[[link removed]]

BLACK ECONOMIC BOYCOTTS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA STILL OFFER LESSONS
ON HOW TO ACHIEVE A JUST SOCIETY  
[[link removed]]


 

Kevin A. Young
July 1, 2024
The Conversation
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ By disrupting white businesses, often in a highly organized way,
Black activists won social change. _

Commuters walking to work instead of riding the buses during the
Montgomery bus boycott, 1956, Don Cravens/Time Life/Getty Images)

 

Signed into law 60 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964
[[link removed]]
outlawed discrimination in the U.S. based on “race, color, sex,
religion, or national origin.”

Yet, as a historian
[[link removed]] who
studies social movements and political change, I think the law’s
most important lesson for today’s movements is not its content but
rather how it was achieved.

As firsthand accounts from the era make clear, the movement won
because it directly hurt
[[link removed]] the interests of
white business owners. The 1955 Montgomery bus boycott
[[link removed]], the 1963
boycott of Birmingham businesses and many lesser-known local boycotts
inflicted major costs on local business owners and forced them to
support integration.

The conventional narrative

A view common among scholars, activists and the general public holds
that the Civil Rights Movement succeeded because violent attacks
against peaceful Black protesters mobilized white public opinion
[[link removed]]
in the movement’s favor.

One of the most famous incidents occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, in
May 1963, when the city’s public safety commissioner, Eugene
“Bull” Connor
[[link removed]],
turned fire hoses and dogs
[[link removed]]
on Black demonstrators.

[A dog held on a leash by a white police officers attacks a Black
man.]
[[link removed]]

 
A Black protester is attacked by a police dog on May 4, 1963, during
demonstrations against segregation in Birmingham, Ala. Afro American
Newspapers/Gado/Getty Images
[[link removed]]

The conventional wisdom is that Connor’s actions outraged Northern
whites, and in response, the Kennedy administration
[[link removed]]
sent federal troops to Birmingham and a civil rights bill to Congress.

But this view misunderstands the source of the movement’s power.

For one thing, it overstates public sympathy for the Civil Rights
Movement. Three months after the attacks against Black protesters in
Birmingham, for instance, almost two-thirds of the public
[[link removed]]
opposed the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
[[link removed]] of August
1963.

Moreover, the Kennedy administration predicted that civil rights
legislation would hurt the Democrats electorally
[[link removed]].
“The President never had any illusions about the political
advantages of equal rights,” wrote Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger
[[link removed]] in
his memoir “A Thousand Days
[[link removed]].”
“But he saw no alternative” given the movement’s actions.

So what were those actions?

Black organizers aimed to inflict maximal disruption on the white
power structure, particularly economic elites. As Martin Luther King
Jr. later recounted
[[link removed]],
“The political power structure listens to the economic power
structure.”

By disrupting white businesses, often in a highly organized
[[link removed]]
way, Black activists won social change.

A ‘devastatingly effective’ weapon

Economic boycotts in Southern cities such as Birmingham
[[link removed]]
and Nashville, Tennessee
[[link removed]], played
crucial roles [[link removed]]
during the civil rights era.

A 20-month boycott by Black shoppers of downtown businesses in
Greenwood, Mississippi
[[link removed]],
brought legal changes to the city’s hiring practices in 1964.

The most famous boycott occurred in 1955–56 in Montgomery, Alabama,
where the nearly 13-month protest against segregated public
transportation
[[link removed]] caused the
city’s bus service to lose an estimated US$3,000 a day in fares.

[A Black woman sits in the front of a bus.]
Rosa Parks sits in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in 1956
after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal on the city’s
bus system. Behind Parks is Nicholas C. Chriss, a UPI reporter
covering the event. United Press photo
[[link removed]]

Black people made up about 75%
[[link removed]]
of public transportation riders. Instead of using city buses, they
walked, formed car pools and used Black-owned taxi services. The
boycott ended on Dec. 20, 1956, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in
Browder v. Gayle [[link removed]] that
segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

By 1960, civil rights organizers were widely embracing this
“economic weapon to fight segregation,” reported
[[link removed]] the national
magazine Business Week.

Three years later, Time magazine wrote
[[link removed]]
that boycotts had proved “devastatingly effective” in pushing
white business owners and government officials to desegregate.

In Birmingham, for example, real estate tycoon Sidney Smyer
[[link removed]]
led the elite push for integration. Smyer was a staunch racist
[[link removed]], but he capitulated amid the
boycott and related disruption.

“I’m still a segregationist,” he said
[[link removed]] in May 1963, but
“I’m not a damn fool.”

During five weeks of boycotts, sit-ins and marches, Birmingham
businesses had lost millions in sales
[[link removed]].

Smyer and his fellow executives
[[link removed]]
decided to cut their losses by integrating. They then dragged along
the politicians, judges, school administrators and law enforcement
officials.

That had been civil rights strategists’ plan from the start.

According to civil rights organizer Abraham Woods
[[link removed]], they hoped that
business owners hurt by the boycott in Birmingham would “pressure
the city [[link removed]]” to
integrate.

Andrew Young, an adviser to King, later said
[[link removed]] that “Bull Connor made
the impact greater, but the dynamics would have taken effect without
Bull Connor and the dogs. … When the demonstrations were so massive
and the economic withdrawal program was so tight, literally, the town
was paralyzed.”

Changing the law after Birmingham

The Birmingham victory inspired other Black people to rise up.
Kennedy’s Department of Justice reported another 2,062 Black
protests in 40 states
[[link removed]]
by the end of 1963.

[A white man is shaking the hands of a Black man as a crowd of other
men stand behind them.]
U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with Martin Luther King
Jr. after signing the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, at the White
House. AFP via Getty Images
[[link removed]]

It also led Kennedy – 28 months into his presidency – to propose a
civil rights bill
[[link removed].],
in June 1963.

Even as he tried to dissuade Black leaders from marching on
Washington, Kennedy admitted that the disruptive boycotts and protests
“had made the executive branch act faster and were now forcing
Congress to entertain legislation,” as Schlesinger reported in his
book “A Thousand Days.”

Kennedy also feared the radicalization of Black consciousness after
Birmingham. If the federal government didn’t deliver moderate
reform, the “colored masses” might embrace “the mindless
radicalism of the Negro militants,” as Schlesinger described the
president’s logic.

Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 meant the civil rights bill
fell to his successor, Lyndon Johnson. After a heated battle
[[link removed].]
in Congress, Johnson signed the bill into law on July 2, 1964.

By causing massive and sustained disruption to ruling-class interests,
particularly businesses, Black organizers who were formally excluded
from political power were able to force legal change.

The lesson is that major legislative reform requires mass disruption
outside the electoral and legislative spheres. Without that
disruption, it will be very difficult to win any law that negatively
affects entrenched power-holders.

===

 Kevin A. Young
[[link removed]]

Associate Professor of History, UMass Amherst

* Montgomery Bus Boycott; Civil Rights Act; US History;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]