April 2009 • Historically Speaking 31

CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORIOGRAPHY: TWO PERSPECTIVES

The following two essays are adapted from papers given at the Historical Society’s June 2008 conference at the Johns Hopkins University.

RECONSIDERING THE “LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT”*

Eric Arnesen

or historians and general readers interested by highlighting the considerable ferment in race re- progressive, and truer story” of civil rights.3 There in the civil rights movement’s past, these lations during the 1930s and 1940s . ...The are many historians who agree with her. The no- are indeed the best of times. Every month, ‘backing up’ of the movement represents an ad- tion of a “long civil rights movement” has clearly F 2 it seems, new books roll off the presses of uni- vance in scholarship.” These are views that are caught on. The theme this year at Harvard’s versity and trade publishing houses, while academic now widely shared. Charles Warren Center for Studies in American journals and television documentaries present spe- Not surprisingly, scholars who argue for a History is “Race-Making and Law-Making in the cialized or general interpretations to their respec- reconceptualization of civil rights chronology ex- Long Civil Rights Movement”; there are now tive audiences. For a number of years since its press a discomfort with the Eyes on the Prize or courses on “the long civil rights movement” at initial release in 1987, the PBS universities, and the seal of ap- documentary Eyes on the Prize es- proval of foundation money has tablished the narrative of the Does the communist Left deserve the credit guaranteed the concept a long shelf movement between 1955 and life. The Andrew W. Mellon Foun- 1965, a narrative that prevailed that long civil rights movement proponents dation recently awarded the Univer- more in the broader culture than bestow upon it? And are they correct in iden- sity of North Carolina Press and in the academy. Today, for the se- UNC a three-year $937,000 grant rious readers of history, if not tifying the communist Left-labor alliance as for a project, “Publishing the Long necessarily the general public, that Civil Rights Movement,” that will narrative has, to some extent, be- the very heart of the mid-century movement? embrace “print and digital publica- come more complex and certainly tions” and foster “interdisciplinary far richer. Studies of prominent civil rights scholarship.”4 and obscure movement leaders, local organizations, “Montgomery to Memphis” narrative that brought In the academy, the notion of the “long civil high politics and public policy, black power, urban knowledge of the movement to a generation of rights movement” has become a widely accepted violence, anti-movement repression, and individual PBS viewers and students. That narrative, they sug- and rather unquestioned one, subject to little de- communities fill shelf after shelf. Keeping up with gest, misrepresents the movement, cutting it off bate or theoretical scrutiny. Despite, or, rather, be- the outflow of new literature is a full-time job for from its very roots with the wrongheaded implica- cause of the consensus that has quickly emerged scholars committed to comprehensive reading in tion that protests against racial inequality only over the concept, a brief pause here to consider this field. began in 1955. An aside: I was perhaps naively its analytical underpinnings and historiographical Perhaps the most significant development in startled when I made reference to the Eyes on the consequences seems in order. In what follows, I recent years has been historians’ insistence that the Prize series to the students in my U.S. history sur- raise several questions about the “long civil rights civil rights movement did not spring into being out vey class just over a year ago. As it turned out, none movement” in the hope of sparking an overdue of nothingness in either 1954 or 1955. They now of my students had heard of the series, much less conversation. advance the notion of the “long civil rights move- seen it (even though PBS recently rebroadcast it For instance, what, precisely, is a movement? ment” to capture the history of the movement before and released a new DVD set for in-school use). So A generation ago, Nelson Lichtenstein and Robert the movement (that is, prior to its so-called “classi- much for narrative hegemony. My lament is: If Korstad noted that the venerable labor historian cal” stage), a movement in its own right that can- only. I suppose I’d be satisfied if my students had, E.P. Thompson once observed that “most social not be reduced simply to that of “prelude” or in fact, absorbed the chronologically misleading movements have a life cycle of about six years,” a “seedtime” for what was to follow. In Steven Law- Eyes framework. At least it would be . . . some- period constituting a “window of opportunity” son’s view, the new “consensus view” is that the thing. But the critics’ larger point remains: for all during which they make their impact.5 The classi- movement “did not suddenly spring up in 1954 or of their visual power and moral storytelling, the cal phase of the modern civil rights movement 1955.”1 New scholarship, Glenn Feldman has re- Eyes documentaries do not link the Montgomery- generally fits this description: after its initial splash cently written, offers an “ongoing challenge to tra- and-beyond movement to strands of protest that during the Montgomery boycott, civil rights ac- ditional periodization of the civil rights movement preceded it. tivism fermented largely below the surface until the One of the most prominent proponents of student sit-ins erupted in 1960. For all of their the “long movement,” Jacqueline Dowd Hall, has programmatic and stylistic differences, the multi- insisted that the “story of a ‘long civil rights move- ple groups of the early 1960s—Student Nonvio- * I would like to thank Alex Lichtenstein, David Chappell, Katrin Schultheiss, and Lawrence Glickman for their criticisms of an earlier ment’ that took root in the liberal and radical mi- lent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Southern draft of this essay. lieu of the late 1930s” is a “more robust, more Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Congress 32 Historically Speaking • April 2009

