Freedom Road: It's a "White Thing"

"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

Sunday, July 15, 2007

It's a "White Thing"

One of the most difficult dynamics of race in America is the invisibility of whiteness to most white people. Because whiteness is normative to white people - the water that we swim in as fish in this society - most whites fail to "see" their own racial identity or the ways they gain advantage and privilege from their racial designation. As a result, for most white people, if they think about race at all, they see it as a black thing, or a brown thing, or a yellow thing, or a red thing... but definitely not as a white thing. Race is removed from white people. It is "those people's" problem. Whites are thereby not invested in the problem of race directly and they thus don't often feel compelled to act to rectify this ongoing problem; There is no immediacy to racial issues for most whites because of this disconnect. But, we might remember that Martin Luther King and James Baldwin both eloquently made the point that the problem of race in America is, in fact, not a problem with black people, it is a problem with white people. The problem of race is the problem of white supremacy. Whiteness is at the root of this issue. Always has been. As a result, to overcome this historic tragedy, white people need to wake up to their racial advantage. The first stage in this process is rendering visible that which is too often invisible - at least to whites - in American society.

I'd like to blog more on this issue down the line, but for now I'll leave it at what I've just written. The reason I bring this up now is that the Jena 6 case is deeply rooted in the issue of whiteness and white supremacy. As my mind has been turning on this case, I was reminded of two recent articles on the subject that I think make sense to post near the Jena 6 stuff.

Check out articles here:

"Whites Just Don't Understand the Black Experience," by Margaret Kamara in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

"The Reality of Race: Is the Problem That White People Don't Know or Don't Care?," by Robert Jensen for www.Alternet.org

Freedom Road

My Book:

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

Blurbs:

The Archive:

Visitors? (since 12/10/07)

Sunday, July 15, 2007

It's a "White Thing"

No comments:

Post a Comment