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PEP Feb 2006
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Public Employee Press

February is Black History Month

Lessons of the civil rights movement for
today’s labor movement

By ALDON MORRIS and DAN CLAWSON

American workers nationwide, including members of DC 37, aren’t paid what they deserve. They face rules, working conditions, and supervisors they shouldn’t have to put up with. What can be done to change that and win better conditions?

Black History Month is a good time for today’s workers to learn valuable lessons from the civil rights movement. Whatever problems New York City workers face today, 50 years ago things were much worse for Black people in the South.

Whites dominated politics, the courts, and the media. Southern Blacks could not vote. Schools, bathrooms, waiting areas, and water fountains were segregated, and that segregation humiliated Blacks and sent the message they were inferior. Most Blacks were unwilling to fight the system openly, and many accepted the label of “inferior.” But 10 years later legal segregation was gone forever, people thought “Black is beautiful,” and Congress had passed laws guaranteeing Black rights.

What are some of the lessons we can learn from the civil rights movement?

1. Disruption creates power: Why do people put up with oppression? Because they lack power, or think they lack power. The civil rights movement succeeded because it showed that it had the power to disrupt things-as-usual. This mass movement created such huge crises that it forced the oppressors to give in. Disruption meant that Black leaders could demand change rather than plead and beg for it. Without such disruption the Jim Crow social system could not have been overthrown.

2. Don’t get lost in bureaucracy: When Rosa Parks was arrested and the Montgomery bus boycott got started, the protest “should” have been organized through the NAACP, which was the leading civil rights organization. But the NAACP said it would take weeks for them to officially endorse the protest. So people created a new organization, the Montgomery Improvement Association, under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. Events create media coverage: The Rev. King was an incredibly powerful and charismatic speaker, but his charisma wasn’t the only factor that focused media attention on the civil rights movement. It was the ability of the movement to organize bold confrontations between Black people and the segregationists that attracted media attention.

People putting their bodies on the line triggered struggles between democracy and oppression, exposed the racism and brutality of the white power structure and let the movement occupy the moral high ground. The media had no choice but to cover these profound struggles. Real human drama cannot be ignored, and leaders and grassroots activists willing to confront oppressors cause extraordinary human drama.

4. Actions change culture: Before the civil rights movement began, Southern whites claimed that both Blacks and whites liked segregation, and many “Negroes” had been taught to be ashamed of Black culture. Indeed, Blacks and whites were ignorant about Africa and about Black history. The civil rights movement changed that. By the late 1960s, Blacks came to think that “Black is beautiful” and adopted hairstyles and clothing to reflect that. People strengthened connections to Africa and began to seriously study Black history, rediscovering a long list of Black accomplishments.

It’s important to realize that Black culture changed because there was a strong movement. Interest in Black history developed because Black people were making history. Whites suddenly discovered that segregation was unjust because a strong Black movement forced them to confront reality.

5. Expect failures: We remember the successes, but the civil rights movement had plenty of setbacks. Indeed, setbacks were important learning experiences and helped prepare the way for future successes. Yet at the time, pessimists claimed that such difficulties proved that success was impossible.

6. Victory takes huge sacrifices: The civil rights movement won major victories because at key times people always stepped up, volunteering to run risks and make huge sacrifices. By putting themselves in the front line, movement leaders led by example. In some struggles nearly the entire local Black population supported the movement. They proved that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary victories when they are organized and determined.

Conclusion for today: Workers today can learn valuable lessons from the civil rights movement. But reading and study aren’t enough. A fundamental question faces workers today: Do they have the courage to get up off their knees and confront powerful employers and corporations? To succeed, mass movements require people willing to go to jail, be beaten, and even lose their lives in a noble and just struggle designed to win their rights and restore their dignity. Although we do not know whether today’s workers possess such courage, we do know that Jim Crow was overthrown because southern Blacks did.

Aldon Morris is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and author of “The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement.” Dan Clawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of “The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements.” A longer version of this article can be read in the December 2005 issue of WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society.

 

 

 
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