Lecture 9 Notes

Differing Political Responses to the African American Condition

NAACP

• Established in 1910, biracial in orientation.  An outgrowth of the Niagara Movement begun by W. E. B. Du Bois.
• Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, wrote the invitation to “all believers in democracy to join in a National conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty.”
• Monroe Trotter had been one of the central figures at the Niagara movement but he refused to attend the conference where the NAACP was established.  Trotter was suspicious of the motives of whites.  He thought their presence would limit the radicalism of the group.
• From the outset, the organization was committed to fighting for legal change.  Major emphases were court challenges to Jim Crow legislation, and a push for a federal anti-lynching bill.
• Pledged to fight for the abolition of all forced segregation, equal education for black and white children, the complete enfranchisement of African Americans, and the enforcement of the 14th and 15th Amendments.
• When the organization was formally created, Du Bois was the only African American officer.
• Du Bois’ presence made many think that the organization was radical.  It was denounced by most white philanthropists and even some blacks.  Jews were the only consistent form of support -- Arthur and Joel Spingarn, in particular.  In fact, the organization was hardly radical.  It worked within the system to change laws or advocate for change.
• Crisis, the official magazine of the group,  reached a circulation of 10,000 by 1918.
• First branch was in Chicago, not an accidental choice given the large African American community there following the Migration.  By 1921, there were over 400 branches nationwide

Urban League

• The NAACP had a plank to improve economic opportunity for blacks, but it did not find time to do much in this area.
• In 1911, two organizations (Committee for Improving Industrial Conditions of Negroes in New York, and the National League for the Protection of Colored Women) merged to form the National League on Urban Conditions Among Negroes, known more widely as the Urban League.
• Again it was a biracial organization, funded in part by Julius Rosenwald (the owner of Sears, also a Jew).
• Booker T. conferred his blessing on the Urban League, as it promoted a generally conservative uplift ideology.
• Purposes of the Urban League included:  opening new opportunities for African Americans in industry and to assist newly arrived blacks in their adjustment to urban centers; meeting immigrants, directing them to jobs and lodging, and offering information on how to live in the city.  In this, the League functioned much like organizations common among other urban ethnic communities.
• Eventually the Urban League published a newspaper, the Opportunity, in 1923.

Liberals, Progressives, Intellectuals, and the Like

• Most focused on moral reform.  The intellectuals and progressives who worked in the organizations were products of their time.  They saw political issues and reform in moral terms and assumed a high moral tone.
• They interpreted racial problems as social aberrations due to corruption, fear, or ignorance.
• Therefore their method was to expose racial injustice.  Their assumption was that the moral weight of good would win once evil was exposed.  They placed their hope on reason, logic, and moral suasion.  In particular, they hoped that the "better class" of whites would recognize the evils of racism and then work to reform society and educate and restrain the lower classes.  This conservative model of integration and moderate reform would dominate social and political thought in the black community throughout the twentieth century, with a few prominent exceptions (like Garvey, Malcolm X).
• A major criticism of the NAACP and Urban League was that they offered no radical solutions; therefore they affirmed that the system was basically sound.
• Additionally, both groups supported African American participation in World War I.  They believed that through patriotic service blacks could achieve equality and justice.

Marcus Garvey

• Garvey was West Indian, which created certain potential problems.  There had long been antipathy and suspicion between African Americans and West Indians.  West Indians had been free longer, and the British had provided education for all in the British Empire, so they were generally better educated than those only a generation or two out of slavery.  They acted more like immigrants, which they were, than like African Americans.  They had their own networks, and did not always fit in with the African American community.
• Garvey was short, dark, loud, and wore bright colors.  He was arrogant, impudent, disrespectful to his “betters.” It was easy for middle-class, intellectual blacks to dismiss him altogether.
• Garvey had initial support from A. Phillip Randolph and Monroe Trotter because he opposed blacks fighting in World War I -- like them, he didn’t believe it was their fight.
• He also didn’t ask for or want white support -- or at least that is what he said publicly.
• Garvey’s vision was for blacks in the Diaspora to go back to Africa.  It was there that blacks could fully develop and enter the international world as equals.  He pointed to the imperialism currently in practice by the industrial countries, and said that the resources of Africa should be for the Africans.
• More than the NAACP or Urban League, Garvey was radical.  He said the United States, and the entire European continent, could not be reformed.  He saw the actions of the Urban League and the NAACP as attempts to make peace with the devil.
• He established the United Negro Improvement and Conservation Association, later shortened to United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).  It was first established in 1914, in the U.S. in 1916.  He tried to begin his association in his native Jamaica, but he soon became convinced that color prejudice among the blacks there was too severe for the organization to have a fair chance.  He then moved his operation to Harlem - Lenox Avenue and 135th.
• Garvey’s was really a groundswell movement.  People who had before associated African with barbarians, black people, now saw it as a possible solution to their condition.  Garvey typically did not appeal to the elite, educated blacks, rather, he won support among the masses of impoverished blacks.

Garvey versus the Establishment

• Not only was Garvey proposing a radical solution, he was also a disciple of Booker T. Washington.  He advocated that black laborers work for less than whites in order to keep the good will of the white employers.  He believed that soon enough the UNIA state would come into existence and there equality would rule.
• Garvey questioned the leadership of some many light skinned blacks in prominent positions, he called them the “blue veined aristocracy.”  In so doing, he charged other African American leaders of establishing a caste aristocracy.
• Du Bois in Crisis, and Garvey in the Negro World, his magazine, blistered each other.
• Garvey was able to circumvent the traditional African American power structure by getting money from blacks outside of America, making his truly a Pan-African movement.  Like David Walker in the 19th century, Garvey linked the African American condition to other blacks throughout the Diaspora.
• His resistance was therefore international.  France and England banned Negro World throughout much of their colonial empires.
• J. Edgar Hoover had him placed under surveillance.

