Elite Philanthropy, SNCC, And The Civil Rights Movement
http://www.swans.com/library/art16/barker68.html
(Part I of III)
November 1, 2010
by Michael Barker
""There is a stark reason why romanticizing the civil rights movement
fails young people. It is not supported by the facts. ... Though Jim
Crow is dead, the evidence is overwhelming that the culture of white
supremacy prevails in a more protected form than was ever possessed
by the necessarily embattled idea of Jim Crow."
苦esley Hogan, 2007. (1)
"In order to find effective solutions, one must formulate the problem
correctly. One must start from premises rooted in truth and reality
rather than myth."
范tokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, 1967. (2)
--
Fifty years ago, a small group of students came together to fight
white supremacy in the United States. They were known as the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Since the advent of their
pioneering activism, which spanned the 1960s, many books have been
written to commemorate their successes, but the first one that was
published in 1964 by one of their few adult advisers was Howard
Zinn's SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Reflecting on the outstanding
commitment of the initial sixteen college students "who, in the fall
of 1961, decided to drop everything" to work for social justice Zinn
notes how by early 1964 their numbers had swelled to 150 full-time
activists. A phenomenal achievement given that: "In the most heated
days of abolitionism before the Civil War, there were never that many
dedicated people who turned their backs on ordinary pursuits and gave
their lives wholly to the movement." (3) But while we should rightly
celebrate the individual dedication in the face of massive adversity
that was shown by SNCC workers and the thousands of other activists
involved in the civil rights movement, it is also necessary to
critically reflect upon their legacy.
Manning Marable, in another must-read book, Race, Reform, and
Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990
(University Press of Mississippi, 1991), observes that: "Any
oppressed people who abandon the knowledge of their own protest
history, or who fail to analyze its lessons, will only perpetuate
their domination by others." First published in 1982, this sad book
examines the legacy of the modern civil rights and Black Power
movements in an attempt "to unearth the reasons for the demise of
militancy and activism among African-Americans in the post-1975
period." This demise and the ensuing "human poverty, social
disruption and hunger were not accidental," Marable points out, but
instead "were the consequences of deliberate federal and corporate
policy." Overt racial segregation from the Jim Crow era may have been
ditched, but the "paradox of desegregation in the 1980s and early
1990s" was that: "Blacks, Hispanics and other people of color were
being more thoroughly oppressed in economic, political, social and
educational institutions, without being stigmatized specifically in
'racial' terms." (4)
Reform or revolution? This is a question that is central to effective
progressive social change. From many people's point of view there is
little doubt that capitalism must be eradicated, so the only question
that remains is "how might this revolutionary process proceed?"
Revolutionary action does not negate reform, as radical reforms are a
critical part of any socialist praxis of change. On the other hand,
liberal reforms without revolutionary direction are unlikely to build
the momentum that will be necessary to oust capitalism. Thus
understanding how leading activists and intellectuals who were
formerly committed to revolutionary social change give up on such
principles and dedicate their lives to moderating capitalist
oppression is critical for social and political movements seeking to
resist such challenges. Revolutionary activists are under immense
pressure from the state to recant their radical ideas, so it is
particularly necessary to scrutinize personal as well as
institutional actions if we are to learn the historical lessons that
will help us to create movements that can break capitalism's back. By
reviewing the history of SNCC in relation to the co-optive nature of
capitalism, this article seeks to highlight the influence of Capital
on the dynamic interplay between liberal and radical activism. In
particular, an attempt is made to delineate the manner by which soft
power, as exerted by liberal philanthropists, was able to influence
the trajectory of SNCC. Such a focus on elite funding is not,
however, meant to suggest that indigenous efforts did not play a
significant role in driving the civil rights movement, as the intent
is to simply highlight the oft-neglected yet powerful influence that
elite philanthropy exerted on homegrown activism and discontent. (5)
But before launching into a history of SNCC, this three-part article
will provide a brief review of the broader involvement of foundations
in the funding of civil rights activism in the United States.
