Freedom Road: plot to seize the white house

"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, May 27, 2008

Three Cheers for (White) Guilt?!

Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum, in what he claims is a "defense of guilt," argues, "it's not wrong to favor Obama because of race." What do you think? Is white racial guilt a bad thing, or can it be a positive and constructive thing?

Here is how he lifts off:

When did "liberal guilt" get such a bad reputation? You hear it all the time now from people who sneeringly dismiss whites who support Obama's candidacy as "guilty liberals." There are, of course, many reasons why whites might support Obama that have nothing to do with race. But what if redeeming our shameful racial past is one factor for some? Why delegitimize sincere excitement that his nomination and potential election would represent a historic civil rights landmark: making an abstract right a reality at last. Instead, their feeling must be disparaged as merely the result of a somehow shameful "liberal guilt."

And later,

Since when has guilt become shameful? Since when is shame shameful when it's shame about a four-centuries-long historical crime? Not one of us is a slave owner today, segregation is no longer enshrined in law, and there are fewer overt racists than before, but if we want to praise America's virtues, we have to concede—and feel guilty about—America's sins, else we praise a false god, a golden calf, a whited sepulcher, a Potemkin village of virtue. (I've run out of metaphors, but you get the picture.)

Guilt is good, people! The only people who don't suffer guilt are sociopaths and serial killers. Guilt means you have a conscience. You have self-awareness, you have—in the case of America's history of racism—historical awareness. Just because things have gotten better in the present doesn't mean we can erase racism from our past or ignore its enduring legacy...

Of course, it's not enough just to feel guilty or to act on guilt alone. But guilt can often spur us to deal with the enduring consequences of the injustices of the past and force us not to pretend there are none.

And he takes on conservative anti-guilt, too:

It's especially surprising to hear "guilt" being disparaged by conservatives, since they present themselves as moralists; they are quick to decry liberals for seeking to abolish guilt over various practices conservatives deem immoral. But was slavery not immoral? For those conservatives who make a fetish of "values": Was not the century of institutionalized racism and segregation that followed the end of slavery a perpetuation of "flawed values" that the nation should feel an enduring guilt over? For those conservatives who are forever speaking of the way they value history and memory more than liberals: Should we abolish the history and memory of slavery and racism just because they're no longer legally institutionalized?

Do we abolish its memories and its effects? Do we abolish the very consciousness of the past and pretend we have a clear conscience? Pretend that on the question of racism, there is no problem anymore? America is impeccably virtuous? This sounds more like Jacobin "Year Zero" thinking than true conservatism...

No, it's not a Democrat or Republican issue; it's a liberal and conservative issue.

I'll leave it there and urge you to go read the entire, extended essay, which is bound to offer much food for thought.

If you do make it through, any reactions?

Thursday, July 26, 2007

The Plot to Seize the Whitehouse!

In 1933, a powerful group of U.S. industrial and banking titans - including the DuPonts, Prescott Bush, and leaders of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, and Goodyear Tire & Rubber - hatched a plan to overthrow the new government of Franklin Roosevelt. The plotters were afraid that the liberal reforms coming into view during the New Deal would erode the power of corporations and wealthy individuals and lead the U.S. toward socialism, bankruptcy and dictatorship. These people admired the fascist regimes sweeping to power in Europe and even studied those regimes and their paths to power as possible models for the U.S. coup. The conspirators were financed, at least in part, by the American Liberty League and attempted to recruit Gen. Smedley Butler, a popular military leader and one of the most decorated soldiers of his era, to lead the plot to seize the White House. Butler initially pretended to go along with the plot in order to find out more information, but ultimately spilled the beans to Congress. In its report, McCormack-Dickstein Committee supported Butler's claims, but failed to investigate further. In fact, some argue that Congress actually participated in a cover-up, pointing to the fact that the committee never called any of the plotters to testify and they erased the names of the conspirators from the transcript of Gen. Butler's testimony. Members of Roosevelt's own administration who had been connected to the potential plot also had an interest in minimizing the story once it emerged. Thankfully, now, many years later, we do in fact have an established paper trail verifying the basic substance of Butler's claims... Historians argue about how threatening the plot really was, but most accept the basic details as established. The question is, was it a "cocktail putsch," as a dismissive Fiorello LaGuardia claimed, or something more immenent, and therefore more ominous, as Butler and Jules Archer contend? Or, was it somewhere in between?

While never operationalized, and whether or not it was a real or perceived threat, the plot to overthrow Roosevelt's government was far along when it was uncovered. It illustrates the potential danger to democracy of massive, concentrated wealth in the hands of a small circle of individuals and large corporations and raises profound questions about who really rules America. It also underscores the way the powerful will act to defend their interests when they perceive them to be threatened.

If you are new to this history, here is a recent BBC audio story on the plot to seize the White House that provides a nice summary of the events and evidence (28 min.):

BBC documentary on plot to seize the White House

Or, read Jules Archer, "The Plot to Seize the White House" (recently reissued by Skyhorse Publishing):

Amazon link to The Plot to Seize the Whitehouse

full online text of The Plot to Seize the White House

If you are more inclined toward the audio/visual, you might want to check out the History Channel documentary, "The Plot to Overthrow FDR":

Amazon link to History Channel documentary, "The Plot to Overthrow FDR"

And, if you are wanting more on the Bush angle, see:

London Guardian article

Here are a couple more sources on the plot to seize the White House and corporate America's links to fascism during the depression era:

Wallstreet's Plot to Seize the White House website

"Profits über Alles! American Corporations and Hitler," by Jacques R. Pauwels

Final thought: We have to ask ourselves why we tell certain stories about the past and not others. Why do some things get included in the popular narrative of our collective past and other things get left out? Why is it that we don't tell or teach the story of the 1933 coup? Why is our popular version of the past silent on this point? What does this tell us about the past? Perhaps more importantly, what does this tell us about the present?

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