Author: MassCommons

King Day means we all have at least one day a year to reflect on the man, his legacy, and their meaning for our times.  This is a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, it means we have Newt Gingrich calling Barack Obama “the food stamp president”…again.  (“Newt, please stay after class.  You obviously still haven’t learned today’s lesson.”  On the other hand, we have Eugene Robinson’s lovely column from last Friday’s Washington Post.  Key paragraph:

“For the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., dreaming was not optional. It was a requirement of citizenship to envision a fairer, more prosperous nation no longer shackled by racism and poverty. It was a duty to imagine a world no longer ravaged by senseless wars. His most famous speech was less an invitation to share his epic dream than a commandment.”

Growing up in Albany, Georgia, dreaming was not optional for Bernice Johnson Reagon either.  Reagon was one of the great voices of the Civil Rights Movement–first with the Albany Freedom Singers, then the SNCC Freedom Singers, and later with the women’s a capella collective Sweet Honey In The Rock.

The 1950s and 60s were a tough time for some traditionalists in the Black Church.  Some young people were taking old church hymns, changing “Jesus” to “baby”, and singing in bars, nightclubs, and radio stations for money.  Some young people were taking old church hymns, changing “Jesus” to “freedom”, and singing in picket lines, lunch counters and county jails.  (Some did both.)

Here’s Sweet Honey doing the latter with their version of “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Set On Freedom)”:

http://youtu.be/5PcDvHsL6Ls

This is dreaming as survival skill during hard times.  Dreaming as daily, even hourly, discipline.  Even dreaming as–when the moment comes–marching orders.

As Robinson writes, “In these sour, pessimistic times, it is important to remember the great lesson of King’s remarkable life: Impossible dreams can come true.”

What dream are you keeping alive–what dream is keeping you alive, this morning?

Crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

Even more remarkable than the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr’s life is the fact that on Nov. 2, 1983 President Ronald Reagan (yes, this Ronald Reagan, and listen to the crowd’s reaction at 1:22 when Reagan proclaims, “I believe in states’ rights”–they know what he’s saying) signed a bill into law making Dr. King’s birthday a federal holiday–just 15 years after his death as one of the most feared, hated and divisive figures in American public life.  (Young `uns, ask the old folks.  There was a lot of fear, hatred and division in these United States in 1968.)

It took a lot of organizing–culminating in the largest petition drive in US history, signed by over 6 million of the 226 million people living in the country at that time–to make King Day a federal holiday.  This song helped.  And, because it’s Stevie Wonder, you can dance to it.

http://youtu.be/FchMuPQOBwA

Later this morning we’ll go to church for prayer, a speaker, brunch and fellowship.  It’s just one of the thousands of below-the-radar observances that will happen across the country, and around the world, today–along with all the larger, more public celebrations.  What are you doing for King Day?

crossposted at: http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

From our vantage point it can be hard to grasp what an astonishing moment it was in American popular culture when, in the spring of 1969, a gospel song performed by a group of young Black Pentecostals from Oakland, CA broke onto Billboard’s Hot 100.  In the (still) notoriously corrupt and segregated  music industry, a straight-out gospel song didn’t “belong” on the pop charts.

Edwin Hawkins had taken an old English baptism hymn, stripped out everything but the refrain, wrote a new verse, and completed the song’s transition from a 3/4 18th century melody to a 20th century 4/4 rhythm and blues-based American praise song.  Underground FM radio stations in the Bay Area picked it up, and it slowly but inexorably spread across the country, eventually reaching the Top 5 and winning a Grammy.

It’s a good song for today because as Charles Pierce points out in his terrific meditation (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/race-in-america-2012-6638829) about MLK Day, “We are all children of the civil-rights movement, and this weekend is our national holiday.”  And without the Civil Rights Movement there is no “Oh Happy Day”–at least in the form we have it–and it doesn’t become part of our common heritage.

“He taught me how to watch, fight and pray; And live rejoicing every day.”

That’s a line that makes sense only in the context of its time:  a time in which African-Americans led a mass social movement that transformed the country, and influenced the world.  That movement had at its core a philosophy, a strategy and a set of tactics that came from the Bible, from the teachings of Jesus and from the hard, bitter lessons learned over 10 generations of slavery, segregation and subjugation.

