MLK Day and the African-American Experience

Martin Luther King day is suppose to be a moment when we reflect on the contributions made by Martin Luther King, Jr. It is that, but "_________ day" has always struck me as a problematic construction. I think MLK would point out, "What are you doing the other 364 days?" It is an easy criticism and I am not making it. The struggle to get an MLK day was hard, so its a celebration we should be proud to have. Indeed, I can point to the events organized by the Office of Multicultural Affairs at Rollins for proof of the commitment to celebrate the message and legacy of Martin Luther King.

Still, I'm an academic and with an election coming up this particular MLK day has me in a reflective mood. In an era of an African-American president, how do we judge the legacy of Martin Luther King? Is racism no longer the social ill it once was? It is clear that in many ways the struggles that animated the civil right movement in the twentieth century are not the same today. The evolution is worth considering as we celebrate MLK in 2012.

We live in a society with radically different expectations related to race. When W.E.B. Dubois addressed the question of social equality between blacks and whites in 1920, he made it clear that that social equality was the means to "associate with one's fellowmen." This simple goal, so easily achieved today, triggered violence against African-Americans throughout the United States. Indeed, the destruction of Rosewood, Florida in 1923 offers a vivid example of the threat of violence that defined the African-American experience for much of the twentieth century.



The struggle for racial equality associated with Martin Luther King began decades before King's appearance. The National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal strategy championed a systematic attack on Jim Crow segregation through a series of court cases that challenged segregation. Still, for all those efforts, King provided a much needed public face to the civil rights struggle. His emergence on the national scene with the Montgomery Bus Boycott was pitch perfect. A well educated, articulate religious leader from a good family, he spoke with reasoned eloquence about the need for social justice.



Still, the reality was that King became a public face for the civil rights movement in part because behind the scene struggles prompted a search for a "fresh face" to lead the boycott. He was untainted by the internal politics that the ongoing struggles for social justice produced. Far from absolute consensus, the struggle for equality required action, but that action was not always welcomed or the path to it clear. Conflict could and did abound happen on the way to social justice.




Martin Luther King was able, as leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, to bring together the grassroots efforts of individuals and organizations across the south. He was the group's public face and he became the person that many white Americans associated with struggle against segregation. In reality, groups such as NAACP, the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worked in parallel with the SCLC and King. Sometime they agreed and worked together, sometime they disagreed and worked apart. The centrality of the church and the emphasis on nonviolent resistance personified by King gave the SCLC a moral certainty many white Americans found compelling. Even if they were not comfortable with racial equality in practice, they respected the moral message in principle. As a result moderate white Americans found it hard to reject calls for justice, especially when confronted with the massive, often violence resistance mustered by southerners against non-violent protesters.



It does nothing to diminish Dr. King to say he understood the media. We tend to ignore the fact that the Civil Right movement had high points and low points. During the low points, civil right activists planned their next action with an understanding that they needed to regain momentum or bring the public eye back to the struggle. Classic moments such as the Children's Crusade in Birmingham garnered negative reactions at the time because it put children in the midst of the action against Eugene "Bull" Connors, a segregationist renowned for his violence reactions. King's response to the criticism, his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is a direct and articulated answer to the problem pose by struggling for social justice.

As celebrated as MLK is for his thoughtful message and nonviolent tactics, it is
perhaps equally important to King's success that he was often contrasted against an unsavory alternative. Malcolm X emerged as the equally articulate spokesperson for the Nation of Islam around the same time as Martin Luther King. Of course, Malcolm X message did little to comfort whites. Indeed, the contrast between the two often ignored the similarities in favor of sharp distinction on the question of violence. For many white Americans, Malcolm X, who advocated African-American self-defense and self-pride threaten them with violence with his every action and word.



The reality is more complicated. It is true that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King seem at odd in terms of the rhetoric. Yet, in practice King and X represented differing views on how to achieve the shared goal of African-American uplift.



Of course, the moderation of Malcolm X's views after his break from the Nation of Islam made this comparison problematic. The fact that both men continued to speak about the need to address poverty even as segregation was attacked by new legal standards further highlights the common themes in their individual messages. The death of both men prevented them from reconciling their message for the public. Indeed, by the 1970s the struggle for desegregation was in many ways overshadowed by the emergence of other social justice campaigns by disabled persons, women, gays and lesbians, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos in the United States. Race did not stop being a problem, it was joined with a long list of other social concerns. In this atmosphere the struggle to achieve equality has become more complicated.

