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Organizing Your Own

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Say Burgin shows that the Black freedom movement never experienced a “white purge,” and it offers a new way of understanding Black Power’s relationship to white America.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 12, 2024

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This video video is a transcript of a discussion surrounding the author’s book, "Organizing Your Own," which differentiates itself from the author's dissertation. The author reflects on the involvement of white individuals in the Black Power movement and its historical significance, particularly in relation to contemporary discussions about the Black Lives Matter movement.

Key themes include:

1. **Historical Context**: The author discusses how both their teaching experiences and their background in community organizing informed their understanding of anti-racism activism, highlighting a lack of historical models for white activists.

2. **Oral History and Archival Research**: The author emphasizes the importance of oral histories and archival materials, detailing their efforts in collecting stories from movement veterans and uncovering previously undisclosed archives that enriched the narrative of white anti-racist solidarity.

3. **Misinterpretations of Black Power**: The author argues against common narratives that paint the Black Power movement as anti-white. Instead, they suggest that the movement called for white allies to organize within their own communities against racism, promoting what they term "racially parallel organizing."

4. **Case Studies of Activism**: This video video describes examples of white-led organizations, such as People Against Racism and the Ad Hoc Action Group, which contributed to anti-racist efforts by engaging white communities. The author asserts these movements illustrate how white activists responded positively to calls for solidarity with Black power.

5. **Relevance and Lessons from the Past**: The book aims to provide insights into current discussions about race and activism, especially in light of the Black Lives Matter movement. The author hopes to motivate present-day activists by illustrating the efforts of earlier generations and emphasizing the importance of experimental and grassroots activism.

6. **Broader Implications**: The author argues that understanding past movements is crucial for today's activists, as it helps them navigate the complexities of racial identity and solidarity in contemporary activism.

Overall, the text presents a nuanced perspective on the interconnectedness of race, activism, and historical narratives, aiming to foster a more inclusive understanding of the Black Power movement and its legacy.

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Here are some articles that have similar themes and topics to the video you :

1. **"Revisiting the Black Power Movement: Causes and Consequences"**
This article explores the historical convideo of the Black Power movement, focusing on its impact on American society and civil rights activism, including the involvement of various racial groups in the movement.

2. **"White Allies in the Civil Rights Movement: A Historical Perspective"**
This piece examines the role of white activists in the Civil Rights era, shedding light on their motivations, contributions, and the complexities of racial solidarity during a tumultuous time in American history.

3. **"The Legacy of the Black Power Movement: Lessons for Modern Activism"**
This article discusses how the Black Power movement's strategies and philosophies can inform contemporary movements such as Black Lives Matter, emphasizing the importance of grassroots organizing and community engagement.

4. **"Racial Parallel Organizing: A Strategy for White Activists"**
Focusing on the concept of "racially parallel organizing," this article details how white activists can engage effectively in anti-racist work by organizing within their communities while supporting broader movements for racial justice.

5. **"Oral Histories of Anti-Racist Activism: Voices from the Past"**
This article highlights the significance of oral history in documenting the experiences of anti-racist activists, offering insights into their struggles, achievements, and the challenges they faced in solidarity work.

6. **"Understanding Solidarity: The Role of White Activists in Black Freedom Movements"**
This research delves into the dynamics of allyship and solidarity between white activists and Black leaders during various civil rights movements, analyzing successful and problematic examples of collaboration.

7. **"Archival Research in Activism: Unearthing Hidden Histories"**
This article discusses the importance of archival research in the study of social movements, focusing on how uncovering hidden histories can provide a richer understanding of past activism and inform current struggles.

These articles explore themes of historical activism, racial solidarity, oral histories, and the lessons contemporary activists can learn from past movements.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Organizing Your Own is my first book,

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but it isn't a revision of my dissertation.

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It's a wholly different project from my dissertation.

