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2018 Mourning King: The iC vil Rights Movement and the Fight for Economic Justice Reuel Schiller UC Hastings College of the Law, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Reuel Schiller, Mourning King: The Civil Rights Movement and the Fight for Economic Justice, 27 New Lab. F. 12 (2018). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/faculty_scholarship/1710
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After the Deluge: 1968 in Retrospect
New Labor Forum 8–1 Mourning King: The Civil Rights Copyright © 2018, The Murphy Institute, City University of New York Movement and the Fight for Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Economic Justice DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796018766357 10.1177/1095796018766357 journals.sagepub.com/home/nlf
Reuel Schiller1
Keywords liberalism, politics, poverty, racism, social welfare
It is impossible to contemplate the fiftieth anni- People’s March. He hoped the March would versary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassina- replicate the success of 1963’s March for Jobs tion without hearing a whispered “if only.” and Freedom that brought a quarter million peo- King, after all, was murdered just as he sought ple to the nation’s capital in advance of to expand the Civil Rights Movement’s agenda Congress’ consideration of the Civil Rights Act to include an explicit focus on promoting mul- of 1964. King was adamant about bringing a tiracial economic justice, a cause that has met racially diverse group of impoverished with little success in the intervening years. If Americans to Washington. They would be a sec- only he had survived, the whispered voice says, ond Bonus Army, camping on the National Mall he would have transformed the Movement into and engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. a force that powerfully and effectively fought Their goal was a dramatic refashioning of the for economic egalitarianism with the same suc- welfare state: a guaranteed minimum income, a cess that it had dismantling Jim Crow. statutory commitment to full employment, a This voice, however, misleads us. King’s massive federal jobs program, and the elimina- death did not itself throw the Movement off this tion of urban slums through the building of half path. Instead, his assassination serves as a dispir- a million units of low-income housing per year. iting marker for the moment when the Civil Thus, by 1967, when King started planning Rights Movement’s internal divisions overcame the March, he had maneuvered one of the main its grand moral vision—a vision that King institutional manifestations of the Civil Rights believed should encompass a commitment to Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership multiracial economic egalitarianism. King’s Conference (SCLC), into a fight explicitly death did not mark the end of the black freedom aimed at promoting, first and foremost, eco- struggle, but it surely marked a transition point. nomic justice. This process, however, revealed The Movement shifted from the streets into the the problems with using the Movement to advo- legislatures, from political protest to partisan pol- cate for redistributive economic policy. King itics. While there were many gains from the shift, met substantial resistance to the March from it profoundly limited the Movement’s ability to within the Movement. Some of his colleagues be a force for economic justice. The conse- had tactical objections: the logistics would be quences of these limitations have become more difficult; it was unreasonable to expect soci- obvious as King’s death has receded into the past. ety’s most vulnerable to drop everything and march to Washington; the public would not be A Fractious Movement sympathetic to their demands. More fundamen- tal, however, was the fact that many rejected the At the time of his death, the focus of King’s activism had shifted from securing the social 1University of California, Hastings College of the Law, San and political rights of African Americans to a Francisco, USA 1 more catholic emphasis on combating poverty. Corresponding Author: He was in the midst of organizing the Poor Reuel Schiller, [email protected] 2 New Labor Forum 00(0)
March’s purpose. They did not believe the aspirational values of political and social (but Movement should use civil disobedience to not economic) equality that they rooted in a convince the federal government to implement uniquely American constitutional tradition. In redistributive economic policies. postwar America, this strand of civil rights Indeed, even before the end of the 1960s, there thought sometimes manifested itself in a more was no single Civil Rights Movement.2 There had secular, scientific mode. It portrayed racism as always been multiple movements, with different a psychological disorder of particular individu- goals, different strategies, and different institutional als who misunderstood America’s bedrock manifestations. For some, economic justice had principles, rather than a structural component always been at the center of what it meant to fight of American political economy. Indeed, in the for civil rights. The 1963 March on Washington years after World War II, these various had been, after all, a march for jobs and freedom. approaches to civil rights—uplift, a return to Indeed, many of the early leaders of the Movement, American values, racism as deviant behavior— such as A. Philip Randolph and W.E.B. Du Bois, were particularly potent. Anticommunist politi- believed racism was simply one manifestation of cal culture suggested to civil rights leaders that the economic injustice endemic to unrestrained grounding antiracism in religious