Virginia Ariail, Michael Williamson, MaKenzie Mosby, Caroline Fowler, and Ashley Dill

11/7/16

Civil Rights in Memphis

Dr. McKinney

Group Review 3

Memphis has long been an icon, positively and negatively, in its ever pushing struggle towards equality. While the main focus of the Movement during this time was integration, many crucial facets of the Memphis Movement found more success going against this. Crucial to this success was the youth-- students, artists, and college students. Over the course of nearly 20 years, Memphis public schools were legally obligated to integrate, but the obvious time frame was not ideal. The Law could not account for the consistent push-back by white Memphians the legal integration had. However, local artists and college students, the younger generations of Memphis, took “de facto” segregation into their own hands, solidifying their approaches in equality by working against integration. At Stax, black musicians became the sole face of the recording studio, creating a unified and all African American company for the economic and cultural advantages for black folk. Black college students at local schools formed even tighter knit communities and activist groups to face the oppression still against them at their integrated schools. The attempt of integration of all public schools also occurring throughout this time represents the failure of integration and reflects a much larger feeling of dissatisfaction also seen in Stax, and college campuses. The presence of youth, and young adults in this Movement is incredibly important because of their desires to learn and help now, also creating activists for generations to come.

Much like the student movement that it both responded to and influenced, the Memphis Soul Music Scene, in the form of Stax Records, coalesced with the rise of the Black Power Movement, celebrated black culture, and provided a platform for black economic development. Music illustrates a unique commercial product as it is both a cultural element and something sellable. Stax Records in its early inception championed racial harmony and integration. It’s location in a predominately black neighborhood and the fact that many of its groups comprised both white and black musicians helped further this narrative of a racially harmonious institution. However, African American leaders and musicians alike criticized the perceived racial hierarchy of the Scene. Although Stax’ artists were mostly black and its audience was likewise mostly black, the positions within the label’s management were mainly white. Similarly, due to the success of the scene and the label, many thought that whites were coopting traditionally black music and changing it into a more palatable form. As a result, black musicians at Stax and other black political leaders fought for greater control in the operation of the label and the music scene.  

        Starting in the late 1960s, Stax Records aligned itself more with the Black Power Ideology to better represent the demands of both its audience and as a means to correct racial grievances. Under the helm of Ad Bell, Stax instituted policies for “greater racial equality” to set an example for African Americans to create their own businesses in the music scene. He changed the face of the record label from one of integration and more identifiable to African Americans. However, Bell’s pursuit, like the student movement, did not go without its own form of controversy from the traditional order. For example, Estelle Axton, an early investor at Stax, left after feeling alienated by the new direction of the label and, likewise, Steve Cooper criticized the change as disrupting the “racial camaraderie.” In Stax Records’ adoption of Black Power ideology, it crafted a cultural institution that exemplified the pursuit of black autonomy in business and cultural direction, in contrast to the myth of racial integration that pervaded the older image of Stax.  

Similarly to the aura that surrounded Stax Records, the desegregation of schools also proved to be a point in the movement that was revered as a much larger step than it was in reality. Even though the desegregation of schools following the Brown v. Board case in 1954 appeared to be an advancement in the Civil Rights movement, it was also a display of how flawed and oppressive the system truly was. In Memphis, there was a disconnect between the concepts of “de jure” and “de facto” segregation. “De jure” segregation refers to the idea of segregation primarily from a legal standpoint. In 1954, the Supreme Court overruled the ruling of Plessy V. Ferguson by stating that “separate but equal was inherently unequal.” It then called for the segregation of schools throughout the country. Even though this marked a monumental step in the Civil Rights movement, it neglected to give each state and school a plan for how to make this vision a reality. This then calls in the idea of “de facto” segregation, which runs much deeper within the culture and is much more difficult to change.

Rather than provide each state and school with a plan, it left it up to each individual case to identify the best course of action when desegregating their institutions. However, specifically in the case of Memphis, this became the downfall of the success of the new system. It did not provide guidelines for states to follow and allowed them to make the process as difficult, slow, and time-consuming as they saw fit. In Memphis, multiple plans for the integration of school were proposed before one was agreed upon. Following Brown v. Board, it took Memphis six years to begin the discussion of integration and seventeen before a plan was implemented. The separation between the decision and action is an example of the discrepancies of the movement. It displays how even though the physical law was evolving, it was much more difficult to implement these changes within the culture and minds of the people. One example can be seen in one of the first proposed plans for school integration. In 1957, the Tennessee Pupil Assignment Law was passed which “required local school districts to develop administrative remedies that would begin to dismantle the century-old system of state-required school segregation.” The state then also implemented a voluntary transfer arrangement that would allow students to have more choice in where they wanted to attend school. In theory, this would mean that in a matter of years the system would be fully integrated. However, the following year, an African American boy named Gerald Young was denied entrance into an all-white elementary school. This incident displayed how even though the correct, evolved legislation was in place, there were still issues implementing them into the general population.

During the Civil Rights Movement, students and young people played a crucial role in the advancement of civil rights by bringing new perspectives and tactics into a seemingly established and settled movement. So many of these young people in Memphis were not satisfied by the results of legislation that was passed in the 1960s and thus began thinking about the fight for equality in different ways. They worked beyond what older advocates in civil rights had settled for in an effort to see the changes that still remained to be seen despite passage of legislation. With the rise of black power, unity on campuses among black activists began to grow in Memphis with the creation of the Black Organizing Project in 1967 which “represented a stark departure from Memphis’s traditional outlets for black activism”. This organization was not just for the middle-class or college students, but instead was a grassroots effort to gather youth from churches, schools, and recreation areas. The purpose of this group was to “stimulate in young blacks a sense of black identity, black pride, and black consciousness... to cease to be dependent upon and influenced by the white race.”

The BOP not only brought together college aged youth but began recruiting high schoolers and post-graduates in order to create a culture and community rather than simply an activist group. This is a different approach than what is typically thought of as a tactic in the Civil Rights Movement which was generally that of fighting for legislation and equality. Instead, this tactic was inclusive because “black youth found themselves on the fringes of civil rights and political activity in the city and the middle-class black leadership that had paved the way for the Black Power generation but failed to effectively utilize and sustain a significant youth-activism presence.” The BOP along with other organizations like the Black Student Association helped to change that by shepherding youth into positions of activism. As students in these organizations, they could express their opinions to their institution’s administration while maintaining the freedom and power to protest. This is an important aspect in the fight for equality because due to their position in society as youths who weren’t dependent on an employer, they had the ability and freedom to skip class for the sake of protest and simply faced little pressure to fit into society’s norms as a black person in America. The autonomy of these students was their greatest strength, was crucial to their success, and continues to contribute to Black Lives Matter activism on campuses today.

Putting Kinchen and Gritter’s books in conversation, a clear picture is painted on students’ activism at the University of Memphis, LeMoyne College, and Owen College. For example, both authors focus on black students’ struggle to integrated into the social and campus life of the university. Students at University of Memphis, LeMoyne College, and Owen College organizing black student associations at their respective campuses demanded that they receive institutional recognition and assembly power. These rights provided an avenue for black students at these campuses to thrive.  Institutional recognition allowed the students to receive student organization funding for events that would support themselves as students. In addition, their organizations would use this funding to host resourceful events for those in the communities where the students are from. However, neither of the books include a discussion about black students’ activism at Rhodes. Why is Rhodes excluded from the conversation on students’ activism in Memphis on college campuses? There are a multitude of reasons that Kinchen and Gritter did not explore black students’ activism at Rhodes. The most plausible reason is that the information was not available.  Ultimately, Rhodes did not chronicle the history of the social lives, work, and activism of first black students on campus. Evidence that Rhodes did not chronicle this history lies in the 50th anniversary of Rhodes’ integration. Neither the administration, Rhodes archivists, nor any other library staff took the initiative to display any information regarding this occasion. A student created the small board currently displayed in Barrett library. Not including Rhodes in the story of black student activism on the city’s college campuses misses a large piece of the story. However, larger question is why has Rhodes erased this history from its memory?