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Chicago School Reform: Harold Washington and a New Era of Decentralization

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

in Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s

This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s ... More

This chapter analyzes the racial politics of Mayor Harold Washington’s election, his education summit, and the supporters and critics of the 1988 Chicago School Reform Act. Harold Washington’s election as the first Black mayor of Chicago in 1983 was heralded by many as the ultimate attainment of Black Power and the success of the local Black Freedom Movement. His electoral victory was grounded in years of grassroots struggle by Black organizers fighting for integration, community control, and Black empowerment. While historians have largely considered the 1980s as a product of the political triumph of conservatism and the “Reagan revolution,” in Chicago a Black-led, urban, antimachine, progressive coalitional politics led to Washington’s electoral victory. The disparate programmatic and ideological camps detailed in previous chapters (desegregation activists, community control organizers, founders of independent Black institutions, Black educators) staked claims in Mayor Washington and his political organization. The politics of Washington’s education reform summits, however, exposed the fractures within this political coalition. The interracial and intraracial struggles over school reform in Chicago during the 1980s reveal the tensions between a politics of racial representation and a politics of progressive transformation and prefigure the increased privatization of public education in the decades that followed.Less

Introduction

Elizabeth Todd-Breland

in Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s

The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban ... More

The introduction outlines the focus, scope, and significance of the book, introducing the Black activists, educators, parents, and students who navigated, challenged, and contributed to the urban political and educational landscape from mid-twentieth century civil rights struggles through the recent corporate reorganization of the public sphere. Black women’s political and intellectual labor powered movements for racial justice and is centered in this discussion of Black politics, social movements, and education reform. The introduction explains how the book presents a different account of Black politics and urban communities in the period after the 1960s by challenging interpretations of urban decline and “urban crisis.” It also explains the historical and contemporary importance of education as a site of struggle that reveals the boundaries of U.S. democracy and changes in the relationship between citizens and the state. The introduction outlines how historical considerations of racial liberalism, the Great Migration, the New Deal, labor, Black protest, machine politics, deindustrialization, the politics of Black achievement, desegregation, self-determination, equity, and education reform inform subsequent chapters.Less

Harold Washington: Black Power and the Resilience of Liberalism

Jeffrey Helgeson

in Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington

This chapter argues that the long tradition of neighborhood-based politics – and the race-conscious, pragmatic, liberal political culture black Chicagoans had created – had its best moment in the ... More

This chapter argues that the long tradition of neighborhood-based politics – and the race-conscious, pragmatic, liberal political culture black Chicagoans had created – had its best moment in the election of Harold Washington as the city’s first black mayor. His electoral insurgency bridged divides in black Chicago with appeals to shared racial interests in the overthrow of the white Democratic machine’s “plantation politics.” After the election, Washington pivoted from black nationalist politics to the politics of progressive reform, seeking to use interracial political alliances and government power to foster democratic political power and fair play and equal opportunity for individuals seeking housing and economic opportunity. In particular, the chapter highlights how people who appeared in previous chapters helped develop a hybrid political vision of “equity planning” that aimed to link economic development to bringing jobs, housing, recreational spaces, and municipal services to working-class communities.Less

Black Electoral Politics in Salvador from the 1970s to the 2000s

Kwame Dixon

in Afro-Politics and Civil Society in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

Chapter seven offers a contextual view into the opaque world of Brazilian and Salvadorian politics. It analyzes the rise of Black electoral power in Brazil and Salvador from the 1980s to the present ... More

Chapter seven offers a contextual view into the opaque world of Brazilian and Salvadorian politics. It analyzes the rise of Black electoral power in Brazil and Salvador from the 1980s to the present and provides an in-depth examination of the rise of formal Black politics and the entry of Black political candidates into the local politics.Less

To the East, Blackward: Black Power, Radical Cinema, and the Muslim Third World

Sohail Daulatzai

in Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America

This chapter explores how the Muslim Third World influenced and informed Black radical politics and culture within the Muslim International. It examines how the anticolonial struggles in the Muslim ... More

This chapter explores how the Muslim Third World influenced and informed Black radical politics and culture within the Muslim International. It examines how the anticolonial struggles in the Muslim Third World of Algeria and Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s not only shaped ideas about tactics and strategy, solidarity and political possibility, but they also informed ideas about film, literature, and cultural criticism within the Black Power imagination. By examining the influence of Frantz Fanon on the Algerian War of Independence and on the novel The Battle of Algiers, and Sam Greenlee and his novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door, this chapter explores how the national liberation struggles in Algeria and Iraq became the literal and ideological backdrop for the redefinition of Black cultural practice, aesthetic developments, thematic concerns, and political orientations during the Black Power era.Less

Introduction

Candis Watts Smith

in Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Diversity

This introductory chapter discusses the ethnic diversity among Blacks. This diversity generates homogeneity in political attitudes and behaviors that are derived from a shared history and collective ... More

This introductory chapter discusses the ethnic diversity among Blacks. This diversity generates homogeneity in political attitudes and behaviors that are derived from a shared history and collective memory. For instance, despite of being minority, Black students in a university organize student groups around their ethnic identity—Duke Africa, Duke Ethiopian Student Association, Students of the Caribbean Association. Hence, the book argues that the boundaries of Black students and the contours of Black politics are (re)shaped by the increasing ethnic diversity among Black people in the United States. It addresses how African Americans and Black immigrants conceptualize who is Black.Less

Postwar Civic and Civil Rights Unionism: The Vulcan Society’s Golden Age, 1946–1963

David Goldberg

in Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City

This chapter charts the growth of the Vulcan Society in both numbers and stature during the postwar era. Led by Wesley Williams’ protégé, Robert Lowery, this second generation of Black firefighters ... More

This chapter charts the growth of the Vulcan Society in both numbers and stature during the postwar era. Led by Wesley Williams’ protégé, Robert Lowery, this second generation of Black firefighters rapidly expanded the organization’s size, civic engagement, public profile, and influence within the FDNY and Democratic politics by the early 1960s.Less

Conclusion: The Tragedy of the Ten and the Rise of a New Black Politics

Kenneth Robert Janken

in The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s

The conclusion brings the case of the Wilmington Ten from the overturning of their convictions into the twenty-first century when they received pardons of innocence in 2012. Returning to the reality ... More

The conclusion brings the case of the Wilmington Ten from the overturning of their convictions into the twenty-first century when they received pardons of innocence in 2012. Returning to the reality that the state of North Carolina ruined lives in order to forestall inevitable change and combat radicalism, the conclusion briefly examines what happened to the individual members of the Wilmington Ten. It also reappraises the movement to free them in light of recent scholarship on the trajectory of African American politics and black radicalism. Since this century began, North Carolina has pulsed with struggle over the types of issues that characterized the conflicts of the 1970s. Public schools have re-segregated, and state government’s support for quality education for all has been hijacked by a mania for charter, religious, and for-profit schools. Fighters for criminal justice reform have brought to light many other cases of wrongful conviction. Police misconduct, including instances of corrupt investigations, brutality and death under at best questionable circumstances, bubbles to the surface, as in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere. This and more has brought forth in North Carolina collective efforts to find solutions, including the broad-based Moral Monday movement, which has been emulated across the South.Less

Selling Soul: Black Music and Black Power in Memphis

Charles L. Hughes

in Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South

This chapter explores the role of Memphis Sound as a both a symbol and an instrument of the Black Power Movement. It highlights Stax Records, who, under the leadership of Al Bell, amplified the ... More

This chapter explores the role of Memphis Sound as a both a symbol and an instrument of the Black Power Movement. It highlights Stax Records, who, under the leadership of Al Bell, amplified the musical “blackness” of its recordings. The studio used nationalist rhetoric in its advertisements and public statements, and allied with African American political organizations in order to force the issue of racial disparity. This unfortunately angered some of the label's white staff members and challenged Stax's image as a site of integration. However, the studio never abandoned the integrationist discourse of the Memphis Sound, nor did they stop using white musicians. The chapter mentions the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, an all-white band, whose career serves as an illustration of how the story of Stax records in these years reveals the multifaceted role of Black Power politics in soul music, the country-soul triangle, and the U.S. recording industry.Less

Introduction: Windrush Politics

Kennetta Hammond Perry

in London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race

When Lord Kitchener proclaimed, “London is the place for me” as he exited the SS Empire Windrush, he did so at a critical juncture in the global and diasporic history of race politics in Britain and ... More

When Lord Kitchener proclaimed, “London is the place for me” as he exited the SS Empire Windrush, he did so at a critical juncture in the global and diasporic history of race politics in Britain and the African Diaspora. This introduction reimagines the landing of the Windrush as a historical guidepost linking the political experiences of people of African descent in the Empire and those within the confines of the imperial metropolis. The introduction outlines elements of the broader historical context shaping histories of Afro-Caribbean migration to Britain and the attendant questions about race, citizenship, and Black Britishness that these movements prompted during the postwar era. This book argues that Black Britons actively shaped debates about race and citizenship in Britain. Moreover, it situates postwar race politics in Britain within a larger transnational historiography about Black political activity and struggles for citizenship within the African Diaspora in the twentieth century.Less

The Dark Side of Desire: Racial-Sexual Alterity and the Play of Race

Ariane Cruz

in The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography

This chapter examines black women’s participation in BDSM and how these performances illustrate a complex and contradictory brokering of pain, pleasure, and power for the black female performer. I ... More

This chapter examines black women’s participation in BDSM and how these performances illustrate a complex and contradictory brokering of pain, pleasure, and power for the black female performer. I reveal BDSM as a critical site for reconsidering the entanglement of black female sexuality and violence. Within BDSM, violence becomes both a mode of pleasure and a vehicle for accessing and contesting power. The chapter begins with a brief section that frames black women practitioners of BDSM in the context of still very vigorous feminist debates surrounding sexuality, violence, and BDSM. Here, I stage the unique theoretical and practical challenges of the unspeakable pleasures aroused in racial submission and domination that BDSM presents to black women specifically. I examine race play as a particularly problematic yet powerful BDSM practice for black women, one that unveils the contradictory dynamics of racialized pleasure and power via the eroticization of racism and racial-sexual alterity. In particular, I argue that race play unsettles the dichotomies of transgression/compliance, subversion/reproduction, mind/body, and fantasy/reality that buttress BDSM. This chapter unveils performances of black female sexual domination and submission in BDSM as critical modes for and of black women’s pleasure, power, and agency.Less

“We Stand Before You, Not as a Separatist Body”: The Techni-Culture Movement to Gain Voice in the National Federation of Settlements

Joyce M. Bell

in The Black Power Movement and American Social Work

This chapter outlines the mobilization process of black social workers within the National Federation of Settlements (NFS). This process resulted in the emergence of the Black Caucus of Settlement ... More

This chapter outlines the mobilization process of black social workers within the National Federation of Settlements (NFS). This process resulted in the emergence of the Black Caucus of Settlement Workers and its attempted transition from a black assembly to a multicultural campaign for representation—also known as the Techni-Culture Movement (TCM). Similar to the development of the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW), the TCM's growth takes place within the context of the expansion of Black Power politics. The chapter considers the demands, grievances, strategies, and outcomes of the TCM's activism. These social workers employed a voice strategy and maintained a commitment to gaining representation throughout their mobilization, which ended in the so-called “black takeover.” The chapter also tackles the emotional dynamics at work in conflicts within the organization.Less

The Black Movement's Foot Soldiers: Black Women and Neighborhood Struggles for Land Rights in Brazil

Kwame Dixon and John Burdick

in Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America

A gendered analysis of Afro women's grassroots urban movements in Salvador, Brazil, that articulate racial and class-based claims.

Exposing the Racial Politics of Immigration Controls

Kennetta Hammond Perry

in London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race

With the passage of the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, the right of migration to Britain guaranteed to all Commonwealth citizens was effectively revoked. The bill outwardly presented a ... More

With the passage of the Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962, the right of migration to Britain guaranteed to all Commonwealth citizens was effectively revoked. The bill outwardly presented a race-neutral set of policy reforms that vetted potential newcomers from the Commonwealth on the basis of their employment prospects. However, historians have demonstrated that by design the bill aimed to restrict the flow of what was at the time a largely Afro-Caribbean Commonwealth migration. This chapter demonstrates how a chorus of dissenting voices, including Black British activists, publicly exposed the bill as a form of institutionalized racism specifically designed to disenfranchise Afro-Caribbean migrants. In protesting the bill’s passage, not only did dissenters highlight how the policy infringed upon the right of Commonwealth citizens to migrate to Britain, but they also drew attention to the ways in which certain provisions transformed resident Black citizens into immigrants subject to surveillance and deportation.Less