Freedom Road: Merry Christmas!

"The Selma of the North": Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee

Between 1958 and 1970, a distinctive movement for racial justice emerged from unique circumstances in Milwaukee. A series of local leaders inspired growing numbers of people to participate in campaigns against employment and housing discrimination, segregated public schools, the membership of public officials in discriminatory organizations, welfare cuts, and police brutality.

The Milwaukee movement culminated in the dramatic—and sometimes violent—1967 open housing campaign. A white Catholic priest, James Groppi, led the NAACP Youth Council and Commandos in a militant struggle that lasted for 200 consecutive nights and provoked the ire of thousands of white residents. After working-class mobs attacked demonstrators, some called Milwaukee “the Selma of the North.” Others believed the housing campaign represented the last stand for a nonviolent, interracial, church-based movement.

Patrick Jones tells a powerful and dramatic story that is important for its insights into civil rights history: the debate over nonviolence and armed self-defense, the meaning of Black Power, the relationship between local and national movements, and the dynamic between southern and northern activism. Jones offers a valuable contribution to movement history in the urban North that also adds a vital piece to the national story.

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Blurbs:

Think you know the full story of the civil rights era? Patrick Jones's masterful study of the movement in Milwaukee will make you think again. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, The Selma of the North provides a devastating rebuttal of many of the conventional narratives of the civil rights movement. Here a vibrant nonviolent movement in the de-industrializing Midwest grows into a Black Power movement led by urban youth and a white Catholic priest who use confrontational direct action to lay bare the fissures of racial inequality in the 'liberal' North.
--Jeanne Theoharis, Brooklyn College, editor of Freedom North and Groundwork

A well-researched, well-written, and important history. Based on a rich array of sources, this book enhances our understanding of civil rights activism in the postwar urban North and establishes a useful foundation for the comparison of similar developments elsewhere in the country.
--Joe William Trotter, Jr., Carnegie Mellon University, author of Black Milwaukee

This book fills a serious gap in the literature of the civil rights revolution, joining studies on other cities in laying the groundwork on race and civil rights in the postwar urban North. Jones tells a good story, capturing events that might otherwise be lost to history.
--Arnold R. Hirsch, University of New Orleans, author of Making the Second Ghetto

The Selma of the North is an insightful and invigorating addition to the growing literature on black freedom struggles outside of the South. Jones's important and informative account writes Milwaukee back into the narrative of the civil rights-Black Power era and in the process expands our understanding of postwar America.
--Peniel E. Joseph, Brandeis University, author of Waiting Till the Midnight Hour

The Selma of the North is a riveting new story of the civil rights movement in America, a tale on par with Selma, Birmingham, and Montgomery in its power and importance. Jones's magisterial research and magnetic prose illuminate the untold story of the battle for the urban north in the 1960s, a battle that shows how race has always been the Achilles heel of white progressives. This story transcends easy dichotomies of black and white, North and South, radical and reformist. How did a group called 'the Commandos' define nonviolence? How did a white Catholic priest become a 'Black Power' leader? If this is not a saga for the age of Obama, I don't know what is.
--Timothy B. Tyson, Duke University, author of Radio Free Dixie and Blood Done Sign My Name

Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas!

In honor of the occassion, here are a few interesting Christmas-related posts:

Holiday Cheer 1: My friend Joe Germuska turned me on to the "Santacon" phenomenon, which is spreading across the land!

According to Wikipedia,

SantaCon, short for "Santa Convention," is a mass gathering of people dressed in their various interpretations of Santa Claus costumes (most, however, are traditional), and performing publicly on streets and in bars in cities around the world. The focus is on spontaneity, creativity, and the improvisational nature of human interaction while having a good time. Variously known in the U.S. as Naughty Santas, Cheapsuit Santas, Santarchy, Santa Rampage, the Red Menace and Santapalooza, SantaCon events are noted for cheerfully bawdy and harmless behavior, including the singing of naughty Christmas carols, and the giving of small gifts and free hugs to random strangers. Some participants see SantaCon as a postmodern revival of Saturnalia, while others see the event as a precursor of the flash mob.

In 1994, the Cacophony Society staged the first SantaCon in San Francisco. Influenced by the surrealist movement, Discordianism, and other subversive art currents, the Cacophonists decided to celebrate the Yule season in a distinctly anti-commercial manner, by mixing guerrilla street theatre, pranksterism, and public intoxication. In subsequent years, SantaCon evolved, spawning many different versions of the event throughout the world.

Here are some other links:
Wikipedia on Santacon
Chicago Santacon photos

Holiday Cheer 2: James Brown "Soulful Christmas"

Footage from a 1968 Boston live show spices up this holiday favorite...

Holiday Cheer 3: "Anarchists in the Aisles? Stores Provide a Stage"

The NYTimes has an interesting article about "shop-dropping" this holiday season. The author writes,

This is the season of frenetic shopping, but for a devious few people it’s also the season of spirited shopdropping.

Otherwise known as reverse shoplifting, shopdropping involves surreptitiously putting things in stores, rather than illegally taking them out, and the motivations vary.

Anti-consumerist artists slip replica products packaged with political messages onto shelves while religious proselytizers insert pamphlets between the pages of gay-and-lesbian readings at book stores.

Self-published authors sneak their works into the “new releases” section, while personal trainers put their business cards into weight-loss books, and aspiring professional photographers make homemade cards — their Web site address included, of course — and covertly plant them into stationery-store racks.

Holiday Cheer 4: Norad Tracks Santa Clause!

This one is an old favorite. NORAD, the North American Aerospace Command, has a great website that "tracks" Santa Clause's progress on Christmas as he flies through the skies delivering presents.

According to the website,

Santa maintains a huge list of children who have been good throughout the year. The list even includes addresses, ZIP codes and postal codes. The list, of course, gets bigger each year by virtue of the world's increasing population. This year's population right now is 6,634,570,959!

Santa has had to adapt over the years to having less and less time to deliver his toys. If one were to assume he works in the realm of standard time, as we know it, clearly he would have perhaps two to three ten-thousandths of a second to deliver his toys to each child's home he visits!

The fact that Santa Claus is more than 15 centuries old and does not appear to age is our biggest clue that he does not work within time, as we know it. His Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it could be that it lasts days, weeks or months in standard time. Santa would not want to rush the important job of bringing Christmas happiness to a child, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa somehow functions on a different time and space continuum.

If you have kids, this is a great thing to check out with them!

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"The Selma of the North": Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Merry Christmas!

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