Copies of my longer reading notes: Morris Notes, McAdam Notes
The Morris and McAdam books are both excellent works which I highly recommend both now and in your later lives as teachers. They provide excellent lecture material and can be assigned to undergraduates.
Skim each book before reading closely. For the McAdam book, you can skim the section headings and look at the tables and graphics, which give you some idea of the kind of evidence being adduced. There are no tables in the Morris book, but you can also get some idea of key themes by reading the chapter titles, first paragraph of each chapter, and boldface headings. You may also wish to examine Morris’s appendices on method.
Focus of attention:
McAdam. Key chapters are 3 (political process model) and 4 (very short on hypotheses, could have been in 3); and analysis chapters 6-8. Lets make sure everyone has read 6 (1950s) and 7 (early 1960s) as these are the periods covered by Morris, but I really recommend 5 (historical background on shifting political opportunities) and 8 (decline of the movement) as well. You may wish to look at pp. 112-116 to see how the historical arguments are integrated into a time series model. (I have taken detailed notes on chapter 5, because I use it in lecture.) NOTE: Page numbers refer to 1st edition. I think second edition mainly differs in the front matter. Pp 112-116 are at the end of Chapter 5, “The Developing Context of Insurgency” and include the path models.
Morris. Read introduction (as it sketches key themes), Chapters 1 (social background), 2 (1950s, correlate with McAdam Ch 6), 3 & 4 (movement centers, SCLC – his key empirical arguments about structure of the movement), 8 & 9 (about the sit-in movements, correlate with McAdam’s Ch. 7), 11 (a sketch of his theoretical arguments). Chapters 5-7 and 10 on organizational issues & struggles are also good. The Morris chapters are longer, as they have a narrative style, but you can hopefully read them more quickly. In terms of relevance for today’s movements, I particularly think the idea of “local movement centers” is important (chapters 3 and 4). The organizational structures of the 1960s South (church-based SCLC, NAACP, SNCC) may also be usefully compared with today.
Oliver. I would also like to bring my piece on repression and the Black movement into the conversation as part of linking the 1960s to today. Oliver (2008) Repression and Crime Control
Black Lives Matter. We will not have assigned readings for this class, but will instead pool knowledge (or ignorance) and pose questions we’d want to answer. If people have specific articles (either popular or academic) they believe would contribute to the discussion, email the article or the link to me and I’ll put them up either here on the web or in the learn@uw site.
- Ferguson Syllabus This is more about background on the issue than the movement itself.
- Short video & article at USA Today about Alicia Garza, the women who stated the tag Black Lives Matter.
- Homepage with the blacklivesmatter domain name. “This is the Official #BlackLivesMatter Organization founded by Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza. #BlackLivesMatter is an online forum intended to build connections between Black people and our allies to fight anti-Black racism, to spark dialogue among Black people, and to facilitate the types of connections necessary to encourage social action and engagement.”
- Ebony 2014 article about the generational divide in the Black movement around BLM.
- A USA Today article about links between BLM and Black Power
- The Ferguson report: How Protest Works A short blog post by social movements scholar David Meyer.
- Turn Up: 21st-Century Black Millennials Are Bringing Direct Action Back Malkia A. Cyril, Huffington Post.
- Young Gifted and Black Coalition homepage of Madison’s YGB formation.
- Justified Anger the “older” generation Madison coalition.
- Mobilizing Ideas (social movement studies blog) section on Racist and Racial Justice Movements seems mostly to have sections on White racist movements. There is an article by Jenny Irons on Organizations for Racial Justice.
- Homepage of NAACP a “traditional” Civil Rights Organization.
- The SCLC still exists as well
- Newly published. James Jasper and AK Thompson. “Did Someone Say Riot?” Social Movement Studies. online publication This dialog explores the role of violent and disruptive action in history.
Articles about other phases of the Black movement
- Bloom, Joshua. 2015. “The Dynamics of Opportunity and Insurgent Practice: How Black Anti-Colonialists Compelled Truman to Advocate Civil Rights.” American Sociological Review 80(2):391-415. doi: 10.1177/0003122415574329. Re-theorizing opportunity as leveraged by particular practices. Why did President Harry S. Truman, initially an apologist for the slow pace of racial reform in 1945–46, suddenly become an avid advocate of civil rights? Event structure analysis reveals how Black Anti-colonialist practices leveraged opportunities afforded by the earlier Progressive Challenge to compel Truman to adopt civil rights advocacy. Civil rights advocacy, in turn, allowed Truman to repress Black Anti-colonialist practices, even while setting the stage for the Civil Rights Movement to come.