Freedom Road: January 2010

"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 31, 2010

Ideas: What Hallucination Reveals About Our Minds?

Neurologist, Oliver Sacks, is always exploring the fascinating lessons we can learn from various rare brain disfunctions. For a fun intro to his work, check out The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. During a recent TED talk, Sacks discussed a group of people with Charles Bonnett syndrome, who experience lucid hallucinations. What does this impairment suggest about the nature of "reality"? Check it out...

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Solutions: Combatting Corporate Dominance of American Politics

How do ordinary citizens counter the massive influence that large monied interests have over our democracy? What is possible after the Supreme Court's recent disastrous decision opening the floodgates to corporate money in elections. Fran Kortan, publisher of Yes! Magazine, explains "ten ways to stop corporate dominance of politics."

UPDATE: NPR's Ari Shapiro has an excellent interview with Lewis Maltby, author of Can They Do That? Retaking Our Fundamental Rights in the Workplace, about the widespread restrictions on individual liberties in the corporate workplace. Maltby says, "What most Americans generally don't know is that the Constitution doesn't apply to private corporations at all." The full interview can be listened to here. Another excerpt and review of the book can be found at Alternet.

UPDATE: Robert Borosage has a good essay about an amendment to the Constitution Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) have introduced in Congress aimed at overturning the Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United, which gave corporations the right to spend unlimited funds in election campaigns as a matter of free speech.

Ideas: Dr. King's Forgotten "Dream" of Economic Justice

I wrote an Opinion piece for the Omaha World Herald reflecting on Dr. King's vision of economic justice.

The essay ran on Monday, January 25, 2010, under the title, "MLK: Justice Requires Economic Transformation."

On Tuesday, an older man called me at my office in Lincoln to let me know that he thought the ideas in the article were "communistic."

Judge for yourself. Here are a few excerpts...

King believed poverty was primarily the result of systemic economic failure and “ongoing economic exploitation,” not individual personal failing. The poor were “damned” to segregated, ghettoized neighborhoods, chronic unemployment and low-paying, meaningless jobs. “Pervasive and persistent want” demoralized the poor, undermined human dignity and led to family disintegration, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and crime.

* * * *

King linked urban poverty with suburban plenty. “The poor and discriminated huddle in the big cities,” he said, “while affluent America displays its new gadgets in the crisp homes of suburbia.” King called suburbs “white nooses around the black necks of the cities.” “Housing deteriorates in central cities,” he groused, while “suburbs expand with little regard for what happens to the rest of America.”

* * * *

Disillusioned with piecemeal reforms, King believed structural change in the economy was essential to end poverty. “True compassion,” he said, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

* * * *

King advocated “democratic socialism,” a mixed economy where citizens, through democratic processes, insert human values into the economy to temper the harsh edges of unbridled free markets.

He fought for an “economic bill of rights,” a $30 billion package guaranteeing full employment, a livable income and increased construction of low-income housing. King called for “massive public works programs (to build) decent housing, schools, hospitals, mass transit, parks and recreation centers.” These public investments would “enrich society” and spur private investment.

* * * *

In an era of ballooning military budgets, billion-dollar Wall Street bailouts, home foreclosures, double-digit unemployment and continuing urban crisis, perhaps we might listen anew to King’s prophetic vision of economic justice.

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To read the entire essay, click here.
Let me know what you think in the comments section below.

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

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Sunday, January 31, 2010

Ideas: What Hallucination Reveals About Our Minds?

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Solutions: Combatting Corporate Dominance of American Politics

Ideas: Dr. King's Forgotten "Dream" of Economic Justice