teachings, the capitalism. For this strand of the Movement, which American civic tradition, and “scientific” over the years had allied itself with Communists, understandings of racism as a psychological Socialists, social gospel Christians, and the left- pathology were the best ways to convince the ward edge of the trade union movement, the fight white majority of the justice of the cause. To for civil rights was a critique of economic inequal- link the Movement to structural critiques of ity that would require a refashioning of capitalism capitalism and advocacy of progressive wealth in order to achieve justice for people of all races.3 redistribution, on the other hand, was suicide. Thus, when King sought to focus the Movement . . . [W]hen King sought to focus the on economic inequality, he was trying to reviv- Movement on economic inequality, ify an aspect of the Movement that many thought to be too risky to emphasize in the he was trying to revivify an aspect years immediately following World War II.5 of the Movement that many Finally, the Civil Rights Movement had always thought to be too risky . . . contained a potent strand of separatist national- ism. By their very nature, nationalists clashed Yet from the Movement’s beginnings in the with those who wished to forge interracial alli- years after the end of Reconstruction, many advo- ances for economic justice. Nationalism also con- cates had pursued considerably less radical tained within it a significant vein of pro-capitalist approaches to civil rights that divorced the black ideology. To be sure, by the 1960s, some national- freedom struggle from issues of economic inequal- ist organizations invoked, with more or less sin- ity. Since Booker T. Washington, the Movement cerity, communist (or Maoist) ideas. Many had contained a powerful strand of social uplift nationalists, however, dreamed of an autonomous philosophy that emphasized the importance of pre- African-American economic order within inde- senting an image of responsibility and self-reliance pendent black communities. While this economic to the white majority. For many within the black order did not look like contemporary American bourgeoisie, this philosophy suggested that the industrial capitalism, it had more in common with correct approach to pursuing civil rights was a romantic notions of early nineteenth-century, heartfelt embrace of capitalism, markets, and indi- small-town capitalism than it had with the robust vidual economic initiative.4 welfare state that King advocated.6 Others within the Movement rooted the fight These divisions within the Civil Rights for civil rights within a Christian moral para- Movement suggest that reconstituting it as a digm that avoided a critique of capitalism, and force focused on eliminating poverty would instead emphasized the moral imperative of have been difficult even had King lived. Indeed, integration and colorblindness. This approach one of the many tragedies of King’s last days was frequently linked, by King and others, to was the toll these divisions took on him. His Schiller 3 biographers uniformly describe him struggling civil rights agenda. Those years saw two frac- with “bouts of near incapacitating depression”7 tious but energizing National Black Political brought on by the increasingly bitter, interne- Conventions, as well as the founding of the cine battles within the Movement. King Congressional Black Caucus. These same years attempted to shift the Movement to focus more saw a dramatic increase in the number of African- directly on economic inequality while main- American elected officials in the United States. In taining his commitment to both nonviolence 1965, just before the passage of the Voting Rights and interracialism. But advocates of other goals Act, there were 193 African Americans holding and tactics plagued him. Some demanded that political office in the United States.11 By 1976, he endorse their priorities. Other derided him as that number had risen to 3,979. By 1980, there out of touch and over the hill. Still others did were 4,912.12 Indeed, even this enormous both. The tragedy of the end of King’s life was increase in office-holding understates the influ- that he had become too powerful a symbol of ence of black voters. As the registration of the Civil Rights Movement to be left alone to African Americans surged—more than doubling shape it according to his own priorities.8 in the South between 1965 and 197013—white politicians courted their votes with increased From the Streets to the Vot- intensity. This was most obvious in the presiden- tial election of 1976 in which black votes made ing Booth up Jimmy Carter’s margin of victory.14 This pat- The existence of these conflicts within the Civil tern of white politicians courting African- Rights Movement did not mean that it ceased to American voters was replicated throughout the concern itself with economic issues after King’s country, at all levels of government. death. It did, but using different tactics. Historians of the Movement characterize the In 1965, just before the passage of years following the assassination as ones in the Voting Rights Act, there were which it stopped acting as a national movement 193 African Americans holding of mass protest and refocused its attention on 9 political office in the United States. electoral politics. This shift from the streets to the ballot box brought considerable successes, . . . By 1980, there were 4,912. even in a political climate that grew increas- ingly hostile to civil rights. Yet while this move The results of this new emphasis on partisan into conventional politics brought with it much politics were mixed. On the national level, it power, it also had profound limitations. succeeded