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Um, but from my dissertation, I knew

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that white people had been involved in the fight

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for black power in the us

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and this was in the front of my mind

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as I was teaching students in 2000 17, 18, 19.

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Um, and my students were talking to me about the movement

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for Black Lives and how it was being demonized

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as anti-white, as though it didn't have a set

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of instructions for white activists.

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And I sort of related to them about the history

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of the Black Power Movement being demonized

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and villainized along the same lines, right?

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That there had been this whole narrative

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of white people getting kicked out and things like that.

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And my students really helped me to see just how relevant

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and important that history was, and how timely.

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So that was really one important source.

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Um, and then another was

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having been a community organizer in Pittsburgh many,

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many years ago, before graduate school,

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I participated in and helped to lead some

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workshops on anti-racism for white radicals.

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And from doing some of that work, I knew about this sort

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of longer lamentation,

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that white people didn't really have a lot of,

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models from history,

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or examples to look from in history for

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how they should be anti-racist

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and live in an anti-racist kind of set of politics.

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Um, and kind of in the back of my mind

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for many years had been the desire

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that maybe someday I could contribute some history on white

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anti-racist solidarity and activism.

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And so both of those things were really present in my mind.

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Um, but I've always been a lover of black power history.

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Um, and I was teaching a lot around the civil rights

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and black power movements, and that's

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where my dissertation had focused as well.

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And so all of this sort of congealed

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probably in about 2019 or 20.

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Um, and that's when I pitched the book to NYU

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I'm a big believer in oral history.

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I did a lot of work in particular, kind of

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putting together the connective tissue

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between different white anti-racist groups.

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Um, I did a lot of that work through oral history.

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So that involved, right, reaching out to a lot of elders,

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sometimes sending emails

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to the wrong person over and over again.

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Um, but then elders

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and movement veterans really connecting me to other people.

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So there was what they call in sociology, right,

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that snowball method of meeting people to interview.

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Um, so I did a lot of oral histories, some with groups

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of people, some with individuals.

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And probably the single most important thing,

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about some of those oral histories was connecting

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with elders who hadn't told their story

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but had archived it for decades.

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And so, through the process of doing oral histories

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and meeting a lot of elders, I met people who had boxes

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and boxes or folders

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and folders of stuff that they had kept in their attics

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and in their filing cabinets for decades and decades.

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But nobody had ever seen them before.

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Um, so one particularly important person in this regard was,

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Patricia Murphy, Ms.

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Pat as I call her. Um, so Ms.

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Pat, I met

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through another movement veteran named Frank Joyce.

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And after he introduced us,

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it became really clear to me that Ms.

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Pat had been the custodian for one

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of the most important groups I write about,

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which was called People Against Racism

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and its History For five decades.

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She had gotten a call in 1971 that the records

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of people against racism were being thrown out,

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that they were in this dumpster in an alleyway in Detroit.

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And she hopped in her car and Ann Arbor

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and drove to Detroit, and she saved those records

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and had been hanging onto them

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and taking care of them for five decades.

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So I go to her house and I meet her

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and interview her and Frank together.

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And then she, she allows me to see just years

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and years worth of paperwork

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that people against racism had done.

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And it just made an entirely different book possible for me.

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So, whereas before I was really combing through a lot of

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radical newspapers,

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a few archival collections at the Ruther Library in Detroit,

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stitching together a lot of stuff from oral histories.

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When Ms. Pat sort of allowed me to look into the archive,

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she had just,

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a whole new chapters were possible in this book.

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Um, so the oral histories were

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not a sort of separate source.

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They were Integra integrally connected

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to the archival material within the book itself.

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Um, but having said that, there were a lot

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of archival collections that I dove into

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as well at the Ruther Library.

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So the League of Revolutionary Black Workers Collection,

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a lot of personal papers from people who had been involved,

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like Sheila Murphy Cockrell, Ken Cockrell, Mike Hamlin,

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Joanne Castle, a bunch of individuals

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who had given their papers.

