As we examined in Modules 22 and 23, civil rights activism was characterized by nonviolent resistance and protest. Through acts of civil disobedience, activists would purposefully break laws they believed to be unjust. The emphasis was on desegregation and integration of public spaces, schools, and the voting booths. We explored Martin Luther King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the more radical student based organization, SNCC.
We stopped with an exploration of some achievements of the civil rights movement, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Through acts of nonviolent resistance, including boycotts, marches, sit-ins, and voter registration drives, civil rights activists gained publicity for their cause in the national and international media, prompting the state to take action and listen to the demands of its citizens. However, they were met with violent resistance from segregationists and those who wanted to preserve the racial order, especially in the Deep South.
Violent reactions to nonviolent protest had become the norm, and by the middle of the 1960s, many student activists were questioning the continued emphasis on nonviolence and whether it was the best tactic. In this module, we’ll look at significant shifts in activists’ tactics and ideology. (We'll continue our discussion of social movements of this era in Module 25, with a look at the Vietnam War, including anti-war activism; and in Module 26 with "Part II.")
Three questions will guide this module blog post:
How did the social movements of the 1960s-1970s build off of and differ from the philosophies of the civil rights movement?
What critiques were freedom struggle activists making of American democracy and citizenship?
What methodologies did movement activists employ to bring about social change?
Let's do it!
(For the record, I am both Erin (excited purple shirt) and Angela (tired red shirt) in this GIF.)
Part I: Ideologies and Roots of 1960s-1970s Social Movements
Urban Uprisings
The main goal of Johnson’s Great Society was to give every American citizen the opportunity to escape from poverty. Certain events of the mid-1960s brought this issue to the forefront of American consciousness—namely, several riots in urban areas, including Harlem, Watts, Newark, and Detroit. These riots were essentially battles between (mainly) Black residents of poor urban neighborhoods and (mainly) white police. The Watts rebellion took place just days after the Voting Rights Act had been signed by Johnson.
An estimated 50,000 people took part in the rebellion, fighting what they saw as an occupying army in their neighborhoods. At the end, 35 people had been killed, 900 had been injured, and $30 million worth of property had been destroyed. In the summer of 1967, uprisings in Newark and Detroit left 23 and 43 dead respectively. In response, Johnson commissioned a group to study the cause of urban rioting, which found that segregation and poverty, as well as the legacies of white racism played a large role in the reason behind the violence.
The urban uprisings demonstrate a few significant things about the 1960s:
Racial discrimination and tense race relations did not just exist in the Deep South. Blacks in urban areas in the North and West also felt these tensions and acted on them.
Urban uprisings represented a turn to a more militant focus on poverty and structural inequality in black communities in the mid-1960s. As we covered in Module 23, policymakers were thinking about poverty. So were people on the ground.
We have focused on nonviolent resistance, but rebellion resulting in violence also represents a type of resistance. We tend to think of riots as unorganized and out of control. However, it is clear that people were rebelling against something specific. I want to ask you to think historically about where we should situate these types of events in our understanding of the 1960s.
Poll #1:
What do you think? Should urban uprisings in Harlem, Watts, Newark, and Detroit be considered a part of the civil rights movement? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here. In the annotations/comments tell us why/why not.
Poor People's Campaign
Although he did not renounce his support for nonviolent protest, Martin Luther King’s response to the urban uprisings legitimized those protesting white racism and economic injustice. He spoke about them as members of a “colonized” or “captive’ group, consigned to “an island of abject poverty from the mainland of power and decisions.”
In a statement from King’s newly formed Poor People’s Campaign, he argued:
“The most militant poor have resorted to retaliatory violence in their demands for economic justice. They have burnt their Ghettos, out of the angry passion of their inflamed spirit, born in the dark hours of hopelessness. They have looted stores, as they likewise have been legally looted by the greed of the business world.” [1]
The SCLC identified five essential requirements for a bill of economic and social rights:
a meaningful job at a living wage
a secure and adequate income for all who cannot find jobs or for whom employment is inappropriate
access to land as a means to income and livelihood
access to capital as a means of full participation in the economic life of America
recognition by law of the right of the people affected by government programs to play a truly significant role in determining how they are designed and carried out
You can read the text of the SCLC's 1967 statement announcing the campaign here!
In an effort to bring attention to poverty and unemployment, King wanted to organize a massive civil disobedience on behalf of the poor in Washington DC. Although King was assassinated before the demonstration took place, a broad coalition of organizations went through with his plan, and launched the Poor People’s Campaign. Groups from around the country, including African Americans, Latinos, poor whites, and Native Americans journeyed by foot or bus to Washington DC and established a shanty town they called “Resurrection City, USA” adjacent to the Lincoln Memorial.
For six weeks, the participants lived in the shanty town. They established a miniature city, with a child-care center, health and social services, a Poor People’s University with lectures and seminars, free meals, a daily newspaper, a city council, a finance committee, and a public relations center. At its peak, Resurrection City housed more than 3,000 people, and demonstrations and solidarity visits drew even more throughout the six weeks. They lobbied government officials and staged demonstrations. The demands were quite diverse and varied, based on the wide array of participants, but ultimately they all mobilized around issues of poverty.
This should remind you of the Bonus Army of WWI veterans who set up an encampment in DC in 1932. Indeed, King referenced this event when he was planning the Poor People’s Campaign:
“The time has come if we can’t get anything done otherwise to camp right here in Washington just as they did in the bonus march, just camp here and stay here by the thousands and thousands until the Congress of our nation and the federal government will do something to deal with the problem.”
Resurrection City was ultimately shut down by violent confrontations between residents and police. Protestors were subject to tear gas and police dogs. Although protestors had met with legislators and had petitioned Congress, policymakers and LBJ had been largely indifferent to their demands.
Critiques of the Great Society
In Module 23, we examined the two sides of the Great Society (specifically the Community Action Program) that were potentially at odds with one another: on the one hand, poor people were politicized and were articulating their needs and building programs and centers that they were a part of. On the other hand, these types of programs, which were based on an ideology of “self-help” did not challenge the structural inequalities which had created poverty and inequality. Furthermore, at times, poor peoples’ ideas and needs did not always match up with what the government deemed appropriate or necessary.
Thus, in the middle of the 1960s, we have a tension between two ideologies: self-help and self-determination.
Self-help can be defined, in the context of the Great Society, as as attempting to break free of “dependency” and function as a free individual within the American nation. Self-help embraces the idea of social mobility, in order to integrate fully as an equal American citizen. Great Society programs were premised on this idea—that giving people a “hand up” could enable them to access the opportunities and freedoms of the US.
Self-determination, on the other hand, refers to an idea of independence from a colonial power—whether through the establishment of a new, sovereign nation, or a community’s control over their own neighborhoods. This term can be applied to struggles for decolonization in a broad sense, but also more specific communities’ struggles within the US. These communities might want control over the administration of police, social services, businesses, etc. in a way that exists as an alternative to American domestic ideals. Therefore, self-determination is not just about being included in the American nation, but it is also about communities having the authority to decide what that inclusion looks like. [2]
To put it more simply...
Self-Help = Individual effort to integrate as a fully equal citizen within the US as it existed
vs.
Self-Determination = Community control and authority over their own people, services, and economic enterprises
The social movements we’ll explore in the next few modules all engage with the idea of self-determination. They posed critiques—not only of past methods used to resist prejudice and discrimination, but also of the goals of some civil rights activists as well as Great Society policymakers.
Part II: Black Power
In Part II, we’ll turn to an especially clear and significant example of a social movement which engaged with the idea of self-determination, the Black Power movement.
In 1966, James Meredith, the first Black student admitted to the segregated University of Mississippi, began a solo “March against Fear” across the state of Mississippi, to encourage voter registration. On the second day of the march, Meredith was shot. Activists from civil rights groups, including SNCC, were motivated to finish his march after seeing photos of the wounded Meredith. At the march, a SNCC member implored the crowd to cheer “Black Power!” This slogan gained instant popularity.
The intellectual “father” of the ideas behind Black Power was Malcolm X. Malcolm X insisted that blacks must control the political and economic resources of their communities and rely on their own efforts, rather than working with whites. He critiqued the ideas of integration and nonviolent resistance, arguing “The day of nonviolent resistance is over.”
After the civil rights protests we explored in Module 22, activists became increasingly drawn to this sort of ideology. There had been so many deaths and serious injuries of activists and innocent men, women, and children, certain civil rights movement activists began to doubt the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance, and started to get the sense that it was unrealistic. Although they had made significant gains, the issues of unemployment, police brutality, and poor and inadequate education and housing seemed to require a different approach.
Stokely Carmichael, who became the chairman of SNCC in 1966, led the group towards an ideology of Black nationalism. He argued that it was time to form an independent Black political party. He argued that SNCC should leave behind the idea of interracial collaboration.
His critique of integration can be seen in this quote from a speech he gave at UC Berkeley in 1966:
“That is what is called in this country as integration: ‘You do what I tell you to do and then we’ll let you sit at the table with us.’ And that we are saying that we have to be opposed to that. We must now set up a criteria and that if there’s going to be any integration, it’s going to be a two-way thing. If you believe in integration, you can come live in Watts. You can send your children to the ghetto schools. Let’s talk about that. If you believe in integration, then we’re going to start adopting us some white people to live in our neighborhood.”
In 1965, Carmichael and activists from Lowndes County, Alabama had collaborated to form the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), which was an independent third party that ran a full slate of African American candidates for local office against white Democrats and Republicans. Their logo was a black panther, leading the press to dub them the “Black Panther Party.”
Carmichael’s critique of integration, which he saw as a “one-way street” (Blacks integrating into white society, rather than integration across the board), was reflected in the philosophy behind the LCFO.
Carmichael asserted that:
“Black Power means the coming together of black people to elect representatives and to force those representatives to speak to their needs. It is a call for black people to begin to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support their own organizations.”
Poll #2:
In your opinion, does “Black Power” represent an interpretation of American citizenship that we have seen before? Or is it completely new? Answer the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Black Panther Party for Self-Defense
Although the black panther was used as a symbol for the LCFO, it became associated with the most well-known of all Black Power groups—the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The group formed in Oakland, California in 1966 with the stated intention to protect black communities from police brutality. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale drafted the party’s Ten-Point Program, which outlined the goals and objectives of their new organization.
The 10-Point Program included points like:
full employment
decent housing
education that teaches Black history and Blacks’ role in present day society
end to police brutality
all Black people brought to trial to be tried by a jury of their peers
Seale and Newton followed the philosophies of Franz Fanon, and embraced the notion that it was incumbent on the “colonized” to violently resist the “colonizer” in order to liberate themselves effectively from the physical and psychological entrapments of oppression. The Panthers viewed their struggle for community self-determination as part of a worldwide struggle against imperialism. The aligned themselves against the Vietnam War, and read the works of Mao Zedong, and Che Guevara in addition to Fanon.
They viewed the police as an occupying force in Black communities. Their task was mainly to police the police, monitoring interactions between police and the Black community, and providing protection from the police. They used guns to demonstrate their courage and militancy, arguing that guns were to be used in self-defense against police attacks, and demonstrated that Black people no longer lived in fear and awe of white power. In addition to political, economic, and social demands, the Panthers and others who supported Black Power emphasized racial pride, the slogan “Black is Beautiful,” and a celebration of African culture.
For a really fascinating history of how the Black Panthers’ use of guns is related to today’s debate over guns, check out this episode of the More Perfect podcast.
The Panthers implemented “survival programs” for Black communities, including the armed neighborhood self-defense patrols. The most well-known and widely implemented community program was the Free Breakfast for Children Program, started in 1968. Panthers would cook, prepare, and serve breakfast to children before school, because, as they argued, “it is impossible to obtain and sustain any education when one has to attend school hungry.”
Because of their use of armed self-defense, the Panthers were confronted with backlash and suspicion by the police and the FBI. Although their militant style and presentation garnered them a lot of publicity, which gave them a larger platform on which to speak, many whites saw the militant style of the Panthers as a threat.
COINTELPRO and the Black Panthers
Former Panther Kathleen Cleaver noted:
“Is it possible, and this is just a question, is it possible that the reality of what was actually going on day to day in the BPP was far less newsworthy, and provided no justification for the campaign of destruction that the intelligence agencies and the police were waging against us?” [3]
The FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) launched a series of attacks on the Panthers, as well as many other leftist and radical groups in the 1960s. J. Edgar Hoover saw the Panthers as a threat to American society.
The 1968 memo initiating the COINTELPRO-BPP explains the tactics that agents used in order to bring the Panthers down:
“These suggestions are to create factionalism between not only the national leaders but also local leaders, steps to neutralize all organizational efforts of the BPP as well as create suspicion amongst the leaders as to each others sources of finances, suspicion concerning their respective spouses and suspicion as to who may be cooperating with law enforcement.
In addition, suspicion should be developed as to who may be attempting to gain control of the organization for their own private betterment, as well as suggestions as to the bet method of exploiting the foreign visits made by BPP members. We are also soliciting recommendations as to the best method of creating opposition to the BPP on the part of the majority of the residents of the ghetto areas.”
FBI agents and informants started rumors, sent letters to various people claiming to be people they weren’t, and coordinated a propaganda campaign using journalists who were friendly the FBI. Even the Free Breakfast Program was not exempt from FBI suspicions. Another COINTELPRO memo stated:
“This program was formed by the BPP for obvious reasons, including their efforts to create an image of civility, assume community control of Negroes, and to fill adolescent children with their insidious poison.”
For more on the clear tension between the state and political organizations on issues of violence and struggle, please watch this short clip from a longer documentary, Black Power Mixtape, made up of recently discovered footage from Swedish journalists. The clip is an interview of Angela Davis, a Panther who was in prison at the time. (Watch until 5:21)
Poll #3:
In your opinion, what was the FBI’s COINTELPRO more concerned about? The Black Panther Party's message? Or the fact that they were armed? Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Part III: The New Left, Chicano Movement, and Third World Liberation
To conclude this module, we’ll explore three other social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. These movements intersected with the Black Power movement and had their own distinct concerns.
The New Left
The “New Left” was the term used to describe groups of primarily white college students. Many of the New Left’s participants had also been a part of the civil rights movement, in sit-ins or freedom rides. These students were frustrated with what they perceived as a lack of authenticity in the age of affluence. Students active in the New Left organized themselves according to a philosophy of “participatory democracy.” This meant rebelling against formal boundaries and qualifications, and in the words of Todd Gitlin, “inserting yourself where the social rules said you didn’t belong—in fancy meeting halls if you were a sharecropper, off limits and off campus if you were a student.” [4]
Rather than conforming to the established bureaucracies and institutions of American democracy, New Left activists wanted to disrupt established procedure. One of the main New Left organizations was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). This organization drafted an influential statement that captured the mood and summarized the beliefs of this generation of student protestors in 1962. This statement is known as the “Port Huron Statement.”
Some key excerpts from the Port Huron statement are included here:
“As a social system we seek the establishment of a democracy of individual participation, governed by two central aims: that the individual share in those social decisions determining the quality and direction of his life; that society be organized to encourage independence in men and provide the media for their common participation.”
SDS critiqued the 1960s student and university for failing to prepare students for a life of active, participatory citizenship. They claimed that the university encouraged apathy, and failed to foster in students a desire for intellectual expansion or preparation for things outside of the conventional bureaucratic career track.
“Almost no students value activity as a citizen…There is not much willingness to take risks (not even in business), no setting of dangerous goals, no real conception of personal identity except one manufactured in the image of others, no real urge for personal fulfillment except to be almost as successful as the very successful people.
Attention is being paid to social status (the quality of shirt collars, meeting people, getting wives or husbands, making solid contacts for later on); much too, is paid to academic status (grades, honors, the med school rat-race). But neglected generally is real intellectual status, the personal cultivation of the mind.”
The SDS did not just pose ideological critiques. They also worked to organize poor people in cities like Newark, Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia through their Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) from 1963-1965. ERAP reflected an effort by SDSers to test out “participatory democracy” in real life. ERAP organizers were committed to projects that would address what the people in the community needed—issues ranged from unemployment to housing to garbage removal.
However, as white, middle-class college students, they struggled with the notion that as outside organizers, they were bringing paternalistic attitudes to poor urban residents. Because of the belief in “participatory democracy,” organizers did not go in with a clear plan, mostly because a clear plan would be considered manipulative and imposing.
Although it wasn’t part of their political message, scholars have linked the New Left with 1960s counterculture. Some saw drug use and hippie culture as signs of cultural dissidence, which were linked to the challenge that New Left activists posed to societal institutions.
Word Cloud #1:
To what extent did the SDS’ ERAP differ from the Community Action Program we examined in Module 23? (To refresh: the Community Action Program specified the need for “maximum feasible participation” of the poor.) Respond with any differences or similarities you notice in the word cloud below, or access it here.
Chicano Movement
In this module, we’ll examine two significant aspects of the Chicano movement: the United Farmworkers and the movement of Chicano youth. In Module 25, we’ll explore a third aspect, the Chicano Moratorium and anti-war protests, when we examine the Vietnam War.
In 1965, Filipino farmworkers decided to strike against grape growers, rebelling against the low wages and harsh working conditions they faced in the fields. They also demanded that growers recognize their union. Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, leaders of a union of Mexican farm workers join the Filipinos and become the United Farm Workers (UFW). They decide to strike against one particular grape company in Delano, CA. The strike lasted for 5 years, as growers utilized a constant stream of migrant workers to act as strikebreakers. The UFW was harassed by police, and were subject to injunctions against their picket lines.
They implemented a boycott on grapes, which eventually became a national movement. The UFW sent organizers across the country to educate people outside of supermarkets, encouraging them to sign petitions and not buy grapes in support of the farmworkers. Organizers were former farmworkers, but also student activists who had participated in civil rights demonstrations who were seeking full-time engagement in a movement for social justice. The UFW was able to attract young activists because of Chavez’s antiwar stance, as well as his support for the African American civil rights struggle.
The UFW also employed creative ways to get farmworkers involved in the strike. The Teatro Campesino, or “Farmworkers Theater” was used to first raise awareness about the strike, and then get people involved in plays that centered around themes of the struggle. They encouraged those who were never taught or encouraged to speak in public to engage and develop their own voices.
The grape boycott and strike ended in success. The boycott cost the industry millions of dollars, and eventually two thirds of growers decide to sign contracts with the union.
In addition to Mexican farmworkers, Chicano youth throughout the southwest started to organize for civil rights. Some adapted the militant style and posture of the Black Panthers (such as the Brown Berets), while other students staged walk-outs of their high school classes to protest the Vietnam War as well as the treatment they received from faculty.
In 1966, the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference took place in Denver. There, organizers drafted El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan, which set out a series of principles for Chicano nationalism.
“Aztlán” was the name given to the area of the Southwest which had once been Mexico. The term became the rallying banner of Chicano nationhood. Those who used the term did so in a conceptual as well as a geographic sense. Aztlan was seen as a “nation within a nation,” where Chicanos would control their own businesses, schools, and other local institutions. The idea behind the Plan was to cast off the chains of what they viewed as American imperialism, and take ownership of their own communities. Chicanos started to assert their indigenous claims to the land of the Southwest, and in so doing, claimed pride in their indigenous heritage. Taking cues from the black power movement, they adopted the phrase “Brown Power” and referred to themselves as the “Bronze People.”