The Fall

• Garvey succeeded despite the criticism of prominent people because he never forgot his target audience.  Much like Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan later, Garvey always remembered his folks were the struggling masses and West Indian Immigrants.
• Even though the government was against him, and prominent and vocal blacks blistered him in the press, he hung on for several years.
• The beginning of the end came when he met with the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan in 1922.  Garvey respected the Klan for its directness.  He also had a similar platform, racial superiority and separateness, but meeting with the Klan was a PR disaster.
• Eventually Garvey was deported after being convicted of mail fraud, leading to the collapse of his organization and international prominence.

Another Approach:  A. Phillip Randolph and Labor

• Asa Phillip Randolph was born to James Randolph, pastor of Union Baptist Church in Crescent City, Florida.  He was valedictorian of his high school class but felt restricted in the South, so after high school graduation he hired on as a kitchen helper on board a ship traveling to New York.  He did odd jobs in New York, attended City College, and listened to the speakers on Harlem street corners.
• Randolph became enthralled with Eugene V. Debs and the Socialist Party.  The idea of a classless society was particularly fascinating. (This probably had something to do with his father’s position in Crescent City.  His father had steady income, but it was never sufficient, forcing the family to do odd jobs for extra money.)
• From Debs, Asa believed that labor and minorities could achieve freedom, equality, and justice if they worked together.
• Randolph met Lucille Green in 1914 while selling pamphlets, and they had a whirlwind romance.  Lucille was everything Asa wasn’t.  She was a successful business woman, entrenched in Harlem’s middle class, and a long time New Yorker.  She operated a very successful beauty shop in New York.  It was the place for the black society women.  Lucille tried to get Asa to accompany her to socialite parties, but he refused to go.  Instead their dates often were centered around Socialist events.  Lucille was successful, however, in getting him to accede to marriage ceremonies at St. Philip's Episcopal Church; they were married in November, 1914.
• Randolph and Chandler Owen began the Messenger, which was largely funded by Lucille’s profits at her beauty salon.  Owen and Randolph consciously called themselves the New Negro Radicals.  The Messenger was the most radical African American publication of the day.  It advocated armed struggle for freedom and consistently lambasted the black middle class for their complacency and complicity in the ongoing economic disparity and injustice.
• Randolph's radicalism railed against the prevailing wisdom of the day.  The two leading black advancement theories of the period were Du Bois' push for political and social equality, and Washington's philosophy of accommodation and steady economic gains.  Both were consistent with democratic and capitalistic principles.
• Randolph called for much more socialistic ends.  He criticized the economic system which allowed such an inordinate amount of people, both blacks and whites, to reside in poverty.
• Almost all-major African American leaders denounced Randolph and the Messenger.  And whereas both Washington and the NAACP were able to get support from white philanthropists, Randolph had no economic support other than a thin stream from socialist sympathizers.
• The NAACP and Du Bois supported World War I, thinking that through patriotic service blacks could achieve equality and justice.  On the other hand, Randolph unequivocally opposed the war.  He was against United States’ entry in the war, saying that white industrialists had more of an interest in the war than the average working man.  He didn’t think blacks had any stake in the war, and said that black war supporters were traitors to the race.  He also criticized Pres. Wilson for leading the country into the war.
• As a result of his outspoken criticisms, after the war the Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, labeled Randolph the most dangerous African American in the country.
• Randolph believed that in order to achieve black rights, activists had to create opportunity and protection for black workers.  Consequently, in the years after the war he pushed for blacks to join unions.  However, at the time AFL-sanctioned unions (representing 80% of the total) were closed to blacks.  Randolph was thus in the awkward position of advising blacks to join unions when many unions didn’t want them.

The Pullman Porters

• In the 19th Century, the railroads were the largest industry in America, and they were still powerful in the 1920s.
• George Pullman had devised a railway car which promised all the “comforts of home,” including a servant.  Pullman thought ex-slaves were the best prospects to be porters because they had learned servility and proper posture around whites.
• By 1920, Pullman was the largest employer of blacks in the nation.  Pullman porters typically earned $15 a week for 80 hours of service.  The porters received additional money from tips.
• In 1925, the porters asked Asa to organize a union, which was called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.  There was a lot of fear that Pullman would fire anyone who joined the Brotherhood.  Pullman did have a company union, which they recognized as the true bargaining agent for the porters.  Like most company unions, it was incredibly acquiescent to management and was mostly a front.
• Randolph was tireless in his organizing efforts.  He traveled a round the country constantly, and was gone from home for weeks at a time.  He often had to pass a hat at the end of his talks in order to get enough money to travel home.
• Lucille lost her business because of Asa’s harsh rhetoric, particularly the way in which he criticized the black middle class.
• Their porters' efforts could have been advanced if they had gained recognition from the AFL.  If that was done, other AFL locals would recognize their strike initiatives and refuse to cross the picket line.  Instead, the AFL denied the Brotherhood’s admittance.
• Labor became an increasingly important and vigorous force during the Depression era, which Pres. Roosevelt could not ignore.  Accordingly, he passed the Wagner Act, which, among other things, allowed workers to choose their own bargaining agent which management was compelled to recognize.
• As a bribe, the Pullman Company sent Asa a signed check with the amount to be filled in by him.  Attached was a note saying that the amount should not exceed one million dollars.  Asa copied the check and sent it back with an attached note saying, “Negro principle was not for sale.”
• Porters overwhelmingly chose the Brotherhood, which became the first African American union recognized by a major organization.
• It took 12 years, but the Brotherhood was finally a viable bargaining agent.