What would MLK say about the state of the African-American experience today? I'm not sure. It is clear African-Americans still struggle in the United States. Despite the election of a black president, poverty, crime, and health care are still problems for African-Americans. The difference today is perhaps that racism is not as closely linked to other problems. An interlocking matrix of influences linked to race, class, and gender challenge modern society. In this atmosphere, can we be sure that racism is the cause of high rates of African-American incarceration or is there something to be said about the problem face by the working poor? In this analysis, working-class poverty is the problem, and African-Americans, who also face limitation because of racial stereotypes, face an amplified effect growing from the discrimination linked to race and limited opportunity associated with class.

This is a real question and something that scholars should be considering. I count myself lucky that I have colleagues such as Rachel Newcomb,Walter Greason, Vidhu Aggarwal, Jonathan Gayles, and Denise K. Cummings( to name just a few, so if I didn't name you, it not because I don't love you:-) who are engaged in the complex work of cultural analysis. In many ways, the efforts made by individuals and groups to understand and address the persistent obstacles to equality mirror Martin Luther King's efforts. At the time of his death, he was organizing his Poor People Campaign, a grassroots action to demand the government help Americans get jobs, health care, and decent housing. Perhaps this fact should animated our thinking about MLK day in 2012. The struggles that defined Martin Luther King's last days still vex us today.

Strange Symmetry

South Carolina State Legislature in 1868




Tim Scott is set to become the first African-American elected from South Carolina since Reconstruction. I take issue with the idea in the NPR piece that he is the first African-American elected from the deep south since Reconstruction because Corrine Brown was elected from Florida's 3rd Congressional District in 1992. Now, we could argue about the depth of Florida's southern identity, but I will let it go.

The specter of Scott election in South Carolina is worth a brief historical note. Remember, the Civil War began in South Carolina and during Reconstruction, the federal push to insure African-American political participation championed by the Republican Party gave African-Americans a commanding presence in state legislature. The great irony is that this era's Republican party, which struggles to define itself in an era of changing demographics has been slow to embrace minority voters. The Republican Party became the party of southern white resentment in the 1960s in the aftermath of the Civil Right legislation championed by Lyndon Johnson. The pattern of catering to anti-government, anti-democrat, and pro traditional values has been the bedrock of the party since. Scott's eventually victory will give Republicans a chance to lay claim to a history of progressive policy that most people associate with Abraham Lincoln and the defense of the Union. Anyone who considers the Republican Party's Platform from 1860 must realize the party has changed. Ironically, South Carolinians' vote for secession in 1860 was triggered by the Republican Party's victory. Southerners believed the Republican Party was a hostile to southern interests. Republicans, for their part advocated for balance between national interest and state's right. At the same time, Republicans also advocated for anti-corruption and greater fiscal constraints. As the platform states, the party viewed, "the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans." Still, southerners took issue with anti-slavery elements of the platform. Scott's campaign has championed him as a conservative republican, a label that is linked, in my mind, to Republican politics in the aftermath of civil right activism in the 1960s not the Republicans of the 1860s. It could be Scott's very presence will shift the party and open a dialogue about what the Republican Party stands for in the United States. On the other hand, the anxiety and frustration the Republican Party has tapped since the 1960s may leave little room for African-American voices they have long identified with undermining southern traditions.

Historical Perspective

This semester is moving along. I have the first exam to grade, a search committee to get through, and worries about next academic years to consider. Despite all of that, I'm gonna drop in on the Daily Buzz tomorrow and give some input on the Chris Matthews issue and the state of African-American marriage. Morning shows are perfect for inviting you and giving you just enough time for a soundbite. Still, as a friend one said to me, "You gotta take the information to the people."

In the case of the African-Americans and marriage, it a complicate problem. The fact of the matter is that marriage in the United State is not what it use to be. The societal restriction against divorce has lessen and as a result couples divorce at higher rates. When you factor in race, the numbers get worst, especially for African-Americans. Yet, the factor related to African-Americans marriage are not all unique to the black community. Since the 1960s, social commentators have pointed to female-head household as failure of the black family.

The causes and consequences single-family household are complicated. Conservatives point to disincentive associated with marriage and general family created by social welfare program. On the other hand, de-industrialization, suburbanization, and crime have led to problems as varied as high incarnation rate for African-American males to low educational achievement. This means young black men are not available to wed during prime marriage age. Added to that, the number of African-American men who drop out of school means there is an education deficit that affected social and economic opportunity. Consider the factors women use (regardless of race) when considering marriage: security and prospect of long terms support. In both cases African-American males often fail in the lowest percentile of any measure. Education also broadens the world view, which adds to possibility of marrying outside your racial group and pushes the median marriage age up. These factors combine to force African-American women to search longer for a suitable mate.

African-American Middle-class women (who tend not to marry outside their race) are further marginalize by stereotypes of beauty and behavior that continue to be produced by popular media. All these factors lead to troubling marriage pattern for African-Americans. Both Working-class and Middle-class African-Americans suffer from the cascading issues that undermine traditional marriage. The problem is amplified by media coverage that conflate issues related to class and race to individual moral failing and/or absence of personal responsibility.

I'm not going to solve the problem with two minute segments, but maybe I can try to clarify some of these issues.

The Social in History

The irony of summer vacation for an academic is that you "work" more during the summer on certain projects than you do during the year. This summer, I have spent some time honing my oral history skill with a workshop sponsored by the Maitland Historical Society (MHS). The MHS sponsored a NIH approved certification program for oral history techniques. I have done some training, but new regulations are always being created. The NIH certification is important part of making sure I know the rules and regulation governing oral history projects. The workshop was great and I got a chance to use my new and hopefully improved skills to conduct an oral interview with a Maitland resident this week. Louise Franklin, the subject of my interview, is from one of the pioneer African-American families in Central Florida. Her parents, Larkin and Effie Franklin purchased land in Maitland in the early 1900s. The ten acre parcel they purchased on Lake Sibila became a focal point for the African-American community in Eatonville and Maitland. Louise Franklin, the youngest living member of the Franklin family, expresses great pride in the fact that her family retains control of the property today. Their home is a bit of living history, the trees on the property were planted by Ms. Franklin's father and you can see evidence of the effort he made to make his property a center of community life. As a large landowner, he opened his home to his neighbors in times of celebration and emergency. The Franklin family story challenges the traditional narrative of African-American life in the deep south. Rather than a story of landless desperate African-Americans at the mercy of the white majority, the Franklins owned property, educated their children, and served as pillar of their community. Their home serve as center of activity for holiday celebrations and with a basement, the Franklin home was the community's shelter from harsh Florida storms. Larkin Franklin worked as chauffeur for the mayor of Maitland, but he was maximized his land value planting oranges and other crops. The Franklin family history does not discount the problems faced by African-Americans, indeed their success was built on a rural Florida where black and white interaction was tightly controlled. The Franklin worked in the white society, but lived in a black world. Central Florida African-American community developed with small overall population, punishing climate, and lack of infrastructure acting as barriers to interaction that might lead to violence. Nonetheless, violence was a concern, especially for those African-Americans that dared to challenge Jim Crow rule. Understanding the Franklin family story broadens our understanding of how black life in Central Florida developed.

More stories to come.

Review of Reviews: The African-American Experience

I'm stuck in the midst of the "reviews of reviews" and have everything to do. Still it is a time of reflection and as I consider theory and practice in small ways and big--I see what I have done and can still do. The upside is, it occurs to me, I've done a lot! The downside is, it occurs to me, I haven't done as much as I would like:( Case in point, public history projects, of which I have a few, haven't developed fully into the forms I think necessary to provide the information to the wider community. Not to say things haven't been done, they have, but they need to look and feel better. I was talking to Vidhu Aggrawal about the next issue of her journal SPECS. SPECS is a world class publication done with small budget and staff. By comparison, I could do better. I have been thinking about it. The key is to create some sort of mechanism to standardize content and style. This mechanism (whatever it may be) will allow work done my students and faculty to be presented in clean and organized way. There is plenty to explore and once I get it working I think the public will be interested. For me, Central Florida offers a unique story about Gilded Age and Progressive Era, African-American experience, and Art and Culture in the twentieth century. As the coordinator of the Africa and African-American Studies Program, I am of course interested in getting students and the public exploring that history. The fact that Winter Park was designed with the assumption that African-Americans would live west of the railroad tracks and work in white community as support staff created a unique opportunity for a stable and in some ways, very prosperous black community to develop. I think you can see a strong connection between Hannibal Square in West Winter Park and the other more famous black community in Central Florida, Eatonville. Eatonville is famous because of Zora Neale Hurston, but of course, Zora had a unique relationship with Winter Park through the support provided to her by members of the Rollins College English Department. Indeed, the Olin Library Archive at Rollins has a Zora Neale Hurston collection that highlight the link between the author and the college. Still, a bigger question of autonomy and agency needs to be explored in the Central Florida area. I think the effect of leisure economy and Florida's existence as a frontier space allowed for greater sense of freedom for African-Americans in communities like Hannibal Square and Eatonville. Of course Jim Crow racism existed, the story of Hannibal Square's detachment from the town of Winter Park as way to undermine African-American Republican voters testifies to the power of white supremacy in Florida. Yet, the family history collection on display at the Hannibal Square Heritage Center demonstrates that African-Americans found ways to continue to function and thrive.


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