in promoting issues that were part of the traditional civil rights agenda. Jimmy Carter, It was only in the 1970s . . . that for example, appointed more African-American federal judges (thirty-seven, or 14 percent of his electoral politics became the judicial appointments) than every previous pres- primary strategy used to further ident combined.15 His executive branch appoin- the civil rights agenda. tees were similarly diverse, with 12 percent being African American, including high-profile Everyone within the Movement accepted the appointments such as the Secretary of Health idea that political participation was fundamental and Human Services, the Ambassador to the to the black freedom struggle. Securing some United Nations, the Solicitor General, the head form of federal protection for voting rights was of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights one of its primary goals in the years following Division, the Secretary of the Army, and the World War II. Similarly, voter registration drives Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity in the South were the focus of both the SCLC and Commission.16 Similarly, even after the the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Republicans regained control of the presidency (SNCC). As former SNCC chairman John Lewis and the Senate in 1981, the power of black vot- said, “The bottom line was voting.”10 It was only ers and politicians ensured the enactment of a in the 1970s, however, that electoral politics continuing stream of civil rights legislation; some became the primary strategy used to further the passed over President Ronald Reagan’s veto: the 4 New Labor Forum 00(0)
1982 Voting Rights Act Amendments, the Martin office holders increased dramatically throughout Luther King Jr. Holiday Act of 1983, the the South during the 1970s, as did the number of Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986, white politicians who depended on black votes the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1988, and the for their success. The direct material benefits to Fair Housing Act Amendments of 1988.17 African Americans brought about through politi- At the federal level, however, the use of the cal participation were obvious. Lily-white law political process was singularly unsuccessful in enforcement agencies were integrated. Unpaved expanding the civil rights agenda to include streets in black neighborhoods were paved, and legislation aimed at combating poverty more parks sprung up in black communities heretofore generally. African-American leaders expressed ignored by local politicians. Public works pro- frustration and anger at Carter’s unwillingness grams were desegregated. Public sector jobs to embrace Keynesian economic policies flowed into the African-American community. designed to reduce unemployment and increase Changes in government contracting procedures, wages. Indeed, if there was a single piece of including set asides for minority businesses, legislation that tested the theory that the resulted in increases in black private sector Movement’s turn to electoral politics could fur- employment as well. Thus, as politicians came to ther King’s economic agenda, it was the count on African-American votes, the black Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill. As community benefitted from the traditional spoils originally proposed in 1974, this legislation of the electoral process: “We Provided the Votes” would have required the federal government to editorialized an African American newspaper in keep the unemployment rate at or below 4 per- Los Angeles, “Now We Want the Oats.”20 It may cent by acting as an employer of last resort dur- not have been the exact sentiment that King ing economic downturns. Coretta Scott King expressed as he sought to reorient the Movement repeatedly emphasized that no legislation to fight for economic justice, but for many would be a better tribute to her husband’s leg- African Americans, the effect was the same: acy. Leading a coalition of labor unions and access to public services and good jobs, and civil rights organizations, she lobbied hard for entry into the middle class. the bill. In the increasingly conservative politi- cal climate of the 1970s, however, its progres- White politicians may have become sive components were stripped away. Mandates responsive to the African-American became goals. The employment program was eliminated, portrayed as both budget-busting community, but black politicians and inflationary. Indeed, the final version of the needed to respond to white elite legislation passed in 1978 only after its goal of interests as well. reducing unemployment had been pushed aside by provisions implementing distinctly unredis- Even at the local level, however, the com- tributive policies such as curbing inflation and mitment to partisan politics as the primary balancing the federal budget. King and her method of advancing civil rights had significant allies claimed a victory, but detached observers limitations. Interest-group politics was a dou- saw the bill for what it was: toothless sop to ble-edged sword. White politicians may have African-American and white liberal legislators become responsive to the African-American with no realistic chance of creating jobs. community, but black politicians needed to Without a mass movement behind them, these respond to white elite interests as well. This fact political forces had lost the capacity to pass put significant restraints on their ability to truly progressive economic legislation.18 address fundamental issues of economic The story of the Movement’s shift to partisan inequality. The contrast between King’s last politics at the state and local level is rosier.19 This campaign—to support striking sanitation work- was most evident in the South where African- ers in Memphis—and the outcome of a similar American political participation transformed the strike in Atlanta nine years later vividly illus- region. The number of local African-American trate the nature of these restraints. Schiller 5
