It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them: Collective Memory and Collective Action during the Civil Rights Movement

Harris, Fredrick C.

doi:10.1080/14742830600621159

Cited by 69 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The results of these analyses are generally consonant with other work (Gibson, 2006;Griffin & Bollen, 2009;Harris, 2006), suggesting possible causal impacts of social memory on present attitudes and beliefs. However, the moderate size and imperfect consistency of the effects are also in line with Satterwhite's (2005) discussion of the ways memory projects may fall short of their goals.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 87%

What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress

Ghoshal

2015

Race and Justice

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In recent decades, African Americans have called for greater reckoning with historic race-related violence. One such violent incident took place in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1979, when Klansmen killed five Communist demonstrators. Greensboro's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created in 2004 as an intervention into collective memory of the killings. In this article, I draw on a unique survey of 716 respondents about this case to make three arguments. First, I argue that memory projects can induce mnemonic overlap between creators and audiences, modestly stimulating support for redress of historic injustice. Second, I show that while ''preaching to the choir'' and to undecided audiences is effective, building project awareness among ideological opponents triggers increased resistance, not persuasion. Third, I show that audiences filtered the project's story through its key characters' ingrained reputations, especially that of the Ku Klux Klan, which constrained and enabled the Commission's effectiveness in surprising ways. I discuss implications for commemorative projects as a part of redress.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 87%

What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress

Ghoshal

2015

Race and Justice

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“…Griffin, 2004;Hajek, 2013) while those of the second have considered how social movements, both past and present, actively utilize collective memory (e.g. Armstrong & Crage, 2006;Daphi, 2017;Harris, 2006). The latter approach, to which this article aligns, has revealed the multiple roles that collective memories plays within social movements, not only contributing to their broader collective identities, but also their framing practices, narratives and repertoires and providing means to sustain movement continuity (Doerr, 2014;Gongaware, 2010;Kubal & Becerra, 2014;Zamponi & Daphi, 2014).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The rhythms of social movement memories: the mobilization of Silvio Meier’s activist remembrance across platforms

Merrill

Lindgren

2018

Social Movement Studies

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This article presents a temporal analysis of the activist remembrance of Silvio Meier, a prominent member of Berlin's radical left scene, who was stabbed to death in 1992. It asks: when has Meier's activist remembrance occurred and been remediated, with what rhythms, and how has it been influenced by different platforms? To answer these questions, the article draws on the literature dedicated to the interface between social movements and collective and connective memory, and applies Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis approach. Within this approach a diverse set of material is used to visualise the timing of the digital and non-digital remediation and mobilisation of Meier's remembrance across different platforms of memory including commemorative events, newspapers, websites and social media. Thereafter the various temporalities of use associated with these platforms and how they can influence the mobilisation of remembrance by social movements is discussed using Lefebvre's concepts of polyrhythmia, arrhythmia, isorhythmia, eurhythmia and with respect to, firstly, a fifteen-year period between 2002 and 2017 and secondly, a fifteen-day period between 15 November and 30 November 2012 around the twentieth anniversary of Meier's death. The article concludes by introducing another Lefebvrian conceptdressagein order to consider which rhythms of activist remembrance might most benefit social movements and their goals. Overall, by demonstrating the importance of attending to the when and not only the what, who, where and how of social movement memories and by highlighting the need to consider the temporal influence of the different digital and non-digital platforms that activists use, as well as, by indicating the broader potential of applying rhythmanalysis approaches to instances of activism, the article has broader relevance for the further study of social movements, their use of different media and their mobilization of memory.

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“…Schuman and Rieger (1992), for example, find that Americans who, in 1991, compared Iraq to Germany in the 1930s, rather than to Vietnam in the 1960s, were more approving of the first Gulf War. Finally, Harris's (2006) statistical evidence suggests that African Americans who, in 1966, remembered particular aspects of the nation's troubled racial past (i.e., the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till for southern blacks and the 1954 Brown v. Topeka decision for African Americans elsewhere in the country) were more likely to engage in civil rights activism. Finally, Harris's (2006) statistical evidence suggests that African Americans who, in 1966, remembered particular aspects of the nation's troubled racial past (i.e., the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till for southern blacks and the 1954 Brown v. Topeka decision for African Americans elsewhere in the country) were more likely to engage in civil rights activism.…”

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confidence: 99%

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

Griffin¹,

Bollen²

2009

Am Sociol Rev

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Scholarly inquiry into collective memory has fostered a host of innovative questions, perspectives, and interpretations about how individuals and communities are both constituted by the past and mobilize it for present-day projects. Race is one of the more important current issues demonstrating how the presence of the past is both potent and sorrowful in the United States. It is therefore critical to examine how memories of racial oppression, conflict, and reconstruction shape race relations. Studies of race relations, however, generally ignore collective memory's role in shaping racial norms and attitudes. This article uses the 1993 General Social Survey to address the silences in the collective memory and race relations literatures by examining how Americans' recollections of the civil rights movement influence their racial attitudes and racial policy preferences. Although we find that Americans' opinions about government programs targeting African Americans are unrelated to civil rights memory, respondents who spontaneously recalled the civil rights struggle and its victories as an especially important historical event generally expressed more racially liberal opinions than did those with different memories. Our findings both support the basic presupposition of collective memory studies—memory matters—and point to a fruitful innovation in the study of racial attitudes.

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It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them: Collective Memory and Collective Action during the Civil Rights Movement

Cited by 69 publications

References 13 publications

What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress

What Does Remembering Racial Violence Do? Greensboro’s Truth Commission, Mnemonic Overlap, and Attitudes toward Racial Redress

The rhythms of social movement memories: the mobilization of Silvio Meier’s activist remembrance across platforms

What Do These Memories Do? Civil Rights Remembrance and Racial Attitudes

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