of Racial Equality (CORE), etc.—shared an activist great outpouring of the freedom movement” by have something else in mind: namely, a civil rights orientation and determination to topple the racial serving as “human bridges between the past and activism strongly inflected by the organized Left status quo. But by the time President Lyndon the future.” They taught him that there was “a sig- and/or a Left-labor civil rights alliance, with “Left” Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the nificant history behind what we called ‘The Move- in this instance being defined as membership in movement had irreparably fragmented, its agendas ment,’ a long time of surging toward freedom.”7 the Communist Party or participation in its orbit. and leaders increasingly at odds. Indeed, Harding ended his study with the Recon- In Gilmore’s view, much credit goes unabashedly The “long” movement proponents tend to do struction era. He reflected upon the “brutal, mag- to American communists, black and white, who away with Thompson’s temporal restrictions by nificent struggle, reaching over more than three “redefined the debate over white supremacy and collapsing chronological boundaries, blurring the centuries, over thousands of miles, from the sun- hastened its end.” It was the communists “who differences between very different organizations, burned coasts of the homeland to the cold and stood up to say that black and white people should approaches, and strategies, and reducing the het- dreary trenches near...FortWagner.” Tracing the organize together, eat together, go to school to- erogeneity of black protest politics into a chrono- “freedom struggle of black people in this country, gether, and marry each other if they chose.” Re- logically expansive phenomenon known as the beginning before there was a country,” he sought jecting all compromise, party members were a “black freedom movement.” Take, for instance, the to convey its “long, continuous movement, flowing “catalyst for change and...aforce that moved claims of Glenda Gilmore, the Yale historian Socialists and liberals to action,” particularly during whose Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights the Popular Front years in the late 1930s.9 She is appeared late last year. Gilmore locates the origins hardly alone in so arguing. of civil rights in the 1920s. Like Hall, she seeks to For Gilmore, Hall, and others, the Great De- overturn the “simplified story broadcast across the pression and the 1940s gave rise to “a powerful nation on black-and-white televisions” in the social movement sparked by the alchemy of la- 1950s, a story that has the movement starting borites, civil rights activists, progressive New Deal- “when it burst into white people’s living rooms, ers, and black and white radicals, some of whom brought to them by white media.” That movement were associated with the Communist party,” in may have been new to white folks, but, she adds, Hall’s words. This movement was not “just a pre- “ knew better,” for in the “three cursor of the modern civil rights movement,” she decades that followed World War I, black South- concludes. “It was its decisive first phase.” erners and their allies relentlessly battled Jim Referred to as “civil rights unionism” or the Crow.”6 “Black Popular Front” by its historians, this al- Was this, in fact, the case? Did African Amer- liance of progressives was based in leftist trade icans know better? Did they “relentlessly” battle “” in jail at Birmingham, undated. Langston unions and led or influenced by the Communist Jim Crow after World War I? A small number of Hughes papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Bei- Party and its allies. The agenda it promoted—of black Southerners and an even smaller number of necke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. union rights, workplace democracy, full employ- whites participated in campaigns against the segre- ment, antiracism in employment and housing, gationist order, but the vast majority did not. And like a river.”8 That long movement was very long broad social welfare programs, and anticolonial- for those on the front lines, activism itself came in indeed. ism—was decidedly to the left of mainstream civil fits and starts. But does the existence of individual The notion of “the black freedom movement” rights