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Origins of the Civil rights Movement
When I first read and first taught this book I used it as a contribution to the social
movement literature and as a valuable source of information on the early days of the Civil Rights
Movement. Only more recently have I considered this book as a community study and as an
important contribution to the literature on community politics. Morris also contributes to the
debates, dating back to the Progressive Era, on the effects of urbanization on community,
particularly the effects of Southern urbanization on the Southern black community. He also
offers an excellent model of oral history and advice on how to combine interviews with key
informants with organizational records and other archival materials. For those of you who are
still enamored with Whyte's participant observation, Morris offers an alternative that might be
more practical, particularly given the time constraints that you are facing.
Morris completed his dissertation under the tutelage of Lewis Coser and Charles
Perrow—neither if whom were students of social movements. Coser was an early "conflict"
theorist, who followed the insights of George Simmel and Robert Merton in recognizing that
conflict could be functional. That was a major advance from social disorganization, relative
deprivation, or mass society theories, which viewed conflict as evidence of what Durkheim
might consider social pathology. Perrow was a student of formal organizations, a Weberian.
Between these two eminent scholars Morris had an excellent foundation for his research, and it
was his good fortune to land a job at Michigan, where he could join Gamson, Tilly, Paige, and
Zald, who were each in his own way working at the cutting edge of social movement reseach. In
fact, Resource Mobilization theory, which became the dominant perspective on social
movements in the 1980s was, to a large extent, a product of these scholars. When Morris joined
this group in 1980, the five of them constituted the foundation for what was to become the core
of social movement research.
When Morris published this book, in 1984, however, he was still rooted in a more
traditional approach to social movements, the theory of collective behavior. To a large extent,
Morris is part of the general critique of collective behavior theory, associated with the rise of
resource mobilization theory. At the same time, he is much more sympathetic, particularly in his
discussion of the work of Killian and Turner (p. 276-7). Nevertheless, he clearly distinguishes
himself from this tradition in arguing that the collection action associated with the origins of the
Civil Rights Movement was clearly well organized, carefully planned, and rooted in the
organizational life of the Southern black communities (p. 278).
Specifically, Morris roots the movement in the "tripartite [economic, political, and
personal] system of domination" (p. 1) associated with the Jim Crow Law South. For those of
you unfamiliar with the history of race relations in the U.S., Reconstruction (1868-1876) was an
attempt to reconstitute Southern society according to Northern standards or free markets in land
and labor, but the effort failed for a variety of reasons that need not concern us at the moment
(I'll forego the opportunity to review the conventional wisdom. W. E. B. DuBois, Black
Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 [NY: Free Press, 1992, originally published by Harcourt
and Brace, 1935, offers a classic revisionist account; Eric Foner, A Short History of
Reconstructiion, 1863-1877 [NY: Harper and Row, 1990], updates and documents this
revisionist account in this abridged edition of his classic work, Reconstuction: America's
Unfinished Business, 1863-1877 [1988]. There is a growing revisionist literature, citations to
which I can provide. Hopefully, my Georgia book will join this list before too long.).
In any case, Southern planters attempted to use contract and convict labor during and
shortly after Reconstruction, but black agricultural workers resisted gang labor as reminiscent of
slavery. Many "Freedmen" (freed slaves, both men and women) moved in efforts to reconstitute
or constitute familes and to find the economic and political freedom that emancipation promised.
To make a long story short, the economic and political and social rights that were guaranteed in
the constitutional amendments and Civil Rights Act passed in the decade after the Civil War
were, in varying degrees, evaded or (in the case of Civil Rights) declared unconstitutional in the
course of establishing separate and unequal as the law of the land. Urban blacks were, in varying
degress, able to vote if not hold elective office and, particular in Southern cities, had relative
economic, political, and even social opportunities that continued to be denied the bulk of the
black population, which was primarily rural and agricultural, between 1876 and 1896.
Then, the Populist revolt came to the cotton South and raised once again the spectre of a
mobilized empowered black community, along with a mobilized white community, fighting
similar battles but generally not united. With the defeat of Populism, in the Presidential election
of 1896, Jim Crow Law became the law of the South. "Jim Crow" was a derogatory term used
by Southern whites in reference to blacks. Thus "Jim Crow law" refers to special laws for
blacks. Specifically, the legal segregtion of whites and blacks, in schools, in public facilities,
etc., including separate waiting rooms, drinking fountains, etc., were the essence of Jim Crow
law. This was the "tripartite system" that Morris describes (p. 1), rooted in the failure of
Reconstruction in 1876, instutionalized after the defeat of Populism in 1896, and taken for
granted as the immutable human condition in the 1950s.
Yet, as Morris tells us, blacks never accepted the status quo. There was a "protest
community" (x) extending from the slave revolts to the aborted March on Washington. Thus we
might consider the Civil Rights Movement as another chapter in the struggle for racial justice
that began with Abolitionism. In any case, the movement was clearly rooted in indigenous
organizations and resources—notably in black churches and movement centers. There were also
organizations that were built upon the indigenous organizations and thereby tied to a mass
constituency. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in particular, was an organization
of organizations, where members were churches (local ministers and their congregations, who
were already organized—hence, the organization of organizations). There were also movement
halfway houses and other external supprorts, including non-mass-membership organizations,
such as the NAACP, which were bureaucratic and legalistic, capable of mounting legal
challenges to Jim Crow law but not capable of organizing a protest In order for the Civl Rights
Movement to succeed, according to Morris, it required indigenous organization capable of
disruptive, mass political aciton—boycotts, sit-ins, and marches.
Morris addresses a series of important theoretical issues concerning the importance of
charismatic leaders, the need for organization, and the need for grassroots participation. He
discusses and illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of centralized bureaucratic organization,
including the limitations of the NAACP. He also discusses and illustrates the need for central
organization and the problem of factions (comparing Albany and Birmingham). He also
considers the limits of the Civil Rights Movements and the need for economic change, above and
beyond the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
Today, as we reflect on the extent to which the South Side of Chicago resembles the
Seventh Ward of Philadelphia in the 1990s it is easy to forget the long history of struggle in the
pursuit of racial justice. While we have considered the question of whether there is a black
community, we have not really considered that question in the context of the historical struggle
for racial justice. Perhaps there is a protest community, as Professor Morris suggests, which is
an essential component of the black community. Perhaps, there is a more general protest
community which transcends the boundaries of categorical inequality and in its finest moments
constitutes the combined efforts of black and white men and women united in a struggle for
social justice. Clearly, the first March on Washington was one such moment.