Legal History and the Problem of the Long Civil Rights Movement

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 1081-1107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Black Freedom Struggle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

This essay offers a critical examination of use of the term “long civil rights movement” as a framework for understanding the legal history of the battle against racial inequality in twentieth-century America. Proponents of the long movement argue that expanding the chronological boundaries of the movement beyond the 1950s and 1960s allows scholars to better capture the diverse social mobilization efforts and ideas that fueled the black freedom struggle. While not questioning the long framework's usefulness for studying the social movement dynamics of racial justice activism, I suggest that the long framework is of more limited value for those who seek to understand the development of civil rights, as a legal claim, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The tendency of long movement scholars to treat civil rights as a pliable category into which they can put any and all racial justice claims is in tension with historical understandings of the term. Susan Carle's Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 suggests an alternative approach. Her detailed and nuanced account of a period in American history when racial justice activists understood civil rights as a relatively narrow subset of legal remedies within a much broader struggle for racial equality indicates the need for an alternate history of civil rights—one that places the evolving, contested, and historically particularized concept of civil rights at the center of inquiry. “Civil Rights” is a term that did not evolve out of black culture, but, rather, out of American law. As such, it is a term of limitation. —Alice Walker (1983)

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Lowney
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Black Atlantic ◽  
Double Consciousness ◽  
Black Music ◽  
American Literary History ◽  
Jazz History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

There have been a number of outstanding studies that articulate the importance of black music for “Afro-modernist” literary production since Paul Gilroy’s seminal The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). Through inquiry into influential Marxist, Black Atlantic, and African diasporic studies of jazz literature and jazz history, the introduction explains how Jazz Internationalism is distinguished by its historical scope and attention to multiple genres of jazz literature. This introduction outlines not only a history of Afro-modernist jazz literature that corresponds with the Long Civil Rights Movement, it also underscores the intertextuality of jazz literature as it evolves through several generations of black music and writing. While the primary purpose of Jazz Internationalism is not one of recovering obscure writers or texts, it does make the case for a more expansive understanding of jazz writing for both African American literary history and African diasporic studies more generally.

Quaker Brotherhood

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan W. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
History Of

This is the first extensive study of the American Friends Service Committee's interracial activism in the first half of the twentieth century, filling a major gap in scholarship on the Quakers' race relations work from the AFSC's founding in 1917 to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. The book tracks the evolution of key AFSC projects, such as the Interracial Section and the American Interracial Peace Committee, that demonstrate the tentativeness of the Friends' activism in the 1920s, as well as efforts in the 1930s to make scholarly ideas and activist work more theologically relevant for Friends. Documenting the AFSC's efforts to help European and Japanese American refugees during World War II, the book shows that by 1950, Quakers in the AFSC had honed a distinctly Friendly approach to interracial relations that combined scholarly understandings of race with their religious views. Highlighting the complicated and sometimes controversial connections between Quakers and race during this era, the book uncovers important aspects of the history of Friends, pacifism, feminism, American religion, immigration, ethnicity, and the early roots of multiculturalism.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Greta de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Displaced Workers ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Mass Displacement ◽  
Finance Capitalism ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

This chapter briefly outlines the history of racial discrimination in the rural South and the ways social justice activists continued the struggle for equality in the decades following the civil rights movement. Civil rights legislation failed to adequately address the economic legacies of past discrimintation, which were compounded by the mass displacement of agricultural workers from the land in the mid-twentieth century. Activists’ calls for government intervention to provide employment, income, education, housing, and health care for displaced workers generated strong resistance from regional elites whose preferred solution to the crisis was for displaced workers to leave. The ideological and political struggles that ensued had consequences for all Americans, not just African Americans, and helped shape national responses to labor displacement during the transition from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism in the late twentieth century.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 3-25
Author(s):  
Emma J. Folwell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Political Power ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
White Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Black Empowerment

The introduction traces the intertwined history of racism and poverty in Mississippi and describes how civil rights activists used these experiences in shaping their fight for racial justice. It outlines the central argument of the book, explaining that from 1965 to 1973, there was both a war against poverty and a war against the war on poverty in Mississippi. The war on poverty provided a powerful tool for black empowerment, drawing on the vitality of Mississippi’s civil rights movement. At the same time, the fight against the war on poverty served as a template for white resistance and entrenchment, and as a way to undermine liberalism, marginalize black political power, and articulate a new conservatism.

Black Power in Philadelphia: Selective Patronage and the Effectiveness of Direct Action Protest

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 373-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Gammage
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Black Power ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Black Power during the 1960s is a shift in direct action protest with its aim at procuring power (economic, political, educational, etc.). The manifestation of Black Power in Philadelphia in the late 1960s provides us an elaborate model of direct action protest that included central components of the African American community. Moreover, the selective patronage movement successfully maintained organization and momentum without the prototypical one leader model that was prominent in the civil rights movement that preceded it. Much like the Black Lives Matter movement, the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia drew on the national outcry for racial justice but largely built the core of its strength on local networks. This article explores the history of the selective patronage movement in Philadelphia during the early 1960s. Next, it assesses the strengths and weakness of the movement. Lastly, it provides recommendations for future movements aimed at economic development.

Class Not Race in Legal Ethics: Or Why Hierarchy Makes Strange Bedfellows

2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Wilkins
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Ethics Committees ◽  
Early History ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Legal Ethics ◽  
History Of ◽  
Corporate Lawyers

Susan Carle has given us a fascinating, thoroughly researched, and well-argued examination of the early history of the modern civil rights movement. She frames her inquiry of this rarely investigated period in terms of the tension between the NAACP's litigation tactics during the early part of the twentieth century and the professed ethics of the establishment lawyers who authored and approved these controversial measures. How, she asks, could leading corporate lawyers such as Charles Boston justify authorizing the NAACP's concerted campaign to solicit plaintiffs and create test cases while at the same time serving on ethics committees that expressly condemned such practices?

Critical Race Theory and The Political Uses of Legal History

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Timothy Lovelace
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Legal Defense

In 1976, Derrick Bell, a former lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, wrote about the inability of modern civil rights litigation to advance real racial justice. His willingness to dissent from civil rights orthodoxy would radically reshape the study of race, law, and history. The result would lead to the creation of critical race theory. This chapter begins by examining the role of historical analysis in the development of critical race theory. It then explores how legal historians of the civil rights movement imported insights from critical race theory to develop three decades of movement scholarship. Next, it charts new scholarly directions for both critical race theorists and legal historians. The chapter concludes with reflections on how legal history and critical race theory have influenced contemporary struggles for racial justice.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Brian C. Odom
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social History ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Civil Rights Movement

This introductory chapter provides an overall introduction for the volume and its collection of diverse essays intended to promote a deeper, interdisciplinary exploration of the social history of NASA during the age of Apollo, developed around the ideas advocated by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall in her 2005 essay, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” which called upon historians to place civil rights movement histories “in the context of a longer story,” one that would make that history “harder to simplify, appropriate, and contain.” The introduction concludes with a call for further research on the topic.

scholarly journals Defying the Law of the Land: The Lawyer's Role in Civil Disobedience in Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Bolger
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Test Case ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Complex Dimension ◽  
History Of

A lawyer’s role in relation to the issue of civil disobedience is far from settled. Lawyers advocate for values such as “truth” and “justice;” however, they are also instructed to respect the rule of law and the legislature’s role in creating laws and policy. Due to the tension between values and law, lawyers must choose which clients to represent as well as determine what constitutes effective counsel. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms adds another complex dimension to this dilemma because of the fine line between “civil disobedience” and the assertion of Charter rights through test case litigation. It is easy to look back at historical moments, such as the civil rights movement, and recognize when civil disobedience is justified. However, we do not always have the luxury of hindsight, and we must not deny that there are legitimate reasons to practice civil disobedience today. The legal history of Dr. Henry Morgentaler is an example of the juxtaposition between advocacy and policy. Throughout his legal battles, Dr. Morgentaler was labelled a criminal who performed civil disobedience, but who is now highly regarded as someone who fought for Charter rights. Therefore, with competing obligations to one’s client, fellow lawyers, and the public in general, lawyers must chart their own ethical course in these matters.

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