or labor organizations. Its distinctive quality activists or even a small and often stigmatized left- extending back centuries has a certain undeniable was its fusing of racial and class concerns; it was wing organization allow us to talk about a move- political appeal today. It provides current demands the “link between race and class”—both “expan- ment or suggest an ongoing, relentless struggle? for social and racial justice with an honorable and sively understood”—[that] lay at the heart of the As it turned out, the communists Gilmore cele- long lineage. And indeed, any lecture class in movement’s political imagination,” Hall insists.10 brates did not really create a civil rights movement African-American history and many U.S. history That alliance, however, proved short-lived and at all, much less one that compared in size or in- surveys rightly emphasize the multiple traditions of its demise was not merely unfortunate but tragic fluence to the movement of the “classical” phase. resistance that characterize the broad sweep of in the eyes of these historians. Its radical agenda is Why, however, start the story merely during African-American history. Yet despite its popular- said to have perished along with the leftist move- World War I? Why not extend it back in time to ity and classroom utility, the notion tends to re- ment when conservative employers and govern- embrace the unprecedented levels of black migra- duce very different approaches and agendas to a ment officials deployed a powerful, indeed tion to the North—itself a form of protest—dur- too simple common denominator, minimizing the “virulent” anticommunism to tar progressive re- ing the Great War? Or to Ida B. Wells and the importance of chronology, precise periodization, formers with the red brush, to crush progressive black clubwomen’s movement’s struggles against and even conflicting agendas and demands. One unions, and to red-bait progressive reformers into ? Or to protests against disfranchisement? can appreciate the deep traditions of black protest silence or conformity. By the time the red scare Or Union League efforts to protect Reconstruc- politics while simultaneously rejecting the adjective and the “long backlash” (Hall’s term) had done tion’s gains? Or black abolitionists’ challenges to “freedom” as too expansive to have much concrete their work, the class-race nexus had been broken, the Fugitive Slave Act and the evils of chattel slav- descriptive meaning. radical ideas were driven underground or out of ery? Or recently enslaved Africans’ uprisings on Finally, much of the new scholarship on the ideological business, civil rights unionism’s “institu- board slave ships during the Middle Passage? In “long movement” comes in a distinctive political tional base” had been weakened, and organized fact, some have done precisely this. Almost three flavor, one that reflects both the orientation of the labor had tacked right. Even though advocates of decades ago, Vincent Harding published There Is a activists it celebrates and the disposition of its his- this view acknowledge—reluctantly, it seems to River: The Black Freedom Struggle in America.Asa torians as well. Of course, one can certainly group me—that the Cold War created real opportunities young activist in the South during the early 1960s, under the general rubric of the “long movement” for less radical advocates of civil rights to promote Harding was impressed by the men and women he myriad approaches to protest, including the “don’t their cause, they ultimately conclude that “civil encountered. They were a “revelation,” he recalled, buy where you can’t work” campaigns of the rights look less like a product of the Cold War and “witnesses who had been standing their sometimes 1930s or the March on Washington movement of more like a casualty.”11 Anticommunism had “sti- solitary ground in harsh and threatening circum- the early 1940s, for instance. In fact, some schol- fled the social democratic impulses that antifascism stances for a long time; people who refused to lose ars, present company included, have. But by and and anticolonialism encouraged, replacing them hope,” who helped to “prepare the way for the large, many proponents of the “long movement” with a Cold War racial liberalism that, at best, April 2009 • Historically Speaking 33

failed to deliver on its promise of reform...and, nists played a vital role, along with party members, is a case in point.18 The long-time socialist who had at worst, colluded with the right-wing red scare to in building the National Negro Congress, while in once been called the most “dangerous Negro in narrow the ideological ground on which civil rights her excellent monograph on Pullman porters, she America” served as the president of the BSCP activists could stand.”12 When a new generation of demonstrates that it was the non-communist from the 1920s through the 1960s and, from his activists emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, they Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), union base, undertook wide-ranging campaigns were cut off from their predecessors. In many more than any other union, that laid the ground- against various facets of racial inequality. It was his cases they were unaware of earlier struggles, and work for the upsurge in black unionization during threat to bring 100,000 blacks to the nation’s cap- their agenda of legal and voting rights appeared the .16 My point is not to dismiss ital to protest discrimination in employment and anemic in comparison. communist contributions to labor and civil rights; the armed forces during World War II that earned Does the communist Left deserve the credit it is, rather, to suggest that revisionist scholars have him a reputation as the nation’s most prominent that long civil rights movement proponents bestow been too quick to assign most credit to the party, black leader. During the war, Randolph continued upon it? And are they correct in identifying the to lead numerous demonstrations and protests communist Left-labor alliance as the very heart of against segregation, which he deemed “wholly un- the mid-century movement? To the first question I tenable and indefensible,” especially while the na- would respond: only in part. It is certainly true that tion was ostensibly fighting to end abroad. in many instances Left-led unions directed the These efforts made his a household name in black charge against discrimination in the workplace and communities across the country. the community, and the Communist Party emerged So where do Randolph and his non-commu- with the reputation, in the words of one historian nist allies fit into the new narrative of the long I spoke with, as “the only show in town” on the civil rights movement? The quick answer: awk- race front. To say nothing beyond this, however, wardly, when they fit at all. Randolph campaigned misrepresents the party’s actual record. The party aggressively against alliances with communists long heroes celebrated as the heart of the Left-labor al- before the rise of McCarthyism made it popular liance by the “long movement” scholars were, to do so. When party members hijacked the Na- from the outset, fatally flawed by the party’s fun- tional Negro Congress (NNC) and hitched its star damentally antidemocratic structure and its sub- to Soviet foreign policy in 1940, Randolph, then servience to the Soviet Union. Party members NNC president, reverted to his earlier anticommu- proved more than willing to subordinate civil rights nist instincts. The break was deep and bitter. His or even betray their black supporters when the personal experiences had demonstrated conclu- party line instructed them to do so.13 Their multiple sively that the party was the agent of a foreign and self-inflicted failures are as important a part power that put Russia’s needs above all others. In of the story as their heroic efforts. If scholarly his eyes, it constituted a “sinister menace”19 and proponents of the “long movement” are correct from that point onward, he declared ideological in identifying the real and at times significant role and organizational war against the Communist played by the Communist Party, they weaken their Party and all it stood for. case by underestimating the party’s flaws and re- fusing to explore the ways in which the Commu- *** nist Party also undermined, at times, the very Undated photograph. Yale Collection of American Litera- movement it claimed to support. ture, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The “long civil rights movement” is a concept with To the second question—was the communist possibilities—but also problems. On the positive Left-labor alliance the heart of the mid-century side, it offers us a single term to embrace the movement?—the answer is a clear no. “Long and it is to insist on placing communists in a larger many individuals and organizations challenging movement” scholars significantly overstate the in- context to which non- and anticommunists con- racial inequality prior to the mid-1950s, about fluence of the Communist Party’s contribution to tributed their share as well. whom historians—if not the general public—have the broader civil rights coalition. Attributing much “Long movement” scholarship runs the risk of long been aware. On the negative side, much of of the era’s activism to communists, fellow travel- substituting a romantic and overly celebratory nar- the new scholarship remains romantic and one- ers, and general sympathizers, they downplay or rative for a much messier and more complicated sided, overemphasizing the contributions of the neglect the activist strains that remained independ- civil rights past. Our purpose, Jacqueline Hall has communist Left, ignoring the party’s less savory ent of, or even hostile toward, the Communist argued, is to “honor the movement” and “rein- practices, and neglecting or minimizing non-com- Party. As Dorothy Sue Cobble has shown, left- force the moral authority of those who fought for munist and anticommunist activists. At a minimum, leaning women trade unionists had no monopoly change in those years.”17 Many of those activists we need to recognize the limits and failures, as well on early labor feminism, and Kevin Boyle has illus- are certainly entitled much honoring and celebrat- as successes, of earlier struggles and include a trated the ways non-leftist black unionists fought ing, but is that our primary purpose as scholars of broad swath of non- or anticommunists into the aggressively and sometimes successfully to use the civil rights? On what basis does one decide whom pantheon of activists in the “long” movement. United Auto Workers’ anti-discrimination machin- to honor? And does honoring the movement re- Such recognition and inclusion would produce a ery to further their cause while the national union quire us to serve as its cheerleaders? Politics is not story that is certainly messier than our current one; contributed mightily to federal legislative reform.14 always a heroic business; politicians and activists one might add that it would also be “more robust” In my own Brotherhoods of Color, I sketched out the alike have been known to get down in the mud, and “truer”—if not necessarily more “progressive,” perspectives and crusades of numerous black rail- directing their indignation not only against the in Hall’s language—than our existing revisionist road unions, communist and non-communist alike, “system” but at each other as well. The imperative narratives. to advance a civil rights unionism in the 1930s and to “honor” runs into more than a little difficulty And what of the movement’s classical, post 1940s.15 In her important study of the National As- when the contentiousness of political engagement Brown v. Board of Education phase? It would be un- sociation for the Advancement of Colored People is fully explored. fortunate if, in their rush to spotlight earlier strug- (NAACP) and grassroots activism in the 1930s, The hostile relationship between the Commu- gles for racial justice, scholars contributed to a Beth Tompkins Bates has shown that non-commu- nist Party and anticommunist A. Philip Randolph redirection of academic and popular attention away 34 Historically Speaking • April 2009

from the modern movement.20 That movement was Alabama Press, 2004), 1, 2. Also see Kevin Boyle, “Labour, (Princeton University Press, 2005); Eric Arnesen, the Left, and the Long Civil Rights Movement,” Social History “Evaluating the Missing Wave,” Labor: Studies in Work- distinctive. It was significantly larger than its pred- 30 (2005): 366-67; Patricia Sullivan, “Forward,” in Feldman, ing-Class History of the Americas 2, No. 4 (Winter 2005): ecessors; it was visible nationally and consistently ed., Before Brown, xii. 48-51; Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of Ameri- in a way unmatched by earlier organizations; it at- can Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Cornell University Press, 3 Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement 1995); Kevin Boyle, “‘There Are No Union Sorrows tained a genuinely mass character; it provoked a and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History That the Union Can’t Heal’: The Struggle for Racial violent backlash of unprecedented proportions; 91 (2005): 1235. Equality in the United Automobile Workers, 1940- and it ultimately succeeded in toppling legalized 1960,” Labor History 36 (1995): 5-23. 4 “Mellon Foundation Funds Interdisciplinary Civil Rights segregation and enfranchising black Southerners. Scholarship.” Monday, January 28, 2008 at 15 Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers Its failure to solve the more intractable problems http://uncnews.unc.edu/news/humanities-and-social-sci- and the Struggle for Equality (Harvard University Press, 2001). ences/mellon-foundation-funds-interdisciplinary-civil-rights- of economic and social inequality may not be at- scholarship.html 16 Beth Tompkins Bates, “A New Crowd Challenges the tributable to its allegedly narrow agenda, the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933–1941,” Ameri- “sidelining” of “independent black radicals” by the 5 Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities can Historical Review 102 (1997): 340–377; Beth Tompkins Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black forces of “[p]ersecution, censorship, and self-cen- Movement,” Journal of American History 75 (1988): 786-811. America, 1925-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, sorship,” or the loss to “memory” of the lessons 2001). 6 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of of “an earlier, labor-infused civil rights tradition,”21 Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (W.W. Norton, 2008), 1-2. 17 Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement,” 1235. as “long movement” writers suggest. Rather, the persistence and even worsening of some problems 7 Vincent Harding, There is a River: The Black Struggle for Free- 18 For accounts of Randolph’s life, see: Eric Arnesen, “A. dom in America (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), xiii-xiv. Philip Randolph: Labor and the New Black Politics,” in Arne- amid dramatic improvement in other areas may sen, ed., The Human Tradition in American Labor History (Schol- have more to do with the political and ideological 8 Harding, There is a River, 331, xviii-xix. arly Resources, 2003), 173-191; Jervis Anderson, A. Philip forces that have continually vexed all social move- Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 9 Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 6-7. 1972). ments in America that advance a class perspective. Steven Lawson has recently raised a “caution- 10 Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement,” 1245, 1246. 19 “The Danger of Communists and Communism to Labor ary flag” about extending the movement’s chrono- and the Negro,” The Black Worker (December 1948), 5. 11 Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement,” 1249. logical boundaries too readily back in time. Civil 20 I am indebted to Joseph Crespino, who articulated this rights campaigns proceeded in “fits and starts” in 12 Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement,” 1248, 1249. point at the 2008 meeting of the Southern Historical Associa- tion, for this formulation. many places. For the movement to have “any con- 13 Eric Arnesen, “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, textual meaning” requires that it be “seen as a dis- the Communist Party, and the Race Question” and “The Red 21 Hall, “Long Civil Rights Movement,” 1253-54. tinct and coherent part of the longer freedom and the Black: Reflections on the Responses to ‘No Graver Danger,’” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 22 Lawson, Civil Rights Crossroads, 23. 22 struggle.” David Chappell endorses Lawson’s 3, No. 4 (Winter 2006): 13-52, 75-79. Also see Eric Arnesen, reservation and takes it a step farther. “The various “Passion and Politics: Race and the Writing of Working-Class 23 David Chappell, “Civil Rights: Grassroots, High Politics, or scholarly extensions” of chronology “neglect the History,” Journal of the Historical Society 6 (2006): 323-356. Both?” Reviews in American History 32 (2004): 568. testimony of participants who saw the 1955–1965 14 Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women’s Movement: period as special. They also ahistorically skip over Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America long periods of inaction, making the subject amor- phous.” Perhaps their political commitments or as- pirations put long movement scholars on the “defensive,” he muses, as though “their saying that the civil rights movement lived and died like any other historical phenomenon would prevent would be activists from reviving it.”23 As Lawson, Chap- pell, and others suggest, it is possible—and neces- sary—to appreciate the distinctiveness of the modern phase of the movement while simultane- ously recognizing its deeper roots. Recent scholar- ship on the “long” dimensions of struggles for civil rights has unquestionably broadened our un- derstanding of the politics of race in the United States. But we need to pay closer attention to its proponents’ political assumptions, choice of sub- jects, and specific interpretations. In the absence of that scrutiny, I would suggest that the enthusiastic consensus on the utility of the newly dominant version of the “long movement” framework is premature.

Eric Arnesen, professor of history at the University of Illinois at , is a former president of the Historical Society.

1 Steven Lawson, Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), 22.

2 Glenn Feldman, “Prologue,” in Feldman, ed., Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South (University of