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CORE:STUDY IN CIVIL RIGHTS
The activities of James Farmer, George Wiley, Floyd McKissick, Wilfred Ussery, and Roy Innis, along with an entire emotion-laden and action-packed era in the American civil rights movement, come to light in this widely acclaimed study of the rise and decline of CORE by two leading authorities in black studies. August Meier and Elliott Rudwick draw on interviews with many key CORE members and on a variety of original manuscripts and published sources as they study the evolution of the Congress on Racial Equality and place it within the context of the civil rights revolution as a whole. A new introduction written for the paperback edition updates the analysis to 1975.
- GenresHistory
563 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 22, 2012
This is a very good, and incredibly well researched book that really gets into the nitty gritty of the national organization, with a good overview of local work. I thought it was nicely balanced between the Freedom Rides and the organising in the South which CORE is mostly remembered for, and the campaigns across the rest of the country, which seem to have slid into obscurity.
Some of the things it did really well: the outline of the tensions involved in maintaining a national organization while most of the action was carried out by local branches that emerged, grew strong and then died away again. The ways that organizational structure, stability and organisation made possible a larger profile and a foundation for the work -- even in the harder times when the victories weren't coming. A sense of the scope of COREs work, just how much fit under that one umbrella, and how regional efforts compared to each other. The ways that the changing national mood around civil rights impacted so heavily on COREs work (harder to see how it were shaped by CORE's work, which it undoubtedly was to some extent), and how expectations were as important in defining success as concrete winnings. The importance of a basic agreement on ideology and tactics to keep the organization together, an how quickly it all fell apart when that was lost (though arguably that could have been a good thing as things need to change and institutions dissolve to make room for new thoughts and life).
I wouldn't change this actually, as a broad overview of a national organization made up of multiple local affiliates each doing their own thing more or less and how that connected nationally with other civil rights institutions, I think this does a really good job. What it was missing, which would be supplemented by a book(s) on a single branch or region perhaps, was a sense of the day to day, the personal. Common themes were clear. CORE inspired an intense enthusiasm and people devoted most of their lives to it, so what did that mean for them and their work? Personalities, both of local members and the national leadership seemed to have played a pivotal role in the successes and failures, yet there is no easy way to gauge how this actually worked. It seems obvious that lost campaigns and disillusionment could cause a chapter to fold, but they give several examples of where local affiliates were killed by their successes, not knowing what to do next. Surely there was more going on, but what?
I also don't think it digs deeply enough into some of the race issues. It is more neutral than some of the things I have read so I may be misreading it, but I still came away with the overall impression that the rise of Black Power kind of ruined a good thing, that the sudden desire of African Americans to run their own organizations and their distrust of whites came out of this more external, national movement. Working in the 2000s, with reams written and spoken about dissecting white privilege and etc., I still found there to be a pervasive if very subtle racism present in many social justice arenas where people of colour were tokenized and patronized in struggle and whites still tend to fill leadership positions. I can't even imagine what it was like in the 60s. My guess after 10 years working in this kind of politics, is that there was plenty internally to drive such a reaction. Given the scale at which most of the book was written this kind of experience is never really examined except where members or affiliates made it into a big issue. Which they did, but the arguments are rendered with very broad lines, and I imagine there was a lot more going on underneath the surface. Some of this comes out in Farmer's autobiography, but he downplays almost all internal tensions around race. The other thing completely absent from the discussion is gender. There were some key women mentioned, but most weren't on staff and it is hard to gauge what roles they played in the national organisation much less the multiple affiliates.
Some of the things it did really well: the outline of the tensions involved in maintaining a national organization while most of the action was carried out by local branches that emerged, grew strong and then died away again. The ways that organizational structure, stability and organisation made possible a larger profile and a foundation for the work -- even in the harder times when the victories weren't coming. A sense of the scope of COREs work, just how much fit under that one umbrella, and how regional efforts compared to each other. The ways that the changing national mood around civil rights impacted so heavily on COREs work (harder to see how it were shaped by CORE's work, which it undoubtedly was to some extent), and how expectations were as important in defining success as concrete winnings. The importance of a basic agreement on ideology and tactics to keep the organization together, an how quickly it all fell apart when that was lost (though arguably that could have been a good thing as things need to change and institutions dissolve to make room for new thoughts and life).
I wouldn't change this actually, as a broad overview of a national organization made up of multiple local affiliates each doing their own thing more or less and how that connected nationally with other civil rights institutions, I think this does a really good job. What it was missing, which would be supplemented by a book(s) on a single branch or region perhaps, was a sense of the day to day, the personal. Common themes were clear. CORE inspired an intense enthusiasm and people devoted most of their lives to it, so what did that mean for them and their work? Personalities, both of local members and the national leadership seemed to have played a pivotal role in the successes and failures, yet there is no easy way to gauge how this actually worked. It seems obvious that lost campaigns and disillusionment could cause a chapter to fold, but they give several examples of where local affiliates were killed by their successes, not knowing what to do next. Surely there was more going on, but what?
