Media, Civil Rights, and American Collective Memory A
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Committing a Movement to Memory: Media, Civil Rights, and American Collective Memory A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Meagan A. Manning IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Dr. Catherine R. Squires June 2015 © Meagan A. Manning, 2015 Acknowledgements This dissertation was completed over the course of several years, many coffee shop visits, and residence in several states. First and foremost, I would like to thank my adviser Dr. Catherine R. Squires for her wisdom, support, and guidance throughout this dissertation and my entire academic career. I would also like to thank my committee members, Drs. Tom Wolfe, David Pellow, and Shayla Thiel-Stern for their continued dedication to the completion of this project. Each member added a great deal of their own expertise to this research, and it certainly would not be what it is today without their contribution. I would also like to thank the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota for allowing me the opportunity to pursue graduate studies in Communication. A big thank you to the graduate student community at the SJMC is also in order. Thanks also to my family and friends for the pep talks, smiles, hugs and interest in my work. Finally, thank you to Emancipator, Bonobo, and Tacocat for getting me through all of those long days and late nights. i Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to Margaret and Edward Manning, Elvina and Edward Buckley and Edward Manning, Jr. and Gerard Manning, both of whom the universe took far too soon. ii Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................... iv List of Figures ......................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................2 Chapter 2: The Selma to Montgomery March ...................................................................35 Chapter 3: The March on Washington ...............................................................................73 Chapter 4: The Chicago Freedom Movement ..................................................................139 Chapter 5: Open Housing Fights in Milwaukee ..............................................................175 Chapter 6: Conclusion .....................................................................................................199 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................223 iii List of Tables Table 1 ...............................................................................................................................82 Table 2 ...............................................................................................................................83 Table 3 .............................................................................................................................116 Table 4 .............................................................................................................................117 iv List of Figures Figure 1 ..............................................................................................................................39 Figure 2 ..............................................................................................................................40 Figure 3 ..............................................................................................................................76 Figure 4 ..............................................................................................................................77 Figure 5 ............................................................................................................................146 Figure 6 ............................................................................................................................147 Figure 7 ............................................................................................................................182 Figure 8 ............................................................................................................................183 v Chapter 1: Introduction Rosa Parks greatly revered the work and philosophies of Malcolm X. 1 She also supported causes that resonated with Black Power groups, sat on the dais at the 1963 March on Washington, spoke at the rally that ended the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march, and attended seminars on community organizing at Tennessee's Highlander Folk School before and after she chose to remain seated on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. If one were to rely on popular media accounts alone for an understanding of Parks' life, it is unlikely that one would be familiar with all, or perhaps any, of these storylines. Despite her position as a universal symbol of the Southern front of the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we collectively know very little about her life, her work outside of Montgomery, and her contributions to the African American freedom struggle beyond 1955. Newspaper coverage produced at the time of her death parroted a familiar narrative: Parks sat one day on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, thus launching the civil rights movement and the career of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. As the "mother of the civil rights movement," Parks is remembered in a decidedly gendered manner as "quiet," "small," "individual," "a seamstress" and her act a "simple" one. 2 This version of Parks' life is more akin to an "inspirational fable" than anything Parks actually lived. 3 As historian Janet Theoharis has most recently shown, Mrs. Parks is better remembered as a strong, courageous activist who dedicated her life to social justice issues in the United States and around the world. 4 1Jeanne Theoharis, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Boston: Beacon Press, 2013), 319-320. References throughout for Malcolm. 2 Ibid., 7-13, and numerous articles unearthed in this study. 3 Ibid., 8-9. 4 Ibid., references throughout. 2 Ella Baker represents another glaring omission from the collective canons of civil rights memory. In fact, media outlets do not acknowledge Baker's legacy in any meaningful capacity. Her life-long dedication to community organizing and activism is punctuated by its variety. Her efforts encompassed Northern groups, Southern fronts, many decades, and cooperation with an array of people fighting for varied causes. Baker began her work in Harlem during the 1930s, joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) staff in the 1940s, helped Martin Luther King, Jr. launch the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in the 1950s, served as an anchor for the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in the 1960s, and supported campaigns to free Angela Davis and end apartheid in South Africa during the 1970s. 5 Despite this expansive list of civil rights projects, media outlets rarely mention, let alone commemorate, Baker, even on the passing of notable civil rights anniversaries. The disparity in media presence between these two figures cannot be understated. For example, a search in ProQuest Newsstand for "Rosa Parks" brings up over 40,000 entries; a search for "Ella Baker" returns a mere 1400. 6 This imbalanced treatment speaks volumes about the type of civil rights figures media choose to incorporate into popular commemoration narratives. As illustrated by the above examples of Rosa Parks and Ella Baker, our nation collectively remembers a highly selective version of the civil rights chapter of the African American freedom struggle. These selections are codified along the axes of gender, 5 Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision , (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003) and Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound , (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1998). 6 ProQuest Newsstand was used because it contains substantial collections of both African American and white-dominated newspapers. 3 geography, the urban, the rural, direct non-violence, and Black Power, among others. As a result, certain events like the March on Washington are lionized yearly while others— local campaigns in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Albany, Georgia, for example—receive limited, if any, commemoration. Similarly, Southern civil rights efforts are positioned decidedly within civil rights movement frameworks while Northern struggles are characterized as part of the Black Power era or, as is more often the case, largely left out of civil rights narratives. Scholar Houston Baker points to the realm of memory as one place where these inclusions and omissions become solidified. Baker argues that the perpetuation of "nostalgic memories" within the public sphere, such as the superficial representations of Martin Luther King, Jr. that surface during many national civil rights commemorations, may contribute to the myopic versions of civil rights history that frequently circulate within American society. 7 These nostalgic portrayals present a uni- dimensional view of the past concentrated on "golden virtues, golden men, and sterling acts." 8 Additionally, this "purposive construction" of nostalgia “writes the revolution as a well-passed aberration”