Direct Action and the Search for “Freedom of Movement”

2019 ◽  
pp. 126-167
Author(s):  
Brandon K. Winford
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Black Business ◽  
Alternative Tactics ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
Generational Shift ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 4 examines Wheeler’s activism during the direct-action phase of the civil rights movement. It pushes us to consider how a black businessman in Wheeler’s position could serve not as an obstacle to but as a steadfast advocate of alternative tactics during the 1960s. Despite the emergence of student-centered leadership with the 1960 sit-in movement, Wheeler did not take a sidelines position. Instead, he continued to operate behind the scenes while publicly and privately lending his support to student activists. Wheeler had a reputation for always being ahead of his time, and white leaders considered him to be a radical. His acceptance of young activists and his integrationist views represented a unique departure from many of his black business contemporaries. I argue that while direct action represented a shift away from strict reliance on legal tactics, as well as a generational shift in leadership, Wheeler recognized that ongoing civil disobedience meant that he was in a much better position than ever before to fulfill the ideals of New South prosperity through increased involvement in reform and policymaking at the local, state, and national levels.

“People Crushed by Law Have No Hopes but from Power”: Free Speech and Protest in the 1940s

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-203
Author(s):  
Catherine L. Fisk
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Fair Employment ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
Free Speech Rights

In a trio of cases handed down on the same day in 1950, the Supreme Court denied constitutional free speech protection to civil rights picketing and labor picketing. The civil rights case, Hughes v. Superior Court, has often been portrayed as an early test case about affirmative action, but it originated in repression of an alliance of radical labor and civil rights activists exasperated by the legislature's repeated failure to enact fair employment law. Seeking a people's law like the labor general strikers and sit-downers of the 1930s and the civil rights sit-inners of the 1960s, they insisted that the true meaning of free speech was the right to speak truth to power. Courts and Congress forced the labor movement to abandon direct action even as it became the defining feature of the civil rights movement. The free speech rights consciousness they invoked challenged the prevailing conservative conception of rights and law. Direct action was a form of legal argument, a subaltern law of solidarity. It was not, as civil rights protest is often portrayed, a form of civil disobedience. What happened during and after the case reveals how the subaltern law and formal law labor and civil rights began to diverge, along with the legal histories of the movements.

The Civil Rights Movement. Million Man March. Black Lives Matter

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Harris
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The United States ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Million Man March ◽  
The 1960S

The author discusses three historical civil rights movements in the United States—Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; the Million Man March; and the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM). The author compares and contrasts each movement and event from his perspective as a participant in each and identifies similarities and differences among them. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was born out of a desire and need to end legalized segregation, better known as Jim Crowism, in the south. Strategies included direct action, passive resistance, and redress of grievances through the judicial system. The Million Man March, which occurred in 1995 in Washington D.C., brought together more than a million Black men from across the United States. Moreover, it was an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s. Whereas the latter was established as a response to legalized racial segregation in the south, the former was designed to instill a sense of responsibility and accountability among Black men as leaders in their communities. In addition, the Million Man March attempted to bring greater awareness of the unkept promise of racial equality. The BLM Movement provided an opportunity for multiple generations from multiple ethnic, cultural, and racial groups to coalesce around the issue of police brutality. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2013 and continuing to the present time, the BLM platform has become the principal venue through which outrage is expressed over the deaths of innocent, unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement and White vigilantes.

Black Power in Philadelphia: Selective Patronage and the Effectiveness of Direct Action Protest

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Gammage
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Black Power during the 1960s is a shift in direct action protest with its aim at procuring power (economic, political, educational, etc.). The manifestation of Black Power in Philadelphia in the late 1960s provides us an elaborate model of direct action protest that included central components of the African American community. Moreover, the selective patronage movement successfully maintained organization and momentum without the prototypical one leader model that was prominent in the civil rights movement that preceded it. Much like the Black Lives Matter movement, the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia drew on the national outcry for racial justice but largely built the core of its strength on local networks. This article explores the history of the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia during the early 1960s. Next, it assesses the strengths and weakness of the movement. Lastly, it provides recommendations for future movements aimed at economic development.

Civil Rights and Battered Bodies

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Nonviolent Resistance ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
Nonviolent Direct Action ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines the publication of images depicting violence against people engaged in acts of nonviolent resistance, suggesting that these acts are deliberately choreographed dramatizations of racial injustice. It links the overarching goals of the civil rights movement to the enduring struggle for black humanity in America by focusing on the violence encountered during nonviolent actions and the aesthetics of their visual documentation through photography and documentary footage. The chapter highlights the strategy of nonviolent direct action that was taken up during the freedom rides, lunch-counter integrations, and marches of the 1960s as stark illustrations of the infringements upon black humanity and freedom of expression endured and indeed endorsed in the southern United States.