According to Craig Jenkins and Abigail Halcli social movement
philanthropy had been growing steadily since the early 1950s when at
first there had been only three social movement funders: the Field
Foundation of New York, and the Emil Schwartzhaupt and Wiebolt
Foundations (both based in Chicago). These foundations thus fulfilled
an important role in helping catalyze the modern civil rights
movement, and in 1953 the Field Foundation first began supporting the
NAACP, (6) while in the same year the Schwartzhaupt and Wiebolt
Foundations began funding the Highlander Center "to initiate voter
education projects in the deep South, thereby encouraging an approach
that would later make Highlander into a 'movement halfway house' for
the civil rights movement, providing leadership training and tactical
advice to the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC)." (7)
Furthermore, Jenkins and Halcli's study of The Development and Impact
of Social Movement Philanthropy between the years 1953 and 1990 lead
them to conclude that "foundation patronage is overwhelmingly
reactive to indigenous protest activism." (8)Yet arguably a more
critical look at this era, and at the history of liberal foundations
more broadly, would suggest that it is often much harder to judge the
exact role played by capitalist funders in helping catapult issues
onto the public agenda. It is clear that under usual circumstances
there must be a public demand for change for elites to encourage
institutional change, but as this article will demonstrate, the
timing of successful grassroots campaigns may be largely influenced
by Capital. That capitalism should respond in such a way to
grassroots pressure should come as no surprise, and as Howard Zinn observed:
[T]here has been a nervousness in high places ever since the Negro
revolt began -- an anxiety over how far it would go and sporadic
moves to contain it before it becomes dangerous. This does not come
out of a conspiratorial plot by hobgoblins of reaction; it springs
with more or less spontaneity out of the historic American tendency
towards moderation whenever there is a forward thrust of social
change. And it comes from liberals as often as from conservatives. (9)
So for instance, with regard to the activities of the liberal
establishment, by the late 1930s the philanthropic behemoth, the
Carnegie Corporation of New York, had already diverted more than $250
million to institutions concerned with problems of race; while
another key educational body for distributing elite philanthropy was
the United Negro College Fund, founded in 1944 with the support of
John D. Rockefeller Jr. Likewise, if one examines significant
philanthropic activities that took place just prior to the time
period covered by Jenkins and Halcli's study, one can see that the
Ford Foundation created their Fund for the Advancement of Education
(FAE) in 1952 -- an organization whose "support for desegregation
became apparent" when Ralph Bunche was chosen to serve on their
founding board of trustees. Bunche had been "a primary researcher"
for the Carnegie Corporation-sponsored study on race relations in
America, whose influential findings were published in 1944 by Gunnar
Myrdal as An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy. (10) The Ford Foundations Fund for the Advancement of
Education later...
....sponsored a major study of the legal history and empirical
dynamics of institutional racism in American public education. It
hired Harry S. Ashmore, a widely respected commentator on race
relations and executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette, to direct the
study. Published on the eve of the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v.
Board Of Education decision, The Negro and the Schools (Ashmore
Report) crystallized FAE's mission and helped nationalize the race
debate. (11)
Simultaneously, US-based liberal foundations like the Rockefeller,
Ford, and Carnegie Corporation were working closely with the US
government both on the domestic front and internationally.