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán states:
“We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops, and not to the foreign Europeans.”
By separating themselves from Europeans, Chicanos asserted that they had deep and legitimate ties to the region. We know from previous modules that there was a lot of anti-Mexican sentiment surrounding immigration. Chicanos in the US resented being treated as perpetual foreigners, and celebrated their long history in the Southwest by championing the idea of “Aztlan.”
Third World Liberation
In 1968, students at San Fransisco State engaged in a five month strike. Organizing under the name, the Third World Liberation Front, a coalition of African American, Latino, Asian American, and American Indian groups demanded that San Francisco State establish a school of ethnic studies and a curriculum to be chosen by people of color, along with open admissions for all non-white applicants. The strike mobilized thousands of students and shut down the college. A number of faculty also joined the strike.
In 1969, the Third World Liberation Front won some of their demands, namely the institution of the first College of Ethnic Studies, as well as additional admission for underrepresented students. The strike also mobilized a new generation of activists, who went on to organize and serve their communities. The strike is known as the first campus uprising involving Asian Americans as a collective force, and in many ways marked a turning point in Asian American activism. Asian American studies was established in the curriculum at SF State, with close collaboration between students, faculty, and the community, and many courses were taught by community members without traditional academic credentials.
Poll #4:
In your opinion, is the ideology of self-determination that is present in the social movements we’ve covered in this module a rejection of American citizenship? In the annotations/comments explain your answer further. Answer in the embedded poll below, or access it here.
Conclusion:
The freedom movements of the 1960s and 1970s have their roots in the civil rights movement. Many activists participated in the civil rights struggle before expanding their goals to include tackling structural inequalities at the heart of the American social, political, and economic system.
In line with their ideologies of self-determination, freedom struggle activists claimed the right of poor people of color to have control over their own communities, and be free of the oppression they experienced at the hands of the American state.
Movement activists formed political parties, community organizations which defended their neighborhoods and instituted survival programs, strikes, boycotts, and protests. In addition, various groups employed an ideological challenge to American racism by asserting power and pride in racial difference.
Citations:
[1] Cited in Alyosha Goldstein, Poverty in Common: The Politics of Community Action During the American Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), 137.
[2] Goldstein, Poverty in Common, 18-25.
[3] From Kathleen Neal Cleaver, “Women, Power, Revolution,” in Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party: A New Look at the Panthers and Their Legacy ed. Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas (New York: Routledge, 2001), 123-127.
[4] Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope Days of Rage (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1987), 134.
With the identity of American citizenship being finely defined throughout the years. The meaning behind being an American citizen is uplifted in meaning. Giving us the people of today the qualities and traits of those that strived to redefine what American values shaped our country. In some ways, the difficulty in obtaining this just and fair position in the country leads to the uplifting and higher standard of what it means to be an American citizen.
In your opinion, what was the FBI’s COINTELPRO more concerned about?
I said how the Black Panthers were armed since they actually had power to do what they wanted.
In your opinion, what was the FBI’s COINTELPRO more concerned about? The Black Panther Party's message? Or the fact that they were armed?
I believe the FBI's COINTELPRO was more concerned that the Black Panther Party was armed. They hid their intentions by stating in memos that they were concerned about control over marginalized people, however, it was clear they were acting based upon fear and their intentions were to both conceal the ideologies of the Black Panther Party and to disarm the party.
The discussion of the role of violence in protest and resistance is really important. To many, the seriousness of the discrimination, segregation, and structural inequality that people were reckoning with demanded a serious response. Aaron's quote from MLK--"a riot is the language of the unheard," is pretty powerful in this regard.
I'm not trying to justify violent protest, but by asking this question I want us to situate these uprisings in a longer history of organized and vocal protest for civil rights, for economic access and opportunity, etc.
In your opinion, what was the FBI’s COINTELPRO more concerned about?
I chose the fact that the Black Panthers were armed. It reveals a sense of violent activity and of course it is an attention grabber. It is an automatic thought of destruction, violence and malicious behavior.