“ A Faith in the Ultimate Justice of Things ” Segregation & the Black Church

1. “A Faith in the Ultimate Justice of Things”Segregation & the Black Church “Segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.” (Sociology 159)

2. The Southern Strategy • Wallace after losing 1958 Alabama gubernatorial race: • "I was out-niggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be out-niggered again.” • Lee Atwater, in anonymous 1981 interview • “As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.”

3. The Southern Strategy • Interviewer: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps? • Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. • You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. • But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.”

4. George Wallace • 1919-1988 • 4-term governor of Alabama • Paralyzed in 1972 assassination attempt • Becomes a born-again Christian, renounces pro-segregations positions in 1979

5. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. • It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. • Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.”

6. 1963 Inaugural Speech • Let us send this message back to Washington by our representatives who are with us today . . that from this day we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of an upright man . . . • that we intend to take the offensive and carry our fight for freedom across the nation, wielding the balance of power we know we possess in the Southland . . . . • that WE, not the insipid bloc of voters of some sections . . will determine in the next election who shall sit in the White House of these United States . . . • That from this day, from this hour . . . from this minute . . . we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in our face no longer . . . . and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth.

7. 1963 Inaugural Speech • We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ourselves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked and is not being threatened by another idea . . . for it is. • We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life . . • that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, to require, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only "good" . . and it shall be our father . . . . and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and destroys our faith . . . for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is no faith. • In encouraging our fears of economic insecurity it demands we place that economic management and control with government...

8. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “We find we are become government-fearing people . . . not God-fearing people. We find we have replaced faith with fear . . . and though we may give lip service to the Almighty . . in reality, government has become our god. • It is, therefore, a basically ungodly government and its appeal to the pseudo-intellectual and the politician is to change their status from servant of the people to master of the people . . . to play at being God . . . without faith in God . . . and without the wisdom of God. It is a system that is the very opposite of Christ for it feeds and encourages everything degenerate and base in our people as it assumes the responsibilities that we ourselves should assume. • Its pseudo-liberal spokesmen and some Harvard advocates have never examined the logic of its substitution of what it calls "human rights" for individual rights, for its propaganda play on words has appeal for the unthinking. Its logic is totally material and irresponsible as it runs the full gamut of human desires . . . including the theory that everyone has voting rights without the spiritual responsibility of preserving freedom.”

9. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “As the national racism of Hitler's Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a national majority . . . so the international racism of the liberals seek to persecute the international white minority to the whim of the international colored majority . . . • so that we are footballed about according to the favor of the Afro-Asian bloc. But the Belgian survivors of the Congo cannot present their case to a war crimes commission . . . nor the Portuguese of Angola . . . nor the survivors of Castro . . . nor the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi.”

10. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “It is this theory of international power politic that led a group of men on the Supreme Court for the first time in American history to issue an edict, based not on legal precedent, but upon a volume, the editor of which said our Constitution is outdated and must be changed and the writers of which, some had admittedly belonged to as many as half a hundred communist-front organizations. • It is this theory that led this same group of men to briefly bare the ungodly core of that philosophy in forbidding little school children to say a prayer. And we find the evidence of that ungodliness even in the removal of the words "in God we trust" from some of our dollars, which was placed there as like evidence by our founding fathers as the faith upon which this system of government was built.” • Link between ungodliness, integration • “In God we trust” on money since 1864

11. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “It is the spirit of power thirst that caused a President in Washington to take up Caesar's pen and with one stroke of it make a law. A Law which the law making body of Congress refused to pass . . . a law that tells us that we can or cannot buy or sell our very homes, except by his conditions . . . and except at HIS discretion. • It is the spirit of power thirst that led the same President to launch a full offensive of twenty-five thousand troops against a university . . . of all places . . . in his own country . . . and against his own people, when this nation maintains only six thousand troops in the beleaguered city of Berlin. “

12. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “We have witnessed such acts of "might makes right" over the world as men yielded to the temptation to play God . . . but we have never before witnessed it in America. We reject such acts as free men. We do not defy, for there is nothing to defy . . . since as free men we do not recognize any government right to give freedom . . . or deny freedom. • No government erected by man has that right. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; no King holds the right of liberty in his hands." Nor does any ruler in American government.”

13. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “So it was meant in our racial lives . . . each race, within its own framework has the freedom to teach . . to instruct . . to develop . . to ask for and receive deserved help from others of separate racial stations. This is the great freedom of our American founding fathers . . . but if we amalgamate into the one unit as advocated by the communist philosophers . . then the enrichment of our lives . . . the freedom for our development . . . is gone forever. We become, therefore, a mongrel unit of one under a single all powerful government . . . and we stand for everything . . . and for nothing. • The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others . . and uniting in effort . . has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small wonder that communism is winning the world.”