Consequently, the Ford Foundation's decision to begin focusing their
attention on African affairs in the 1950s "was a logical extension of
similar emphases in the foundation's domestic work"; and in their
efforts to create an elite cadre for Africa, they simultaneously set
about "nurturing an academic and intellectual elite which would play
the leadership role in the evolving domestic policy found its best
expression in the work of the Ford-created and -supported Fund for
the Advancement of Education." (12)
Criticism of elite philanthropy has been longstanding in radical
milieu, even if such polemics are rarely cited or publicized. For
instance, in 1933, leading American Marxist Max Schachtman penned a
draft pamphlet (which ironically has only just been published) titled
Communism and the Negro. Here Schactman noted: "At no point do the
ruling class and its supporters reveal their utter bankruptcy in so
glaring a light than when they are confronted with the unpleasant,
inconvenient 'Negro problem.'" His powerful polemic highlighted the
hypocrisy of the "segregationist ideology" of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the
existence of a "whole school of philanthropists" devoted to the
question of the Negroes. (13) Schactman drew particular attention to
the influential Julius Rosenwald Fund, writing:
The Rosenwalds, swollen with a wealth extorted from underpaid and
undernourished young girls in their employ, give a modicum of it for
the "education" of the black, for whom they entertain a not-very-well
concealed contempt, in order that he shall be less inclined to fight
for the uprooting of the poisonous tree of capitalism on which the
Rosenwalds' grow. The same motive impels the comparatively large
contributions made by philanthropic whites for religious work among
the Negroes. (14)
Writing some decades later Martin Carnoy makes a similar point,
noting that: "While Northern capitalism has been associated with
humanitarian treatment of the black -- and it must be conceded that a
humanitarian element was present in philanthropic efforts during
Reconstruction and around the end of the century -- humanitarianism
was always secondary to capitalists' economic needs." (15) This
situation put leading progressive Negro scholars, like W.E.B. Du Bois
and Carter Woodson in an uncomfortable position, especially given the
regularity with which their philanthropic benefactors advertised
their racism to the world. For example, following Woodson's criticism
of Thomas Jesse Jones's 1917 report for the Phelps-Stokes Fund --
which "argued that the foundations should only support black colleges
that stuck to vocational education, along the lines of Hampton
Institute and Tuskegee Institute" -- "Jones [in retaliation]
convinced many foundations, including the Rosenwald Foundation, the
Carnegie Corporation, and the [Rockefeller-funded] General Education
Board, to terminate foundation support" for Woodson and his
Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History. (16)
Such disputes were particularly problematic given the intimate
relations that existed between the various Northern philanthropic
bodies, (17) and so "commonsense" prevailed and Woodson quickly
reestablished a serviceable working relationship with the foundation
world. (Later, during the 1930s, his Association for the Study of
Afro-American Life and History would be largely funded by the Rosenwald Fund.)
Likewise, although St. Clair Drake and Horace Mann Bond had tended to
hold their tongues with regard their criticisms of the philanthropic
community (in public anyway), by 1945 they felt confident enough to
print a vaguely critical sentence in their landmark study Black
Metropolis, writing: "Faith and hope play some part in dispersing the
discontent of the masses, but 'charity' is probably far more
important." (18) Indeed, such intent to disperse discontent through
the philanthropic development of responsible leaders perhaps helps
explain why in December 1946 the Rosenwald Fund awarded the activist
training organization, the Highlander Center, a $15,000 grant "to
develop an education program for potential community leaders in the
rural South." One might also add that the influential civil rights
activist, Ella Baker -- who would go on to work closely with many of
the Highlander-trained activists -- had been a staff member of the
reformist NAACP (between 1940 and 1946) when it was receiving support
from the Rosenwald Fund: Baker then moved on to play a key role in
the ongoing evolution of the civil rights movement, by initially
helping to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (19)
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded in
1957 by Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, and Stanley Levinson, and
the following year, Ella Baker set up their first office in Atlanta,
becoming their first full-time executive secretary. Baker, however,
was already well acquainted with Rustin and Levinson, as in 1956 they
had formed In Friendship, a group that provided the original impetus
for the formation of the SCLC. Baker subsequently went on to play an
important role as a supporting actor and critical insider for the
germinal student wing of the civil rights movement, and: (20)
Deciding, in late February of 1960, that the sit-in leaders should
be brought together, she asked the SCLC to underwrite it financially.
