Freedom Road: The Missed Opportunity Debate

"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.

Buy it here!

Spread the word...

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

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Missed Opportunity Debate

Following the Cleveland debate the other night, the media bobble-heads are a-twitter about the Farrakhan question, Hillary's blame game, Russert's inane hypotheticals, health care mandates, etc. I would submit that these stories miss the real tragedy of that final debate. Here is the deal:

I grew up in Cleveland and am a proud Clevelander. Cleveland is in my blood. That written, Cleveland is one of the poorest cities in the country. A full one-third of the population lives in poverty. The sub-prime loan crisis has hit Cleveland's poor communities and communities of color harder than any other city in the nation. In fact, Cleveland has a a proud and distinguished black middle class community... but it has been ravaged by predatory corporate lenders who purposefully targeted communities of color and working-class communities for quick profits. Foreclosures in Cleveland have sky-rocketed. The American dream has turned into a nightmare for thousands of good, decent, hardworking residents. In short, what I am saying is that the debate in Cleveland could have been, and should have been, a show-case discussion of the ongoing urban crisis in America. Cleveland is ground zero for that crisis and it is the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about. We get distracted in cities like Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and elsewhere, by new ballparks and flashy downtown condos and restaurants, and forget that massive inequalities remain in each of those places. Instead of the same old questions that have been hashed and rehashed at 20 (yes, 20!) debates, instead of stupid gotcha questions, why not actually raise some vital and substantive new issues that speak to one of the biggest crises facing the nation? Why not ask the candidates to address the predatory subprime crisis? Why not ask them what they will do to revitalize communities like Cleveland where industry has left and one-third of the population is poor? Why not ask them what they will do about a public education system that is segregated? Why not ask what they might do to address police brutality in poor communities of color? Why not ask them ANYTHING about this crisis!!!???!!!??

This is, I think, the great failing of the debate the other night. More than Hillary's shrill tone. More than Russert's ridiculous hypotheticals. More than Obama's "Farrakhan problem." Shame on all of them for not speaking up while sitting at the epicenter of urban decay. This reveals something terrible about ourselves and our society... that we are willing to tolerate this urban crisis and the wide-spread human destruction that is its product.

This makes my heart very heavy... I love Cleveland, but it is dying.

Freedom Road

My Book:

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

Blurbs:

The Archive:

Visitors? (since 12/10/07)

Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Missed Opportunity Debate

No comments:

Post a Comment