14. 1963 Inaugural Speech • “We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station . . as we will work with him . . to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races . . the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, if which I make full practice . . . . for we are all the handiwork of God. • But we warn those, of any group, who would follow the false doctrine of communistic amalgamation that we will not surrender our system of government . . . our freedom of race and religion . . . that freedom was won at a hard price and if it requires a hard price to retain it . . we are able . . and quite willing to pay it.”

15. The Black Church and the Civil Rights Movement • “Black churches have been aggregated into the singular institution called "the black church" to the extent that they are united by their cultural, historic, social, and spiritual missions of fighting the ravages of racism by "buoy[ing] up the hopes of its members in the face of adversity and giv[ing] them a sense of community-regardless of denominational distinction, geographic location, or class composition.’” • “Although some denominational and congregational distinctions can be drawn, most black churches share a very similar religious culture. [...] Although black churches operate with a high degree of independence, people going from service location to service location would feel little cultural disconnect.” (169)

16. Resource Mobilization • "Resource mobilization theory asserts that discontent is basically constant. What really matters to organizers of a movement "is the amount of social resources available to unorganized but aggrieved groups, making it possible to launch an organized demand for change" (Jenkins and Perrow 1977, 250).” • “Approached from this perspective, mobilization can be understood as the "process by which a group secures collective control over the resources needed for action. The major issues therefore are the resources controlled by the group prior to mobilization efforts, and the processes by which the group pools resources and direct these toward social change" (Jenkins 1983, 532-33). "In the absence of resources," McAdam explained, "the aggrieved population is likely to lack the capacity to act even when granted the opportunity to do so" (1985, 43).” (170)

17. Resource Mobilization • “The black church could offer social communication networks, facilities, audience, leadership, and money to the movement.” • Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) coordinated “nonviolent direct action activities through churches in various locations and its initial leadership was made up of ministers who led many of the largest nonviolent actions in Montgomery, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and Nashville.” (170) • “More than a year before the sit-ins, NCLC [Nashville Christian Leadership Council] Project Committee Chair Rev. James Lawson began holding workshops on nonviolent direct action at churches throughout the city. Through the churches and ministers affiliated with the NCLC, students were equipped and trained for nonviolent action, and the black community was organized to support the students once the sit-ins began.”

18. Interpretive Frames • But not only resource mobilization, but culture and beliefs matter • “Much of the work done by a social movement organization involves, literally, making meanings and communicating the appropriate mobilizing messages to its constituents.” (171) • “The black church was able to mobilize people for nonviolent action because church membership provided individuals a frame for receiving the message and meaning of nonviolence. A "frame" is an interpretive schemata or way of understanding the world (Snow et al. 1986). Tarrow (1992) has explained that collective action frames work best when they are connected to the cultural meaning and symbols of a movement's audience. (172-73)

19. Interpretive Frames • Andrew Young: “Nobody could have ever argued segregation and integration and gotten people to do anything about that. But when Martin would talk about leaving the slavery of Egypt and wandering into the promised land; somehow that made sense to folks. • And they may not have understood it; it was nobody else's political theory, but it was their grassroots are all perfectly legal. For example, the March on ideology. It was their faith; it was the thing that they had been nurtured on. • I think it was the cultural milieu, when people were really united with the real meaning of that cultural heritage, and when they saw in their faith also a liberation struggle that they could identify with, then you kind of had 'em boxed. They all wanted to be religious. And when you finally helped them see that religion meant involvement in action, you kinda had 'em hooked then.” (173)

20. Church Culture • “The black church can be seen to have engendered in members an oppositional consciousness that predisposed them to challenging society, and concurrently, reinforce their attachment and loyalty to for understanding the societal regime. Paris observed that black churches have always stressed to their members a healthy respect for the rule of law.” • Circumscribes possibilities of political engagement • March on Washington not civil disobedience, but exercise of constitutional rights: both oppositional and law-abiding. • MLK on civil disobedience: “I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.” (173)

21. Church Culture • Relative balance between oppositional culture and conservative orientation toward preserving social order may explain whether a given congregation did or did not become involved in the civil rights struggle • “Congregational-specific characteristics such as socioeconomic background, educational achievement, age composition, ministerial disposition, and theological orientation were undoubtedly important determinants of the balance.” (174) • Not only a matter of resource mobilization: culture matters