With $800 of SCLC money, the prestige of Martin Luther King, the
organizing wisdom of Ella Baker, and the enthusiasm of the rare young
people who were leading the new student movement, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC] was born. (21)
However, two weeks prior to SNCC's founding meeting the Highlander
Center had brought over seventy students from seven states to attend
a workshop titled "The New Generation Fights for Equality." (22)
Subsequently, what was to be SNCC's founding conference was held in
Raleigh on Easter weekend, April 15-17, 1960. Baker "got her Alma
Mater, Shaw University, to provide facilities for a meeting of about
a hundred students" but the event turned out to be more popular than
she had expected and in the end over 200 students participated. (23)
Yet, even at this early stage of the student movement's evolution,
the latent radicalism of the group was apparent in relation to the
more moderate SCLC, and during the conferences "organizing sessions,
there was some tension over whether to have an official connection
with SCLC." This tension was ultimately resolved when the students
"finally decided to maintain a friendly relationship with SCLC and
other organizations but to remain independent." (24)
In addition to obtaining Baker's invaluable guidance, a white student
activist named Constance Curry was recruited to become SNCC's second
adult adviser. Curry was then able to redirect grant money from the
Marshall Field Foundation "to help the fledgling movement"; monies
that were in Curry's hands because at the time she was running the
National Student Association's Southern Student Human Relations
Project (the Southern Project), which was being supported by the
Field Foundation. (25) With regard to SNCC's initial fundraising
efforts, when the office was being run by Baker, Curry, and their
newly recruited executive secretary, Jane Stembridge, Curry recalled
that the "first check" they received that summer was from Eleanor
Roosevelt. (26) In July the trio were then joined by former Harvard
graduate Robert Moses. As it happens, Moses had come to Atlanta at
"the urging of" Bayard Rustin "to work on an SCLC voter registration
project," but he quickly ended up working with SNCC, who were then
based in the corner of SCLC's Atlanta office. (27)
Despite SNCC's nominal financial independence from SCLC, Jim Forman
-- who served as SNCC's executive secretary from 1961 until 1966 --
recalled that in these early days they "had to rely heavily upon
contributions" from SCLC, "which was like pulling teeth." (28)
Although this aid certainly helped in some respects, it
simultaneously made it more difficult for SNCC to be seen in the
public mind as a separate entity from SCLC so that they could secure
direct financial support from the public. Bearing this in mind, it is
noteworthy that funding dilemmas actually proved to be one of SNCC's
"first crises," as they had obtained funding from the AFL-CIO to run
a conference in October 1960 in which SNCC would "be formalized by
the election of representatives to a permanent Coordinating
Committee." The funding crisis then eventuated because SNCC had
invited Bayard Rustin to speak at the event, and the AFL responded by
saying that "they would not give the money if he were going to
speak." SNCC eventually caved in to the union's demand, and this led
to their conference organizer, Jane Stembridge, leaving the
Committee. (29) But despite the union's obsession with Rustin, who
they considered to be too radical, he was far from it, as Rustin had
already attempted to moderate the SNCC by trying to get them to
insert a clause in their constitution to bar communists from
membership. Although Rustin had failed in this effort, he had already
succeeded in getting "SDS to put such a clause in its early
constitution." (30)
--
Notes
1. Wesley Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New
America (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), p.5. (back)
2. Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The
Politics of Liberation in America (Penguin Books, 1971 [1967]), p.12. (back)
3. Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Beacon Press, 1964),
p.3, p.10, p.3. (back)
4. Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second
Reconstruction in Black America, 1945-1990 (University Press of
Mississippi, 1991 [1982]), p.xi, p.ix, p.x. (back)
5. For example, Manning Marable's otherwise comprehensive book Race,
Reform, and Rebellion categorically fails to discuss the influence of
liberal foundations on the civil rights movement. (back)
6. Before the 1950s, the Julius Rosenwald Fund whose operations were
dissolved in 1948 (as per the request of its founder), had been a
major funder of the NAACP's work. Writing in the NAACP's official
journal, The Crisis, A Gilbert Belles noted how in hard times, both
the NAACP and the Urban League "turned to sympathetic whites for
financial assistance." Belles continues: "One major drawback often
resulted from this dependence on white philanthropy; donors of large
amounts of money felt obliged to recommend policies that controlled
the operation of the NAACP and NUL. These attempts were resisted with
varying degrees of success." A Gilbert Belles, "The NAACP, the Urban
League, and the Julius Rosenwald Fund," Crisis, 86 (3), 1979 , p.97. (back)
7. Craig Jenkins and Abigail Halcli, "Grassrooting the System? The
Development and Impact of Social Movement Philanthropy, 1953-1990,"
In: Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (ed.), Philanthropic Foundations: New
Scholarship, New Possibilities (Indiana University Press, 1999),
pp.230-1. "In 1953, there were only four social movement grants
totaling $85,700." (p.231) The other key grantee in 1953 was Saul
Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, which used the monies to
launch the Community Service Organization in California.
The Highlander Center was founded in 1932 and their initial advisory
board included Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the
international secretary of the international YMCA Sherwood Eddy,
Socialist party leader Norman Thomas, and Kirby Page of the
Fellowship of Reconciliation. See, John Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary
School (University of Tennessee Press, 1996), p.20. Like most radical
educational institutions, over the years Highlander has suffered from
funding problems; and right from the get go, "In 1933-34 Highlander
was in deep financial trouble." Thus, while Highlander's cofounders
(Myles Horton and Don West) had intended that "the school's programs
should be largely self-sustaining" by relying upon the support of
their grass-roots participants, Niebuhr used his close connection to
the project to encourage a broader fund raising approach, and he
"used his influence to secure money and materials for Highlander and
urged Horton to seek foundation grants." (p.32) During its early
years Highlander became well respected for its work with labor
activists, and in the year that Eleanor Roosevelt started funding the
group, in 1940, their executive council was "composed largely of AFL
and CIO officials". (p.70, p.81) Later, owing to their commitment to
running a desegregated school, in December 1946 the Julius Rosenwald
Fund awarded them a $15,000 grant "to develop an education program
for potential community leaders in the rural South." (p.122) In 1953
Highlander set up their Citizenship Schools program, which they ran
until 1961 and were arguably "Highlander's most significant
contribution to the civil rights movement and perhaps the most
important single program the folk school staff ever developed."
(p.185) "The primary aim of the program would be to train leaders in
the use of educational methods that would not only promote 'rural
citizenship' [in the South] but also establish a 'continuous
relationship' between Highlander and these leaders." In 1953 this
ambitious program for developing Citizenship Schools obtained the
support of the Schwarzhaupt Foundation who initially gave them a
three-year grant worth $44,100, and a further $56,150 in July 1956 to
continue the program for another three years. (p.186, p.193) In early
1961 the Schwarzhaupt Foundation again supported Highlander's work on
a local spin off from this program, the Southeastern Georgia Crusade
for Voters which later in the year became affiliated with SCLC.
(p.202) Not long after their work on the Crusade for Voters project,
the Field Foundation worked with Highlander to transfer the
management of the Citizenship Schools to the SCLC. (pp.203-6) One
should also note that the building momentum of the civil rights
movement witnessed an increase in foundation support for Highlander:
"In 1957 only $4,000 of its total income of $39,000 had come from
foundations; in comparison, by the end of the 1958 fiscal year the
school's income had shot up to nearly $114,300, with foundation
granting over $73,000." (p.216) (back)
8. Jenkins and Halcli, "Grassrooting the System?", p.243, p.247. The
one notable exception during the period of their study was the
consumer-rights movement. (back)
9. Zinn, SNCC, p.217. (back)
10. Gregory Raynor, "The Ford Foundation's War on Poverty," In:
Ellen Condliffe Lagemann (ed.), Philanthropic Foundations: New
Scholarship, New Possibilities (Indiana University Press, 1999),
p.198. "By 1952, Ford and FAE aroused serious opposition from
southern communities, elected officials, and Ford Motor Company
dealerships. Segregationists boycotted Ford products and threatened a
broader political reaction against Foundation- and FAE-sponsored
desegregation experiments." (p.199) (back)
11. Raynor, "The Ford Foundation's War on Poverty," p.199. (back)
12. Edward Berman, "The Foundations Role in American Foreign Policy:
The Case of Africa, post 1945," In: Robert Arnove (ed.) Philanthropy
and Cultural Imperialism: The Foundations at Home and Abroad (G.K.
Hall, 1980), p.209. "The concern with world stability and the need to
incorporate peripheral areas into the American-dominated world
capitalist system led the foundations to concentrate their university
programs in African areas considered of strategic and economic
importance to the United States government and American corporations
with African investments." (p.209) For more on the role of the Ford
Foundation in co-opting the race issue in both the United States and
abroad, see Michael Barker, "Liberal Foundations and Anti-Racism
Activism," Swans Commentary, August 24, 2009; Michael Barker,
"Liberal Philanthropy and Social Change in South Africa," Swans
Commentary, April 5, 2010. (back)
13. The pamphlet was first published in 2003 and was edited by
Christopher Phelps, see Max Schactman, Race and Revolution (Verso,
2003), p.49, p.52, p.60. Phelps points out how Schactman "put strong
emphasis on slave insurrection as a form of class conflict with the
Old South and as proof of the mythological nature of images of slave
contentment promoted by apologists for slavery. This he asserted a
decade before Herbert Aptheker, the Communist historian, produced his
now famous book on slave rebellion." Phelps also notes that
"Schactman explained what Aptheker never quite did: why slave
rebellions so often failed, namely because of their lack of allies in
the wider population, and why they lacked such allies."
(pp.xxii-xxiii) (back)
14. Schactman, Race and Revolution, p.52. (back)
15. Martin Carnoy, Education as Cultural Imperialism (Longman Inc.,
1974), p.273. As Carnoy observes, it is important to recognize that:
"Winning at least some control over one's own destiny, however,
especially for a people who have been oppressed during their entire
history in this country, does have important psychological effects.
Political and social learning as a result of community control may
not be the end point of a liberation period, but the beginning of
something much more extensive and profound, depending upon who
controls the community control movement. Cooptation by establishment
blacks and Chicanos would ensure that the building of self-identity
and the use of the schools for real community social change and
political development be subverted to the needs of the corporate
structure." (p.258) (back)
16. Michael Barker, "An Interview with Jerry Gershenhorn," Swans
Commentary, June 28, 2010; Jerry Gershenhorn, Melville J. Herskovits
and the Racial Politics of Knowledge (University of Nebraska Press,
2004), p.145. Over the course of a long career, leading NAACP
spokesperson, W.E.B. DuBois, maintained a delicate relationship with
the white philanthropists who funded much of his work. Thus despite
his intermittent public criticism of the philanthropic community, Max
Schactman's 1933 pamphlet singled him out for criticism owing to his
current work for the NAACP. Du Bois' critique of Thomas Jesse Jones
was printed as, W.E.B. DuBois, "Negro Education," Crisis,15 (4),
February 1918. This is reprinted in Eugene Provenzo (ed.) DuBois on
Education (Altamira Press, 2002), pp.123-32. (back)
17. The Rosenwald Fund had been founded in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald
with its structure "based on the model of the Rockefeller Foundation
on which he previously served as a board member"; and when Rosenwald
had set up the Fund, he was initially "persuaded by Booker T.
Washington to contribute to building Black rural schoolhouses."
Likewise, in 1928 the newly appointed president of the Fund, Edwin
Embree -- who served in this position for twenty years -- was the
former director of Divisions for Studies at the Rockefeller
Foundation, and former employee of the General Education Board.
Wayne Urban, "Philanthropy and the Black Scholar: The Case of Horace
Mann Bond," Journal of Negro Education, 58 (4), 1989, p.480, p.481.
Here Urban provides a useful account of Horace Mann Bond's long and
ultimately negative relationship with the Rosenwald Fund (who "halted
his scholarly development" p.493). (back)
18. St. Clair Drake and Horace Mann Bond, Black Metropolis: A Study
of Negro Life in a Northern City -- Volume II (Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1970 [1945]), p.717. Later in their book they added: "The
primary activity of most 'accepted' leaders centers around raising
money to finance such organizations as the NAACP, the Urban League,
the Provident Hospital, the YMCA, the YWCA, the Federated Women's
Clubs, and a number of other organizations. The leaders of these
groups are upper-class and upper-middle-class men and women who 'have
the confidence of the community' and who can secure donations from
white philanthropists and funds such as the Community Chest, the
Community Trust, the Rosenwald Fund, etc." (pp.740-1) (back)
19. In her excellent history of liberal philanthropy, Joan Roelofs
writes: "The NAACP (founded in 1909) represented a conservative,
elite-led approach to racial integration and was aided during its
formative years by the Rosenwald and Peabody funds. Its original
anti-imperialist tendencies were gradually transformed as pragmatic
gains seemed possible. The early donors were joined by J. D.
