Freedom Road: LeRoy Grannis, "Big Waves"

"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

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

LeRoy Grannis, "Big Waves"

I've been hitting politics hard recently, so I feel moved to head in a different direction...

I am teaching my "America in the 60s" course this semester, so have been poking around in a variety of sources and came across these amazing surfing photos by LeRoy Grannis. Just like the hippies, the surf scene was another interesting laguna of youth culture in the 60s. These photos are drawn from the M+B Gallery website and here is what those folks have to say about the artist:

A surfer since 1931, LeRoy Grannis was born in Hermosa Beach, California in 1917 and began shooting surf-culture images on 22nd Street in Hermosa in 1960 as a hobby at the suggestion of a family doctor. His work immediately appeared in the important surf culture magazines of the time including Surfer, Reef and Surfing Illustrated. He quickly became one of the sport's most important documentarians, voted into the International Surfing Hall of Fame as the number one lensman in 1966 and in 2002 was awarded SIMA's Lifetime Achievement Award. Grannis was the subject of The Surfers Journal's first ode to the master photographers in 1998 with Photo: Grannis; his work was featured in Stacy Peralta's 2002 award-winning documentary of the sport, Riding Giants; and most recently, LeRoy Grannis: Birth of a Culture was published as a limited-edition, signed collector's edition monograph by TASCHEN. The artist, who will turn ninety this year, continues to photograph the sport from his home near San Diego.

Well, dag. I'd sure like to meet that guy, wouldn't you? Here are a few of his beautiful photos (click any photo to enlarge):

When I saw these, it reminded of me of Tom Wolfe's "The Pump House Gang," which focuses on California surf culture during this period (thanks to my friend TJ for turning me on to that one back in graduate school). Here is an interesting recent article from San Diego Magazine on "The Pump House Gang" 40 years later:

"Forgiving Tom Wolfe: Four decades after publication of The Pump House Gang, the work is still a point of contention for members of the local surf culture whose lives it chronicled"

To find out more about the whole book, click here:
Tom Wolfe, "The Pump House Gang"

To check out the entire exhibition by LeRoy Grannis at the M+B Gallery website, click here:
LeRoy Grannis, "Big Waves"

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Freedom Road

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

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Tuesday, September 04, 2007

LeRoy Grannis, "Big Waves"

1 comment: