Agitations: Ideologies and Strategies in African American Politics

By Kevin R. Anderson

Though the activities of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) were unified in their common idea of resistance to oppression, these groups fought their battles on multiple fronts. The NAACP filed lawsuits and aggressively lobbied Congress and state legislatures, while Martin Luther King Jr. and SCLC challenged the racial status quo through nonviolent mass action, and the SNCC focused on community empowerment activities. In Agitations, Kevin Anderson studies these various activities in order to trace the ideological foundations of these groups and to understand how diversity among African Americans created multiple political strategies.

Agitations goes beyond the traditionally acknowledged divide between integrationist and accommodationist wings of African American politics to explore the diverse fundamental ideologies and strategic outcomes among African American activists that still define, influence, and complicate political life today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781610750110

Book preview

AGITATIONS

Ideologies and Strategies in African American Politics

Kevin R. Anderson

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PRESS

FAYETTEVILLE

2010

Copyright © 2010 by The University of Arkansas Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN-10: 1-55728-926-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-55728-926-1

14    13    12    11    10        5    4    3    2    1

Text design by Ellen Beeler

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anderson, Kevin R., 1967–

Agitations : ideologies and strategies in African American politics / Kevin R. Anderson.

         p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55728-926-1 (casebound : alk. paper)

1. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century.   2. Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th century.   3. African Americans—Politics and government—20th century.   4. African Americans—Politics and government—Philosophy.   5. Political science—United States—History—20th century.   6. African Americans—Intellectual life—20th century.   I. Title.

E185.615.A679 2010

323.1196'073—dc22

                    2009047714

ISBN-13: 978-1-61075-011-0 (electronic)

To the memories of

Diane D. Blair

1938–2000

Teacher, activist, and great friend

Adolph L. Reed Sr.

1921–2003

Teacher and first guide to the complexities of African American Politics

and

Nianzer E. Anderson

1950–2009

Thanks, Uncle, for teaching me to always think twice

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

Agitations: African American Ideology in Action

CHAPTER 2

Counted but not Heard: The Evolutionary Context of African American Political Thought

CHAPTER 3

An Identity Crisis: The Ideological Foundation of the NAACP

CHAPTER 4

Ministers in Black: The Ideological Origins of Grassroots Civil Rights Protest

CHAPTER 5

Sitting Down to Stand Up: Ideology and the Creation of SNCC

CHAPTER 6

Agitations: Freedom and the Future

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Preface

Agitation: 1. To call attention to by speech or writing, discussion or debate. 2. To arouse or attempt to arouse public interest and support, as in a political or social cause. 3. The persistent urging of a political or social cause or theory before the public.

—Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

Those of you who have been around for some time know that I’ve sometimes been called a troublemaker in the city of Birmingham, an agitator. I don’t resent that because I remember the little old lady [who] said if a washing machine didn’t have an agitator, then it wouldn’t get the clothes clean. I’m proud to be in Birmingham, the United States. I am an American and I’m just as patriotic as they come. But I don’t mind taking a stand, telling my city, and my state and my nation they’re wrong when I believe they are wrong.

—Rev. Abraham Woods, president, Birmingham Chapter, Southern Christian Leadership Conference

When Africans first arrived in America, they came bound together in chains. These chains tied them together as a group yet the links of the chain separated them into individuals, creating distinct experiences with slavery, racism, and the character of American life. How did these experiences affect the agitations for freedom? How did this diversity of experiences and ideas become the foundation of African American ideologies?

The racial nature of slavery and segregation in America means that African American politics is often defined by the fight for inclusion and equality in the American polity. Historically, all forms of civil resistance—lawsuits, sit-ins, protest marches, internal community building and armed resistance—were viewed as of a piece, as different stages of a universal fight against racism and second-class status. What is the impact of group exclusion on African American political thought and political strategies? Does the common oppression of racism produce a unique unified political response or are African American political responses complicated by the different perceptions of racial oppression in America? Are the diverse methods of political resistance historically engaged in by African Americans separate pieces of a common strategy or do they reflect a complex ideological diversity rooted in American ideas? Can we understand the foundations of African American political actions as direct challenges to, and dynamic examples of, American democratic action? This study posits that while exclusionary political, social, and economic pressures may have dictated a common idea of resistance, the multiple strategies of political engagement reflected differences of ideological perceptions—perceptions that revolved around the impact of race, religion, social class, and gender among African Americans. These differences define the problems and possibilities of politics for African Americans, and they lay at the foundation of how African American political thought transformed into concrete political strategies. Did the different perceptions of race influence the ideological dispositions of African Americans in ways that generated different strategies for change?

The degree to which African American political organizations reflected the ideological diversity of the African American community is complicated by the common oppression of racial exclusion. Groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fought for equality for all Americans yet their task involved a fight for equal treatment on multiple fronts: education, voting rights, criminal rights, and simple social equality. The universal nature of this fight often obscured a detailed look into the foundations of their strategic approaches. How does African American history frame the ideological development of African Americans? What perceptions of racism lay at the core of their ideological approach to overcoming racism? Was it a universal approach grounded in American political thought or did other ideological influences shape the strategies used to attain political power? Can understanding the evolution of political thought produce viable political strategies that are instructive in contemporary African American politics?

The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education¹ in 1954 fundamentally altered civil rights as an issue in American politics. The African American fight for equality becomes an essential public policy debate far beyond the contested terrain of education. The unanimous Supreme Court decision affected everything from school integration to voting rights to the American image during the cold war. The powerful impact of race relations in the wake of the decision, and the resultant protest movement identified as the modern civil rights movement, suggest that its relevance for international as well as domestic policy underlie an evolution in American democracy. To analyze the foundations of African American engagement strategies is vital to understanding the successes and failures of civil rights activities. This study explores the multiple strands of African American political thought that help form the foundations of the political strategies employed by the NAACP, the SCLC, and SNCC, three of the most prominent civil rights groups during this era in American politics. The models and strategies of political engagement during this time provide a clear understanding of how complex perceptions of race and politics have historically influenced the push for political change and still define, influence, and complicate modern political life.

Although this study uses a detailed look at three of the most well-known civil rights organizations in American history, it is not a comprehensive study of each group; this project seeks to use the actions of each group to demonstrate the strategic outcomes of diverse ideological traditions among African Americans. Why did the NAACP file lawsuits and aggressively lobby Congress and state legislatures? What drove Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference into direct challenges of the racial status quo through nonviolent mass action? And what was at the core of the community empowerment activities of SNCC? These actions reveal the ideological and intellectual roots of modern African American politics, and underscore the relevance and power of democratic models of political engagement. By studying the effects of multiple models of strategic political action in the past we can better understand how they serve as models for contemporary political life.

Acknowledgments

This work is the product of multiple influences; although only my name is on the cover, numerous people have shaped this work in ways large and small and I thank each of them for their knowledge, friendship, and support. My intellectual debts begin with Dr. Leroy Williams of the Department of History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His classes on African American history sparked a curiosity and fired a passion that I try to share with each of my students. I also owe a great deal to Dr. Daryl Rice and Dr. Conrad Waligorski, political theorists who showed me the power and influence of political ideas. As I began to explore the connections between political ideology and political actions in graduate school, I cannot thank Dr. K. C. Morrison enough for his critical perspective and unflagging support of this project, first as graduate advisor and then as mentor. I was blessed to have been influenced by Professors Catherine Holland, Sharon Austin, Robert Weems, Wilma King, and Rick Hardy; thanks to each of you for your input and advice.

My colleagues in the Department of Political Science at Eastern Illinois University have been terrific and I thank each of them. Professors Ryan Hendrickson, Richard Wandling, Steve Roper, Lilian Barria, Andrew McNitt, and department chair Jeff Ashley offered support, read portions of the manuscript (and more!), and offered sage advice that helped me complete the project. I thank Michael Smith, Richard Middleton, Chapman Rackaway, Tara Warne, and Kimberly Beecham for friendships that extend back to our graduate school days at the University of Missouri. They all provided encouragement, understanding, and laughter as this project made its way to publication. My family, including the Reverend Carroll Anderson and Carolyn Anderson, have endured the writing of this book with steady patience and I thank them for everything. Kerry Green and Dionysius Anderson are cousins by blood and brothers by deed; thanks for always having my back. I thank the anonymous reviewers of this work along with the staff at the University of Arkansas Press led by Larry Malley. They have been great to work with and I cannot say thank you enough. Each person shares in the work you are reading but the mistakes are mine alone.

CHAPTER 1

Agitations

African American Ideology in Action

Between Me and The Other World there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All nevertheless flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.

—W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

Introduction

African Americans hold a unique claim upon the evolution of American politics and political thought. Scholarly debates regarding freedom and equality, liberty and justice, and the fundamental definition of what it means to be an American can all be filtered through the history of African Americans. Intellectual debates among historians and political theorists as to the proper ideological tradition of American politics can be divided into those arguing that American political thought derives from Classical Liberalism (typically represented by John Locke) and those arguing that Classical Liberalism was undoubtedly an influence but so were other non-liberal traditions, which explains why inequality existed and why it has flourished for much of American history. These two competing explanations, while widely noted in history and political theory, are incomplete in terms of the scholarly research into American political thought. The history, tradition, and political ideologies emanating from African American communities provides insight into both the perceptions among African Americans of the racial animus present in society and the nuances of American politics and political thought.

Debating American Politics

One of the most persistent debates among scholars of American political thought revolves around the intellectual and ideological traditions from which American politics derives. One school of thought argues that the dominant political ideas in American thought derive from Classical Liberalism with the Second Treatise of Government by John Locke as the single most influential work. The outline of a limited government designed to protect private property based upon a social contract individuals enter into in order to escape the State of Nature and the encroachments on their individual freedoms that occur therein are argued to be at the core of the ideals around which our Constitution is based.¹ Indeed, as James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton argued for the ratification of the Constitution in The Federalist Papers, they built arguments for a new Constitution around the central idea that a strong national government (as opposed to the decentralized system of the Articles of Confederation) could better protect individual liberty from the occasional tyranny of the masses.²

Scholarly attention to American political thought also focuses on the dominance of liberal ideals. Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville was the first and perhaps best articulation of this conception of American society and politics as shaped predominantly by liberal democratic ideals.³ An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, while addressing the problems associated with race in America, also accepted the basic premise of liberal democratic ideals as essential to understanding American politics. Indeed, the central conclusion at the core of the analysis by Myrdal was the moral conundrum faced by Americans who professed a belief in equality and justice yet tolerated the unequal treatment of African Americans.⁴ The Liberal Tradition in America by Louis Hartz was a strong critique of liberal ideals yet it also accepts them as essential to understanding the political development of the United States.⁵

A number of other scholars, such as Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood argued that the influence of Locke in the development of American political thought has been overstated and that other influences—many of which do not always comport with a progressive view of history—have been decisive in the formation of the American republic. Wood argues:

They all see that nature has made them all very unequal in respect to their original powers, capacities and talents. They became united in claiming and in preserving the equality, which nature has assigned to them; and in availing themselves of the benefits, which are designed, and may be derived from the inequality which nature also established.⁶

The establishment of the social contract did not preclude the existence of inequality among citizens insofar as these inequalities were rooted in nature. The founding of civil society to protect individual rights provided some individuals with more protection than others. Bernard Bailyn argued that slavery as a political concept had specific meanings: It meant the inability to maintain one’s just property in material things and abstract rights and things which a proper constitution guaranteed a free people. This definition provides a key insight regarding American political thought, As long as the institution of slavery lasted, the burden of proof would lie with its advocates to show why the statement ‘all men are created equal’ did not mean precisely what it said: all men, ‘white or black.’⁷

African American political thought has been similarly divided into different schools of thought; one associated with W. E. B. Du Bois and noted for the emphasis on protest directed toward full political integration into American society, and another most famously attributed to Booker T. Washington (although the historian Kevin Gaines argues that some of the assumptions credited to Washington lay at the foundation of what he terms Uplift Ideology, which straddled both schools of thought⁸) that believed political rights would be bestowed once African Americans demonstrated a commitment to the moral and economic values of the American capitalist system. This division not only masks other ideological constructions (such as Black Nationalism) that are important responses from the community to the racial exclusion of the American polity, it artificially constricts the ideological range of debate by posing the economic/political debate as the single spectrum of alternatives. It is argued here that the broader debate among African Americans is rooted in the differing perceptions of racism in America and how these perceptions give life to multiple ideological traditions.

The perception of racism as a permanent part of the American political system produces strategic programs that are very different from those working from the assumption that the polity can be reformed. The increasing importance of race as a political issue after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision makes the modern civil rights era in the United States (1954–1968) a prime example of how ideological diversity created multiple strategic programs among African Americans. The goal of this research is to explore African American political thought as it evolved, especially within the context of American politics. The complexity of American political thought leads to varying perspectives as to the importance of racism to the polity. It is my argument that American politics has shaped both African American political thought and strategic political actions. In this regard I seek to understand the multiple collective responses of African Americans to an American society that has varied in its responses to the African American population. These different responses have in turn produced multiple ideological and strategic traditions that form the core of this investigation.

Organized Opposition

To understand how African Americans responded to American racism, I analyze the strategies and actions of three organizations within the African American community: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The leadership styles embodied by each group provide insight into the ideologies each embraces. James MacGregor Burns identifies two principal leadership styles: transactional—in which one person takes the lead in securing gains for a group—and transforming leadership—which occurs when one person or a small group engages a larger group in such a way that both leaders and followers are elevated in pursuit of a common goal.⁹ The three groups to be analyzed are the most representative models of political engagement as identified by Burns—elite brokerage and litigation (NAACP) and social movement/grassroots pressure (SCLC) and (SNCC). Each group sought to address the problem of racism in America by confronting the political system, but the different modes they chose are illustrative of the ideological backgrounds from which each group emerged.

Beginning with an investigation and discussion of American ideology (i.e., liberalism and its many variants), I review the status of liberalism and how the meaning of liberalism changed with the advent of the American Revolution. Liberalism and its meanings (and the many other possible ideological influences) in the American context had a profound influence on how African Americans defined and articulated their interests. The status of African Americans raised a special set of problems in the context of liberalism. Insofar as African Americans began their journey as an enslaved population, one needs to ask how liberal thought accounted for what seemed to be a contradiction in the implementation of the liberal democratic republic, how African American thought and behavior were affected by this condition.

What role did race play in the development of the American ideal? Did American political actions live up to the lofty ideals espoused by the Constitution and liberal democratic theory? If the United States engaged in actions contradictory to its professed ideals, how did this affect the theory of liberalism? How did the possible contradiction between ideology and action structure the political outlook of African Americans? In answering these questions I will present several prominent models that attempt to account for the racialized nature of the American political system. I consider the moral dilemma theory Gunnar Myrdal presented in An American Dilemma—that Americans understood the central contradiction between professed American ideals and American action and that this understanding created a moral dilemma for most Americans.¹⁰ I also discuss the foundations of critical race theory, which a number of contemporary scholars such as the sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant use to argue that race is, and has always been, politically contested. This is a function of what they term the social nature of race. The authors state that Racial Formation occurs on a common sense level that is inherently ideological. All people learn the structures of racial identity without being consciously taught the rules: We are thus inserted in a comprehensively racialized social structure.¹¹ We accept the status quo without recognizing the role state action played in forming and enforcing these racial rules. The contradiction posed by Myrdal does not exist for these authors who argue that the political definition of race is central to understanding American politics, a point clearly articulated by Oliver Cox. He argued in Caste, Class, and Race that the assimilation of African Americans into the social and political system was the source of the greatest friction in the area of race relations and that the systemic nature of racial exclusion meant that the problem for African Americans was far more complex than the emphasis on individual prejudice and moral ambivalence posited by Myrdal.¹² St. Clair Drake also points out that the status of African Americans is not the result of benign social evolution: In other words, Negroes in America have been subject to ‘victimization’ in the sense that a system of social relations operates in such a way as to deprive them of a chance to share in the more desirable material and non-material products of a society which is dependent in part, upon their labor and loyalty.¹³

The fact that race appears to be an active factor in the constriction of opportunities for African Americans leads to another strategic question: Have racially exclusionary actions by the United States Government been the work of individuals? Or, have African Americans been the victims of systemic racism as implied by Cox and later postulated in the colonial model of racism as articulated by Charles Hamilton and Kwame Ture when they defined Institutional Racism as the predication of decisions and policies on considerations of race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and maintaining control over that group.¹⁴ It is critical to understand the assumptions at the core of these ideologies. It is also important to understand the larger context of these actions. Has the society at large endorsed these actions or has it dissented against actions taken toward African Americans?

Links in the Chains That Lead to Agitations

The history of the civil rights protest movement illustrates how African Americans began breaking down the barriers to political participation. The purpose of this work is to understand the ideological foundations of that protest. Chapter 2 analyzes and places into context the previous scholarship dealing with the ideological development of African Americans as well as explaining the method of analysis to be utilized in this investigation. The following chapters explore the ideological histories and strategic choices of three major civil rights groups as they sought to overcome racial oppression in the United States. In chapter 3 I investigate the NAACP model of protest utilizing lobbying and legalism, which provided the first successes for African Americans in the twentieth century and also provided an organizational infrastructure that proved critical to the emerging mass movement. The approach centering on reforming a just and liberal democratic system was an elite centered model, which, while built on a base of mass support, did not directly involve the mass of African Americans. The leadership by a middle-class African American elite, who defined just what was important and what was not, allowed for an agenda setting function that had ideological implications for the strategies employed by the NAACP. The decision to reform the polity could not be accomplished unless a strict adherence to the fundamental principles of the polity was observed. In this task, the NAACP pursued a strategy focusing on people who generally were external to the African American community and this decision was part of a long-standing tradition in African American history and politics.

Chapters 4 and 5, dealing with the SCLC and SNCC, respectively, delve into the attempts to mobilize and organize the community for mass action. The social movement model as embodied in the work of the two organizations grew from the direct involvement of the students, ministers, and citizens unmediated by elite leadership. The central argument here is that this approach is an outgrowth of an ideological orientation calling for internal uplift for oppressed African Americans. The push for a grassroots, bottom-up campaign signaled a significant shift in the way in which political