How to watch?  Vigilantly, reading the “signs of the times”, ready to act when the moment is right.  How to fight?  Nonviolently. “Turn the other cheek.” “Go the extra mile.” “Love your enemies; do good to those that hate you…for thereby you will heap burning coals upon their heads.”  How to pray?  Always. Constantly. You will not survive with your soul intact if you do not.

Shore dwellers know that a high tide at full moon during a storm will scour and reshape the landscape.  The Civil Rights movement was just such a flood tide for us.  It scoured and reshaped our relationships, our institutions, our vision of what is possible.

Without it the feminist, gay rights and disability rights movements do not exist–at least in the way we now know them.  Without it, there is no negotiated end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, no Solidarity in Poland, no Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, no overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, no hordes of young people atop the Berlin Wall singing “We Shall Overcome”.  There’s no Tienanmen Square student movement in China, no Optor in Serbia and no April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt.  Without it, Nelson Mandela never walks out of Pollsmoor Prison a free man, and never becomes the first president of a united, democratic, non-racial South Africa.

Oh Happy Day indeed.

http://youtu.be/CNQXQKflJNA

crossposted at:  http://masscommons.wordpress.com/

I don’t have a prediction for the outcome of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary.  (And I don’t think the results will matter much.  Given Romney’s financial, organizational and endorsement advantages, it’s hard to envision any of the other candidates overtaking him for the nomination.)  But I do have a prediction for America’s political pundits:  in the coming weeks they’ll rediscover the 1988 Democratic presidential race.

Why 1988?  Because like the Democrats in 1988, the 2012 Republican Party is on the verge of nominating a “moderate”, technocratic governor from Massachusetts (Romney now, Michael Dukakis then).  And like the 1988 Democrats, Republicans have an experienced challenger (Paul now, Jesse Jackson then) who represents an important faction of the party base–a faction that is intensely loyal to its candidate.

Like Jackson, Rep. Paul has run for president before.  Like Jackson, Paul has both solidified and expanded the base of voters that supported him four years earlier.  Like Jackson, Paul could cripple the party’s nominee by refusing to endorse him or by running a third party campaign.  Like Jackson, Paul’s supporters give him the power to stay in the race right up to the convention (even if Romney has it locked up long before then).  Like Jackson, Paul has party insiders asking “what does he really want”?

When the pundits refresh their memories of 1988, they’ll see that Rev. Jackson won about 30% of the overall popular vote, nearly 30% of the delegates, and won 9 states (plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) outright.  After the Michigan caucuses on March 26, in which Jackson won 55% of the vote in a three way race with Dukakis and Dick Gephardt, Jackson (briefly) held an overall lead in delegates.

When Dukakis retook the lead, the question of the day became, “What does Jesse want?”.  The answer was, basically, power and respect.  From his negotiations with Dukakis and the DNC, Rev. Jackson won a prime speaking slot at the convention, changes in the party’s platform, a role in the fall presidential campaign, and changes in the party’s nomination rules.

The question for Mitt Romney and the Republican Party may well soon be–if it isn’t already–“What does Ron want?”.  Romney’s campaign (and its totally-separate-and-not-coordinating-at-all SuperPAC) have, noticeably, avoided attacking Rep. Paul.  In the coming weeks and months we’ll find out whether that’s enough to keep Paul in the Republican Party.  Or whether Ron Paul decides that he and his followers can win more power and respect by leaving the Republican Party and running a third party presidential race this fall.

Cross-posted at http://masscommons.wordpress.com/.

“All organizing is reorganizing.”  Once a campaign is over, it can’t be repeated.  People change; relationships change; conditions change.

Rosa and Raymond Parks moved to Detroit shortly after the bus boycott ended.  “My picture had been in the papers, and it was doubtful that I could ever get a regular job in a white business in Montgomery.”

Raymond worked at a barber college; Rosa ended up working for a seamstress friend, and then at a clothing factory, before getting a job in the office of Rep. John Conyers.

Mrs. Parks continued traveling and speaking about the Montgomery bus boycott and the civil rights movement.  She was invited to the 1963 March on Washington.  She notes that “women were not allowed to play much of a role….Nowadays, women wouldn’t stand for being kept so much in the background, but back then women’s rights hadn’t become a popular cause yet.”

She was invited to, and attended the last leg of the March from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965—but was put out of the march because the (young) march organizers didn’t recognize her.

Eventually, “people have made my place in the history of the civil-rights movement bigger and bigger.  They call me the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement….”