A Tale of Two Strikes was not the outcome. It was the union’s antago- nist. While Loeb was one in a long line of The details of the Memphis strike are a familiar 21 southern politicians intent on maintaining white part of King’s biography. He traveled to racial and economic hegemony, Atlanta’s Memphis in April of 1968 to organize protests on mayor was Maynard Jackson, the city’s first behalf of African-American sanitation workers African-American mayor. Furthermore, the demanding higher pay and an end to dehumaniz- city’s civil rights establishment—the National ing, dangerous working conditions. (The strike Association for the Advancement of Colored began after two workers were crushed to death in People (NAACP), the Urban League, even the a malfunctioning trash compactor.) Although SCLC—actively supported Jackson’s union- Memphis’ mayor, Henry Loeb, is not as well busting strategy. Indeed, Jackson’s most out- known in the annals of labor and civil rights sup- spoken supporter was the slain civil rights pression as other neolithic, southern politicians of leader’s father, Martin Luther King Sr., the the era, he played the part to a T: striking workers longtime minster at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist were met with stonewalling, red-baiting, strike- Church. Most disturbingly, the elder King breakers, and brutal police violence. deployed rhetoric drawn from the playbook of King’s assassination ended the strike in the Civil Rights Movement’s white supremacist Memphis. Faced with violent protest throughout opponents. Labor unrest, King told the Atlanta the country in the aftermath of the murder, fed- Constitution, was the result of outside agitators, eral officials pressured Loeb into a settlement particularly the leadership of AFSCME: “If any favorable to the union. Although the cost was group comes in to try to destroy our town, we terrible, King seemed to have connected the tac- are against it, with all the power we have.”23 tics of nonviolence to the fight for economic justice in a manner that transcended race. He had linked the traditional institutions of the . . . [In the 1977 sanitation workers’ Civil Rights Movement to a labor union—the strike] Atlanta’s . . . civil rights American Federation of State, County, and establishment . . . actively supported Municipal Employees (AFSCME)— that itself [Mayor Maynard] Jackson’s union- was at the forefront of promoting interracial economic egalitarianism. With its progressive busting strategy. leadership and a genuinely integrated member- ship, AFSCME seemed like the perfect partner Jackson was explicit about his reasons for for a Movement that had focused its attention on breaking the strike. He felt intense pressure to combating both racial and economic inequality. be fiscally prudent, perhaps more than a white Compare the outcome of the Memphis sanita- mayor might have. Accusing black politicians tion strike with a similar strike, nine years later of fiscal irresponsibility had, after all, been the in Atlanta.22 As in Memphis, Atlanta’s African- stock in trade of the white supremacist redeem- American sanitation workers were hideously ers who put an end to Reconstruction and dis- underpaid, their wages insufficient to bring their franchised African Americans in the late families’ income above the federal poverty line. nineteenth century. Accordingly, the image of Similarly, Atlanta’s mayor took a hardline with Atlanta’s first African-American mayor plung- the workers. While he avoided violence, he had ing the city into debt was not one that Jackson no qualms about firing the striking workers and was willing to countenance. “Before I take the permanently replacing them with strikebreakers. city into a deficit . . . elephants will roost in When the workers offered to end the strike in trees.”24 Similarly, as he ran for reelection that exchange for getting their jobs back, the mayor year, Jackson needed to appeal not only to the bluntly refused them: Their jobs no longer African-American middle class but also to existed. Those jobs belonged to the replacement Atlanta’s white middle class, and to the city’s workers. The strike and the union were broken. business elites. Indeed, Jackson’s alliance with The most remarkable difference between the white business interests was replicated by black Memphis strike and the Atlanta strike, however, mayors in most cities where they were elected.25 6 New Labor Forum 00(0)
Politics was a double-edged sword. By the participant in the Poor People’s March, was, by 1970s, white politicians courted African- nature, more of an activist than a politician. But American voters by furthering their interests. what she and other progressive politicians, both Black politicians, in turn, had to gain the sup- black and white, had discovered by the 1980s port of powerful interests within the white busi- was that “they were generals without armies.”29 ness community if they wished to stay in power. Too often, the Movement’s shift from the streets The need for this sort of political pragmatism to the ballot box left the politicians who wished meant that as the Movement became primarily to further King’s dream of a racially and eco- devoted to electoral politics, its ability to pro- nomically egalitarian society unable to mobi- mote progressive economic policies was lize the social protest that would have turned severely limited. that dream into a reality.
