Copyright by Erin Alane Boade 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Erin Alane Boade certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Limits of Civility in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements: Three African- American Women’s Autobiographies Committee: ____________________________________ Patricia Roberts-Miller, Supervisor ____________________________________ Linda Ferreira-Buckley ___________________________________ Brian Bremen ___________________________________ Jacqueline Henkel ___________________________________ Laurie Green The Limits of Civility in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements: Three African- American Women’s Autobiographies by Erin Alane Boade, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2009 Acknowledgments This project has not turned out to be what I thought it would, and there are many people and institutions who helped it become what it is, which I hope is what it was meant to be. First of all, I would like to thank my family, which includes the Boades, the Englands, and the Francises. My parents always encouraged me in my educational pursuits even as they were not always sure of their vocational payoff because they knew I would find my way somehow. My siblings were always there to cheer me along, and our keeping in touch now includes Facebook postings and other such long distance means people have invented to keep far flung networks connected. I only wish my grandparents would have survived to see this dissertation’s completion. I would also like to thank the University of Texas in general and the Departments of English as well as Rhetoric and Writing for supporting me and my work and for allowing me to change my study’s approach. When I taught my UT students about the rhetoric of the 1960s, I know I always learned a lot from them, and for that I thank them. My committee certainly deserves its own paragraph. The debt of gratitude I owe my dissertation advisor, Patricia Roberts-Miller, is immense. Her kindness, willingness to listen, concision, and insightfulness in response to my writing, and her practical professional advice have all been enormously helpful. Her office door has always been open to me, and her generosity with her time is what I am most grateful for. Linda Ferreira-Buckley’s careful reading of early drafts have also helped shape this version of this project along the way, and I thank her for her kind writing, professional, and personal advice. I met Brian Bremen in my first year of graduate school when I was his teaching assistant, and his rhetorical approach to teaching literature got me thinking about the iv relationship between literature and the rhetoric of race, as did his practical teaching methods, and traces of both can be found in this manuscript. He also recognized the moment when I had found the right theoretical framework, having already watched me struggle to apply the wrong one. Laurie Green, trained in history, has offered a careful reading of chapters that allowed me to revise more mindfully, and I plan to refer back to her thoughtful comments in the future. Jackie Henkel offered much support along the way, as she sometimes was part of our writing group, and she read the first articulation of Chapter Two in the form of a seminar paper. The writing group Trish Roberts-Miller has assembled is also remarkable. Part self-enclosed feedback loop, part support group, its members have varied, but all of them deserve a thank you. Eric Dieter always listened well and offered me a useful, pithy way to describe what I was trying to say, and Zachary Dobbins knew what essential question to ask and when to ask it. Nathan Kreuter deserves thanks for playing devil’s advocate and challenging me to take the patently absurd claims of some of my sources seriously. Stephanie Odom also offered helpful and encouraging comments, persuading me that my dissertation was more ready than I then thought it was. Sarah Sliter-Hays’ comments were always challenging and incisive, and I thank her for them and look forward to working with her further. Janice Fernheimer has always been a generous and critical reader of my work, and I thank her for that. The other members of this protean writing group whose names I have not specified, I offer you my thanks as well. As well as a reader, Janice Fernheimer has also been a dear friend, and I thank her for her personal and professional support. Jacqueline Thomas has been a friend, confidant, and, importantly, partner in retail crime, both in person and online. Eliana v Schonberg has been of great assistance, and I thank her for her advice about sticky situations as well as the time we spent on thoughtful shopping trips. Kat Schwegel, a wonderful friend who has been in my life since we were undergraduates, also has all my thanks and my love and always will. Susan Frederick-Gray is another old friend whose kind passion has always inspired me, and our shared love of music has allowed us to reconnect time and time again in spite of the physical distance between us. I also thank Chris Jochimsen, who persuaded me that graduate school was an appropriate place for me to land. To all the other teachers, friends, and students who sustained me throughout my educational career and life, you also have my thanks. You are too numerous to mention here by name. Finally, I must thank the unconventional family that Frank Wong and I have created, consisting of us and a passel of stray and adopted cats. The oldest adopted cat has been alive about as long as this project has, and while she doesn’t talk to me when I talk to her, I thank her anyway. The second youngest cat was only with us for a few months, but those were crucial ones, and his loving suppo rt was helpful. The littlest one is here now as I write this, so she deserves mention as well. The dozens of strays that we fed in our two backyards in East Austin did not all have names, but we recognized them all, and I thank them as well. Frank, at last, deserves special thanks. It is not easy sharing space with someone who is writing a dissertation, and for his willingness to do so, I am grateful beyond any language’s capability to express. He has managed to make sure I was fed even while tolerating impossibly disorganized stacks of papers and books that I know drove and will continue to drive him crazy. For that and everything else, he has all my gratitude. vi The Limits of Civility in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements: Three African- American Women’s Autobiographies Erin Alane Boade, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin Supervisor: Patricia Roberts-Miller Rhetoricians have long praised argumentation as a productive alternative to violence, and while I agree that it can be such an alternative, my dissertation aims to complicate our understanding of both violence and coercion by illumination how the strictures of civility limit the rhetoric of dissent. This study makes two main arguments, 1), that the dominant narrative of the civil rights and Black Power movements has been insufficiently challenged by rhetoricians, and 2), that this lack can be explained in part by these scholars’ preference for civility and decorum over coercion in persuasion. I argue that both the civil rights and Black Power movements share similarities both tactically and philosophically. Looking beyond assessing these movements in terms of their alleged levels of civility allows us more fully to account for the complexity of their rhetorical situations. I use black women’s autobiographies as my focus because they allow a glimpse into the quotidian nature of the civil rights and Black Power movement’s struggles, one that lies on the margin of the media spotlight on movement leadership. In addition, these autobiographies unveil the multiple audiences activist rhetors faced in ways that major speeches, penned and delivered by men, cannot. vii Table of Contents The Limits of Civility in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements………………………………………………..1 The Narrative of Civil Rights/Black Power: The Rhetoric of Dissent, Coercion, and Civility ………………………………………...38 “Losing Faith in American Democracy: The Long Shadow of Little Rock ………………………………………………………...75 Tired of Living in Mississippi: “You’ve Got To Be the Ones To Give it Meaning” …………………………………...113 “Let the Martial Songs Be Written, Let the Dirges Disappear”: An Interlude on Black Power …………………………………………………………..143 From Dynamite Hill to Acquittal in San Jose: Angela Davis, Black Power, and State Repression……………………………………..182 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………......................…220 Notes …………………………………………………………………………………...238 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………244 viii The Limits of Civility in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely [. .] Just as we formerly pointed out that “hatred and violence have no sanction in our religious and political traditions,” we also point out that such actions as incite to hatred and violence, however technically peaceful those actions may be, have not contributed to the resolution of our local problems. We do not believe that these days of new hope are days when extreme measures are justified in Birmingham. --Public Statement by Eight Alabama Clergymen, “A Call for Unity,” April 1963 You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation.