Freedom Road: "Hey Hillary, MLK Was a Talker AND a Doer"

"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

Saturday, February 16, 2008

"Hey Hillary, MLK Was a Talker AND a Doer"

One of the preeminent historians of African American experience, Harvard Sitkoff, has written an interesting short piece in response to Hillary Clinton's comments about MLK, LBJ and change. Here is one nugget:

MLK was never a mere dreamer, never only a talker. He stood up for what is right, repeatedly putting his body on the line, going to jail again and again, constantly facing death threats. By such actions, King and a multiplicity of black leaders and movements at the grass-roots level mobilized black Americans as they had never previously been mobilized to collectively bring about change. King, above all, stirred African Americans’ emotions, raised their hopes, convinced them to believe in their abilities to alter history, and got them to come together to press for racial justice in a manner that could not be, and was not, denied.

To read the whole essay, click here: Sitkoff, "MLK Was Both a Talker and a Doer, Hillary"

I think all of this points out the way Hillary Clinton fundamentally misapprehends how social change occurs. You can hear it in her speeches, not only as she belittles and denigrates Obama's oratorical powers, but also in her persistent references to herself and to the idea that what we need most is a strong, experienced, centralized, supreme power. It is the constant refrain of "I," "I," "I." By contrast, Obama stresses "we" in his rhetoric. He is clear to tell his audience that real change depends on a movement, depends on the mass participation of millions of ordinary citizens, that only "we" can do this together. I think Obama has the cart and horse in the right order on this one. If real, transformative change is going to happen, the broader political context has to be different and Obama gets that. Clearly, he is the only remaining candidate that not only can win, but who might also have some coattails. Hillary is too polarizing and divisive; she may win, but she won't have significant coattails. And, if Obama were to come into office with a nice, comfortable majority in Congress, and a new coaliton of voters, that may enable him to be more bold, active and progressive that if he or Hillary is elected with a tightly split legislature.

But, back to the inspirational/empty rhetoric part of all of this. I feel strongly that charisma and visionary language actually matters quite a bit from the president. Such rhetoric can be central to cultivating the type of political context necessary to make governmental change. Clearly, Obama's rhetoric is not hollow, since it has connected with millions upon millions of citizens and turned them on to the process.

There is something amazingly condescending (cynical?) from Clinton and her supporters when they argue that Obama is full of hot air ("all hat, no cattle") and/or that Obama supporters have been somehow hoodwinked, or brainwashed by his blinding charisma. Hear the arrogance of that view? I've met hundreds and hundreds of Obama supporters in multiple states and I have yet to meet a single one who is glassy-eyed and clueless. In fact, at the events I've been to, I've been impressed by how highly engaged and conscious Obama folks are.

Anyway, check out Sitkoff's brief essay and think more broadly about what each candidate is telling us in terms of what lies ahead and what our responsibility in all of this is?

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

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Saturday, February 16, 2008

"Hey Hillary, MLK Was a Talker AND a Doer"

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