Winds of Change, or More Hot Air?
“When in human history has positive change not been incredibly costly, selfless and bloody?”
Christian Gossett asked that question in an interview on this site, almost a year ago, and it’s been at the back of my mind ever since. Not News is dedicated to the idea that people can come together, talk through problems, look at evidence in a critical fashion, and come to an agreement on what should be done for the good of everyone. We sit at computers, surf the web for research, make some phone calls and post on the forums. Doesn’t sound very costly or bloody . . . or even all that selfless. The thought has entered my mind, more than once, that maybe all we’re really doing is salving some guilty consciences.
That thought hit especially hard as I read William H. Chafe’s Civilities and Civil Rights, an excellent book that tracks the progress — and lack thereof — of the civil rights movement in Greensboro, NC from the mid-50s through the 70s. Drawing on extensive interviews and written archival materials, the book is a tightly focused narrative that goes into great depth as it covers the community leaders and members that can get missed in larger overviews of the civil rights movement.
What is most fascinating, and most troubling, about the book is the vast disconnect it portrays between Greensboro’s image of itself and its reality. Greensboro had long considered itself a ‘progressive’ Southern city, with a more modern outlook and economy than many cities in the Deep South — and certainly with better, and fairer, relations between the city’s white and black populations. There was a black member of the city council in 1951, and also a black member of the school board. Several of the city’s philanthropists contributed significant sums to facilities in black neighborhoods, and a few major institutions were willing to work toward integration. And city leaders were almost always willing to discuss race relations in civil discourse, through official committees and informal talks.
The key word, there, is ‘civil.’ The powers that be did not want to ruffle any feathers, they did not want to provoke controversy, and they certainly did not want to suggest that conditions in Greensboro might be less than ideal. Change in Greensboro was expected to be attained through consensus, which meant that if anyone objected to change, then the status quo would be maintained in the name of civility, until the objector could be persuaded to change his mind. And rest assured, if a change would require that whites give up some of their entrenched power or privileged space in society, there would be objectors.
Greensboro was the birthplace of the student sit-in movement in February 1960, when four students and North Caroline Agricultural & Technical College grew frustrated with the slow pace of reform — lunch counters were still segregated, many jobs were off limits to blacks, and six years after Brown vs. Board of Education, black children still weren’t attending white schools. The students went to a downtown Woolworth’s, made purchases, and then st down at the lunch counter. When they were refused service, they stayed. Within days, dozens and then hundreds of students — and eventually adults — joined in the effort and brought commerce in downtown Greensboro to a standstill.
Here’s the interesting part. The powers that be of Greensboro did not respond to the students with a statement of, ‘Thank you for bringing this blatant hypocrisy and act of disrespect to our attention; we will remedy it immediately, and please accept our apologies.’ They criticized the protestors for being disruptive, threatened to enforce anti-trespass laws, and refused to believe that the protestors reflected the will of Greensboro’s black population. “It seems apparent,” said North Caroline Attorney General Malcolm Seawell, that these incidents have been promoted, encouraged, and even supervised by persons coming into North Carolina from other states” (Chafe 86).
Some white liberals did attempt to use the demonstrations as a catalyst for social change, as did a very small number of city leaders. But even those efforts showed the limits of a consensus-driven approach — a group of community leaders came together to negotiate first a moratorium on demonstrations and then an overall solution. They got the moratorium, but with the pressure off, and with the negotiating group having no official power to sanction anyone, businesses retrenched. The community leaders operated under the assumption that it was necessary to build up something close to unanimous public support for integration before anything could change. Meanwhile, the local Woolworth’s manager wrote to the governor, “We are fighting a battle for the white people who still want to eat with white people” (Chafe 93) — which pretty much sums up the chances for such a consensus. Fed up with the lack of progress, the students resumed the demonstrations, and eventually the lunch counters were integrated. But change only occurred when the oppressed made life uncomfortable for the oppressors, many of whom refused to believe they were doing anything wrong.
The civil rights movement is full of such stories. Local residents showing great courage and determination called attention to injustice, and when they tried to play within the existing system, they found their needs sacrificed in the name of political expediency. In 1964, for example, a group of Mississippi activists challenged the credentials of Mississippi’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention, on the grounds that black voters had been disfranchised — but President Johnson was unwilling to anger Southern Democrats by letting a vote on the credentials challenge go to the convention floor (where it almost certainly would have won). And when civil rights leaders began to call attention to the racial inequities of the American economic system, many of their political allies turned a deaf ear. Clearly, there are limits to working within the system, and you could make a strong case that a reform movement that relies on politely asking the system to change its ways is no reform movement at all.
So what are we left with? Is the only honest, and honorable, solution a remorseless, revolutionary struggle (to steal a phrase from Abraham Lincoln)? I’m not sure that’s the answer either — such a struggle is bound to cause resentments, and even if a revolution somehow put a just system into place, the overthrown would be more likely to nurse their grievances rather than become a part of the new society. There’s another Gossett quote that comes to mind: “No war has ever ended that did not begin another.”
The only truly lasting change will come when we change our hearts and our minds, and I don’t think that change can come at the end of a gun. It can only come slowly, and it will take a critical mass of everyday people who are willing to recognize that it is necessary. It will take people with the tools to analyze the world around them, to see where and how it could be better. One of the inspiring elements of Chafe’s book is the four students’ recollections of the role models that gave them the courage to take a stand — the teachers and leaders of their community, the people who did work within the system but weren’t afraid to tweak it where they could. When I think of what Not News can be, that’s what I like to imagine. We will always need heroes to stand up and shout, to call our intention to injustice. And it may be getting time to shout a little louder. But we also need people to talk to each other — and that’s why we’re here.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.