Rough Draft of History

A Century of US Social Movements in the News

Edwin Amenta, Neal Caren

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780691232775, 9780691232782
• eBook ISBN: 9780691232768
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

A comprehensive account of the media's coverage of social movements in the United States

A new view of twentieth-century US social movements, Rough Draft of History examines how national newspapers covered social movements and the organizations driving them. Edwin Amenta and Neal Caren identify hundreds of movement organizations, from the Women's Christian Temperance Union to Occupy Wall Street, and document their treatment in the news. In doing so, Amenta and Caren provide an alternative account of US history from below, as it was refracted through journalistic lenses.

Iconic organizations in the women's rights, African American civil rights, and environmental movements gained substantial media attention. But so too did now-forgotten groups, such as the German-American Alliance, Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Peace and Freedom Party. Amenta and Caren show why some organizations made big news while others did not, why some were treated well while others were handled roughly. They recover forgotten stories, including that of the Townsend Plan, a Depression-era organization that helped establish Social Security. They also reveal that the media handled the civil rights movement far more harshly than popular histories recount. And they detail the difficulties movements face in today's brave new media world.

Drawing from digitized newspapers across a century and through to the present, Rough Draft of History offers insights for those seeking social and political change and those trying to make sense of it.

1

A Brief History of Contention: 100 Organizations in the News

WHEN MOVEMENT ACTORS are most prominent in the news, they can make a permanent impression, good or bad, on public consciousness and political issues. Movement and advocacy organizations define interests and construct identities for groups. Gaining standing in the news media can legitimate these interests and identities.¹ It matters whether the public face of a movement is the NAACP or the Black Panther Party, the League of Women Voters or the National Organization for Women, the Sierra Club or Greenpeace, the Human Rights Campaign or Queer Nation. Media attention can also help to mobilize people behind them. It also matters if a movement is not prominently represented in the news. Discussing which organizations mattered when they did can provide a contemporaneous history of US social movements. That account can also help to identify recurrent patterns and themes in the coverage of movements as well as historical shifts in attention.

Here we discuss a century’s worth of the most newsworthy movement organizations, as they appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Wall Street Journal. We identify every organization—100 in all—that gained an extremely high profile in the news in any year of the century. We note when these organizations first came into high relief and when or if they dropped off journalism’s radar. Across the century, waves of organizations emerged in the news, injecting new issues into the public sphere. Many of these movement organizations remained highly newsworthy for long stretches. Others rose up and flamed out quickly. Many are well known today. Others are almost completely forgotten.

Movement actors are frequently considered sideshows in standard accounts of US history, which focuses on political and professional leaders. The Progressive Era is often treated as an elite movement to bust trusts, regulate food and drugs, enact the income tax, and fight political machines. The Roaring Twenties are considered a period in which Republicans cut taxes and reduced immigration, while turning a blind eye to citizens dodging Prohibition, but whose extravagances and raised tariffs brought on a stock market crash and the Great Depression. The story of the age of Franklin Roosevelt tends to begin in 1933, during the depths of the crisis. Although that period is often associated with social movements, most accounts focus on New Deal policies, including new labor laws, social security, and unemployment insurance, as well as the growth of the state and military during the Second World War. The postwar period up until the early 1960s is thought to be another period of economic growth and normalcy, plus a Cold War featuring nuclear-arms and space races. The long 1960s, stretching through the r...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface (by Edwin Amenta)
• Introduction: Uncovering a History of US Social Movements
• 1. A Brief History of Contention: 100 Organizations in the News
• 2. Good News, Bad News, Hard News, Soft News (with Weijun Yuan)
• 3. Movement Features: A Century of News Waves (with Thomas Alan Elliott and Weijun Yuan)
• 4. Fantastic News: The Wild Media Ride of the Townsend Plan
• 5. The Race Beat and Press Beatdown: Black Rights in 1960s News
• 6. Lopsided Politics, Unbalanced Media, and US Movements Today
• Conclusion: The Past and Future of Social Movements in the News
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index
• Series List