Battling the Plantation Mentality by Laurie B. Green

Author:Laurie B. Green [Green, Laurie B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, American, African American & Black Studies, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV), Discrimination
ISBN: 9780807888872
Google: ee57pYS2SmYC
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2009-12-08T02:41:27+00:00

Civic Clubs and Civil Rights at the Grass Roots

As seen in the fight over the Stainback bill, black Memphis civic clubs ranked among the most outspoken advocates of Brown v. Board of Education , helping to forge a network of local activists that could be called upon in the Memphis State lawsuit. Most of these civic clubs emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1952 the Bluff City and Shelby County Council of Civic Clubs was established as a counterpart to the all-white Memphis and Shelby County Council of Civic Clubs.37 Civic clubs in black neighborhoods often began with demands for improvements such as paved streets, curbs, sidewalks, and gutters. Participants interpreted such improvements not so much in terms of individual property rights as in collective racial terms, that is, in what distinguished black from white neighborhoods. Such acts became stepping stones to more overtly political ones, from registering voters to campaigning for African American candidates. Dependent upon neither citywide black leaders nor ministers, these civic clubs involved large numbers of working-class people, both men and women, boys and girls.

Many workers who had joined labor unions during the 1940s sought ways to alter race and class relations in other realms of their lives. Workers who labored in the same plants and lived in the same neighborhoods might also belong to the same civic clubs. Evelyn Bates, who began working at Firestone during the war, for instance, joined the Fortieth Ward Civic Club, in which black Firestone union activist Matthew Davis was a prominent member. Bates, Davis, and other black Firestone workers lived in the New Chicago section of north Memphis just east of the plant, extending their concerns about segregated union meetings and racist working conditions to their neighborhood organization.

Members of the Fortieth Ward club initially pressured officials for street paving, curbs, gutters, streetlights, and street markers, which they viewed as issues of not only beautification but also racial equality. In 1949, the club submitted a petition to the commissioner of public works signed by 500 residents protesting the city’s policy of picking up garbage in front of homes in “Negro sections” but picking it up at the backs of white homes. Some residents stopped dragging their garbage around to their front yards, protesting that it led to infestations of flies and created eyesores.38

The Fortieth Ward club also expanded its horizons to voter registration and politics, although Matthew Davis recalls initially encountering pessimism and fear when he began urging members to move in this direction. Civic clubs, from this perspective, helped working-class African Americans build confidence to challenge the Crump regime. Voter registration, which became particularly important after the state legislature’s lifting of the poll tax in 1951, became a springboard for further political education and activism. The Fortieth Ward club hosted banquets to which, according to Davis, they “invited some of the top speakers out,” including attorney Benjamin Hooks, who had helped the group write its charter. “And then we just started moving on out and doing things,” he remembers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.