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The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past

Author(s): Jacquelyn Dowd HallSource: The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Mar., 2005), pp. 1233-1263Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3660172.

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T h e L o n g i v i l i g h t s ovementa n d t h ol i t ical U s e s o t h a s t

JacquelynDowd Hall

The blackrevolutionis much more than a strugglefor the rightsof Negroes. It isforcingAmerica to face all its interrelated laws-racism, poverty,militarism,andmaterialism. t is exposingevilsthat are rooteddeeplyin the whole structureof oursociety ... and suggeststhat radicalreconstructionof societyis the realissueto befaced.-Martin LutherKingJr.

Storiesarewonderfulthings.And they aredangerous. -Thomas KingThe civil rights movement circulates through American memory in forms andthrough channels that are at once powerful, dangerous, and hotly contested. Civilrights memorials jostle with the South's ubiquitous monuments to its Confederatepast. Exemplary scholarship and documentaries abound, and participants have pro-duced wave after wave of autobiographical accounts, at least two hundred to date.Images of the movement appear and reappear each year on Martin Luther King Jr.Day and during Black History Month. Yet remembrance is always a form of forget-ting, and the dominant narrative of the civil rights movement-distilled from historyand memory, twisted by ideology and political contestation, and embedded in heri-tage tours, museums, public rituals, textbooks, and various artifacts of mass cul-ture-distorts and suppresses as much as it reveals.'JacquelynDowd Hall isJuliaCherrySpruillProfessorof Historyat the Universityof North Carolina and directorof the SouthernOral History Program.This article is a revisedversionof the presidentialaddressdelivered to theconvention of the Organizationof AmericanHistoriansin Boston on March27, 2004.Writingthis essayled me to conversationwith a far-flungnetwork of friends and colleagues,and I thank themfor their encouragementand generous sharingof ideas.Among them wereJeffersonCowie, JaneDailey,MatthewLassiter,Nelson Lichtenstein, Eric Lott, Nancy MacLean, Bryant Simon, and Karen Kruse Thomas. LauraEdwards, Drew Faust, Glenda Gilmore, Jeanne Grimm, Pamela Grundy, Bethany Johnson, Robert Korstad,Joanne Meyerowitz,Timothy McCarthy,Joe Mosnier, KathrynNasstrom, Della Pollock, Jennifer Ritterhouse,and SarahThuesen also offered astute comments on the manuscript n its various iterations.I benefitedespeciallyfrom BethanyJohnson'sresearchand editorialskills,and ElizabethMoreprovidedadditional researchassistance.Afellowshipat the RadcliffeInstitute for AdvancedStudy providedan idealcommunity in which to think and write.

1 On civil rights autobiographiesand histories, see KathrynL. Nasstrom, "BetweenMemory and History:Autobiographiesof the Civil RightsMovement and the Writingof a New Civil Rights History,"National Endow-ment for the Humanities Lecture,Universityof San Francisco,April 29, 2002 (in JacquelynDowd Hall'sposses-sion); Steven F. Lawson, "FreedomThen, Freedom Now: The Historiographyof the Civil Rights Movement,"AmericanHistoricalReview,96 (April 1991), 456-71; Adam Fairclough,"Historiansand the Civil Rights Move-ment,"JournalofAmericanStudies,24 (Dec. 1990), 387-98; Charles M. Payne,I've Got theLight ofFreedom:The

The Journal of American History March 2005 1233

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Centeringon what BayardRustin in 1965 called the "classical"haseof the strug-gle, the dominantnarrative hroniclesa shortcivil rightsmovement thatbeginswiththe 1954 Brownv.BoardofEducationdecision,proceeds hroughpublicprotests,andculminateswith the passageof the Civil RightsAct of 1964 and the Voting RightsAct of 1965.2 Then comes the decline.After a seasonof moralclarity, he countryisbeset by the VietnamWar,urbanriots, and reactionagainstthe excessesof the late1960s and the 1970s, understoodvariouslyas student rebellion,black militancy,feminism, busing, affirmativeaction, or an overweeningwelfare state. A so-calledwhite backlashsets the stage for the conservative nterregnum hat, for good or ill,dependingon one's deologicalpersuasion,marks he beginningof anotherstory,thestorythatsurroundsus now.Martin LutherKing Jr. is this narrative's efining figure-frozen in 1963, pro-claiming"Ihave a dream"duringthe march on the Mall. Endlesslyreproducedandselectivelyquoted, his speechesretain their majestyyet lose their politicalbite. Wehear ittle of the Kingwho believedthat"theracial ssuethat we confront in Americais not a sectionalbut a nationalproblem"andwho attackedsegregationn the urbanNorth. Erasedaltogether s the Kingwho opposedthe Vietnam War and linked rac-ism at home to militarism and imperialismabroad.Gone is King the democraticsocialistwho advocatedunionization,plannedthe PoorPeople'sCampaign,andwasassassinatedn 1968 while supportinga sanitationworkers' trike.3By confiningthe civil rightsstruggle o the South, to bowdlerizedheroes,to a sin-gle halcyon decade, and to limited, noneconomic objectives,the master narrativesimultaneouslyelevates and diminishes the movement. It ensuresthe status of theclassicalphaseas a triumphalmoment in a largerAmericanprogressnarrative, et itundermines ts gravitas. t preventsone of the most remarkablemass movementsinAmericanhistoryfromspeakingeffectively o the challengesof our time.

OrganizingTradition nd theMississippiFreedomStruggle Berkeley,1995), 413-41; CharlesW. Eagles,"TowardNew Histories of the Civil Rights Era," ournalof SouthernHistory,66 (Nov. 2000), 815-48; and Kevin Gaines,"The Historiographyof the Strugglefor Black Equalitysince 1945," in A Companion o Post-1945America,ed.Jean-ChristopheAgnew and Roy Rosenzweig(Malden,Mass., 2002), 211-34. In contrast to the vastliteratureonwhat the movement was and did, the scholarshipon how it is remembered s scatteredand thin. Forexamples,seeDavid A. Zonderman, review of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, BirminghamCivil RightsInstitute, and National Civil Rights Museum,Journal ofAmerican History,91 (June 2004), 174-83; KathrynL.Nasstrom, "Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women's Leadershipin the Civil Rights Movement inAtlanta,Georgia,"Genderand History,11 (April1999), 113-44; TerrieL. Epstein,"Tales rom Two Textbooks:AComparisonof the Civil Rights Movement in Two Secondary History Textbooks,"SocialStudies,85 (May-June1994), 121-26; William A. Link, reviewof the film TheRoadto Brown,by William A. Ellwood, MykolaKulish,and GaryWeimberg, HistoryofEducation Quarterly, 1 (Winter 1991), 523-26; and an anthology in progress:LeighRaifordand Renee Romano, eds., "'Freedom s a Constant Struggle':The Civil RightsMovement in UnitedStatesMemory"(in LeighRaifordand Renee Romano'spossession).2 BayardRustin,Down theLine: The CollectedWritings fBayardRustin(Chicago, 1971), 111-22, esp. 111.Martin LutherKingJr.,"The RisingTide of RacialConsciousness(1960)," in I Have a Dream:Writings ndSpeechesThat Changed he World,ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco, 1992), 67. For early protestsagainstthe tendency to idolize King and to ignore his radicalismand that of the grassroots, see "ARound Table:Martin LutherKingJr.," ournalofAmericanHistory,74 (Sept. 1987), 436-81. Fora call for attention to the laterKing years, see Michael Honey, "Laborand Civil Rights Movements at the Cross-Roads:Martin Luther King,BlackWorkers,and the Memphis SanitationStrike,"paperdeliveredat the annualmeeting of the OrganizationofAmericanHistorians,Memphis,Tenn., April2003 (in Hall's possession).



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XWhilehe narrative have recountedhas multiple sources,this essayemphasizeshow the movement'smeaninghasbeen distortedand reifiedby a New Rightbent onreversingts gains.I will then tracethe contours of what I take to be a more robust,more progressive,and truerstory-the story of a "longcivil rightsmovement" hattook root in the liberal and radicalmilieu of the late 1930s, was intimatelytied tothe "riseandfall of the New Deal Order," cceleratedduringWorldWarII, stretchedfarbeyondthe South,was continuouslyand ferociouslycontested,and in the 1960sand 1970s inspireda "movementof movements" hat "def[ies]any narrativeof col-lapse."4Integral o that more expansivestory is the dialecticbetweenthe movement andthe so-called backlashagainst t, a wall of resistance hat did not appearsuddenlyinthe much-maligned1970s, but arose n tandem with the civil rightsoffensive n theaftermathof WorldWarII and culminated under the aegisof the New Right. Theeconomic dimensionsof the movementlie at the coreof my concerns,and through-out I will draw attentionto the interweavings f gender,class,and race.In this essay,however,racial narratives nd dilemmaswill take centerstage, for, as Lani Guinierand GeraldTorressuggest,"Those who areraciallymarginalized relike the miner'scanary: heir distress s the firstsign ofa danger hat threatensus all."5A desire to understandand honor the movement lies at the heart of the rich andevolving literatureon the 1950s and early 1960s, and that era'schroniclers havehelpedendow the strugglewith an aura of cultural egitimacythat both reflectsandreinforces ts profound legal,political,and social effects.By placingthe world-shak-ing events of the classicalphase in the context of a longerstory,I want to buttressthat representational rojectand reinforce he moralauthorityof those who foughtfor change in those years.At the same time, I want to make civil rights harder.Harderto celebrateas a naturalprogressionof Americanvalues.Harderto castas asatisfyingmoralitytale.Most of all,harder o simplify,appropriate, ndcontain.6The Political Uses of Racial NarrativesThe roots of the dominantnarrativeie in the dancebetweenthe movement's trate-gistsandthe media's esponse. n one dramaticprotestafteranother,civilrightsactiv-ists couched their demands in the language of democratic rights and Christianuniversalism; emonstrated heir own respectability nd courage;and pitted coercivenonviolenceagainstguns,nightsticks,andfists.Playedout in the courts, n legislativechambers, in workplaces, and in the streets, those social dramas toppled the South'ssystemof disfranchisement nd de jureor legalizedsegregationby forcingthe hand

4Steve Fraserand Gary Gerstle,eds., The Riseand Fall of the New Deal Order,1930-1980 (Princeton, 1989);Van Gosse, "AMovement of Movements:The Definition and Periodizationof the New Left,"in Companion oPost-1945America,ed. Agnew and Rosenzweig,277-302, esp. 282.5The meaningof race and racism n Americahas alwaysbeen inflectedby ethnic exclusions and identities,andit has been complicated by the demographicchanges in the late twentieth century.In this essay,however,I limitmy focus to the black-white divide. Lani Guinier and GeraldTorres,TheMiner'sCanary:EnlistingRace,ResistingPower,Transformingemocracy Cambridge,Mass., 2002), 11.6 Kevin Mattson, "Civil Rights Made Harder," Reviews in American History, 30 (Dec. 2002), 663-70.



