By Lee Sartain, Senior Lecturer in History.
History at university is all about the detail – but not so detailed as to lose the overall plot. How do people in hundreds of towns and cities across a country combine in order to create a movement? What is it that affects their everyday lives in order for them to become a movement? This grassroots approach to the African American civil rights movement has been the recent historical trend – the lives of activists in communities across the nation that form change and may never be heard about by most people but are intimately connected to social revolution and national reform.
African American slave photo from Laura Plantation, Louisiana.
Louisiana, a deep southern state, is unlike most other states in the Union – firstly, it is the only place in the US to have parishes rather than counties and this reflects its French and Spanish colonial past. Purchased by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, Louisiana became gradually more Americanized, coming to represent an important region for trade along the Mississippi River, a centre for musical innovation and creativity, and the oil trade. It was also known for its brutal slavery and racial apartheid system. Challenging white supremacy was no easy task and studying the individuals and groups that finally saw the toppling of apartheid is both a task of acute detail and national synthesis.
My work has been focused on one of the oldest American civil rights organizations, the NAACP, mainly in Louisiana, Maryland, and, for personal reasons, New Mexico (I love typing Albuquerque – but I spell it wrong every time). The encyclopaedia entries I have undertaken for 64 Parishes (an online database) shows the breadth and depth of Louisiana citizens’ commitment to the civil rights. They appear ordinary and extraordinary – reminding us that people in History are just living their lives and interpreting the world around them – who usually do not reflect on their own bravery whilst working for social betterment.
Bogalusa civil rights march against police brutality, 1965. Source: The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
My various entries on 64 Parishes show women who were teachers, preachers, and entrepreneurs – leaders of their communities – who organized to bring down racial oppression during the 1920s to the 1960s – through local, state and national networks. Georgia Johnson, newspaper editor, café owner, and legal terrier, was persistently harassed by police for single-handedly investigating the Alexandria riot in 1942. This was the largest social unrest in the wartime America that was suppressed as it was thought it would create propaganda for the Axis powers and show America in a racist light. Fannie Williams of New Orleans was a leading light in education in some of the most deprived parts of New Orleans and linked social reforms alongside civil rights activities. Delphine Dupuy of Baton Rouge was a long-time activist who helped organize the bus boycott of 1953 that became the template for the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56.
Fannie C. Williams teaching sewing. Source: The Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
Such lives shows the complex jigsaw of social activism – very much the approach undertaken in my third-year module, Civil Rights USA. Such social movements are never about just one person (invariably a man) but about social and economic changes that take decades to develop – by women often overlooked by the popular histories.
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