. . . [W]hat . . . progressive Making the Whispered Dream politicians, both black and white, Reality had discovered by the 1980s was The fifty years since King’s murder have not that “they were generals without been good ones for progressives engaged in the armies.” fight for economic justice. Republican thirst for tax cuts, welfare reform, deregulation, and Not every African-American politician made union busting have eviscerated the social safety the same compromises with elite business inter- net. Similarly, the Democratic Party has evi- ests that Jackson and other African-American denced little stomach for expanding the welfare big city majors did. For these black progres- state, or otherwise slowing the dramatic sives, however, the shift from protests to ballots increase in income inequality that has occurred caused a different problem: It was often hard to since the early 1970s. None of this was caused pursue progressive economic policies in the by King’s assassination. Nor is it the fault of the political realm without accompanying social Civil Rights Movement. An amorphous mass protest. The failure of Humphrey-Hawkins was movement cannot make blameworthy choices. proof positive of this fact.26 Similar problems Historical circumstances dictated its fractious emerged in states and localities. In his wonder- nature, which, in turn, made it a poor candidate ful history of Civil Rights Movement in north- to be the vanguard of a movement for combat- ern states, Sweet Land of Liberty, Thomas ing economic inequality. Its turn to partisan Sugrue describes Roxanne Jones, an African- politics was similarly unconscious. Indeed, American state senator from Philadelphia, after the remarkable success of the Voting fighting to realize King’s dream of economic Rights Act, it would have been shocking if the egalitarian public policy.27 In office from 1985 Movement had not gravitated toward the use of until her death in 1996, her legislative agenda the political power that African Americans had included policies, small and large, designed to previously been denied through violence, fraud, protect Pennsylvania’s poorest and most vul- and legal disfranchisement. nerable citizens: rehabilitation programs for Broad social movements are by their very drug-addicted mothers, health care for AIDS nature chaotic, restless entities. They are diffi- patients, financial assistance for the elderly, cult to focus on a unified goal, even by a leader heating aid and medical assistance for the poor. as gifted as King. Yet advocates for social jus- Most of these initiatives failed. Indeed, most of tice do not have the luxury of abandoning them, her career was spent in unsuccessful attempts to in all their messiness, for the well-worn chan- limit the pernicious effects of Ronald Reagan’s nels of party politics. Indeed, what brought cuts to welfare (“human genocide,” she called about the Civil Rights Movement’s successes— it28) and subsequent welfare “reform” legisla- from Birmingham to Selma, from the Civil tion. Jones, who had cut her teeth in the National Rights Act of 1964 to the Voting Rights Act— Welfare Rights Organization, and had been a was King’s ability to blend these two forms of Schiller 7 advocacy. The whispered dream—“imagine 5. For the deradicalizing effect of anticommunism our society, if only King had lived”—can only on the Civil Rights Movement, see Sugrue, be realized by doing so. Sweet Land of Liberty, 102-11, and Risa L. Goluboff, The Lost Promise of Civil Rights Declaration of Conflicting Interests (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007). The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter- 6. For black nationalism and the Black Power est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or Movement, see Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, publication of this article. 313-55; Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Black Power: Radical Politics and American Identity Funding (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, The author(s) received no financial support for the 2005); Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: research, authorship, and/or publication of this Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black article. Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 7. Jackson, From Human Rights to Civil Rights, Notes 24. Branch and Garrow also comment on King’s 1. For the details of King’s planning of the fragile mental state at the end of his life: Branch, Poor People’s Movement, see Thomas E. At Canaan’s Edge, 734; Garrow, Bearing the Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Cross, 577-78. Also David L. Chappell, Waking Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights Economic Justice (Philadelphia: University in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 329-58; Taylor York: Random House, 2014), 26. Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the 8. For the internecine disputes over the Poor King Years, 1965-1968 (New York: Simon & People’s Movement and the activities in Schuster, 2006), 683-766; David J. Garrow, Memphis, see Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 682- Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and 766, and Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 575-624. the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 9. For this section, I rely on several excellent (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 527-624. studies of African-American voting and politi- 2. This description of the Civil Rights Movement cal power: Steven F. Lawson, In Pursuit of leans heavily on Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land Power: Southern Blacks and Electoral Politics, of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil 1965-1982 (New York: Columbia University Rights in the North (New York: Random House, Press, 1985); Steven F. Lawson, Running for 2008), but a discussion of the various schisms Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics in within the Black freedom struggle can be found America since 1941 (New York: McGraw-Hill, in most histories of the Civil Rights Movement 1997); Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The including Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the Rights; Branch, At Canaan’s Edge; and Garrow, American South (Cambridge: Belknap, 2013), Bearing the Cross. 183-222; James W. Button, Blacks and Social 3. For histories of this strand of the Civil Rights Change: Impact of the Civil Rights Movement Movement, see Jackson, From Civil Rights in Southern Communities (Princeton: Princeton to Human Rights, 25-20; Sugrue, Sweet Land University Press, 1989). African-American of Liberty, 3-84; Patricia Sullivan, Days of political power is also discussed in Chappell, Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Waking from the Dream, 28-123; and Sugrue, Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Sweet Land of Liberty, 494-505. Press, 1996); Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and 10. Lawson, Running for Freedom, 193. Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great 11. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 501. Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North 12. Lawson, Running for Freedom, 255. Carolina Press, 1990). 13. Wright, Sharing the Prize, 188. 4. This economically conservative strand of civil 14. Chappell, Waking from the Dream, 74. rights thought is nicely captured in Joshua 15. Jonathan K. Stubbs, “A Demographic History D. Farrington, Black Republicans and the of Federal Judicial Appointments by Sex and Transformation of the GOP (Philadelphia: Race, 1798-2016,” Berkeley La Raza Law University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Journal 26 (2016): 92, 106. 8 New Labor Forum 00(0)
16. Lawson, Running for Freedom, 193-94. 23. McCartin, “‘Fire the Hell Out of Them,’” 86. 17. Chappell, Waking from the Dream, 121. 24. Ibid., 84. 18. Ibid., 65-90; Laura Kalman, Right Star Rising: 25. Lawson, Running for Freedom, 163-80; Sugrue, A New Politics, 1974-1980 (New York: W.W. Sweet Land of Liberty, 502-505. Norton, 2010), 219-21. 26. Gus Hawkins’ legislative assistant believed 19. Wright, Sharing the Prize, 198-220; Button, that the bill was diluted because white politi- Blacks and Social Change, 114-205. cians “haven’t felt the pressure from enough of 20. Chappell, Waking from the Dream, 75. us. It’s that simple.” Chappell, Waking from the 21. This description of events in Memphis is taken Dream, 87. from Branch, At Canaan’s Edge, 683-766; 27. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 516-31. Jackson, From Human Rights to Civil Rights, 28. Ibid., 525. 349-53; and Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 609-24. 29. Ibid., 526. 22. For the Atlanta strike, see Joseph A. McCartin, “‘Fire the Hell Out of Them’: Sanitation Workers’
Struggles and the Normalization of the Striker Replacement Strategy in the 1970s,” Labor: Author Biography Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas Reuel Schiller is the Roger J. Traynor Professor of 2 (2005): 67, 81-87 and Maurice J. Hobson, Law at the University of California, Hastings College Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class of the Law. His most recent book is Forging Rivals: in the Making of Modern Atlanta (Chapel Hill: Race, Class, Law, and the Collapse of Postwar University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 85-89. Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2015).