Freedom Road: Paul Fusco: RFK's Funeral Train

"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

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Paul Fusco: RFK's Funeral Train

After Robert Kennedy's assassination, his body crossed the country by train. All along the way, people flocked to the tracks to pay their last respects to the fallen leader. They came in throngs, they came in groups of one, two and seven. They were white and black and brown. They were poor and middle class. They were Democrats and Republicans.

Photographer Paul Fusco was there and captured some of those who came to bid good-night to RFK. The M + B Gallery is currently showing some of Fusco's images. Here is how they introduce the exhibit:

M+B is pleased to announce the exhibition PAUL FUSCO: RFK FUNERAL TRAIN. The opening will coincide with the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. On a Saturday afternoon on June 5, 1968, Magnum photographer Paul Fusco accompanied the body of Robert F. Kennedy as it made its way from New York City to its final resting place in Arlington Cemetery, near Washington, D.C. Transported by train, the coffin was placed in the last of twenty-two cars and elevated so that it was visible through the large observation windows. However, it was what lay outside the train that interested Fusco most: the track-side mourners who--silent, curious and patient--waited to pay their respects.

"They were mostly ordinary Americans: young parents, retirees, nuns, men in suits, teenagers in shorts. Some waved happily. Others wailed in grief. Some stood quietly, hand to heart. Others snapped pictures. Some looked plainly curious. Others hoisted placards of farewell. Some brought flowers, many only themselves. Boy Scouts waved the Stars and Stripes. A woman knelt, her hands touching in prayer." (Margarett Loke, New York Times)

A uniquely profound record, RFK FUNERAL TRAIN is an oblique chronicle of the tragedy and trauma of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination. In tribute to RFK's raw empathy and his determination to make lives better across the social spectrum, hundreds of thousands of people stood patiently in the searing heat to pay their respects. It was one of those rare instance during the Civil Rights era that showed a nation coming together, when both black and white shared a respect for a leader whom they believed could have healed the country's wounds.

In vivid color, Fusco's study provides a unique exploration of a nation coming to terms with the loss of a president who never was. It presents a snapshot of a broad range of American citizens and conveys the depth of civic feeling engendered by the tragedy. With their strange blend of valediction and voyeurism, these pictures capture a decisive moment in American history, pictures in which the subject is forcibly absent. In an equally profound way, RFK FUNERAL TRAIN offers a salient and instructive contrast to the diminishing levels of affection that the public holds towards the political classes of today.

Paul Fusco was born in Leominster, Massachusetts in 1930. He received his B.F.A. in photojournalism from Ohio University and went directly to work for Look magazine as a staff photographer and traveled extensively in South East Asia, Mexico, India, Europe and Russia. In 1974 he joined Magnum Photos. His work has appeared in many domestic and international publications such as Life, Time, Newsweek, The Sunday Times and Paris Match. He has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Newseum, New York and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C. RFK Funeral Train was published by Umbrage Editions in 2001, with an introduction by Norman Mailer. Most recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York acquired six of his photographs from this series.

Here are a few for your consideration: