The Origins of the Civil Rights Movements: Black Communities Organizing for Change

by Aldon D. Morris

A “valuable, eye-opening work” (The Boston Globe) about the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Mrs. Rosa Parks, weary after a long day at work, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man…and ignited the explosion that was the civil rights movement in America. In this powerful saga, Morris tells the complete story behind the ten years that transformed America, tracing the essential role of the black community organizations that was the real power behind the civil rights movement. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty key leaders, original documents, and other moving firsthand material, he brings to life the people behind the scenes who led the fight to end segregation, providing a critical new understanding of the dynamics of social change. 

“An important addition to our knowledge of the strategies of social change for all oppressed peoples.” —Reverend Jesse Jackson

“A benchmark study…setting the historical record straight.” —The New York Times Book Review

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, Sociology, American History, Activism

354 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Aldon Morris is the Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He has published widely on social movements, race, religion, social inequality, and the sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois. He is the author of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (Free Press, 1984), which won the 1986 Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association, and co-editor of the volumes Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (Yale, 1992) and Opposition Consciousness: The Subjective Roots of Social Protest (University of Chicago, 2001). Most recently he authored the award-winning book The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (University of California, 2015). In 2009 Morris won the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award from the American Sociological Association for a lifetime of research, scholarship, and teaching.

Reviews

[Dorothea · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the books on my unofficial and ever-growing Mandatory Reading for U.S. History list.

The way the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s is taught in primary and secondary schools in the United States is something like this: A brave old lady, Rosa Parks, sat down in the white section of a bus, and refused to move. A group of black teenagers insisted on their right to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, despite the outrage of white citizens. College students in Greensboro, North Carolina decided to make a point by sitting at a whites-only lunch counter. The bravery of these people, and the inspiring speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., triggered a mass movement among Southern blacks, changes in policy from the federal to local levels, and the defeat of institutionalized white supremacy. (Yay!)

The telling of these stories often features the spontaneous actions of individuals. One can get the idea that real change can be started by just a few people, if they're the right people and they're committed enough.

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement is about how this is the wrong lesson to learn from those events.

The actions and words of certain individuals did serve as a catalyst for protest. However, in most cases it was not the individual traits of participants that mattered as much as their organizational connections.

Morris's thesis is that the Civil Rights Movement was able to emerge and become strong because it was deliberately developed out of long-established Southern black social and organizational networks, especially black churches. Because Southern blacks were excluded from political, economic, and social power held by whites, and because most blacks depended on whites for their livelihood (whether as sharecroppers or as schoolteachers whose school board was all white), black ministers were in an almost unique position of both leadership within black society and economic independence from white society. This position, the connections ministers shared with others across the country, and the fact that many ministers were also involved in organizations such as the NAACP, meant that new civil-rights groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, whose leaders were almost all pastors, could draw on decades of organizing experience and pre-established support networks.

Morris is a sociologist; The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement reads a bit more scientifically than some histories, but I found that to be a good thing. Morris's writing is not beautiful or particularly dramatic, but it is clear and very organized; one always knows exactly what he is arguing and how the evidence fits together. There are appendices at the end describing research methods and giving a list of the many Civil Rights participants Morris interviewed (many of whose words are included in the book).

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement is focused on the organizations that created and led the mass movement: national organizations such as the SCLC, NAACP, CORE, and SNCC; what Moore calls "movement centers" such as the Montgomery Improvement Association; and "halfway houses" like the Highlander Folk School. It's a history of how these organizations got started (usually, it turns out, with the assistance of other organizations), how they interacted with each other, and how they carefully, strategically planned and executed the Civil Rights Movement.

This book is full of fascinating information about the Civil Rights Movement, and I think it can also be read as instruction in how to build massive protest.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in the eighties as a corrective to a view of history that viewed the civil rights movement in terms of the spontaneous outbursts of African Americans motivated by immediate outrages. Morris set out to demonstrate the importance of "movement centers"--communities with a strong connection to both political organizations (above all the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) and the culture of the black church. He interviewed about sixty of the leading figures in the movement of the 50s and early 60s and put the "spontaneous" outburst approach to rest. In terms of historical importance, I'd give the book four stars. Clearly it's one that should be read by anyone with a serious interest in the movement.

Nonetheless, there are some significant problems. The biggest is simply that Morris is essentially an apologist for SCLC, which leads him, repeatedly, to downplay the contributions of SNCC and push women (Dianne Nash, Ella Baker) into the background of stories in which they were central. That's simply to say, he was writing in and of his moment. He hadn't had the opportunity to read John Detmer's Local People, Charles Payne's I've Got the Light of Freedom, Barbara Ransby's study of Ella Baker or Danielle McGuire's At the Dark End of the Street, all of which revise the narrative in important ways. Especially in his discussion of Birmingham, Morris's approach opens the doors that later historians would walk through. Worth noting that the SCLS and organizational emphases lead him to glide over the Freedom Rides with only cursory attention.

The second problem is that Morris's style is at best pedestrian, and often clouded by a theoretical vocabulary concerning social movements that is a bit antiquated. Those passages are balanced by the quotes from the participants, so it's not a horrible slog, but it's nowhere near as compelling as Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters, which covers most of the same material.

[Tariqjones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Intricate good read.

[Grub Street Hack · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, Aldon Morris argues that the civil rights movement was, from its conception, an organized movement that depended on community structure to gain momentum in face of an oppressive regime. Fueling this monograph is the impressive array of sources that includes over fifty interviews with civil rights leaders and a vast accumulation of primary source documents, including archival materials in addition to papers contributed by interviewees. The framework for Origins is based on Morris’ background in sociology and three theoretical frameworks: The Classical Collective Behavior, Max Weber’s Charismatic Movements, and Resource Mobilization. Morris rejects and accepts aspects from all three. For example, he rejects the idea that the civil rights movement was spontaneous, that charismatic leaders were responsible for the beginnings of the movement, that influence from outside the movement was important, and how all three theories overlook the role that religious beliefs, music, and sermons played in the development of the civil rights movement. On the other hand, Morris agrees that social movements are geared towards change, that charismatic leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. played an important role in facilitating the movement, and most importantly, Resource Mobilization theory’s emphasis on the importance of resources and organization to the development of social movements.

There are two blemishes on this otherwise flawless work. First of all, Morris completely disregards the role of gender in the civil rights movement, despite including several female interviewees. This could be partially forgiven as gender history was just in its infancy at the time Morris was writing this work. After all, Joan Scott's influential “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” was published the same year as Origins. The second flaw in Morris’ monograph is that the scope of the study is limited to 1953 through 1963. As Dianne Pinderhughes points out, Morris overlooks “the way black leaders and organizations behaved or related to the political or economic system from the 1940s through the 1950s.” By limiting his study, Morris has handicapped himself and made it impossible to determine the true origins of the civil rights movement, which is not only the stated goal of his book, but also the title.

[Fran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was on a reading list for a trip I am taking to visit Civil Rights sights in Alabama. I read it at the same time as Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter. The books are complementary. Morris gives the descriptive background for the organizing of local African American communities between 1953 and 1963 and why they succeeded, while McWhorter tells the story of the twentieth century people and events in Birmingham. I learned a lot from this book, but it is academic and not easy reading. I would recommend it to only to those who want to delve deeply into the subject and are willing to read a dense book, packed with facts. It is an amazing story given the forces the Civil Rights movement was facing and the book shows how it succeeded.

[Lance]

I can't recommend this highly enough: it's a sober and thorough look at how the Civil Rights movement actually took off. By omission of how detailed the planning was, we're more or less left to believe that the Montgomery bus boycott and confrontations in Birmingham were spontaneous. Morris details the organizations that took years to plan the actions across the South we've heard about.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray]

I have a lot of Civil Rights books on my to-read list, so I think I don't have time in my short life to read this one which apparently (1) makes it seem like the clergy started everything instead of getting pushed into it by their constituents (2) excises all the women leaders (3) applies a strict "resource mobilization" social movements theory that disregards emotional content.

[Dex]

Influential social movement analysis and fantastic description of the movement itself. Does not seem to hold the authoritative place in the canon of civil rights as many of the more “popular” histories, but it probably should.

[Darkowaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

African American history class at Midd, sophomore year. Need to re-read this at some point...

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

This classic offers a powerful alternative to the three staples of social movement theory (resource mobilization, political process, and culture).

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful in my preparation for the National Council on Public History conference. Good summation of the event, told from contemporary POV. Current scholarships dates some of the references, but most stand the test of time.

[Donnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charismatic leadership was an element of the Civil Rights movement, but not its driving force. Churches were the social institutions that created the movement and sustained it.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly focused look at the movement-extremely informative-learned a lot

[Tinea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid and detailed history of the organization that went into the first ten years of the Civil Rights Movement (1953-63). Dense, but useful.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely recommend this book, one of my favorite sociological works that I return to frequently.

[Aaron Reyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very in-depth. Very resourceful.

[Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written but so dense.

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

We read this in my social movements class. This is a great text that gave a lot of detail. Very helpful.