Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle

Kenneth A. Loparo, Robert W. Widell, Jr.

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137340955
• eBook ISBN: 9781137340962
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Birmingham, Alabama looms large in the history of the twentieth-century black freedom struggle, but to date historians have mostly neglected the years after 1963. Here, author Robert Widell explores the evolution of Birmingham black activism into the 1970s, providing a valuable local perspective on the "long" black freedom struggle.

Notes

Introduction

1. Carl Braden, “Labor and Civil Rights Joined: Birmingham Movement Grows,” Southern Patriot, September 1972, 1; Portions of the introduction and section IV of this book appeared previously in Robert W. Widell, Jr., “‘The Power Belongs to Us and We Belong to the Revolutionary Age’: The Alabama Black Liberation Front and the Long Reach of the Black Panther Party” in Jama Lazerow and Yohuru Williams, eds., Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008).

2. Ibid., 7.

3. The events leading up to and surrounding 1963 are described in detail in a number of works. Among the most important are Glenn Eskew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); J. Mills Thornton, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002); Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001); Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988); David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 1955–1968 (New York: W. Morrow, 1986); Garrow, ed. Birmingham, Alabama, 1956–1963: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1989); Andrew Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out: The Civil Rights Life of Birmingham’s Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000).

4. There are works that discuss post-1963 Birmingham but none that focus on that period and its connection to the movement. Eskew’s treatment of the period is an epilogue and relies mainly on census data from 1980 to make its assessment. His central focus, of course, is the 1963 demonstrations so the point is not to fault his work, but rather to simply note what it does not address. Eskew, But for Birmingham; Thornton, too, includes some discussion of post-1963 Birmingham, but his interest after about 1966 is primarily in electoral politics. Thornton, Dividing Lines; Much of Jimmie Lewis Franklin’s biography of Richard Arrington is set in post-1963 Birmingham, but it is centered, necessarily, on Arrington. Robin D. G. Kelley has published two chapters on black activism in Birmingham that extend into this period, but although they are largely correct in their characterization, they are not full-length studies. See Jimmie Lewis Franklin, Back to Birmingham: Richard Arrington, Jr. and His Times (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1989); Robin D. G. Kelley, “Birmingham’s Untouchables: The Black Poor in the Age of Civil Rights,” in his Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), 77–100; Kelley, “The Black Poor and the Politics of Opposition in a New South City, 1929–1970,” in Michael B. Katz, ed., The Underclass Debate: Views from History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 293–333.

5. On the Arrington campaign and its effect on the black community, see Franklin, Back to Birmingham, esp. 144.

6. Braden, “Birmingham Movement Grows,” 7.

7. Jeanne Theoharis, for example, has noted the ways in which the Birmingham campaign overlapped with and offered inspiration to the civil rights movement in Los Angeles. Jeanne Theoharis, “Alabama on Avalon: Rethinking the Watts Uprising and the Character of Black Protest in Los Angeles,” in Peniel Joseph, ed., The Black Power Movement: Rethinking the Civil Rights-Black Power Era (New York: Routledge, 2006).

8. Eskew, But for Birmingham, Chapter 9; idem., “‘The Classes and the Masses’: Fred Shuttlesworth’s Movement and Birmingham’s Black Middle Class,” in Marjorie L. White and Andrew M. Manis, eds., Birmingham Revolutionaries: The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000); Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, 397, including note 12.

9. The best source for exploring the intersection of the national and local movements in 1963 is Eskew, But for Birmingham. On the limit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction “To Stay and Fight”: Birmingham’s Civil Rights Story and Twentieth-Century Black Protest
• Section I Implementation
• Section II Familiar Issues, New Directions
• Section III A New “Civil Rights Unionism”
• Section IV Black Power in the Deep South
• Conclusion The “Long” Movement and the South
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index