Every now and then some folks start talking about the possibilities of a “second Civil War” in these United States.  With all due respect, we’ve already had one—it’s called the Civil Rights Movement.

Violence and terror were the ugly heart of segregationist resistance to full citizenship by African-Americans.  Montgomery segregationists bombed the houses of Martin Luther King, Jr. and E. D. Nixon.  They bombed the houses of Revs. Ralph Abernathy and Robert Graetz.  They bombed Bell St., Hutchinson St. and First Baptist Churches.

Segregationists used the threat of violence.  Mrs. Parks writes, “Nobody tried to bomb my home, but I did get a lot of threatening telephone calls.  They’d say things like, ‘You’re the cause of all this.  You should be killed.’  It was frightening to get those calls, and it really bothered me when Mama answered the telephone and it was one of those calls.”

Segregationists used economic violence.  “The white people tried to break the boycott by not giving the church cars any insurance.  All the churches operated the station wagons, and had their names on the sides.  Without insurance, the cars could not operate legally.  Every time they got insurance from a new company, the policy would suddenly be canceled.”  (The eventual solution to that issue was “Dr. King got in touch with a black insurance agent in Atlanta named T. M. Alexander, and T. M. Alexander got Lloyd’s of London…to write a policy for the church-operated cars.”  You’ll notice Alexander didn’t go to national US insurance companies.  State Farm wasn’t there.  There were no good hands from Allstate.)

“A lot of people lost their jobs because they supported the boycott.”  Given that whites controlled the vast majority of the economy in Montgomery (and elsewhere in the US), this was a common and often devastatingly effective tactic of economic violence.  Raymond Parks resigned because “Mr. Armstrong, the white owner of the private barbering concession at Maxwell Field Air Force base, issues an order that there was to be no discussion of ‘the bus protest or Rosa Parks in his establishment.’  Parks said he would not work anywhere where his wife’s name could not be mentioned.”

“I was discharged from Montgomery Fair department store in January of 1956, but I was not told by the personnel officer that it was because of the boycott.  I do not like to form in my mind an idea that I don’t have any proof of.”  Mrs. Parks goes on to provide the facts as she knew them…which leave little doubt that her leadership role in the boycott was precisely the reason for her firing.

While the boycott continued, Rosa Parks took in sewing and worked with the MIA.  When the boycott ended, the harassment continued.  “The threatening telephone calls continued even after the Supreme Court decision.  My husband slept with a gun nearby for a time.  Bertha Butler, a close friend of ours in Montgomery, says that my mother would call her some nights and talk for long periods just to jam the lines so the hate calls couldn’t get through for a while.  Once, when I was on the street, a white man recognized me and made a hateful remark.  My picture had been in the papers, and it was doubtful that I could ever get a regular job in a white business in Montgomery.”

You can’t negotiate with a movement.  Rosa Parks, E.D. Nixon, Martin King and the other Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) leaders knew that.  That’s one of the reasons they formed the MIA—to have an organization that could negotiate with officials from the city and the bus company.

You can’t negotiate abstract principles either.  You can only negotiate terms and demands.  And after the mass meeting on Dec. 5, the MIA had demands:  “1) Courteous treatment on the buses; 2) First-come, first-served seating, with whites in front and blacks in back; Hiring of black drivers for black bus routes.”

On Thursday, Dec. 8, Rev. King, Fred Gray and other MIA leaders met with bus company officials and the city commissioners to present the MIA’s demands.  Attorney Gray pointed out that the same bus company had a “first-come, first-served” seating policy in Mobile.

But, as Mrs. Parks writes, “they wouldn’t change their minds.  The city commissioners wouldn’t go along with any of the demands either.  They didn’t want to give an inch, not even to reasonable demands.  They were afraid of compromising in any way with black people.”

Here’s another reason why it’s important for people to form their own organizations and elect their own leaders.  Your opponents will try to choose leaders to negotiate for you; and that’s just what the Montgomery city fathers did next.

“Late in January the three city commissioners met with three black ministers who were not part of the MIA.  These ministers agreed to a plan for bus seating that would reserve ten seats in front for white and ten seats in back for blacks, with the rest available first-come,first-served.  The the commission told the “Montgomery Advertiser”, and that Sunday the paper ran big headlines announcing the end of the boycott.  But Dr. King and the Reverend Abernathy and the other leaders of the MIA heard what was happening.  They went all over the black community Saturday night saying it was a lie.  Then on Sunday the ministers told their congregations the story wasn’t true.  So they got the word out and very few black people rode the buses on Monday.”

No community is monolithic.  There are always those who—for whatever reasons—will betray a cause.  Because of the broad base of support and legitimacy the Montgomery Improvement Association enjoyed throughout the black community, the bus boycott survived white attempts to end the boycott without concessions to black demands.

Meet WITH a plan, not FOR a plan…Part 2.

Why do so many people hate meetings?  One reason is that so many meetings end with no action occurring, no meaningful decisions being made (and no, setting up committee meetings, or another meeting, doesn’t count).  A good leader goes into an important meeting already having thought through a plan for action, rather than expecting a plan to emerge from the varied voices in the room.

Here’s Larry Tye’s account (in his “Rising From the Rails:  Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class) of how E.D. Nixon orchestrated the decision to make the Montgomery Bus Boycott more than the one day symbolic protest it was as of midday on Dec. 5 when Rosa Parks was convicted of violating the bus segregation laws:

“Nixon had made sure no decision was made at the first meeting (held Friday, Dec. 2 at Dexter Ave. Baptist Church) in his absence.  Before the second, he and two leading ministers—(Ralph D.) Abernathy and E.N. French—met to set the script.  ‘Abernathy was sittin’ as close as me in here to you, and he leant over,’ Nixon remembered.  ‘He said, “Brother Nixon, now you gon’ serve as president, ain’t-chya?”  I said, “Naw, not unless’n you all don’t accept my man.”  He said, “Who is your man?”  I said, “Martin Luther King.”  He said, “I’ll go along with it.”  French said, “I’ll go along with it.”  So then we had not only our recommendation, our resolution, our name, we had our president.'”

So Nixon, Abernathy and French went into that afternoon’s (Dec. 5) meeting agreed on:

*a recommendation—to continue the bus boycott;
*a resolution—stating the reasons for their actions, to be adopted that night at the mass meeting at Holt St. Baptist Church;
*a name—the Montgomery Improvement Association (a new organization around which Negroes and their allies could unite, and against which their opponents had no history that could be used to discredit it)’
*a president—the young Rev. King, an eloquent speaker, and the new pastor of black Montgomery’s most socially prominent church.

The “action” in the meeting was persuading the ministers to adopt an agenda that would anger white Montgomery; and that’s what Nixon did, bringing to bear all his moral authority and experience from decades of civil rights and labor leadership:

“I said, ‘How you gonna have a mass meeting, gonna boycott a city bus line without the white folks knowing it?'”  Nixon recounted.  “I said, ‘You guys have went around here and lived off these poor washerwomen all your lives and ain’t never done nothing for ’em.  And now you got a chance to do something for ’em, you talkin’ about you don’t want the white folks to know it.’  I said, ‘Unless’n this program is accepted and brought into the church like a decent respectable organization….I’ll take the microphone and tell ’em the reason we don’t have a program is ’cause you all are too scared to stand on your feet and be counted.  You oughta make up your mind right now that you gon’ either admit you are a grown man or concede to the fact that you are a bunch of scared boys.'”

It was not an idle threat.  Because of the bus boycott’s overwhelming success that morning, everyone in that afternoon’s meeting knew that thousands of people would be at that evening’s mass meeting to hear what their community leaders would propose.  

The combination of the peer pressure in that room, the pressure of their followers expected at that evening’s mass meeting, and pressure of a clear plan of action as proposed by Nixon and his allies worked.  The ministers (and other community leaders at that afternoon’s meeting) adopted Nixon’s plan of action and took it to that night’s mass meeting.

One of the most agonizing moments for leaders and organizers is the time between when a call for action goes out and the time when the action begins.  Anyone can issue a “call to action”.  But will people respond?  That’s the question.  It’s one of the rarely mentioned burdens of democratic leadership—the responsibility of calling for action knowing that your followers may not respond.  

Before leaving town on Friday Dec. 2, E. D. Nixon had met with Joe Azbell, a Montgomery Advertiser reporter.  That meeting resulted in a front page story on Sunday that included a copy of Jo Ann Robinson’s flyer.  But, as Rosa Parks writes, “no one could be sure if the protest would be successful.  Just because they read a leaflet or heard about it in church, it didn’t mean that people would stay away from the buses.”

