Freedom Road: It's Getting Ugly Out There...

"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

Sunday, January 13, 2008

It's Getting Ugly Out There...

Looks like yet another Clinton campaign surrogate has smeared Obama. This time it was BET founder Robert Johnson who smeared him on the drug stuff and for being, well, hhmmmm... he laid down this weird Sidney Poitier stuff, so I guess he meant to call Obama an Uncle Tom. Man, this is really getting ugly...

Sad: Robert Johnson Smears Obama at Clinton Endorsement Event

Or, here: Clinton backer appears to raise Obama's drug use

The Right Hook: a bizarre-o Sidney Poitier Uncle Tom charge

“That kind of campaign behavior does not resonate with me, for a guy who says, ‘I want to be a reasonable, likable, Sidney Poitier ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.’ And I’m thinking, I’m thinking to myself, this ain’t a movie, Sidney. This is real life.”

The Left Hook: the drug smear

“And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book – when they have been involved."

So, I want to make sure I've got this straight. Hillary is on Meet the Press in the morning blathering about how it is not her campaign, but Obama's, that is playing the race card, how she is the victim of racial politics (despite 5 or 6 instances of campaign surrogates playing the race card). Then, later the same day, one of her surrogates in the battleground state of SC, where the African American vote will be decisive in a couple weeks, makes what can only be described as a complete and utter racial smear against Obama, no TWO of them. Uuuuhhhmmm... I, uh, think that, uh, maybe..., uh, suggests that... uh, the Clintons might, uh... be... playing ... the... race... card.

Look, one or two of these incidents might have been explained away as a rogue supporter who put their foot in their mouth, but now we are up to five or six or seven or something like that...

... If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

what do you think?

UPDATE: This is probably not helpful from the Obama camp:
Obama Staffer Plays Jay-Z Song at Event

Hey, Barack, DON'T TAKE THE BAIT!

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

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

It's Getting Ugly Out There...

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