Disobedience In Black

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Juliet Hooker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
American Political Thought ◽  
Protest Movements ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
The Us ◽  
The 1960S

Philosophical and political questions about the legitimacy of uncivil disobedience have been a core preoccupation of African American political thought since its inception. Additionally, a systematic misreading of black protest movements, particularly the US Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, has been a fundamental referent for philosophical defenses of a right to civil disobedience. This essay takes Candice Delmas’s defense of uncivil disobedience as a point of departure to reflect on how African American political thought challenges dominant liberal understandings of dissent, and to consider the conceptions of political obligation that should accompany accounts of principled lawbreaking.

Seeing Like a White State

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-52
Author(s):  
Erin R. Pineda
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
The Political ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Racial Injustice ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter explores the political formation of the intertwined narratives about civil disobedience and the civil rights movement. Detailing their relationship to the 1960s push for “law and order,” it traces the significant ways that this context shaped the conceptualization of civil disobedience as a means of strengthening already extant constitutional principles. Theorists like John Rawls saw civil disobedience from the perspective of a white state: taking for granted the legitimacy of the constitutional order, assuming as primary the ends of constitutional integrity and stability, and figuring the problem of racial injustice as limited, exceptional, and all-but-already solved. Such a stance takes the state’s perspective by theorizing within the bounds of a presupposed legitimacy, prioritizing stability and maintenance of an existing system. This chapter shows how such a perspective delivers standards of judgment that bolster rather than undermine white supremacy.

Becoming the Rolling Quads: Disability Politics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s

2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scot Danforth
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
University Of California ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
Disability Rights ◽  
California Department ◽  
Student Activists ◽  
The University

Historical analyses of 1960s university campus activism have focused on activities related to the civil rights movement, Free Speech Movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. This study supplements the historiography of civil disobedience and political activity on college campuses during that tumultuous era with an account of the initiation of the disability rights movement with the Rolling Quads, a group of disabled student activists at the University of California, Berkeley. This small group, with little political experience and limited connections to campus and community activists, organized to combat the paternalistic managerial practices of the university and the California Department of Rehabilitation. Drawing from the philosophy and strategies of the seething political culture of 1969 Berkeley, the Rolling Quads formed an activist cell that expanded within less than a decade into the most influential disability rights organization in the country.

Women’s Activism in the Modern Movement for Black Liberation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aisha A. Upton ◽  
Joyce M. Bell
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Modern Movement

This chapter examines women’s activism in the modern movement for Black liberation. It examines women’s roles across three phases of mobilization. Starting with an exploration of women’s participation in the direct action phase of the U.S. civil rights movement (1954–1966), the chapter discusses the key roles that women played in the fight for legal equality for African Americans. Next it examines women’s central role in the Black Power movement of 1966–1974. The authors argue that Black women found new roles in new struggles during this period. The chapter ends with a look at the rise of radical Black feminism between 1974 and 1980, examining the codification of intersectional politics and discussing the continuation of issues of race, privilege, and diversity in contemporary feminism.

Racial Realities

2020 ◽  
pp. 9-24
Author(s):  
Natsu Taylor Saito
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Structural Change ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
American Indian Movement ◽  
The 1960S

In the 1960s, global decolonization and the civil rights movement inspired hope for structural change in the United States, but more than fifty years later, racial disparities in income and wealth, education, employment, health, housing, and incarceration remain entrenched. In addition, we have seen a resurgence of overt White supremacy following the election of President Trump. This chapter considers the potential of movements like Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock water protectors in light of the experiences of the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement, and other efforts at community empowerment in the “long sixties.”

Introduction

Troublemakers ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Kathryn Schumaker
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Chicano Movement ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introductionexplains how and why student protest became common in the United States in the late 1960s and places these protests in the context of shifts in the history of education and in broader social movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano Movement, and black power activism. The introduction also situates students’ rights within the context of children’s rights more broadly, explaining the legal principles that justified age discrimination and excluded children and students from the basic protections of American constitutional law. The introduction identifies the two decades between the 1960s and 1980s as a constitutional moment that revolutionized the relationship of students to the state. It also connects students’ rights litigation to the issue of school desegregation and the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education.

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