But they did.  Monday morning the buses were virtually empty.  “I think everybody was quite amazed at that demonstration of people staying off the buses (writes Mrs. Parks).  As Mr. Nixon said, ‘We surprised ourselves.’  Never before had black people demonstrated so clearly how much those city buses depended on their business.  More important, never before had the black community of Montgomery united in protest against segregation on the buses.”

This, on the other hand, is one of the great joys of democratic leadership—the moment when your followers not only respond, but respond so fully that new possibilities open up ahead of you.  

Rosa Parks didn’t have much time to think about that on Monday morning.  she had to get to the courthouse for her trial.  “I did not spend a lot of time planning what to wear, but I remember very clearly that I wore a straight, long-sleeved black dress with a white collar and cuffs, a small black velvet hat with pearls across the top, and a charcoal-gray coat.  I carried a black purse and wore white gloves.  I was not especially nervous.  I knew what I had to do.”

In the large crowd that had gathered at the courthouse were many members of the NAACP Youth Council that Mrs. Parks had supervised and mentored over the years.  One girl, Mary Frances, said, “Oh, she’s so sweet. They’ve messed with the wrong one now.”

After a short trial, Mrs. Parks was found guilty, given a suspended sentence, a $10.00 fine, plus $4.00 in court costs.  E. D. Nixon, attorneys Fred Gray and Charles Langford and the Montgomery NAACP had their test case.  Mrs. Parks reports that while the crowd was angry at her conviction, “there was no organized protest”.

Mary Frances was right.  Rosa Parks was “the wrong one” to mess with.  Montgomery segregationists could not have faced an opponent more likely to make them look bad—a respectable, middle-aged hard-working church-going woman known and respected by all factions of Montgomery’s Negro community (and by the small faction of white Montgomerians opposed to segregation).

Having been up late at the Parks’ home Thursday night, E. D. Nixon was up before dawn on December 2, 1955.  Here’s how Nixon remembered what he did that morning  (source:  Larry Tye’s “Riding The Rails:  Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class”).

“Number one, I called Ralph D. Abernathy.  And he said he’d go along with.  Second, I called the late Reverend H. H. Hubbard.  And I called Reverend King, number three.  Reverend King said, ‘Brother Nixon, let me think about it awhile and call me back.’  Well I could see that.  He’s a new man in town, he don’t know what it’s all about.  So I said, ‘Okay.’  So I went on and called eighteen other people, and I called him back and he said, ‘Yeah, Brother Nixon, I’ll go along with, and I said, ‘I’m glad of that Reverend King, because I talked to eighteen other people, I told them to meet at your church at three o’clock.'”

Nixon had to work and wasn’t at that meeting, but Mrs. Parks was.  “I explained how I had been arrested, and then there were long discussions about what to do.  Some of the ministers wanted to talk about how to support the protest, but others wanted to talk about whether or not to have a protest.  Many of them left the meeting before any decisions were made.  But most of those who stayed agreed to talk about the protest in their Sunday sermons and to hold another meeting on Monday evening to decide if the protest should continue.”

Notice what Mr. Nixon, Mrs. Parks, and their allies in the ministry did in this first meeting:

*They held the meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist, the leading congregation of middle-class African-Americans in Montgomery.  They knew they needed middle-class leadership, as well as working-class leadership to organize and lead the boycott.

*They had Mrs. Parks tell her story.  Ministers can easily get diverted into abstract arguments (justification by faith or by works?); a real live person giving her own testimony is hard to talk your way around.

*They didn’t try to get the ministers to agree to a long-term boycott and campaign.  At this first meeting, it was enough to get (most of) them to agree to talk about the planned one-day boycott from their pulpits on Sunday, and to announce a mass meeting Monday night at Holt St. Baptist Church “for further instructions”.

*To agree on “further instructions”, they would have to meet again.  Their next meeting, they agreed, would be Monday afternoon.  By Monday afternoon, E. D. Nixon would be back in town.

There’s an old organizing maxim:  “Don’t meet FOR a plan.  Meet WITH a plan.”  It means if you’re going to call a meeting, have an idea of what you’d like to happen as a result of the meeting.  Thirty-two years as a leader in the Brotherhood had prepared Nixon well for this moment.  His plan for the first meeting had been adopted in his absence.  

The second meeting would happen after the one-day boycott had started.  When he got back into town, he made plans for that second meeting.