint Gesture"

- Main argument: Black people pay taxes and bet low-quality (or no) education. Without political aspirations, they are more easily disfranchised

- Of Burdens White and Black

- Professor Hopkins's Schools

- "Educate a Nigguh"

Higher Eudcation in the Emergency Period"


PART III - Working and Striving

CHAPTER 4 - Farmers without Land

- Rungs on the Ladder

- The New Servitude

- Outdoing of Ol' Mostah

- "Returning us to Slavery"

- Postscript to the Cotton Patch


CHAPTER 5 - Black Labor/Black Capital

- "N* Work"

- The Artisans

- The Professionals

- The Entrepreneurs

- The Mound Bayou Proposition

- Notes this as a failure of separation & "the group economy." I wonder if it is not because white businesses were supported by racist capitalists & a system that would help them succeed.

- Notes it is not only a small-town phenomenon, but also the issues of undercapitalization, racial targetting, economic dependency, etc.

- Severe class divisions between elite & poor Black folk (194)

- "racial self-doubt" (194) - internalized white supremacy/devaluing of African American products (and yet, who produced that stuff?)

- Epitaph for the Group Economy


PART IV - Under White Law

CHAPTER 6 - Jim Crow's Courts

- Trial by Ordeal

- "Negro Law"

- The Mob in the Court Room

- On Appeal: Between Caste and Law


CHAPTER 7 - Judge Lynch's Court

- White Death

- First on th eRoll

- "Negro Barbecues"

- Popular Justice

- "Unknown Causes"

- Going Underground

PART V - A Resistant Spirit

Chapter 8 - "Northboun'": Mississippi's Black Diaspora

- Prewar Patterns

- "Many Thousand Go"

- The Distant Magnet

- A Curse and a Blessing

- No Threat Intended

CHAPTER 9 - The Gathering Challenge

- Intimacy w/Black people did not mean knowledge of them by white people

- Reform efforts but no "sustained" resistance

- This goes through the litany of attempts to increase autonomy & citizenship

- Challenge to segregated trains results in extention of this model to all social arenas

- On railroads - "Whatever their strategies, blacks failed to win meaningful concessions." (293)

- Strong representation by Black folks in military attributed to drive for citizenship (303)

- Backlash against Black servicemen precedes end of war (303-4)

- "Quiet reformers" - emphasizes role of women-organized groups  - plan to build school for blind African American children, for example (308-309)

- NAACP has plenty of trouble gaining traction - this reminds me of Anne Moody's story & describing her parents' generation vs. hers.

- Behind the Mask

- Feasible Limits

- Dark Journey: Stage One

- New Realities: Stage Two

- The Resistant Spirit: Stage Three

- The Impending Revolution

Notes

Index

Jim Crow's Likeness: A Photo Essay, following p.194

Type:

Social history

Methods:

- Organized by topic

- Describes development of racial caste system and response to it

Sources:

WPA interviews, newspapers, legal documents

Historiography:

Keywords:

- The new servitude (123)

- "blue vein" (22) - Black folks with higher social standing 

Themes: Double consciousness & connection to hegemony

Critiques:

"Isolated lynching." (29) - is there such a thing?

Questions:

Quotes:

"Although race loyalty no doubt influenced the buying habits of many, the fact remains that impoverished field hands could not afford to pay a premium for the satisfaction of trading with their own kind." (192) - said another way, they could only afford to pay the subsidized prices established by white vendors with usurious borrowing rates... (see p.193)

Notes:

Domestic wages same in 1865 as in 1940 (see photo essay w/laundresses carrying laundry)