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of federalofficialsand bringing ocalgovernments o their knees. The massmedia,inturn, made the protests"one of the greatnews stories of the modernera,"but theydid so very selectively. ournalists'nterestwaxed and wanedalongwith activists'abil-ity to generatecharismaticpersonalities who were usuallymen) and telegeniccon-frontations, preferably those in which white villains rained down terror onnonviolent demonstrators ressed n theirSundaybest.Brought nto American ivingrooms by the seductive new medium of television and replayedever since, suchscenesseem to come out of nowhere,to have no precedents,no historicalroots. Tocompound that distortion,the nationalpress'soverwhelmingly ympathetic, f mis-leading, coverage hangedabruptly n the mid-1960s with the adventof blackpowerand black uprisingsin the urbanNorth. Traininga hostile eye on those develop-ments, the cameras urned awayfrom the South, ignoringthe southerncampaign'sevolving goals, obscuringinterregionalconnectionsand similarities,and creatinganarrativebreachbetween what people think of as "the movement"and the ongoingpopularstrugglesof the late 1960s and the 1970s.'Earlystudiesof the blackfreedommovementoften hewedcloselyto thejournalis-tic "roughdraftof history," eplicatingts judgmentsand trajectory.More recenthis-tories, memoirs,and documentarieshave struggledto loosen its hold.8Why, then,hasthe dominantnarrative eemedonly to consolidate ts power?The answer ies, in

7 ulian Bond, "The Media and the Movement: Looking Back from the SouthernFront," n Media, Culture,and the ModernAfricanAmericanFreedomStruggle, d. Brian Ward(Gainesville, 2001), 16-40, esp. 32. See alsoRobertJ. Norrell, "One Thing We Did Right: Reflections on the Movement,"in New Directions n Civil RightsStudies,ed. ArmsteadL. Robinsonand PatriciaSullivan(Charlottesville,1991), 72-73, 77; and Payne,I'veGottheLight ofFreedom,391-405.8 Payne,Itve GottheLight ofFreedom,391. For works that stress the events of the classicalphasebut also high-light the long trajectoryof the movement, see ibid.; Manning Marable,Race,Reform,and Rebellion:The SecondReconstructionn BlackAmerica,1945-1990 (Jackson,1991); Steven E Lawson,Running or Freedom:CivilRightsand BlackPolitics n America ince1941 (New York,1997);Adam Fairclough,RaceandDemocracy:TheCivilRightsStruggle n Louisiana,1915-1972 (Athens, Ga., 1995); and Greta De Jong, A DifferentDay: AfricanAmericanStrugglesor Justicein RuralLouisiana,1900-1970 (Chapel Hill, 2002). Community studies tend to blur theboundariesof the dominant narrative,and biographiesoften illuminate North/South linkagesand the fluidityanddiversityof the movement. See, for example, George Lipsitz,A Life in the Struggle: voryPerryand the CultureofOpposition Philadelphia,1995). For a growing chorus of calls for a broaderscholarlyfocus, see Robert Korstadand Nelson Lichtenstein, "OpportunitiesFound and Lost: Labor, Radicals,and the Early Civil Rights Move-ment,"Journal ofAmerican History,75 (Dec. 1988), 786-811; Timothy B. Tyson, "RobertE Williams, 'BlackPower,'and the Roots of the AfricanAmericanFreedomStruggle," bid, 85 (Sept. 1998), 540-70; JulianBond,"The Politics of Civil RightsHistory," n New Directions n Civil RightsStudies,ed. Robinson and Sullivan, 8-16;Payne,I'veGottheLight ofFreedom,3, 391-405, 413-41; CharlesPayne,"Debatingthe Civil RightsMovement:The View from the Trenches," n Debating the Civil RightsMovement, 1945-1968, by Steven E Lawson andCharlesPayne (Lanham, 1998), 108-11; Peniel E. Joseph, "Waitingtill the Midnight Hour: Reconceptualizingthe Heroic Period of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1965," Souls,2 (Spring2000), 6-17; JacquelynDowdHall, "MobilizingMemory:BroadeningOur View of the Civil RightsMovement,"Chronicle fHigherEducation,July27, 2001, pp. B7-B 11; Nell IrvinPainter,"AmericaNeeds to Reexamine Its Civil Rights History," ournalofBlacks n HigherEducation,Aug. 31, 2001, pp. 132-34; BrianWard,"Introduction:ForgottenWails and Master

Narratives:Media, Culture, and Memories of the Modern African AmericanFreedomStruggle," n Media, Cul-ture,and the ModernAfricanAmericanFreedomStruggle, d. Ward, 1-15; RobertO. Self,AmericanBabylon:Raceand the Struggle or Postwar Oakland(Princeton, 2003), 10-11, 330-31; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "Fore-word," n FreedomNorth:BlackFreedom truggles utside heSouth, 1940-1980, ed. JeanneTheoharis and KomoziWoodard (New York,2003), viii-xvi; Jeanne Theoharis, "Introduction," bid., 1-15; Van Gosse, "PostmodernAmerica:A New Democratic Orderin the Second GildedAge," n The World he SixtiesMade: Politicsand Culturein RecentAmerica, d. Van Gosse and RichardMoser (Philadelphia,2003), 1-36; JackDougherty,More Than OneStruggle:TheEvolutionofBlackSchoolReformn Milwaukee ChapelHill, 2004), 1-4; and Nikhil PalSingh, BlackIs a Country:Raceand the UnfinishedStruggleor DemocracyCambridge,Mass., 2004), 4-14.



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part,in the riseof otherstorytellers-the architectsof the New Right,an allianceofcorporatepowerbrokers,old-styleconservativentellectuals,and "neoconservatives"(disillusioned iberalsand socialists urned Cold Warhawks).The Old Right, North and South, had been on the wrongside of the revolution,opposingthe civil rightsmovementand reviling ts leaders n the name of propertyrights, states'rights, anticommunism,and the God-given, biological inferiorityofblacks.Largelymoribundby the 1960s, the conservativemovementreinvented tselfin the 1970s, first by incorporatingneoconservativeswho eschewedold-fashionedracismand then by embracingan idealof formalequality, ocusingon blacks'osten-sible failings,and positioning itself as the true inheritor of the civil rights legacy.9Like all bids for discursiveand politicalpower,this one required he warrantof thepast, and the dominant narrativeof the civil rightsmovementwas readyat hand.Reworkingthat narrative or their own purposes,these new "color-blindconserva-tives" gnoredthe complexityand dynamismof the movement,its growingfocusonstructuralnequality,and its "radical econstruction"oals.Instead,they insistedthatcolorblindness-defined as the elimination of racialclassifications nd the establish-ment of formalequalitybeforethe law-was the movement's ingularobjective,theprinciple orwhich Kingand the Browndecision,in particular,tood.They admittedthat racism,understood as individualbigotry,did exist-"in the distantpast"andprimarilyn the South-a concession thatsurelywould have takenthe Old Rightbysurprise.10 ut afterlegalizedJim Crow was dismantled,such irrationalitiesdimin-ished to insignificance.In the absence of overtlydiscriminatoryaws and with thewaning of consciousbias,American institutionsbecamebasically air.Free to com-pete in a market-drivenociety,AfricanAmericans hereafterborethe onus of theirown failureor success.If starkgroup inequalitiespersisted,blackattitudes,behavior,and familystructureswere to blame. The race-conscious emediesdevisedin the late1960s and 1970s to implementthe movement'svictories,such as majority-minorityvoting districts,minoritybusinessset-asides,affirmative ction,and two-waybusing,were not the handiworkof the authentic civil rightsmovement at all. Foistedon anunwittingpublic by a "liberal lite"madeup of judges,intellectuals,andgovernmentbureaucrats,hosepoliciesnot only betrayed he movement'soriginalgoals;they alsohadlittle effect on the economicprogressblacksenjoyed n the late 1960s and 1970s,which was caused not by grass-rootsactivism or governmental nterventionbut by

9 or a bracingook at the reinvention f the Rightin the 1970s,see NancyMacLean,"Freedoms NotEnough"How theFightover obsandJusticeChanged mericaCambridge,Mass., orthcoming),hap.7. I amindebted to MacLean for sharingher work with me. For the metamorphosisof conservatism in the West andSouth, see Lisa McGirr, SuburbanWarriors:The Originsof the New AmericanRight (Princeton, 2001); AndersWalker,"The Ghost of Jim Crow: Law,Culture, and the Subversionof Civil Rights, 1954-1965" (Ph.D. diss.,YaleUniversity,2003); AndersWalker,"LegislatingVirtue:How SegregationistsDisguised RacialDiscriminationasMoral ReformFollowingBrownv.BoardofEducation,"Duke LawJournal,47 (Nov. 1997), 399-424; MatthewD. Lassiterand Andrew B. Lewis, eds., TheModerates' ilemma:MassiveResistanceo SchoolDesegregationn Vir-ginia (Charlottesville,1998); Matthew D. Lassiter,"The SuburbanOrigins of'Color-Blind' Conservatism:Mid-dle-ClassConsciousness in the Charlotte Busing Crisis," ournalof UrbanHistory,30 (May 2004), 549-82; andRichard A. Pride, The Political Use of Racial Narratives:SchoolDesegregationn Mobile, Alabama, 1954-97(Urbana, 2002).'o The quotation is from Ernest Van den Haag, "ReverseDiscrimination:A BriefagainstIt,"NationalReview,April 29, 1977, p. 493, cited in MacLean, "FreedomsNot Enough,"chap.7.



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impersonalmarketforces.In fact, the remediesthemselvesbecame the causeof ourproblems,creatingresentmentamongwhites, subverting elf-relianceamong blacks,and encouraging"balkanization" hen nationalismand assimilationshould be ourgoals."1t was up to color-blind conservatives o restore he originalpurposeof civilrights laws, which was to preventisolated acts of wrongdoing againstindividuals,rather han,asmanycivilrightsactivistsand legalexpertsclaimed,to redresspresent,institutionalizedmanifestationsof historical njusticesagainstblacksas a group.12Germinated n well-fundedright-wingthink tanksand broadcast o the generalpublic, this racialnarrativehad wide appeal,in partbecause t conformed to white,middle-class nterestsand flatterednationalvanitiesand in partbecause t resonatedwith idealsof individualeffort and merit that arewidelyshared.The Americancreedof free-market ndividualism,in combination with the ideologicalvictories of themovement (which ensured that white supremacymust "hide its face"),made therhetoricof color blindnesscentral o the "warof ideas" nitiatedby the New Rightinthe 1970s.With RonaldReagan's residential ictoryin 1980, and even more so afterthe Republicansweepof Congress n 1994, that rhetoricentrenched tself in publicpolicy. Dovetailingwith the retreat romrace-specific emediesamongcentrist iber-als, it crossed traditionalpoliticalboundaries,and it now shapesthe thinkingof "agreatmanypeopleof good will."'3

"11 roponentsof this new racialorthodoxy differ in tone and, to a lesserextent, in ideas. I am stressingtheinterventions of those who presentthemselves as the voice of the reasoned, nformed center or as "racial ealists,"in Alan Wolfe'sphrase.I referto them as "newconservatives" r "color-blindconservatives." or racialrealism,seeAlan Wolfe, "EnoughBlame to Go Around,"New YorkTimesBookReview, une 12, 1998, p. 12; Philip Klinkner,"The 'Racial Realism'Hoax," Nation, Dec. 14, 1998, pp. 33-38; "Letters," bid., Jan. 25, 1999, p. 24; andMichael K. Brown et al., WhitewashingRace: TheMythofa Color-BlindSociety Berkeley,2003), 5-12, 224. Forthe spectrumand evolution of new conservativewritingon race,see CharlesA. Murray,LosingGround:AmericanSocialPolicy,1950-1980 (New York,1984); Thomas Sowell, Civil Rights:RhetoricorReality? New York,1984);Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism:Principlesor a MultiracialSociety New York, 1995); StephanThernstromandAbigailThernstrom,America n Blackand White:OneNation, Indivisible New York,1997);Jim Sleeper,Lib-eral Racism(New York, 1997); TamarJacoby,SomeoneElse'sHouse:America'sUnfinishedStruggleor Integration(New York,1998); ShelbySteele,A DreamDeferred:TheSecondBetrayal fBlack Freedom n America New York,1998); and Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom,No Excuses:Closing he Racial Gapin Learning(NewYork,2003). Critiquesof color-blindconservatives,which disputetheirunderstandingof history, nterpretationofcivil rights law, and research, nclude Brown et al., WhitewashingRace;J. Morgan Kousser,Colorblind njustice:Minority VotingRightsand the Undoingof the SecondReconstructionChapel Hill, 1999); K. Anthony AppiahandAmy Gutmann, Color Conscious:ThePoliticalMorality of Race (Princeton, 1996); Stephen Steinberg, TurningBack: The Retreatrom RacialJustice n AmericanThoughtand Policy(Boston, 2001); MacLean, "Freedoms NotEnough';andAlice O'Connor, "MalignNeglect,"Du Bois Review,1 (Nov. 2004), forthcoming.12This formulation s drawn from KimberlkWilliamsCrenshaw,"Race,Reform,and Retrenchment:Transfor-mation and Legitimationin AntidiscriminationLaw," n CriticalRace Theory:TheKey WritingsThat Formed heMovement,ed. KimberldCrenshawet al. (New York,1995), 105.13 Gosse, "PostmodernAmerica,"5; Brown et al., WhitewashingRace,224. We have little scholarshipon themushroomingof conservative hink tanksand foundations and their role in trainingand supportingpolicy intel-lectuals and marketersand thus in shaping the terms of Americanpolitical debate. This lack of attention leavesintact the assumptionthat the currentassaulton the gains of the civil rightsmovement resultsfrom a more or lessspontaneousshift in public opinion that proponentsof racialand gender justice often feel helplessto combat. Fora start, see Leon Howell, Fundingthe Warof Ideas:A Report o the United ChurchBoard or HomelandMinistries(Cleveland, 1995);JeanStefancicand RichardDelgado, No Mercy:How ConservativeThink Tanks nd FoundationsChangedAmerica's ocialAgenda(Philadelphia,1996); David Callahan,$1 Billionfor Ideas:ConservativeThinkTanks n the 1990s (Washington,1999); Lee Cokorinos, TheAssaultonDiversity:An OrganizedChallengeo Racialand Genderustice Lanham,2003); andAndrewRich, ThinkTanks,PublicPolicy,and thePoliticsofExpertise NewYork,2004).



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Clearly, he storieswe tell about the civil rightsmovementmatter; heyshapehowwe see our own world. "Facts"must be interpreted,and those interpretations-nar-ratedby powerfulstorytellers,portrayedn publicevents,actedupon in laws andpol-icies and courtdecisions,and groundedin institutions-become primarysourcesofhuman action.Those who aspire o affectpublic opinion andpolicyand thus to par-ticipate in "theendlessstruggleover our collectivedestiny"must alwaysask them-selvesnot only "whichstories to advance,contest, and acceptas 'true'"but also howto disciplinethose storieswith researchand experienceand to advance them withpower.In the world of symbolic politics, the answers o those questionsdeterminewho will prevail.14

In that spirit, I will turn now to a story of my own-the story of the long civilrightsmovementand of the resistance o it. Throughout,I will draw on the work ofa wide rangeof historians,tying togetherstoriesusuallytold separatelyn ordertoalter common understandings f the blackfreedomstruggle(andof how we arrivedat the dilemmasof the new millennium) in at least six majorways. First,this new,longer and broadernarrativeundermines the trope of the South as the nation's"oppositeother,"an image that southernizesracismand shields from scrutinyboththe economic dimensionsof southernwhite supremacyand the institutionalizedpat-terns of exploitation,segregation,and discrimination n other regionsof the coun-try-patterns that survivedthe civil rights movement and now define the South'sracial andscapeaswell. Second,this narrative mphasizes he gordianknot that tiesrace to class and civil rightsto workers' ights.Third, it suggests hat women'sactiv-ism and genderdynamicswere centralboth to the freedom movement and to thebacklashagainst it. Fourth, it makes visible modern civil rights struggles in theNorth, Midwest,andWest,which entereda new phasewith the turn to blacknation-alism in the mid-1960s but had begun at least a quartercentury before. Fifth, itdirectsattention to the effort to "makeuse of the reformswon by the civil rightsmovement" n the 1970s, afterthe nationalmovement'sallegeddemise.15And finally,it construes he Reagan-Bush scendancynot simplyas a backlashagainst he "move-ment of movements"of the late 1960s and 1970s, but as a developmentwith deephistoricalroots.The Long BacklashTwogreat nternalmigrationsgaveriseboth to the long civilrightsmovementandtothe interestsand ideologiesthatwould ultimatelyfeed the most telling resistance oit: the exodusof AfricanAmericans o the cities of the South, North, and Westpre-cipitatedby the collapseof the southernsharecroppingystemand the mass subur-banization of whites. Acceleratingduring World War II, those vast relocations ofpeople and resources transformed the racial geography of the country. Each

14Pride, PoliticalUseofRacialNarratives,4-20, 244-72, esp. 9 and 272.'5 Nancy MacLean,"RedesigningDixie with AffirmativeAction: Race, Gender,and the Desegregationof theSouthernTextile Mill World,"in Genderand the SouthernBodyPolitic:Essays nd Comments, d. Nancy Bercaw(Jackson,2000), 163.



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respondedto and acted on the other.They were fatefully,althoughoften invisibly,entwined.'6Gender,class,region,and raceall shapedboth migrationexperiences.Becausedis-criminationin the North shunted black men into the meanestfactory obs, womencarried he burdenof a doubleday.Relegatedmainlyto domesticservice,they com-bined wage earningnot only with homemakingbut with kin work and social net-working,practices hat were rooted in the folk and family traditions of the South,bound neighborhoods ogether,and providedthe safetynet thatdiscriminatorywel-fare policies denied. Such networks also helped to blur urban-ruralboundaries,ensuringthat struggles n the city and the countrysidewould be mutuallyreinforc-ing.'7As ruralblackfolk grappledwith the planter-dominated oliciesandpractices hatexploitedtheir labor and drovethem fromthe land, urbanmigrants ought to "keepMississippiout of California" nd the "plantationmentality"out of the cities of theSouth.'8Indeed,the resonanceof the plantationmetaphor or blacks hroughoutthecountrysuggeststhe depth and durabilityof ruralmemoriesand interregional on-nections.In one sense, however, he metaphor s misleading.For blackmigrantswhomade theirwayto the "promisedand" ound themselvesconfrontingnot Mississippiin Californiabut indigenousforms of discriminationand de facto segregation-theresultnot of custom,as "de acto" mplies,but of a combinationof individualchoicesand governmentalpolicies (some blatant and some race neutral on their face) thathad the effect, and often the intent, of barringAfrican Americans from access todecentjobs, schools,and homes, aswell as to the commercializedeisurespacesthatincreasinglysymbolized"making t in America" or white ethnics en route to themiddleclass.

Ironically,New Deal programshelped to erect those racial barriers. n tandemwith the higher wages won by the newly empoweredunions of the CongressofIndustrialOrganizations clo), the expansionof the welfarestatemitigatedthe terri-ble insecurityof working-classife for blacksand whites alike.Yet the "gendered"nd"raced"maginationof New Deal reformersalso built racial and gender inequalityinto the veryfoundationof the modernstate.'9Those inequalitieswereintensifiedby

16On the reshapingof cities by the two internalmigrations,see RobertO. Self and Thomas J.Sugrue,"ThePower of Place: Race, Political Economy, and Identity in the PostwarMetropolis," n Companion o Post-1945America,ed. Agnew and Rosenzweig,20-43.17Robert O. Self, "'NegroLeadershipand Negro Money':African American PoliticalOrganizingin Oaklandbefore the Panthers," n FreedomNorth, ed. Theoharis and Woodard, 99-100. For the long-neglected topic ofwomen and migration, see Darlene ClarkHine, "BlackMigration to the Urban Midwest: The Gender Dimen-sion, 1915-1945," in TheGreatMigration n HistoricalPerspective: ew DimensionsofRace, Class,and Gender, d.Joe William TrotterJr. (Bloomington, 1991), 127-46; KimberleyL. Phillips,AlabamaNorth:African-American

Migrants, Community,and Working-Classctivismin Cleveland,1915-1945 (Urbana, 1999); Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo,Abiding Courage: fricanAmericanMigrantWomen nd the EastBay Community Chapel Hill, 1996);Megan TaylorShockley, "We,Too,AreAmericans"' fricanAmerican Women n Detroitand Richmond,1940-54(Urbana,2004); and LaurieBeth Green,"Battling he PlantationMentality:Consciousness, Culture,and the Pol-itics of Race, Class,and Genderin Memphis, 1940-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof Chicago, 1999).18 Self,AmericanBabylon,88; LaurieB. Green, "Race,Gender,and Labor n 1960s Memphis: 'IAMAMAN'andthe Meaningof Freedom," ournalof UrbanHistory,30 (March 2004), 467.19 Alice Kessler-Harris,n PursuitofEquity:Women,Men, and the Questor EconomicCitizenshipn Twentieth-CenturyAmerica New York,2001).



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the concessionsexactedboth by conservativeRepublicancongressmenand by south-ernDemocrats,who owed theircongressional eniorityand thus theirdomination ofkeycommittees to the South'sconstrictedelectorateand one-partyrule.One manifestationof systemic nequalitywas a two-trackwelfaresystemrootedina "familywage"ideal that figuredthe workeras a full-time breadwinnerwho sup-ported childrenand a dependent, non-wage-earningwife at home-an ideal fromwhich most people of color were excluded. When unemploymentinsurance wasenacted n 1935, forexample, t did not extendto agricultural nddomesticworkers,whom reformersdid not see as independent,full-time breadwinners, nd on whomthe South's ow-wageeconomydepended.As a result,55 percentof allAfricanAmer-ican workers and 87 percent of all wage-earningAfrican Americanwomen wereexcludedfrom one of the chief benefits of the New Deal. In lieu of suchprotections,African Americanswere dependent on-and stigmatizedby-the stingy, means-testedprogramsknown as "welfare"oday.20As metropolitanpopulationsexploded,a mad scramble or housingbroughtAfri-canAmericans ace to facewith another imitation of the New Deal:white men ben-efited disproportionately rom the G.I. Bill of Rights, a mammoth social welfareprogramfor returningveteranspassedby Congressat the end of World War II. Incombinationwith an equallyambitioushousing program, he G.I. Bill drewaspiringethnic workersand the white middle classout of the city, awayfromblackneighbors,and into ever-expandingsuburban rims. Centuries of racial denigration, com-pounded by divisions built into the two-trackwelfaresystem, predisposedwhiteurbanites o fearblackmigrants.But what came to be known as "whiteflight"wascaused not just by individualattitudesbut also by a panoplyof profit-and govern-ment-drivenpolicies. Local zoning boardsand highway building choices equated"black"with "blight," righteningawaywhite buyersand steeringinvestmentawayfrom blackurbanneighborhoods.Blockbustingreal estateagentsstampededwhitesinto sellingcheapand blacks nto buyingdear.Redliningbanksdeniedmortgages oAfricanAmericans and to buyersin "mixed"neighborhoods.Most important,theFederalHousing Administrationpursuedlending policies that not only favoredbutpracticallymandatedracialhomogeneity.21

20 Nelson Lichtenstein, State ofthe Union: A Centuryof AmericanLabor(Princeton, 2002), 96. On gender,race,andwelfare,see Kessler-Harris,n PursuitofEquity;LindaGordon, ed., Women,heState,and WelfareMad-ison, 1990); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled:SingleMothersand the Historyof Welfare, 890-1935 (NewYork, 1994); and Michael K. Brown, Race,Money,and the AmericanWelfare tate (Ithaca,1999). Forchanges inthe family-wagesystem as the key theme of post-World War II women'shistory,see Nancy MacLean,"PostwarWomen'sHistory:The 'Second Wave'or the End of the FamilyWage?,"n Companion o Post-1945America,ed.Agnew and Rosenzweig,235-59.21 Mydiscussionof white ethnic workers,the middle class,and the spatializationof racedrawson the work ofbrilliant urbanhistorians,especiallyKenneth T. Jackson,"Race,Ethnicity,and Real EstateAppraisal:The HomeOwners Loan Corporationand the FederalHousing Administration," ournalof UrbanHistory,6 (Aug. 1980),419-52; Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass rontier: The Suburbanizationof the United States (New York, 1985);Thomas W. Hanchett, Sorting Out the New South City:Race,Class,and UrbanDevelopmentn Charlotte,1875-1975 (Chapel Hill, 1998); Thomas J. Sugrue,"Crabgrass-Roots olitics:Race, Rights, and the Reaction againstLiberalism n the Urban North, 1940-1964," Journal ofAmericanHistory,82 (Sept. 1995), 551-78; Arnold R.Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto:Raceand Housingin Chicago,1940-1960 (New York, 1983); Thomas J. Su-grue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis:Race and Inequalityin PostwarDetroit (Princeton, 1996); Kevin FoxGotham, "UrbanSpace, RestrictiveCovenants,and the Origins of RacialResidentialSegregation n a U.S. City,



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Encouragedby tax incentives,highwaybuilding programs,and a desire to out-flank the new unions, factoriesand businessesmoved to the suburbsaswell, erodingthe cities' taxbase,damaging nfrastructure,ndevisceratingmunicipalservices.Thegrowthof segregated uburbsalso exacerbated he trend towardalmostcompleteseg-regation n urbanschools.The practiceof supportingpubliceducationthrough ocaltaxes and the fiercelyguardeddivide between urban and suburbanschool districts,combined with conscious,raciallymotivatedchoicesregarding he siting of schoolsand the assignmentof pupils, relegatedblackmigrantsto schools that were often asseparateand asunequalas those theyhad left behind.22This cascading process of migration, job discrimination, suburbanization,andrace-codedNew Deal reform had three majoreffects. First,over the courseof the1940s racebecame ncreasingly patialized, enderingnvisibleto whitesthe accumu-latedrace and classprivileges hat undergirdedwhat suburbanites ame to see as therightfulfruits of their own labor.Second, the "suburbanrontier" pawneda newhomeowners'politics based on low taxes,propertyrights, neighborhoodautonomy,and a shrinkingsense of social responsibility,all of which became entangledwithracial dentityin waysthat would proveextremelydifficultto undo.23Finally,AfricanAmericans,alreadyburdenedby the social andeconomic deprivationsof slaveryandJim Crow,found themselvesdisadvantaged y employmentpracticesand statepoli-cies thatamountedto affirmative ctionforwhites. In a societywherea home repre-sentedmost families'single most importantasset,for example,differentialaccesstomortgagesandhousingmarketsand the racialvaluationof neighborhoods ranslatedinto enormousinequalities.Passedon fromgeneration o generation, hose inequali-ties persistto this day.Short-circuitinghe generationalaccumulationof wealth andsocialcapitalthat propelledother ethnic minoritiesinto the expandingpost-WorldWarII middleclass,those policiesleft a legacyof racial nequalitythat hasyet to beseriouslyaddressed.24SouthernStrategiesWe now have a copious literatureon postwarsuburbanization nd the deepeningofsegregationn the North andWest. But too often, the already egregated, ural,back-wardSouthfigures n thisstory only as a footnote or an exceptionto the rule.In fact,

1900-50," International ournalof Urban and RegionalResearch, 4 (Sept.2000), 616-33; Self,AmericanBabylon;Martha Biondi, ToStandand Fight: TheStruggleor Civil Rights n PostwarNew YorkCity (Cambridge,Mass.,2003), 112-36, 223-49; LizabethCohen, A Consumer's epublic:ThePoliticsof Mass Consumptionn PostwarAmerica (New York,2003); Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash:White Working-Classolitics in Baltimore,1940-1980 (Chapel Hill, 2003); and BryantSimon, Boardwalkof Dreams:Atlantic Cityand the Fate of UrbanAmerica(New York,2004). I am also indebted to Douglas S. Masseyand Nancy A. Denton, AmericanApartheid:Segregationnd theMakingof the UnderclassCambridge,Mass., 1993); and Brown,Race,Money,and theAmericanWelfare tate. On how veterans'benefitsdisadvantagedblacks,see Brown et al., Whitewashing ace,75-77.

22 Biondi, ToStandand Fight,241-49.23 Self,AmericanBabylon,333-34.24 Melvin L. Oliverand Thomas M. Shapiro,Black Wealth/WhiteWealth: New Perspectiven RacialInequality(New York,1995).



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CivilRights ndthe PoliticalUsesof the Past 1243

becausesoutherncitiesgrewup in the ageof New Deal reform,the automobile,andsuburban prawl, he modernSouthmight betterbe seen as a paradigm.25Lookingbackfrom the perspectiveof the dominant narrative, t is easy to see apeculiar ystemof legal segregationas the South'sdefiningfeature.Butspatialsepara-tion wasneverthe white South'smajorgoal. Black and white southerners ngaged nconstantand nuancedinteractions,moderatedby personalties, economic interests,and class and genderdynamicsand markedby culturalexchange.26 akingplace asthey did within a contextof racialhierarchy,hose interactionsdid not diminishseg-regation'sperniciousnessand power.Yet given the ubiquityof black-whitecontactandthe crucialroleof blacksas a sourceof cheap abor,what we think of asthe ageofsegregationmight betterbe called the age of "racial apitalism,"or segregationwasonly one instrumentof white supremacy,and white supremacyentailed not onlyracialdominationbut also economic practices.Pursuedby an industrialand agricul-turaloligarchy o aggrandizehemselvesand forwarda particulardevelopmentstrat-egy for the region,those practices nvolvedlow taxes,minimalinvestment n humancapital,the separationand politicalimmobilizationof the blackand white southernpoor, the exploitationof non-unionized,undereducatedblackand white labor,andthe patriarchalontrolof familiesand local institutions.27That strategycreateda particularlybrutal and openly racializedsocial system,especially n the Deep South. But its basicdoctrines-racial and classsubordination,limited governmentregulation,a union-freeworkplace,and a raciallydividedwork-ing class-dovetailed seamlesslywith an ethic of laissez-faireapitalismrooteddeeplyin Americansoil.28This is not to minimizeregionaldifferences. t is, however, o sug-gest that the furtherwe move awayfrom the campaigns hat overturned he South'sdistinctivesystem of state-sponsored egregation, he easierit is to see the broaderand ultimatelymore durablepatternsof privilegeand exploitationthatwereAmeri-can, not southern, n theiroriginsandconsequences.

25For the argumentthat the South "traveled lmost directlyfrom the countrysideto suburbia"and that "thesouthern city became the quintessentialsuburbancity,"see David R. Goldfield, PromisedLand: The Southsince1945 (ArlingtonHeights, 1987), 153, 34.26On such black-whiteinteractions,see Diane Miller Sommerville,Rapeand Racein theNineteenth-CenturySouth(Chapel Hill, 2004); andJenniferLynnRitterhouse,"LearningRace: RacialEtiquetteand the Socializationof Childrenin the Jim Crow South"(Ph.D. diss., Universityof North Carolina,Chapel Hill, 1999).27Forthe argumentthat racialismarosein feudalEuropebeforeEurope's ncounterwith Africa and that capi-talism and racialismevolved togetherto produce "amodern world system of 'racialcapitalism'dependent on sla-very, violence, imperialism, and genocide," see Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the BlackRadicalTradition1983; ChapelHill, 2000), 2-3; and Robin D. G. Kelley,"Foreword,"bid., esp.xiii. I use "racialcapitalism" o emphasizethat unfetteredcapitalismaswell as racialismproducedthe Jim Crow systemand to sug-gest similaritiesbetween the North and the South. For such uses of the term by southern historians,see Hall,"MobilizingMemory,"B8; Robert RodgersKorstad,Civil RightsUnionism:TobaccoWorkersnd the StruggleorDemocracy n the Mid-Twentieth-Century outh (Chapel Hill, 2003), 55; and Brian Kelly, "Sentinelsfor NewSouth Industry:BookerT. Washington,IndustrialAccommodation, and Black Workers n the Jim Crow South,"LaborHistory,44 (Aug.2003), 339. On the patriarchalpolitical cultureof the blackbelt elite, see KariA. Freder-ickson, The DixiecratRevoltand the End of the Solid South, 1932-1968 (ChapelHill, 2001).

28 RobertKorstad,"Classand Caste:Unravelingthe Mysteriesof the New South Regime,"paperdeliveredatthe W. E. B. Du Bois InstituteColloquium Series,HarvardUniversity,Cambridge,Mass.,Feb. 18, 2004 (in Hall'spossession).



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Those common patternsmeant that the South'spostwarprosperitycould narrowregionaldifferenceswithout eliminatingracialgaps. Change beganin earnest n the1940s and acceleratedn the 1950s and 1960s, as southernDemocrats,respondingselectively o the activistNew Deal state (rather han opposingit, as observersoftenassume), used their congressionalseniority to garnera disproportionateshare ofdefensespendingwhile demandinglocal and statecontrol overfederalprograms orhousing, hospital construction,education,and the like. That strategyhelped raisewagesand tripleregional ncomes in the 1940s, but it also blunted federalantidis-crimination efforts.29At the same time, southern industrialists, ike their counter-parts n otherregions,reacted o risingwagesand to the labormilitancythatfollowedWorldWarII by installing aborsavingmachineryand eliminatingthe jobs held byblacks, while whites monopolized the new skilled and white-collarjobs, whichdemandedqualificationsdenied to blacksby both educationalinequitiesand dis-criminatorypractices hat barred hem from learningon the job. Thus even as theSouthprospered,racialdisparitieswidened.30Much of the South'snew technical and managerialwork force, moreover,wasimportedfrom the urbanNorth. BeforeWorld WarII, the chief goalof most south-ern politicianswas to maintainthe South's solation and the captive aborsupplyonwhichthe sharecroppingystemdepended.Afterward,boosterismbecametheselead-ers' raisond'tre and "the selling of the South"began. Low corporatetaxes, lowwelfarebenefits,and "look-the-other-waynvironmentalpolicies,"coupledwith fed-erally financed highway-building campaigns,attractednorthern industry and aninflux of northern-born,Republican-bred ranchmanagers, upervisors, nd techni-cians.31Those newcomerssettledwith theirsouthern-born ounterpartsn class-andrace-marked nclavescreatedby the sameostensiblyrace-neutral ublicpoliciesthatspatializedrace in the North. With mushroomingsuburbanization ame the atti-tudes and advantages hatwould undergird he South'sversion of homeownerpoli-tics-the politics of the long backlasheverywhere.RichardM. Nixon's "southernstrategy,"which attackedwelfare,busing, and affirmativeaction in order to bringwhite southerners nto the Republican old, targeted uch voters:middle-class ubur-banites, includingskilledworkers from outside the South and young familieswhohad come of age after the Browndecisionand were uncomfortablewith the openlyracistrhetoricof massiveresistance.Aimed alsoatwhite workers n the urbanNorth,that strategyhelped make the South a chief strongholdof the Republicanpartyas,

29 BruceJ. Schulman,From CottonBelt to Sunbelt:FederalPolicy,EconomicDevelopment, nd the Transforma-tion ofthe South, 1938-1980 (New York, 1991), 112-73; Samuel Lubell, The FutureofAmericanPolitics(NewYork, 1951), 100, 111-12; Karen Kruse Thomas, "Southern Racial Politics and FederalHealth Policy in theCareersof Three Southern Senators:Allen Ellender of Louisiana,Lister Hill of Alabama,and Claude PepperofFlorida,"paperdeliveredat the Organizationof American HistoriansSouthernRegionalConference,Atlanta, Ga.,July 10, 2004 (in Hall'spossession).30 Gavin Wright, "Economic Consequences of the Southern ProtestMovement,"in New Directions n CivilRightsStudies,ed. Robinson and Sullivan, 174-78; Brown et al., WhitewashingRace,72-73. On how mechaniza-tion undercut abor and eliminatedjobs for blacks,see Korstad,CivilRightsUnionism,277-81.31Gavin Wright, "The Civil Rights Revolution as Economic History," ournalof EconomicHistory,59 O(June1999), esp. 285. For the argumentthat much of the South'scontinuing distinctivenessrestsless on its historyofracism than on its devotion to the conservativeeconomic tenets of racialcapitalism,see ibid.



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over the next quartercentury, he partycastoff its moderatesand set about disman-tling the New Deal order.32The Long Civil RightsMovementYetthe outcome was not inevitable.Itwould takemany yearsof astute andaggressiveorganizing o bringtoday'sconservative egimeto power.It took such effortbecauseanotherforcealso rosefrom the caldronof the GreatDepressionand crested n the1940s: a powerfulsocial movementsparkedby the alchemyof laborites,civil rightsactivists,progressiveNew Dealers,and black andwhite radicals, ome of whom wereassociatedwith the Communistparty.RobertKorstadcallsit "civilrightsunionism,"MarthaBiondi the "BlackPopularFront";both termssignal the movement'scom-mitment to buildingcoalitions,the expansiveness f its socialdemocraticvision, andthe importanceof its black radical and laboriteleadership.A national movementwith a vital southernwing, civilrightsunionismwas not justa precursor f the mod-ern civil rightsmovement. It was its decisivefirstphase.33The link between raceand class ayat the heart of the movement'spoliticalimagi-nation. Historianshavedepictedthe postwaryearsasthe moment when raceeclipsedclass as the definingissue of American iberalism.34 ut amongcivil rightsunionists,

32 This paragraphdrawson JamesC. Cobb, TheSellingof theSouth: TheSouthernCrusadeor IndustrialDevel-opment,1936-1980 (Baton Rouge, 1982); Schulman,From CottonBelt to Sunbelt;Brown, Race,Money,and theAmericanWelfare tate;Lubell, Futureof AmericanPolitics, 100, 111-12; Hanchett, SortingOut the New SouthCity,89-182, 223-56; BruceJ. Schulman, The Seventies:The GreatShift in AmericanCulture,Society, nd Politics(New York,2001), 36-37; Dan T. Carter,ThePoliticsof Rage:GeorgeWallace,heOriginsof the New Conservatism,and the Transformation f American Politics (New York, 1995), 326-27, 399; Lassiter,"SuburbanOrigins of'Color-Blind'Conservatism,"549-82; and JeffersonCowie, "Nixon'sClass Struggle:Romancingthe New RightWorker, 1969-1973," LaborHistory,43 (Aug. 2002), 257-83. For a more sympathetic treatment of Nixon'ssouthern policies, see Dean J. Kotlowski, Nixon'sCivil Rights:Politics,Principle,and Policy (Cambridge,Mass.,2001), 1-43.33Korstad,CivilRightsUnionism;Biondi, ToStandandFight,6. In this essayI use the term "civilrightsunion-ism" to highlightthe conjunction of race and class interests n black- and Left-ledunions and progressive rganiza-tions. On the PopularFront, see Michael Denning, The CulturalFront: TheLaboringofAmericanCulture n theTwentiethCentury New York,1996). Importantearlystudiesfocused on civil rightsactivism n the late 1930s andthe 1940s. See, for example, RichardM. Dalflume, "The 'ForgottenYears'of the Negro Revolution,"JournalofAmericanHistory,55 (June 1968), 90-106; and HarvardSitkoff,A New Dealfor Blacks:TheEmergence f CivilRightsas a National Issue(New York, 1978). Still, only in the 1990s did civil rights historiansbegin to see the1940s as awatershedcomparable o the 1870s and the 1960s. See, for example,MichaelK. Honey, SouthernLaborand Black Civil Rights:OrganizingMemphisWorkersUrbana, 1993); PatriciaSullivan,Days of Hope:Race andDemocracyn theNew Deal Era(ChapelHill, 1996); Penny M. Von Eschen, RaceagainstEmpire:BlackAmericansandAnticolonialism,1937-1957 (Ithaca,1997); BarbaraDianne Savage,Broadcasting reedom:Radio, War, nd thePoliticsof Race,1938-1948 (Chapel Hill, 1999); John Egerton, SpeakNow againsttheDay: TheGeneration eforethe Civil RightsMovement n the South(New York,1994); CarolAnderson,Eyesoff thePrize: The UnitedNationsand theAfricanAmericanStruggleor Human Rights,1944-1955 (New York,2003); Risa LaurenGoluboff, "TheWork of Civil Rights in the 1940s: The Department of Justice, the NAACP,nd African-AmericanAgriculturalLabor"(Ph.D. diss., Princeton University,2003); and Glenda Gilmore, "Defying Dixie: African Americans andTheir Allies, 1915-1945," book in progress in Glenda Gilmore'spossession).Fora contraryview of the 1940s asa decadeof quiescence,see HarvardSitkoff,"AfricanAmericanMilitancyin the World War II South:Another Per-spective," n RemakingDixie: TheImpactof WorldWarII on the AmericanSouth,ed. Neil R. McMillen (Jackson,1997), 70-92.34On the 1940s as the beginning of an era in which progressives levated race over class, see Gary Gerstle,"TheProteanCharacterof AmericanLiberalism,"AmericanHistoricalReview,99 (Oct. 1994), 1043-73; and PeterJ. Kellogg, "CivilRights Consciousness in the 1940s,"Historian,42 (no. 1, 1979), 18-41, esp. 22-25. For con-traryviews of the decade,see Denning, CulturalFront,467; and Goluboff, "Workof Civil Rights in the 1940s."



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neitherclass nor racetrumpedthe other,and both wereexpansivelyunderstood.Pro-ceeding from the assumptionthat, from the founding of the Republic,racism hasbeen bound up with economic exploitation,civil rightsunionistssoughtto combineprotectionfrom discriminationwith universalistic ocialwelfarepoliciesand individ-ual rightswith laborrights.Forthem, workplacedemocracy,union wages,and fairand full employmentwent hand in hand with open, affordablehousing, politicalenfranchisement, ducationalequity,and an enhancedsafety net, includinghealthcarefor all.35The realizationof this vision dependedon the answers to two questions. First,could the black-labor-left oalition reformthe socialpoliciesforgedduringthe GreatDepression,extendingto blacks the social and economic citizenshipthe New Dealhad providedto an expandingstate-subsidizedmiddle class and an upperechelon ofmale workers?Second, could the coalitiontakeadvantageof the New Deal and thesurgeof progressivehoughtand politics in the AmericanSouth to breakthe gripofthe southernoligarchy n the region?36Extending he New Deal and reforming he Southweretwo sidesof the samecoinbecause even out of ten AfricanAmericans till livedin the formerConfederate tatesand becauseconservative outhernDemocratspossessed uch disproportionate owerin Congress."37o challengethe southernDemocrats'congressional tranglehold, hemovement had to enfranchiseblackand white southernworkersand bringthem intothe house of labor,thus creatinga constituencyon which the region's mergingpro-civil rights,prolaborpoliticianscould rely.If the projectfailed and the conservativewing of the southern Democraticparty triumphed, he South would become a mag-net for runaway ndustriesand a powerbase for a nationalconservativemovement,undercuttinghe northernbastionsof organizedaborandunravelinghe New Deal.38During the 1940s half a million unionized blackworkers,North and South, putthemselves n the front ranks of the effort. The "Double V" campaign,for victoryover fascism abroadand racism at home; the prolabor policies of the Rooseveltadministration; he booming economy,which made labor scarce and triggered hebiggest jump in blackearningssince emancipation; he militancyof the black-and

35Korstad,CivilRightsUnionism,3; Biondi, ToStand and Fight, 16; Self,AmericanBabylon,2-3, 6; Alan Der-ickson, "'TakeHealth from the List of Luxuries':Laborand the Right to Health Care, 1915-1949," LaborHistory,41 (May2000), 171-87.36What Alex Lichtenstein has called the "Southern Front"was signaled by union successes in the region, aspike in National Association for the Advancementof Colored People (NAACP)embershipand voter registrationamong blacks, ocal activismbyAfricanAmericansand white workers,and an influx into Washingtonof prolabor,antiracist,southern New Dealers.See Alex Lichtenstein,"The Cold War and the 'Negro Question,'"RadicalHis-toryReview,72 (Fall 1998), 186; Anthony P. Dunbar,Againstthe Grain:SouthernRadicalsand Prophets,1929-1959 (Charlottesville,1981); LindaReed, SimpleDecencyand CommonSense:The SouthernConferenceMovement,1938-1963 (Bloomington, 1991); Sullivan,Days of Hope; Korstad,Civil RightsUnionism;and Egerton, SpeakNow againsttheDay37According to the U.S. census of 1940, 8,873,631 out of 12,672,971 AfricanAmericanslived in the elevenformer Confederate states. Universityof VirginiaGeospatialand StatisticalData Center, UnitedStatesHistoricalCensusData BrowserSept. 2004).38Sullivan,DaysofHope;MichaelGoldfield, The ColorofPolitics:Raceand theMainsprings fAmericanPolitics(New York, 1997), 231-61; Brown, Race,Money,and the AmericanWelfare tate,99-134; IraKatznelson,KimGeiger,and Daniel Kryder,"LimitingLiberalism:The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933-1950," Political ScienceQuarterly, 08 (Summer 1993), 283-306; Korstadand Lichtenstein,"OpportunitiesFound and Lost,"786-811;Korstad,CivilRightsUnionism,4-5.



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CivilRights nd he PoliticalUsesof the Past 1247

Left-ledunions;the return of blackveterans-all takentogether "generated rightsconsciousness hat gaveworking-classblackmilitancya moraljustification n somewaysaspowerfulas thatevokedby [Afro-Christianity] generation ater."39International ventsdeepenedand broadened hat consciousness.AfricanAmeri-cans and their allies wereamong the first to graspthe enormityof the Nazi persecu-tion of the Jewsand to drive home the parallelsbetweenracismand anti-Semitism.In so doing, they usedrevulsionagainst he Holocaust to undermineracismat homeand to "turnworld opinion againstJim Crow."A "risingwind" of popularanticolo-nialism,inspiredby the nationalliberationstruggles n Africa andAsia that eruptedafter the war,also legitimizedblackaspirations nd linkedthe denial of civil rightsathome to the exploitationof the colonized peoples around the globe as well as toraciallyexclusive mmigrationand naturalizationaws.40At the sametime, PopularFront cultureencouragedaborfeminism,a multiclass,union-oriented trandwithin the women'smovement n which blackwomen playedacentralrole. Womenjoinedthe labormovement n recordnumbers n the 1940s, andby the end of the decadethey had moved into leadershippositions.The labor femi-nistsamongthem fought for accessto jobs, fairtreatment,and expandedsocialsup-portswithin theirunionsand on the shop floor.They aimed to "de-gender"he ideaof the familywageby asserting hatwomen too were breadwinners. hey alsowantedto transform"the masculinepattern"of work, firstby eliminatingall invidiousdis-tinctions betweenmale andfemaleworkersand then by demanding nnovations, uchasfederally unded childcare,thataddressed he burdensofwomen'sdoubleday.Par-alleling and reinforcinglabor feminism, women in the Communist movementlauncheda women's iberationcampaign.Articulatedby ClaudiaJones, the leadingblackwomanleader n the Communistparty,andpushedforwardby the CongressofAmericanWomen, the conceptof the tripleoppressionof blackwomen-by virtue oftheirrace, class,and gender-stood at the center of a traditionof left or progressivefeminism that sawwomen's ssuesasinseparableromthoseof raceandclass.41

39Dalfiume, "'ForgottenYears' f the Negro Revolution,"90-106; Biondi, ToStandand Fight,5; KorstadandLichtenstein,"OpportunitiesFound and Lost,"esp. 787; and EricArnesen,Brotherhoodsf Color:BlackRailroadWorkersnd theStruggleor Equality(Cambridge,Mass., 2001).40Nikhil PalSingh, "Culture/Wars:RecodingEmpirein an Age of Democracy,"AmericanQuarterly, 0 (Sept.1998), 474; Norrell, "One Thing We Did Right,"68-69. For the statement on "worldopinion," see Gilmore,"Defying Dixie." Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: BlackAmericansand U.S. ForeignAffairs, 1935-1960(ChapelHill, 1996); Von Eschen,RaceagainstEmpire.41This discussionof labor feminism is drawn from Dorothy Sue Cobble, "LostVisions of Equality:The LaborMovement Origins of the Next Women'sMovement,"paperdeliveredat the annualmeeting of the Organizationof AmericanHistorians,Washington,D.C., April 13, 2002 (in Hall'spossession),esp. 13; and Dorothy Sue Cob-ble, The Other Women'sMovement:Workplaceusticeand SocialRights n ModernAmerica Princeton,2004), 8-9,94-144, esp. 8. For an earlier use of the term "laborfeminism,"see JacquelynDowd Hall, "O. Delight Smith'sProgressiveEra:Labor, Feminism, and Reform in the Urban South,"in VisibleWomen:New EssaysonAmericanActivism,ed. Nancy A. Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsock(Urbana, 1993), 166-98. For left feminism more generally,see KateWeigand,RedFeminism:AmericanCommunism nd theMaking of Women's iberation Baltimore,2001);GeraldHome, Race Woman:The Livesof ShirleyGrahamDu Bois (New York,2000); Amy Swerdlow,"The Con-gressof AmericanWomen: Left-FeministPeacePoliticsin the Cold War,"n US. Historyas Women's istory:NewFeministEssays, d. Linda K. Kerber,Alice Kessler-Harris, nd KathrynKish Sklar(ChapelHill, 1995), 296-312;Daniel Horowitz, BettyFriedanand theMaking ofThe Feminine Mystique: TheAmericanLeft,the Cold War,andModernFeminism Amherst, 1998), 50-152; and GerdaLerner,Fireweed:A PoliticalAutobiographyPhiladelphia,2002), 256-74.



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Spurredby this broad nsurgency, s well asby the turnof black eaders rom"par-allelism" the creation of black institutionsand the demand for separatebut equalpublicservices) o a push for full inclusion,blackpoliticalactivismsoaredand barri-ers to economicand politicaldemocracy umbled. The WagnerAct and the NationalWar LaborBoardhelpedworkers emperthe powerof corporationsand forward hedreamof workplacedemocracythat had animatedAmerican reformconsciousnesssince the ProgressiveEra.In response o pressurerombelow,led mainly byA. PhilipRandolph and the Brotherhoodof Sleeping Car Porters,President Franklin D.Rooseveltestablisheda FairEmploymentPracticesCommittee (FEPC)n 1941, put-ting racialdiscriminationon the nationalagendafor the first time since Reconstruc-tion. In 1944 the SupremeCourt broughta halfcenturyof acquiescencen politicalexclusionto an end when it declared he white primaryunconstitutional.Rivaling nimportance he later and more celebratedBrowndecision,Smith v.Allwright parkeda major,South-widevoter registrationdrive. Other victories ncludedthe desegrega-tion of the military, he outlawingof racialrestrictivecovenantsand segregation ninterstatecommerceand graduateeducation,and the equalizationof the salariesofblack andwhite teachers n some southernstates.42The Chill of the Cold WarThose breakthroughsontributedto the movement'smomentum, but they also metfierceresistance, s the long backlashaccelerated. n the late 1940s, northernbusinessinterests oined conservative outhernDemocratsin a drive to roll backlabor'swar-time gains,protectthe South'scheaplaborsupply,andhalt the expansionof the NewDeal. Their weapon of choice was a mass-basedbut elite-manipulatedanticommu-nist crusade hat would profoundlyalter the culturalandpoliticalterrain.The chief targetwasNew Deal labor law.Likeantidiscrimination nd affirmativeaction programs in the 1960s and 1970s, the FEPC ad enraged the conservative alli-ance,which defended the employer's ightto hire andfireatwill andequatedfairhir-ing practiceswith quotas. After the war, probusinessconservativesquashed thecampaignfor a permanentFEPC,the chief item on the black-labor-leftegislativeagenda, in part by framingtheir opposition in the powerfulnew languageof theCold War.Sen. StromThurmondof South Carolina,for instance,paintedthe FEPC

42 Lichtenstein, State ofthe Union, 4-11; Dalfiume, "'ForgottenYears'of the Negro Revolution," 90-106;Biondi, ToStand and Fight,4; Darlene ClarkHine, Black Victory:TheRise and Fall of the WhitePrimary n Texas(Columbia,Mo., 2003); Smithv.Allwright,321 U.S. 649 (1944); AmilcarShabazz,AdvancingDemocracy: fricanAmericansand the Struggleor Accessand Equityin HigherEducation n Texas Chapel Hill, 2004). On "parallel-ism,"see Darlene Clark Hine, "Black Professionalsand Race Consciousness:Origins of the Civil Rights Move-ment, 1890-1950," Journal of American History, 89 (March 2003), 1280. On salary equalization and theimprovementof black schools in the 1940s and early 1950s, see Sonya Ramsey,"More Than the Three R's:TheEducational, Economic, and CulturalExperiencesof African American FemalePublic School Teachers n Nash-ville, Tennessee, 1869-1893" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof North Carolina,Chapel Hill, 2000); Adam Fairclough,TeachingEquality:Black Schools n the Age offim Crow (Athens, Ga., 2001), 58-60; SarahCaroline Thuesen,"Classesof Citizenship: The Culture and Politics of Black Public Education in North Carolina, 1919-1960"(Ph.D. diss., Universityof North Carolina,Chapel Hill, 2003); andJamesJ. Heckman, "The Central Role of theSouth in Accounting for the Economic Progressof BlackAmericans,"AmericanEconomicReview,80 (May 1990),242-46.



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as a violation of the "American"rincipleof "localself-government"by a "federalpolicestate"reminiscentof the Soviet Union. By demonizingthe Communists n thelabormovement,conservativesalso pushedthe Taft-HartleyAct throughCongress.UnderTaft-Hartley'sestrictions, he cIo expelledits left-wingunions, tempered tsfight forsocialwelfareprograms hat would benefit the whole workingclass,and set-tled for an increasinglybureaucratizedystem of collectivebargaining hat securedhigherwagesandprivatewelfareprotections orits own members,mainlywhite maleworkers n heavyindustries.Despite this so-called abor-managementccord,Ameri-cancorporations emained undamentallyhostiletowardboth unionsandthe regula-tory state, leaving even the workerswho profited from the constricted collectivebargainingsystem vulnerable to a renewedcorporateoffensive in the 1970s and1980s, an offensivethat, in combinationwith economic stagnation,deindustrializa-tion, and automation,would cripplethe trade-unionmovement foryearsto come.43To be sure,even as domestic anticommunismhelpeddrivelaborto the rightandweakencivil rightsunionism's nstitutionalbase,it gavecivilrightsadvocatesa potentweapon:the argumentthat the United States' reatmentof its blackcitizensunder-mined its credibilityabroad.At a time when the StateDepartmentwas laboringtodraw a stark contrast betweenAmericandemocracyand Soviet terror,win the alle-gianceof the newly independentnations of Asia andAfrica,and claimleadershipofthe "freeworld,"competition with the Soviet Union gave governmentofficials acompellingreason o ameliorateblackdiscontentand,aboveall, to manage he imageof Americanrace relationsabroad.As a result,civil rights eaderswho werewillingtomute their criticismof Americanforeign policy and distancethemselves from theLeft gaineda degreeof access to the halls of power they had neverhad before. Onbalance,historianshaveemphasized he effectivenessof this strategyand viewedthemovement's uccesses n the 1950s as "at east in parta productof the Cold War."44Seen throughthe optic of the long civil rightsmovement, however,civil rightslookless like a productof the Cold Warand morelike a casualty.

That is so becauseantifascismand anticolonialismhad already nternationalizedthe race ssueand, by linkingthe fate of AfricanAmericans o that of oppressedpeo-ple everywhere,had given theircausea transcendentmeaning.Anticommunism,onthe otherhand, stifled the socialdemocratic mpulsesthat antifascismand anticolo-nialismencouraged,replacing hem with a Cold Warracial iberalism hat, at best,failed to deliveron its promiseof reform(with the partialexceptionof the judiciary,the federalgovernment ook no effectiveactionthroughout he 1950s) and, atworst,colluded with the right-wingred scare to narrowthe ideologicalground on whichcivil rightsactivistscould stand.To takejust one example:Both left-wingand cen-tristblack eaders eized the opportunityofferedby the 1945 foundingof the UnitedNations (UN) o define the plight of AfricanAmericansas a "humanrights" ssue, a

4 Frederickson,DixiecratRevolt,7; Lichtenstein, Stateof the Union, 114-40; Nelson Lichtenstein, "UnionStrategies,"Dissent,49 (Summer 2002), 75. For the battleoverthe FairEmploymentPracticesCommittee (FEPC),see also Merl E. Reed, Seedtimeor theModern Civil RightsMovement:ThePresident's ommitteeon FairEmploy-mentPractice,1941-1946 (Baton Rouge, 1991).4 MaryL. Dudziak, Cold WarCivilRights:Raceand theImageofAmericanDemocracyPrinceton,2000), 12.



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conceptthatin UNtreatiesdenoted not just freedomfrompoliticalandlegaldiscrim-ination but also the right to education, health care, housing, and employment.Although eager o convinceemergingAfricannationsofAmerica's acialprogress, heStateDepartmentblockedthatendeavor,nsulating he internalaffairsof the UnitedStatesfrom the oversightof the UNwhile carefully eparatingprotectedcivil libertiesfrom economicjusticeand brandingthe whole campaignfor a robusthumanrightsprograma Soviet plot. Thwarted in its efforts, the National Association for theAdvancementof Colored People (NAACP)bandonedboth economic issues and thebattle against segregation n the North and devoted its considerableresourcestoclear-cutcasesof de juresegregation n the South, thus severing ts ties to the blackPopularFront and increasinglyweakening he link betweenraceand class.45The presidential ampaignof 1948 markedboth the high point and the demiseofthe postwarblack-labor-left oalition.The coalition found a nationalvoice in HenryWallace,a New Dealerwho brokewith the Democraticpartyand ranfor presidenton a third-party icket. Courtingthe blackvote with a progressive ivil rightsplat-form, DemocraticpartycandidateHarryS. TrumantrouncedWallacebut alienatedthe Dixiecrats,conservative outherncongressmenwho bolted the Democraticcon-vention and formedtheirown party--a way station,as it turnedout, on a roadthatwould lead many conservativewhite southernersto support George C. Wallacebrieflyandthen, with the election of RichardM. Nixon in 1972, movein largenum-bers to the Republicanparty.46The Dixiecratsalsoleft another egacy.They perfecteda combinationof race-andred-baiting hat defeatedthe South'seadingNew Deal politicians n the criticalelec-tion of 1950 and, ten years ater,allowedsegregationistso claim that the civil rightsmovementwas "communist nspired."Red-baitingthus got a second lease on life,spawning a dense network of "little HUACs" nd "little FBIs,"ocal imitations of theHouse Committee on Un-AmericanActivities and the FederalBureauof Investiga-tion, throughoutthe South. Led by some of the region'smost powerful politicians,notably Mississippi's amesEastland,those agencieshounded "subversives"f everysort, from veteransof the black-labor-leftalliance,to local NAACP fficials, to gayteachers,to nationalcivil rightsleaders,thus extendingMcCarthyismwell into the1960s, long after t had falleninto disreputeat the national evel.47

45Anderson, Eyesoff the Prize;Von Eschen, Raceagainst Empire;GeraldHorne, CommunistFront?The CivilRightsCongress, 946-1956 (London, 1988); U.S. Civil Rights Congress, WeChargeGenocide:The HistoricPeti-tion to the United Nations or Relieff?oma Crimeof the United StatesGovernmentgainsttheNegroPeople,ed. Wil-liam L. Patterson (1951; New York, 1970); Mark V. Tushnet, The NACP's Legal Strategyagainst SegregatedEducation,1925-1950 (ChapelHill, 1987); Goluboff, "Workof Civil Rights in the 1940s."46Frederickson,DixiecratRevolt;Carter,PoliticsofRage.47Jeff Woods, BlackStruggle,Red Scare:Segregation nd Anti-Communism n the South, 1948-1968 (BatonRouge, 2004); CatherineFosl,Subversive outherner: nne Bradenand theStruggleor RacialJustice n the ColdWarSouth (New York, 2002); Chris Myers, "The Senator and the Sharecropper: ames O. Eastland, Fannie LouHamer,and the Strugglefor Freedom at Home and Abroad" Ph.D. diss., Universityof North Carolina,ChapelHill, in progress,in Hall's possession);Stacy Braukman,"Anticommunismand the Politics of Sex and Race inFlorida,1954-1965" (Ph.D. diss., Universityof North Carolina,ChapelHill, 1999); StacyBraukman,"'NothingElse Matters but Sex':Cold WarNarrativesof Deviance and the Searchfor LesbianTeachers n Florida, 1959-1963,"FeministStudies,27 (Fall 2001), 553-75. For a prescientstudy of the 1950 election, "the first trialruns ofa Republican-Southernpolitical alliance," n which North Carolina'sFrankPorter Graham and Florida'sClaudePepperweredefeated,see Lubell,FutureofAmericanPolitics,100-128, esp. 108.



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Civil Rightsand the PoliticalUses of the Past 1251

The ClassicalPhase of the MovementIn the South, perhaps more than anywhereelse in the country, the Cold WardestroyedPopularFront nstitutionsanddiverted he civilrightsmovement into newchannels. When the so-called classicalphase of the movement erupted in the late1950s and 1960s, it involved blacksand whites, southernersand northerners,ocalpeopleandfederalofficials,secularists ndmen and women of faith. It also extendedfar beyond the South, and throughoutthe countryit drewon multiple, competingideologicalstrands.But on the ground,in the South, the movement'sabilityto rallyparticipants, tymie its enemies, and breakthroughthe fog of the Cold War camelargely romthe prophetic raditionwithin the blackchurch.Cold War iberalscoun-seledpatiencewhile countering nternational riticismby suggesting hat racismwasnot woven into American institutions; it was limited to the South, a retrograderegionthat economic developmentwould eventuallybring into line with an other-wise democraticnation. By contrast,southern civil rights activists,mobilizing thelatent themes of justiceand deliverancen an otherworldly eligion,demanded"free-dom now,"not gradual, op-downamelioration.That propheticvisiongavebelieversthe courageto engagehistoryas an ongoing processof reconstruction, o riskevery-thing for idealstheymightneversee fulfilled.48Those idealshave often been misconstrued,not only by those on the rightwhoreduce them to color blindnessbut also by those on the left who stressthe southernmovement's limitations. In their zeal to make up for inattention to the freedomstruggle in the North and West, for instance, urban historians sometimes draw amisleadingcontrastbetween a northernembraceof economicsand blackpoweranda southerncommitment to a minimalistprogramof interracialism nd integration.That dichotomyignoresboth the long historyof nonviolent strugglesagainstsegre-gationin the North and the fact thatblacksouthernerswereschooledin a questbothfor access and for self-determination hat dated back to emancipation,a quest thatcalled forth strategies ranging from tactical alliances across the color line, to thebuilding of separateinstitutions, to migration, to economic boycotts and directaction.49 n both regions,the successof the movementdependednot just on ideal-ism and courage,but on a keen understandingand readyuse of the fulcrums ofpower.There was, moreover,nothing minimalist about dismantlingJim Crow,a systembuilt as much on economicexploitationas on de jureand de factospatialseparation.In the mindsof movementactivists, ntegrationwas neverabout"racialmingling"or

48 David L. Chappell,A StoneofHope: PropheticReligionand the DeathofJim Crow ChapelHill, 2004); Rich-ardMoser,"Was t the End orJusta Beginning?AmericanStorytellingandthe Historyof the Sixties," n World heSixtiesMade, ed. Gosse and Moser, 37-51. For an emphasison the relativequiescenceof the institutional blackchurch and the strategicbrilliance,rather han the idealism,of the movement'sgrass-rootsparticipants, ee Payne,I'veGot theLight ofFreedom.See alsoAldon D. Morris, TheOriginsof the CivilRightsMovement:Black Communi-ties Organizing or Change New York,1984). For conflicting perspectiveson the religiousbasisof segregationistthought, see Chappell, Stoneof Hope;and Jane Dailey, "Sex,Segregation,and the SacredafterBrown,"JournalofAmericanHistory,91 (June2004), 119-44.49StevenHahn, A Nation under OurFeet:BlackPoliticalStrugglesn the RuralSouth, rom Slavery o the GreatMigration(Cambridge,Mass., 2003).



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1252 The Journal of American History March 2005

_?b~a~

--~??l??nns~apesp?8~rs;E?a;B~aes;sss~I.,

'L:

These women protesters at the August 1963 March on Washington forthrightly issueddemands that had a long history in the long civil rights movement: decent housing, equalrights, voting rights, and jobs for all. Photograph by WallyMcNamee. Courtesy Corbis."merely sitting next to whites in school," as it is sometimes caricatured now.50Nordid it imply assimilation into static white-defined institutions, however much whitesassumed that it did. True integration was and is an expansive and radical goal, not anending or abolition of something that once was-the legal separation of bodies byrace-but a process of transforming institutions and building an equitable, demo-cratic, multiracial, and multiethnic society.1

The 1963 March on Washington,which came at the heightof what figures n thedominantnarrative s the good, color-blindmovement, s a case n point.Today's on-servativesmake much of Martin LutherKing'sdreamthat "childrenwill one daylivein a nation wheretheywill not be judgedby the color of their skin butby the contentof their character." ut virtuallynothing in the dominantnarrativewould lead us toexpectan imageof the march that showed women carrying igns demanding obs forall, decenthousing,fairpay,and equalrights"NO1.," thusassertingboth their racialsolidarityand their identitiesas activistsand workersand thereby he equalsof men.5250Forexamplesof the caricature, ee WallStreet ournal,July21, 1999, p. A22; TamarJacoby,"ASurprise,but

Not a Success,"AtlanticMonthly,289 (May2002), 114; RaymondWolters,"FromBrownto Greenand Back:TheChanging Meaningof Desegregation," ournalof SouthernHistory,70 (May2004), 321; andAnn Coulter,"RacialProfilingin UniversityAdmissions,"HumanEvents,April 9, 2001, p. 7. Fora contraryview, see LosAngelesSenti-nel, March31, 1994, p. A4.51 ohn a. powell, "ANew Theory of IntegratedEducation: True ntegration," aperdeliveredat the conference"The Resegregationof Southern Schools?A Crucial Moment in the History (and the Future)of PublicSchoolingin America,"Universityof North Carolina LawSchool, Chapel Hill, N.C., Aug. 30, 2002 (in Hall'spossession).52For an example of the "content of our character"mantra,see WallStreet ournal,Jan. 19, 1998, p. 1. For



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Nothing in the dominantstoryremindsus that this demonstration,which mobilizedpeoplefrom all walksof life and fromeverypartof the country,was a "march orjobsand freedom"-and thatfromearlyon womenwerein the frontranks,helpingto linkrace,class,andgenderand thusforeshadowing oth blackfeminismand the expansivemovementof movements he civilrightsstruggle et in motion.53In recentyearswe have learnedmoreandmore about the continuitiesbetween the1940s and the 1960s, especiallyabout the civil rightsactivistswho came to politicalconsciousnessn the earlierperiodandthen groomedandguidedthe youngmen andwomen who steppedforward n lateryears.E. D. Nixon, the stalwartNAACPeaderwho recruitedKing for the Montgomerybus boycott,was a veteranof the Brother-hood of SleepingCarPorters, he black-ledunion that was centralto the movementin the 1940s. Ella Bakerpassedon to the Student Nonviolent CoordinatingCom-mittee (SNCC) the radicalpedagogyand organizingstyle she had learned both fromher upbringing n the ruralSouth and from the left-wingpolitics of Harlemin the1930s and 1940s. BayardRustin, one of the movement'smost brilliantstrategists,had been "aneageryoung explorerof the Americanleft, broadlydefined."AnneBraden,a white southernerwho became, as AngelaY. Davis put it, a "legend" oyoung radicals,workedfor Left-ledunions in the late 1940s and continues to carrythe bannerof antiracism o thisday.FrancesPauleygot herstartworkingfor the NewDeal in Georgia,helpedmobilizewhite women on behalfof desegregation, ndspentthe restof her life in the fight for civil rightsandagainstpoverty.54The differencesand discontinuities,however,were criticalas well. The activistsofthe 1960s relied on independentprotest organizations;hey could not groundtheirbattle in growing,vibrant,socialdemocraticunions. They also suffered rom a rup-turein the narrative, void at the center of the storyof the moderncivil rightsstrug-gle that is only now beginningto be filled. Many young activistsof the 1960s sawtheir efforts as a new departureand themselvesas a uniquegeneration,not as actorswith much to learn from an earlier, abor-infusedcivil rightstradition.Persecution,censorship,andself-censorship einforced hatgenerationaldivideby sidelining nde-pendent blackradicals, hus whitening the memory and historiographyof the Leftand leavinglatergenerationswith an understandingof black politics that dichoto-mizes nationalism and integrationism.The civil rights unionism of the 1940s-more accurateviews of the March on Washington,see Higginbotham,"Foreword,"iii-xiv; Theoharis,"Introduc-tion," 1-15; and JuanWilliams, "AGreatDay in Washington:The March on WashingtonforJobs and FreedomWas America at Its Best,"Crisis,110 (July-Aug.2003), 24-30.

5 My gloss of this photographdraws on Green, "Race, Gender,and Labor n 1960s Memphis,"465-89; andNasstrom,"Down to Now."On the recent literaturegivingattentionto women and the culturalwork of genderinthe movement, see Michele Mitchell, "SilencesBroken,SilencesKept:Gender and Sexuality n African-AmericanHistory,"Gender nd History,11 (Nov. 1999), 433-44; and StevenF.Lawson,"CivilRightsand BlackLiberation,"in Companion o American Women's istory, d. Nancy A. Hewitt (Malden, 2002), 397-413.54Payne,I've Got theLight ofFreedom,404-17; BarbaraRansby,EllaBakerand the BlackFreedomMovement:ARadicalDemocraticVision(Chapel Hill, 2003); John D'Emilio, LostProphet:TheLifeand Timesof BayardRustin(New York,2003), 36; KathrynL. Nasstrom,Everybody's randmothernd Nobody's ool:FrancesFreebornPauleyand the Struggleor SocialJustice(Ithaca, 2000). ForAngela Davis'sstatement, see Fosl, Subversive outherner, .Other black radicals,sidelined by McCarthyism,took up artisticendeavorsthat influenced the political and aes-thetic imaginationof generations o come. See RebeccahE. Welch, "BlackArt and Activism in PostwarNew York,1950-1965" (Ph.D. diss., New YorkUniversity,2002).



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which combined a principled and tactical belief in interracialorganizingwith astrong emphasis on black culture and institutions-was lost to memory. As themovement waned and contrarypolitical forces resumedpower,that loss left a vac-uum for the currentdominant narrative o fill.55Beyond DeclensionIn the dominantnarrative,he declineof the movement followshard on the h

long civil rights movement (hall)

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