Historians and the Civil Rights Movement

Fairclough, Adam

doi:10.1017/s0021875800033697

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…Black heritage started to be recognized thanks to the influence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement used mass nonviolent action to fight the social oppression endured by Black people around the country (Fairclough 1990;Morris 1999). African American communities gained an increased sense of recognition, changing how local history has been perceived and understood (Lee 2012).…”

Section: Including Black Heritage In Historic Preservation Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Black Heritage in the National Register: The Williams Avenue YWCA in Portland, Oregon

Redaelli,

Arroyo,

Carson

2024

Urban Affairs Review

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This paper examines the nomination of the Williams Avenue YWCA in Portland, Oregon, in the National Register of Historic Places as a crucial event in recognizing and preserving Black heritage within American national history. Our analytical framework combines Black geography and multilevel governance theory (MLG) to examine documents used for the nomination process. We unpack the historic significance of the Williams, illustrating its multifaceted role in Portland's African American community and emphasizing the role of various private and public actors in the nomination process. This analysis reveals that cities play a crucial role in protecting local history and highlights the importance of nurturing connections between cities and other levels of government. Moreover, it illustrates how the documents used for the nomination process are a tool for racial equity and it shows how historic preservation contributes to a more inclusive understanding of cities by celebrating their local, diverse, and pluralistic pasts.

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Section: Including Black Heritage In Historic Preservation Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Black Heritage in the National Register: The Williams Avenue YWCA in Portland, Oregon

Redaelli,

Arroyo,

Carson

2024

Urban Affairs Review

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“…The historiography of the civil rights movement is voluminous, and numerous historians have attempted the daunting task of synthesising the growing body of literature (Gaines, 2002;Lawson, 1991;Fairclough, 1990). Most relevant to this study is the important shift in recent decades away from older narratives that focused on a top-down approach to social change with an emphasis on biographies of leaders, especially Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, and the relationship between prominent organisations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), national politics centred on Washington DC, and legal changes in the South (Garrow, 1986;Oates, 1982;Branch, 1988).…”

Section: Historians' Evolving Interpretations: the Civil Rights Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Collective memory and historical narratives: The African American civil rights movement

Hughes¹,

Brown²

2021

History Education Research Journal

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This study explores how undergraduates, as historical thinkers, learn to interact with history and construct their understanding of the past, and examines the role that primary and secondary sources play in narrative construction and revision. Using the African American civil rights movement as a content focus, participants used images to create initial narratives that reflected their understanding of the movement. Half the participants then read an essay on the movement written by a prominent historian, and the other half examined 18 primary sources that reflected the historian’s interpretation of the movement. Participants then each created a second narrative, again selecting images to depict their understanding of the movement. The results of the study suggest that even as students work with primary sources, they need an effective narrative framework based on recent scholarship to forge powerful counter-narratives that transcend outdated interpretations and historical myths. In terms of teaching and learning about the lengthy struggle for racial justice in the United States, simply encouraging teachers and students to ‘do history’ and conduct their own online research is unlikely to change persistent narrative structures that continue to enable and excuse systemic racism.

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“…But there has always been another narrative of the civil rights movement stressing disappointment in its accomplishments (Allen ; Carson ; Fairclough ). It is the view that the movement did little to improve the day‐to‐day lives of blacks in poverty‐stricken Northern cities or Southern rural areas.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful? Tracking and Understanding Black Views

Santoro

2015

Sociological Forum

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Was the modern civil rights movement successful? I depart from traditional approaches that judge success in terms of political inclusion and policy response and instead ask “ordinary” blacks what they thought. Using 1968 survey data, I find that while a slight majority (58%) believed that the movement successfully reduced racial discrimination, a sizable share (42%) saw failure. It seems most accurate to conclude that both perspectives resonated with large segments of the black population. I next examine who thought the movement a success and uncover that blacks of higher economic standing had the most faith in the movement's achievements. This result supports critics who thought that the poor were left behind by the movement's gains. Finally, while there was overall stability from 1968 to 2000 in opinion, the mid‐1980s represented the nadir in thinking the movement successful. This development appears to have been a reaction to the racially hostile Reagan administration and the worsening economic position of blacks in the 1980s. Views on the civil rights movement, thus, are a living memory that can be altered by contemporary deleterious developments. I conclude by arguing that conceptualizations of success should be grounded in how movements impact the everyday lives of their constituency.

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Historians and the Civil Rights Movement

Cited by 19 publications

References 18 publications

Black Heritage in the National Register: The Williams Avenue YWCA in Portland, Oregon

Black Heritage in the National Register: The Williams Avenue YWCA in Portland, Oregon

Collective memory and historical narratives: The African American civil rights movement

Was the Civil Rights Movement Successful? Tracking and Understanding Black Views

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