The Birth of the Citizenship Schools: Entwining the Struggles for Literacy and Freedom

2004 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 388-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Levine
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Education Program ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The People ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Citizenship Schools

In a 1981 interview, civil rights leader Andrew Young commented, “If you look at the black elected officials and the people who are political leaders across the South now, it's full of people who had their first involvement in civil rights in the Citizenship Training Program.” Informally known as Citizenship Schools, this adult education program began in 1958 under the sponsorship of Tennessee's Highlander Folk School, which handed it over to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1961. By the time the project ended in 1970, approximately 2500 African Americans had taught these basic literacy and political education classes for tens of thousands of their neighbors. The program never had a high profile, but civil rights leaders and scholars assert that it helped to bring many people into the movement, cultivated grassroots leaders, and increased black participation in voting and other civic activities.

Dreams and Shadows

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvester A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Internal Security ◽  
Politics Of Race ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Radical Activism ◽  
Martin Luther King

This chapter explains how the FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. as an exceptional and uniquely dangerous threat to the nation’s internal security. The author demonstrates the numerous efforts by the bureau to oppose the influential activism of King and the organization he led, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The chapter explains the important shifts in American culture that pitted the more radical activism of civil rights leaders against an increasingly strident FBI that was determined to thwart law abiding activists who challenged the nation’s mainstream racial politics. The author argues that the pivotal issue behind the FBI’s repression of King was not personal antagonism between King and Hoover but the politics of race and repression.

Breaking White Supremacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Dorrien
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Martin Luther King

Breaking White Supremacy analyzes the twentieth-century heyday of the black social gospel and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. Asserting that Martin Luther King Jr. did not come from nowhere, it describes major figures who influenced King, offers a detailed analysis of King’s leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and his catalyzing and unifying role in the southern and northern Civil Rights Movements, and interprets the legacy of King and the black social gospel tradition.

Forced Confessions

2019 ◽  
pp. 58-78
Author(s):  
Silvan Niedermeier
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
High Profile ◽  
White Allies ◽  
Criminal Suspects ◽  
Bureaucratic State ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

This chapter studies two high-profile cases in which police officers used torture to extract confessions from black criminal suspects. In these cases, African Americans, aided by prominent white allies and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), appealed to the courts to protest acts of torture, contest forced confessions, and challenge legal discrimination. The chapter places these protests within the context of the “long Civil Rights movement” to illuminate the tensions between the demands of white supremacy and the demands of a “color-blind” law characteristic of the modern bureaucratic state.

The Fraternal Council of Negro Churches, 1934–1964

1990 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary R. Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
National Conference ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Religious Landscape

In the years since the civil rights and black power movements cooperative black religious organizations have become a familiar feature of the religious landscape in America. Among these interdenominational bodies, in addition to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, may be noted the now defunct National Conference of Black Churchmen, the Black Theology Project, Partners in Ecumenism, and the Congress of National Black Churches. Little noted, however, is a precursor of these organizations which functioned for two decades prior to the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.

Remembering Dorothy Cotton, 1930–2018

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Siegel
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Effect Change ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
The 1960S

Civil rights pioneer Dorothy Foreman Cotton passed away on June 10, 2018, in Ithaca, New York, at the age of eighty-eight. On August 11, 2018, a Saturday afternoon, around seven hundred community members, friends, and local and national leaders gathered at Cornell University’s Bailey Hall to celebrate her life. Cotton was the highest-ranking woman in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) throughout the 1960s. She devoted her life to liberation and social justice. Remembered by many as an iconic feminist and grassroots innovator, she led an extraordinary life that undoubtedly transformed the lives of African Americans fighting for full citizenship and justice. Cotton was critical in opposing economic and social regimes of power, but she also ushered in a new sense of individual and collective subjectivity through political participation and mobilization in southern Black communities. Throughout her life, she reminded ordinary people of their vast power to effect change and transform society.

“In Chains 400 Years … And Still in Chains in DC!” The 1966 Free DC Movement and the Challenges of Organizing in the City

2007 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE MADDISON
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Northern Cities ◽  
Local Movement ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
The City

In the summer of 1965 the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) toured possible locations for a campaign that would highlight the problems African Americans faced in Northern cities.1 Chicago was chosen, primarily due to the presence of an effective local movement.

FRAMING THE FIELD: THE CASE OF THE 1969 CHARLESTON HOSPITAL WORKERS' STRIKE*

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 417-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
William F. Danaher ◽  
Marc Dixon
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Hospital Workers ◽  
Medical College ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Multiple Actors

We investigate how union, employer and allied actors engage in framing contests and seek to gain the upper hand in a strike event by analyzing a historically significant labor and civil-rights struggle in the 1969 hospital workers' strike in Charleston, South Carolina against the Medical College of South Carolina (MCSC). Through an analysis of newspapers, interviews, and archival materials, we show how discursive tactics by multiple actors superseded worker messages over the 100-day event. Worker messages, dignity and union recognition, competed with their ally's, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), messages of poverty and civil rights as well as claims from MCSC. The workers' weakened position within this multi-actor field and limited salience of union claims served to gradually silence worker voices, shaping the protest campaign in important ways. Our findings underscore the importance of power and inequality in the framing of social conflict.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document