Rockefeller Jr., Edsel Ford, and the Garland Fund, among others. 'By
1928, on the eve of the Depression, the NAACP had amassed a
sufficient surplus of funds to invest part of its income in an
impressive array of stocks and bonds.'" Joan Roelofs, Foundations and
Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (State University of New York
Press, 2003), p.111. (back)
20. "From the 1930s until her death in 1986, Ella Baker participated
in over thirty organizations and campaigns ranging from the Negro
cooperative movement during the Depression to the Free Angela Davis
campaign in the 1970s." Barbara Ransby, "Behind-the-Scenes View of a
Behind-the-Scenes Organizer: The Roots of Ella Baker's Political
Passions," In: Bettye Collier-Thomas and V.P. Franklin (eds.) Sisters
in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black
Power Movement (New York University Press, 2001), p.42. (back)
21. Zinn, SNCC, p.33. Of SNCC's predecessors, Hogan writes: "Though
it drew many new people into the struggle, the sit-in movement
faltered in the fall of 1960. Publicity declined as the novelty of
protests wore off and as local white governments refined the practice
of co-opting black college administrators dependent on the local
power structure." Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart, p.40.
Shortly after the CORE Freedom Rides were disbanded (owing to extreme
oppression), "twenty-one students -- the mainstays of the 1960
Nashville [nonviolence] workshops -- prepared to leave for Alabama"
to restart the Freedom Rides. After initially being forcefully
ejected from Alabama they returned in force and met a brutal welcome
from the local whites. When Martin Luther King flew in to support the
Riders, Robert Kennedy was forced to use federal troops and declare
martial law to break up the white mobs which surrounded King's rally
in Montgomery's First Baptist Church, "threaten[ing] to burn the
church and shoot everyone who ran outside." "Two days later, on May
24, Greyhound buses left with Freedom Riders for Jackson,
Mississippi. Unbeknownst to the Riders, Robert Kennedy had made a
secret deal with the state of Mississippi - he would not enforce
federal law in the state in return for a pledge that there would be
no visible, public violence inflicted upon the Riders. Kennedy's
compromise had the effect of undercutting the Riders' intent to
compel federal enforcement of U.S. law in the Deep South." Hogan,
Many Minds, One Heart, p.47, 49. (back)
22. Glen, Highlander, p.174. "SNCC's [newly formed] leadership
included several members of Highlander's 'New Generation' workshop,
foreshadowing a relationship that would persist well into the 1960s.
Marian Barry, later elected major of Washington, D.C., became SNCC's
first chairman in 1960; John Lewis would rise to national prominence
as chairman of SNCC between 1963 and 1966 and became a Georgia
congressman in 1986; Bernard Lafayette served as a SNCC field
secretary until 1963; and James Bevel worked closely with SNCC while
remaining a militant member of the SCLC staff." (p.177) (back)
23. Zinn, SNCC, p.33. (back)
24. Zinn, SNCC, p.34. Marking the time of her break with the SCLC,
"Baker took a decisive step when she publicly opposed the proposal of
SCLC leaders Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Wyatt T. Walker
to make SNCC a youth wing of SCLC." Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart,
p.41. (back)
25. Formed in 1941 by Marshall Field III, the Chicago banker and
publisher of The Chicago Sun-Times, the Field Foundation "supported
health programs for children, programs that sought to improve race
relations and other programs devoted to international peace." In 1960
the foundation was divided into two separate entities: the Field
Foundation of New York and the Field Foundation of Illinois. (back)
26. Constance Curry, "Wild Geese to the Past," In: Constance Curry
et al. (eds.) Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom
Movement (University of Georgia Press, 2000), p.15, p.13, p.16. Prior
to moving to the Southern Project (in December 1959), Curry had been
recruited by Allard Lowenstein (in 1957) to replace Lowenstein as the
new national field secretary of the Collegiate Council for the United
Nations -- the student affiliate of American Association for the
United Nations that had been founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. (p.11)
(For more details on Lowenstein's manipulative background see PART II
-- forthcoming) Curry left NSA and the SNCC executive committee in
early 1964, spending the next eleven years of her life working as the
southern field representative for the American Friends Service
Committee (AFSC). In 1966 she also became the administrator for the
AFSC Family Aid Fund, a fund that had been "supported for ten years
by grants from the Ford Foundation, had been established to help
southern families or individuals who were harassed, or worse, in
their attempts to exercise their civil rights." Ford later terminated
their funding of AFSC's work in 1975. (p.25, p.31)
As one of SNCC's first funders, Eleanor Roosevelt had a longstanding