I also don't think it digs deeply enough into some of the race issues. It is more neutral than some of the things I have read so I may be misreading it, but I still came away with the overall impression that the rise of Black Power kind of ruined a good thing, that the sudden desire of African Americans to run their own organizations and their distrust of whites came out of this more external, national movement. Working in the 2000s, with reams written and spoken about dissecting white privilege and etc., I still found there to be a pervasive if very subtle racism present in many social justice arenas where people of colour were tokenized and patronized in struggle and whites still tend to fill leadership positions. I can't even imagine what it was like in the 60s. My guess after 10 years working in this kind of politics, is that there was plenty internally to drive such a reaction. Given the scale at which most of the book was written this kind of experience is never really examined except where members or affiliates made it into a big issue. Which they did, but the arguments are rendered with very broad lines, and I imagine there was a lot more going on underneath the surface. Some of this comes out in Farmer's autobiography, but he downplays almost all internal tensions around race. The other thing completely absent from the discussion is gender. There were some key women mentioned, but most weren't on staff and it is hard to gauge what roles they played in the national organisation much less the multiple affiliates.
October 1, 2018
This is an unbelievably immense and highly descriptive volume looking at the organizational history of the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE). I read this book so hard that the spine split in two! The authors did a tremendous job of researching and telling the story of this civil rights organization.
In the beginning, CORE was dedicated to racial integration and was one of the groups spearheading the use of nonviolent direct action/civil disobedience as a way to draw public attention to racial injustices. As with any hierarchical organization, this led to flare-ups between local chapters and the national and eventually led to the slow disintegration of the organization as local chapters adopted the Black Power mantra and called for the organization to embrace self-defense as called for by groups like the Black Panther Party (among a plethora of other reasons that are spelled out in the book). There was so much tumult in the 1960s and 1970s that CORE's founding principles were discarded in many ways in favor of a rush to become the most radical organization out there. Again, between an unresponsive national board, local chapters demanding and taking their autonomy, and no one able to reconcile the two, disintegration was inevitable.
Aside from the explication of the causes that led to the slow withering of the organization (and the several pages going into financial detail of the organization over its lifetime) there were many highlights. For instance: in 1947 the Journey Of Reconciliation happened whereby an integrated number of whites and Blacks rode on buses through the south as an act of civil disobedience against Jim Crow–at incredible risk to themselves. Nearly 20 years later, the Freedom Rides occurred based off the work of CORE and the Journey for Reconciliation.
The above is just one example of a CORE legacy that offered possibilities to other organizers and activists as ways forward that may not have been envisioned or thought possible. I need to read it again, but upon one reading, this book is certainly worth its weight in knowledge. It gives a thorough telling of civil rights history, strategy, and tactics through the eyes of CORE. It can be slow and pedantic. It can also be exhilarating and eye-opening. But you don't have to take my word for it.
In the beginning, CORE was dedicated to racial integration and was one of the groups spearheading the use of nonviolent direct action/civil disobedience as a way to draw public attention to racial injustices. As with any hierarchical organization, this led to flare-ups between local chapters and the national and eventually led to the slow disintegration of the organization as local chapters adopted the Black Power mantra and called for the organization to embrace self-defense as called for by groups like the Black Panther Party (among a plethora of other reasons that are spelled out in the book). There was so much tumult in the 1960s and 1970s that CORE's founding principles were discarded in many ways in favor of a rush to become the most radical organization out there. Again, between an unresponsive national board, local chapters demanding and taking their autonomy, and no one able to reconcile the two, disintegration was inevitable.
Aside from the explication of the causes that led to the slow withering of the organization (and the several pages going into financial detail of the organization over its lifetime) there were many highlights. For instance: in 1947 the Journey Of Reconciliation happened whereby an integrated number of whites and Blacks rode on buses through the south as an act of civil disobedience against Jim Crow–at incredible risk to themselves. Nearly 20 years later, the Freedom Rides occurred based off the work of CORE and the Journey for Reconciliation.
The above is just one example of a CORE legacy that offered possibilities to other organizers and activists as ways forward that may not have been envisioned or thought possible. I need to read it again, but upon one reading, this book is certainly worth its weight in knowledge. It gives a thorough telling of civil rights history, strategy, and tactics through the eyes of CORE. It can be slow and pedantic. It can also be exhilarating and eye-opening. But you don't have to take my word for it.
June 28, 2013
Early chapters are an excellent outline of CORE's "pre-history" before that organization became a major player in the larger Movement. Organizing for change is often long, sometimes boring, usually difficult, and always rewarding - a lot like some 500+ page books.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews