Freedom Road: Selma

"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

Friday, November 07, 2008

Selma, Lord, Selma!

(Ms. Bland is to the right of Barack Obama as you look at the above photo!)

Selma, AL, is sacred ground in the civil rights movement. It was there, in '65, during the historic voting right campaign, at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that thousands of people made a stand for racial justice that reverberated across the country and around the world. Those activists and local people took their lumps, but their efforts resulted in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Ms. Joanne Bland was there, as a little girl, and has spent the rest of her life in Selma, carrying on the struggle for full equality. I've had the great fortune to get to know Ms. Bland, first as a grad student at the U. of Wisconsin, and more recently when I brought her to Lincoln as a part of "From Selma to Washington: A 40th Anniversary Celebration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a conference I organized in 2005.

This New York Times video features Ms. Bland and other local people in Selma, as they vote and await the results of election '08 on Tuesday. In case you are unclear about the deep meaning of Barack Obama's historic victory, please watch this moving video... but be prepared to shed some tears.

I love you Ms. Bland! Thank you for everything you and all the other local people in Selma have done for our nation, for our democracy! This one is for you and for all the other foot-soldiers of the Movement. We are a better nation because of your sacrifices...

Sunday, February 24, 2008

James Orange, "Gentle Giant" of the Civil Rights Movement, Passes

We lost another legend of the civil rights movement recently when James Orange passed at the too young age of 65. Though he carried a large physique, Orange was fiercely committed to non-violence; many called him a "gentle giant" of the Movement. Born in Birmingham, Orange participated in the historic civil rights campaign there in 1963. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, “The children’s demonstrations in Birmingham had transformed James Orange from hulking high school drifter to precocious minister of nonviolence.” Orange also served as an organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and helped organize gang members in Chicago to non-violence. He was also well-known for his deep baritone voice and for his preaching. Orange was jailed and beaten on many occasions.

During the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, it was Orange's arrest - and fears he had been lynched - that spurred a protest march that resulted in the murder of Jimmy Lee Jackson by police. Jackson's death and Orange's incarceration prompted the Selma-to-Montgomery march, which was the catalyst for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Later in life, Orange worked for the AFL-CIO where he helped organize more than 300 labor campaigns. He was also an ardent supporter of the rights of "illegal" immigrants. All tolled, Orange was arrested for non-violent civil disobedience more than 100 times in his life!

Here is the Washington Post obituary. Here is the Guardian UK obit and the New York Times memorial.

Freedom Road

My Book: