Source: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 2005 “Another force also rose from the caldron of the Great Depression and crested in the 1940s: a powerful social movement sparked by the alchemy of laborites, civil rights activists, progressive New Dealers, and black and white radicals, some of whom were associated with the Communist party…. [T]he movement’s commitment to building coalitions, the expansiveness of its social democratic vision, and the importance of its black radical and laborite leadership. A national movement with a vital southern wing, civil rights unionism was not just a precursor of the modern civil rights movement. It was its decisive first phase. The link between race and class lay at the heart of the movement’s political imagination…. [C]ivil rights unionists sought to combine protection from discrimination with universalistic social welfare policies and individual rights with labor rights. For them, workplace democracy, union wages, and fair and full employment went hand in hand with open, affordable housing, political enfranchisement, educational equity, and an enhanced safety net, including health care for all…. Extending the New Deal and reforming the South were two sides of the same coin…. To challenge the southern Democrats’ congressional stranglehold, the movement had to enfranchise black and white southern workers and bring them into the house of labor, thus creating a constituency on which the region’s emerging pro-civil rights, pro-labor politicians could rely.” Source: Steven F. Lawson, “Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968,” in Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, 2011 “There was a genuine movement for social change in the South during the New Deal era, but it took on a different shape from the civil rights movement that followed in the next two decades. Civil rights unions … performed the work of extending civil rights and laid the groundwork for what followed, but this remained distinct from the civil rights movement…. Class mattered more than race, and critics targeted capitalism as the source of black oppression…. [O]nly through a restructuring of corporate capitalism would genuine economic democracy emerge and white supremacy collapse. Although African American progressives actively participated in unions…, the leadership and membership of these organizations in in the South consisted mainly of whites…. These activists were courageous, visionary, and essential, but they composed only a tiny fraction of the southern population. Their influence should be neither ignored nor exaggerated…. [B]y the time of the Brown decision and [Emmett] Till’s murder, African Americans possessed the institutional structures necessary to mobilize to close the gap between their expectations of change and the brutal reality of white supremacy. At the national level the NAACP led the way, followed by the SCLC, CORE, and SNCC. Indeed, after Brown, state-led efforts to destroy the NAACP, considered the most radical of black organizations by southern white authorities, spurred the creation of new protest organizations locally and throughout the South. Black churches, civic associations, and informal community networks added organizational muscle to the demands for racial equality during the 1950s and 1960s. Without these structures…, the yearning for civil rights would not have grown into a movement, and people would not have taken action against the power of state-supported white supremacy.” Briefly explain ONE major difference between Hall’s and Lawson’s interpretations of the origins of the civil rights movement. Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development from the period that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Hall’s argument. Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Lawson’s argument.
Source: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History, 2005
“Another force also rose from the caldron of the Great Depression and crested in the 1940s: a powerful social movement sparked by the alchemy of laborites, civil rights activists, progressive New Dealers, and black and white radicals, some of whom were associated with the Communist party…. [T]he movement’s commitment to building coalitions, the expansiveness of its social democratic vision, and the importance of its black radical and laborite leadership. A national movement with a vital southern wing, civil rights unionism was not just a precursor of the modern civil rights movement. It was its decisive first phase.
The link between race and class lay at the heart of the movement’s political imagination…. [C]ivil rights unionists sought to combine protection from discrimination with universalistic social welfare policies and individual rights with labor rights. For them, workplace democracy, union wages, and fair and full employment went hand in hand with open, affordable housing, political enfranchisement, educational equity, and an enhanced safety net, including health care for all…. Extending the New Deal and reforming the South were two sides of the same coin…. To challenge the southern Democrats’ congressional stranglehold, the movement had to enfranchise black and white southern workers and bring them into the house of labor, thus creating a constituency on which the region’s emerging pro-civil rights, pro-labor politicians could rely.”
Source: Steven F. Lawson, “Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968,” in Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement, 2011
“There was a genuine movement for social change in the South during the New Deal era, but it took on a different shape from the civil rights movement that followed in the next two decades. Civil rights unions … performed the work of extending civil rights and laid the groundwork for what followed, but this remained distinct from the civil rights movement…. Class mattered more than race, and critics targeted capitalism as the source of black oppression…. [O]nly through a restructuring of corporate capitalism would genuine economic democracy emerge and white supremacy collapse. Although African American progressives actively participated in unions…, the leadership and membership of these organizations in in the South consisted mainly of whites…. These activists were courageous, visionary, and essential, but they composed only a tiny fraction of the southern population. Their influence should be neither ignored nor exaggerated….
[B]y the time of the Brown decision and [Emmett] Till’s murder, African Americans possessed the institutional structures necessary to mobilize to close the gap between their expectations of change and the brutal reality of white supremacy. At the national level the NAACP led the way, followed by the SCLC, CORE, and SNCC. Indeed, after Brown, state-led efforts to destroy the NAACP, considered the most radical of black organizations by southern white authorities, spurred the creation of new protest organizations locally and throughout the South. Black churches, civic associations, and informal community networks added organizational muscle to the demands for racial equality during the 1950s and 1960s. Without these structures…, the yearning for civil rights would not have grown into a movement, and people would not have taken action against the power of state-supported white supremacy.”
- Briefly explain ONE major difference between Hall’s and Lawson’s interpretations of the origins of the civil rights movement.
- Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development from the period that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Hall’s argument.
- Briefly explain how ONE specific historical event or development that is not explicitly mentioned in the excerpts could be used to support Lawson’s argument.
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