Freedom Road: The Most Challenging Question for Palin and Biden

"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

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

The Most Challenging Question for Palin and Biden

This is an interesting post by William Saletan over at the Slate blog, Human Nature:

Tomorrow night, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin will meet in their only vice-presidential debate. Most of the discussion will be about economics and foreign policy. On the social issues, here are two questions moderator Gwen Ifill should ask.

• Gov. Palin, you were asked this week whether it should be illegal for a girl to get an abortion in the case of rape or incest. Your answer was that the girl herself should not go to jail. What about the doctor? Should the doctor who performs that abortion face criminal penalties?

• Sen. Biden, you said four weeks ago that you believe life begins at conception but that you can't impose your personal beliefs on other people. Yet you also voted for a law against gay marriage called the Defense of Marriage Act, and two years ago, you said this law expresses your view that "marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that." Why is it OK to impose your beliefs on gay marriage but not on abortion?

Here's all the background information Ifill will need when the candidates start fudging...

• Palin's interview with Katie Couric, aired yesterday:

Couric: "If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?"

Palin:"I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic about my position there on pro-life. And I understand good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion and when it should be allowed. So ... I respect people's opinion on this. ..."

Couric: "But, ideally, you think it should be illegal for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion? "

Palin: "I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an ... abortion, absolutely not."

• Biden on Meet the Press, Sept. 7, 2008:

Biden: "I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. ..."

Tom Brokaw: "But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you've also voted for abortion rights."

Biden: "No, what [I] voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's a moment of conception."

• Biden's recorded vote for DOMA, Sept. 10, 1996.

• Biden on Meet the Press, June 4, 2006:

"We already have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act. We've all voted—not, where I've voted, and others have said, look, marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody's violated that law, there's been no challenge to that law."

• Biden on CNN, June 5, 2006:

"We have already passed a law saying that—and the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage between a man and a woman."

• The Biden campaign's evasive response to a same-sex marriage question on the Human Rights Campaign's 2007 survey of presidential candidates:

"Senator Biden supports letting states determine how to recognize civil unions and how to define marriage. He believes that legal recognition should not be denied to same-sex couples."

Bonus peg: Biden will speak at HRC's annual dinner Saturday night.

All yours, Gwen. Go for it.

What do you think? What question would you ask the vice-presidential candidates?

Freedom Road

My Book:

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

Blurbs:

The Archive:

Visitors? (since 12/10/07)

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

The Most Challenging Question for Palin and Biden

No comments:

Post a Comment