commitment to social activism having first taught immigrant children
at the Rivington Street Settlement House (in New York City) in 1903
-- although she quit this work in 1905 when she married Franklin
Roosevelt. Over the years Eleanor worked closely with a wide variety
of liberal human rights organizations, for example, she had joined
the advisory board of the American Friends Service Committee in the
1930s, and in 1951 became vice president of the NAACP Legal Defense
and Education Fund. Amongst her other assorted social commitments she
also helped found the Southern Conference for Human Welfare; chaired
the National Committee for Justice in Columbia, Tennessee; and
endorsed the Southern Conference Education Fund. According to her
biographer, Allida Black, "black activists trusted her commitment to
racial equality" but at the end of the day she was "the consummate
liberal power broker": this tension between Eleanor's work for social
justice and her more radical contemporaries can be seen through her
disagreements with NAACP stalwart W.E.B. DuBois, who eventually left
the NAACP in 1948 as a result of their differences. Allida Black,
Casting Her Own Shadow: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Shaping of Postwar
Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1996), p.86, p.3, pp.100-2. (back)
27. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of
the 1960s (Harvard University Press, 1981), p.26, p.46. After
completing his junior year at Hamilton College Moses had "worked in a
European summer camp sponsored by the pacifistic American Friends
Service Committee, and the following year he worked at a similar camp
in Japan." He then did graduate studies at Harvard University (which
he completed in June 1957), and in 1959 he "helped veteran black
activist Bayard Rustin in organizing the second Youth March for
Integrated Schools." (p.46) In 1982 Moses obtained a MacArthur
Foundation fellowship, which he used to help create the Algebra
Project -- see Robert Moses, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from
Mississippi to the Algebra Project (Beacon Press, 2002).
"The first [SNCC] meeting after the Raleigh Conference was held in
May 1960, on the campus of Atlanta University. About fifteen of the
student leaders were there, as were Martin Luther King, Jr., James
Lawson, Ella Baker, Len Holt (a CORE lawyer from Norfolk, Virginia),
and observers from the National Student Association, the YWCA, the
American Friends Service Committee, and other groups. They now called
themselves the Temporary Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,
and elected Marion Barry, at this time doing graduate work at Fisk,
as chairman." Zinn, SNCC, p.34. (back)
28. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Open Hand
Publishing, 1985 [1972]), p.161. (back)
29. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.219. Forman
writes that "it is my informed guess that the so-called liberal and
also conservative forces around the country saw the student sit-in
movement as something that could become useful to the foreign policy
of the United States. After all, the students were closely allied to
the philosophy of Dr. King, who posed no serious threat to the
foreign policy of this country. In fact, his emphasis on nonviolence,
love, and religion made him a darling of the U.S. State Department.
... In this same spirit, the AFL-CIO could offer funds to SNCC but
with a string attached. And its success in preventing Rustin from
speaking must have suggested that is was indeed possible to influence
if not control the student movement." (pp.219-20) (back)
30. Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.220. Historian
Clayborne Carson writes: "While Forman argued consistently within
SNCC for a greater emphasis on class analyses, he was by no means
doctrinaire Marxist. He strongly opposed the efforts of Marxist
groups to supply SNCC with a preconceived ideology. Thus, despite his
belief in the ideal of open association, he apparently acquiesced [to
H. Rap Brown's demand] in the expulsion of two known members of the
Communist Party, Franklin Alexander and Angela Davis, from the Los
Angeles SNCC chapter to ensure that the SNCC chapter remained
independent of outside control." Carson, In Struggle, p.270.
Towards the end of the 1960s Forman recognized how the problems that
stemmed from the SNCC's focus on community organizing and neglect of
the political education of their activists had left them prone to the
government attempts to "co-opt the work of community organizers." He
continued: "It would pay people to work in its poverty programs -- a
reformist trap designed to militate against basic changes... The cry
for community control is a false one within the present structure of
this society. Nevertheless, action geared to achieving community
control can help people realize the impossibility of that goal if the
proper political education goes along with the action." Forman, The
Making of Black Revolutionaries, p.238. (back)
.
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