David
Maselli, Raven Burks, Kala Burr, Sumner Richter, and Brooks Lamb
Professor
McKinney
Civil
Rights in Memphis
September
29, 2016
Moving
the Memphis Movement Forward:
The
Signifcance of War, Education, and Popular Culture
The master
narrative of the American Civil Rights Movement has traditionally been
comforting in its simplicity of heroes and martyrs, far off from the realities
that everyday people were forced to face. Battling
the Plantation Mentality by Laurie B. Green offers a realistic, complex,
and thus frustrating truth of the actions taken in the name of Civil Rights.
She provides a history of Memphis’ Movement, giving insight not only into the importance
of war and war-related activities, popular culture, and education—aspects
highlighted in this paper—but far beyond into labor and urbanization and other
major factors in the national movements. Through these “categories of analysis,”
the modern reader can better understand the efforts of black Americans and
allies, along with the extreme and effective measures taken in organizing,
publicizing, and mobilizing for a more equal future.
Popular culture was a complicated
component of the movement for increased African American freedom and equality
in the first half of the twentieth century. Resentful white leaders harnessed
certain aspects of popular culture to limit the freedom of black Memphians.
These limitations can be seen clearly through examining movies and theaters in
the Bluff City in the 1940s and 1950s. The social freedoms of African Americans
were obviously constrained through the segregated seating of movie theatres.
The restrictions, however, go much further than determining where black
Memphians sat. The Memphis Board of Censors, led by the notorious white
supremacist Lloyd T. Binford, strictly controlled what audiences saw on the
silver screen. Cutting and splicing reels, or in some instances banning entire
films, Binford refused to allow African American actors to be seen in roles
that were not entirely subservient to white actors. This was a way, explains
Laurie Green, for white leaders to extinguish the “mental liberties” of black
Memphians, attempting to eliminate even the faintest notions of equality in the
minds of citizens.[1]
But African Americans found other
avenues through which to exercise their “mental liberties,” avenues that
avoided Binford’s oppressive censorship. One example of black Memphians
pursuing freedom through popular culture can be found in discussing the dance
halls and clubs on Beale Street. Robin Kelley explains that black citizens went
to these venues with “people who had a shared knowledge of cultural forms,
people with whom they shared kinship, people with whom they shared stories
about the day or the latest joke, people who shared a vernacular struggled to
articulate the beauty and burden of their lives.”[2]
Through shedding—at least momentarily—the mistreatment that they faced on a
daily basis in the work spheres, black Memphians could regain some of their
mental liberties.
Another
example of black Memphians embracing popular culture to propel the movement
forward is seen in WDIA, a Memphis radio station with all-black programming.
This station was nothing short of revolutionary. As the first radio channel in
the country to cater solely to an African American audience, WDIA played music
that was favored by the black community, broadcasted black church services, and
employed black disk jockeys and hosts who spoke extensively about politics that
affected the station’s listeners.[3]
Through this station, black Memphians had a constant source of entertainment
and discussion that was uplifting, rather than oppressive. At work and at home,
a source of comfort was only a few turns of the radio dial away. The positive
impact of WDIA on the Memphis freedom movement cannot be underestimated.
World War II brought noticeable
changes to the movement for civil rights in Memphis. As the United States
geared up to fight a war against fascism, its African American citizens were
left to wonder about the hypocrisy of the war. The average white American
citizen was able to strap on his patriotic boots in order to support the
eradication of the threat of tyranny abroad, and he was able to work in the
defense industry as a skilled worker. African Americans, on the other hand,
were only allowed to fulfill docile and servile positions. This lead to the ardent
support of the “Double V” movement. National Black leaders claimed “that
democracy could only be achieved if it were based on genuine freedom for African
Americans and for people of color in colonized nations.”[4]
Many African Americans wanted recognition as actual citizens with innate human
rights. The national discrimination in the defense industry sparked protests
within the local Memphis industry. Green reports that “over 20,000 Memphis
workers joined CIO unions between 1941 and 1945.”[5]
The pressure of black workers nationally and the threat of thousands of African
Americans marching on the nation’s capital led President Roosevelt to issue
Executive Order 8802, banning racial discrimination within the defense
industry. But Memphis businesses did not comply with the president’s Order. Black
Memphians, if hired, were typically placed in low skill jobs or, more often,
servile jobs. E. H. Crump’s influence within the black community undermined
some black leader’s efforts to gain better conditions for the black community. Crump
affiliates cancelled a key 1943 rally, spurring anger within the black
community. Crump’s hold on the black community hindered its progress. One of
the March on Washington’s Movement most prominent leaders, A. Phillip Randolph,
compared “Crump’s paternalism and black complacency with slavery.”[6]
Randolph’s critiques highlighted the irony of local black leadership. Although
it seemed like Crump was benefiting blacks, his machine only served to keep
blacks within the segregated society, while strengthening its power.
During the Cold War when the Freedom
Train began rolling through the nation, Memphis leaders banned its passage
through the city limits. The train called for desegregated viewings because it
represented things that united all American citizens—democracy, freedom, and
the notion that “all men were created equal.” The American Heritage Foundation
did not intentionally craft the train under these premises, but the strong
opposition to its integrated viewings in Southern cities resulted in the train
symbolizing more than just an exhibit. It spurred conflicting opinions of
freedom. The battle over the train was paired with Memphis college students
emerging as leader in the fight for freedom. These students established “their
own demands for rights…in the context of the Cold War…[and] anticolonial
movements.”[7] Student
leaders separated themselves from the previous trend of local black leaders;
they promoted civil rights openly and enthusiastically. They attended rallies,
weighed in on legislation, and encouraged their communities to vote. The
Freedom Train controversy combined with the LeMoyne students’ activism
contributed to the demise of the Crump machine. During the 1948 election
season, black Memphians were finally able to break the chains of the Crump
machine.
A
formal, systematic approach of confronting segregation and mistreatment in
World War II era-Memphis allowed the essence of formal educational
ideology—famously advocated in the early twentieth century by W.E.B. DuBois—to
flourish, becoming a hallmark of the Memphis freedom movement. Colleges like
LeMoyne were pivotal in this liberation-through-education tactic, as evidenced in
their Freedom Train involvement and their outspoken activism mentioned in the previous paragraph. Through
pursuing higher education and uniting as academics with a common goal, black students
and educators were able to garner greater freedoms for African Americans in
Memphis than were previous generations, despite being forced to abide by
societal conditions very much dominated by a white supremacist, plantation
mentality. It is important to remember that this appreciation of education was
rooted in the experiences of those oppressed by slavery, those who first
learned to confront inequality with what little they had before garnering
greater measures of freedom throughout the South in the movement overall.
Increasing the access to education and encouraging students to unite was essential
to moving the Memphis Movement in the right direction.
Often, the transformation of figures
like Dr. Martin Luther King and Ida B. Wells into folk heroes hinders real
examination into their humanity; perhaps even more importantly, it also diverts
historical attention from the hundreds of thousands of African Americans who
instituted change in their daily lives through avenues such as war and
war-related activities, popular culture, and education, among other
institutions. Everyday activists receive recognition in Green’s work as she
portrays the permeation of segregation and bigotry as well as the efforts to
move past these restraining societal features. In their own unique ways,
education, popular culture, and broadly-defined war involvement and rhetoric
helped move the Memphis Movement for increased freedom and equality forward. The
war for Civil Rights was not fought or won only in the oval office, on the Senate
floor, or in the Supreme Court. Memphis’ localized struggles for equality serve as a microcosm of the greater
movement that was happening on the ground throughout the nation.
[1]
Laurie B. Green, Battling the Plantation
Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC
Press, 2007), 145.
[2]
Robin D. G. Kelley, “We Are Not What We Seem”: Rethinking Black Working Class
Opposition in the Jim Crow South, The
Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993), 85.
[3]
Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality,
142-143.
[4]
Ibid, 48.
[5]
Ibid, 51.
[6]
Ibid, 75.
[7]
Ibid, 141.
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