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An Examination of the Writings and Tactics of Robert F

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An Examination of the Writings and Tactics of Robert F EMPLOYING MASCULINITY AS AN AGENT OF SOCIAL CHANGE: AN EXAMINATION OF THE WRITINGS AND TACTICS OF ROBERT F. WILLIAMS A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts By Dwight Meyer December, 2010 Thesis written by: Dwight Robert Meyer B.A., Denison University, 1999 M.A., Kent State University, 2010 Approved by: __________________________, Julio Pino, Advisor __________________________, Kenneth J. Bindas, Chair, Department of History __________________________, John R. D. Stalvey, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii Table of Contents List of Illustrations v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 2. A snapshot of gender as it applied to the work of Robert Williams, followed by a chapter outline. 16 Chapter 1: Gender in History and the Civil Rights Movement 25 2. The Role of Stereotypes in blocking Understanding of the Other. 32 3. The role of Masculinity in Selecting Tactics 39 Chapter 2: Providing for physical and economic safety; the twin responsibilities of the modern man. 46 2. Is fighting for your country a path to full employment? 60 3. The Dr. Perry Abortion Case: Employment should be based on aptitude rather than Racial Politics. 72 4. How we fight is just as important as the causes that we champion: A Debate on the Tactics of the Civil Rights Movement 80 Chapter 3: Life in Cuba results in a different set of difficulties 95 2. Masculinity and Militancy, From Common Ground to Point of Ideological Conflict 102 3. Is the Race Problem Really a Problem? 114 Chapter 4: Exit to China: A new home and the renewal of the debate on the “proper” role of African American men. 131 2. Home Again: A quieter life, but still active politically 146 iii 3. Conclusion: 153 Works Cited 155 Appendix A 167 Appendix B 168 iv List of Illustrations Illustration #1 “OH PLEASE MASTER – LET ME GO TO HELL WID YOU.”……...65 Illustration #2 “How colored they look!”………………………………………………141 Illustration #3 “For democracy? Whose democracy?”………………………………...141 v Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Julio Pino for helping me take this project from an odd conversation about “mate, cigars and beards” into a thesis on masculinity and the role that it played in the Civil Rights Movement. These thoughts about some of the outward appearances and habits of Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were some of the first steps that helped me to shape some my understanding of “masculinity” and “machismo” which led me down a path toward understanding the relationships between gender and revolution. The general strategy of understanding feminist perspectives and the French Revolution put me on the path to a much richer understanding of some fundamental theories regarding the nature of gender. Dr. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor helped me understand how black masculinity and most importantly a positive concept of citizen and self shaped the views of Robert F. Williams. It was her class on the Civil Rights Era and her assignment of Timothy Tyson’s Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of the Black Power Movement that first introduced me to Williams. At some time during our reading and discussion of the Tyson piece I came to understand that looking at masculinity and Williams in particular would be an excellent focus for my thesis. vi I also would like to thank Dr. Mary Ann Heiss for her excellent help in putting together the two seminar papers that aided me in focusing and narrowing my topic. The first of those papers helped me to understand Guevara and Guerrilla Warfare which is the intellectual seed where this project started. The second of these seminar papers added some much-needed polish to the third and fourth chapters of this work. I also would like to thank my wife Lisa Regula Meyer and our 4-year-old son Kenny. Without the two of you, I would not understand anything of what it is to be a true man living in the world today. I cherish the life that we have made together and the man you both have helped me to become. The three things that I am most proud of during my time as a graduate student would be the family that we have become together, the home that we have made, and maybe finally becoming a historian and writer. I love you both. vii Introduction Seemingly fundamental questions such as the definition of citizenship have been redefined at critical points in world history. The struggle for black empowerment that was waged during the Civil Rights Era was essentially an effort to expand the definition of citizen in the United States in such a manner that it would include people of African descent and put them on equal footing with those with European backgrounds. Robert Williams used masculinist rhetoric to champion the causes of Civil Rights and Human Rights. He is best known for the work that he did while president of the local NAACP chapter in Monroe, North Carolina. His rhetoric was mostly self-published in his newsletter The Crusader and it was informed by his experiences in the Army as part of a segregated unit at the end of World War II as well as his experience as a member of the Marine Corps soon after their integration. His military service allowed him to attend some college classes where he studied English and Journalism but was never really able to progress professionally in his chosen profession as a writer. Instead he was a working- class black man, and in the pages of The Crusader he argued that black men were first of all; men, and secondly full citizens of the United States of America. While these claims seem self evident to some liberal-minded modern historians, this was not the case in the late 1950s and early 1960s in North Carolina. Racism had deep roots in the era of slavery that centered on the ability of white society to transform 1 2 enslaved blacks into commodities to be bought and sold. The definition of enslaved blacks as property with a value in dollars enshrined racism and second class citizenry.1 The long term psychological and economic effects of this process of dehumanization are a sad American legacy.2 Even after emancipation and Reconstruction white supremacists attempted to maintain the status quo from these earlier periods through their ability to monopolize extra-legal violence. It has been a major difficulty to undo this process and the period of the Civil Rights Era was a revolution of thought directed at establishing a balance of the American social contract without the need for a violent or bloody revolution. While the humanist ideals of the Declaration of Independence declare that “All men are created equal” the founders wrote the Constitution as a proslavery document.3 Reweaving the social contract has often been accomplished during periods of violent insurrection and revolution. The trick has been to get the desired change while avoiding bloodshed.4 1 This definition of enslaved peoples as property comes from Dred Scott v. Sandford which “was a catalyst for a fundamental alteration of the Constitution through the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, forever changing the nature of American law and race relations.” Paul Finkelman, Dred Scot v. Sandford: a brief history with documents, (Boston: Bedford Books, A Division of St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 1997), 2. 2 Slave markets spent much of their time and energy making people appear to be standardized, healthy and free of maladies which preserved the value of people transformed into a marketable commodity. Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1999), 131. 3 Paul Finkelman argues that preserving the property rights of slaveholders quashed any humanist inclinations at achieving true equality and instead the founders “pursued policies that protected slavery.” Paul Finkelman, Slavery and the Founders: Race and Liberty in the Age of Jefferson (M. E. Sharp, Inc., 2001), x. 4 While there are interesting parallels to be drawn between the Civil Rights Movement and both the American and French Revolutions, they are not as simplistic as the casual observer might argue. David Brion Davis argued that “liberty and natural rights” are so often used to argue in favor of revolution, and subverting others in slavery or other terms of second class citizenship seems antithetical to the overall goals 3 From the perspective of the “Long Movement” school of the Civil Rights Era; the end of World War II provided a unique opportunity to make strides in the cause of black empowerment. During the course of the war, black newspapers including the Pittsburgh Courier argued that a “Double-V” or “Double Victory” was possible. The argument ran that blacks who served in the force that helped to defeat Nazi Fascism abroad should enjoy fuller citizenship at home in the full spirit of spreading democracy throughout the world.5 It is important to note that historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall defines the Long Civil Rights Movement that began “in the liberal and radical milieu of the late 1930s… accelerated during World War II and culminated under the aegis of the New Right.”6 This Historiographical view argues that the response to integration throughout the nation, in both the north and the south are important and thus Hall and others define the larger movement in terms that are much more temporally expansive definition that went into the 1970s even influenced the ascendency of the Reagan and Bush Administrations.7 of such a process, yet slavery continued following the American Revolution. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 84-85.
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