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Um, and then in the end, I also was able

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to help people like Frank Joyce

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and Pat Murphy, give their records over

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to the Ruther too, so that hopefully other people can do,

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work on, on these important groups.

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But it was really, because elders in there,

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collections that they've been taking care of for so long,

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were so central to being able to, to write the,

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the exact book that I wrote.

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It really feels like the oral history

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and the archival work was a sort of, not separate,

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but really one in the same for this particular book.

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We, we have lived with this idea that in 1966,

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the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNC,

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voted to expel all remaining white members.

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And this, has long been seen as Charles Payne puts it

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as a, as a watershed in our social history.

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It's sort of seen as the moment where

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identity politics is on the rise,

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and it takes over kind

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of on the ground organizing in the Black Freedom Movement.

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And that in and of itself eventually helps this sort

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of shatter the kind of

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left liberal co left liberal coalition

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that undergirds liberalism in the 1960s, right?

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But we have kind of fundamentally, I argue, misread

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what happened both in that movement, in that movement

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and in the shift towards black power more broadly.

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So the first thing I would say about that is

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that it's just not accurate on the face of it.

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So there was in 1966 within the Student Nonviolent

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Coordinating Committee, a series of votes that took place

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that sort of heralded the arrival of black power.

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So in May, 1966, there's a vote,

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that brings in new leadership into SNC.

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And there's also a vote to keep white activists out

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of rural black organizing in the South.

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And that happens for all kinds of reasons, not least

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of which is the fact that it had become incredibly dangerous

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and a number of white and black people had been murdered in

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some of these areas, right?

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So it wasn't ideologically driven, it was driven

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by strategy, necessity and safety

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and the overall goals of the movement.

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Perhaps the more important vote

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that people think about in this regard, though,

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is the December, 1966 vote.

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And what happens there is certainly the one vote

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that takes place, where

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some SNC members, it's a vote of 19 to 18, vote

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to expel white members.

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But that vote is essentially voided very, very quickly

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as some veterans essentially threaten

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to leave the organization,

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they're very unhappy with the decision.

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And what more or less happens out of that is not

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that white people get kicked out.

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White people do not get kicked out in that moment.

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But actually there's a reaffirmation that happens at

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that meeting that black people should be in charge of SNC

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and that SNCC c wants to start really,

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really pushing white people to go

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and organize in white communities.

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So there's a reaffirmation of that kind of goal.

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So that's what actually happens on the ground

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with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

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But the sort of larger problem with the myth

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of the white purge is that it allows us to imagine

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a much more homogenous

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and ideologically driven

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black power movement than actually existed.

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And it really is the fundamental seed,

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for the myth that black power was anti-white, right?

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When in fact, what was happening

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was Black power was asking its white allies

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to do something different.

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And it had started to do that well

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before any of these votes.

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And in particular, what black activists were asking white

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people to do was

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to focus their organizing in white communities

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and to see white communities as really the root of racism

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and racial inequalities in the US

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and that that's the reason they should go in there

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and change white minds and change white structures

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and change white institutions rather than coming into black

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communities and organizing there.

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So black power essentially had this vision

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that I call racially parallel organizing.

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And the vision said, why don't we try something new?

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Why don't we have it so

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that African American activists are going into black

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communities and shoring up political

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and economic power in those communities while at the same

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time white people are going into white communities

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to organize against racism there

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and trying to organize basis of support

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for black self-determination.

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And part of what I try to do in the book is

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not just look at the history

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of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,

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but also the history of the Northern student movement.

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And that's really important

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because it doesn't sort of have this mythologized baggage

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that s NCC does.

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And in fact, if we look at the northern student movement,

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we don't see a kind of narrative of white hurt that centers

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that black power is sort of centered on.

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And in fact, we see in the Northern student movement

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that they're coming to the same strategy and ideas,

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but it doesn't have this baggage of the votes

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and all that kind of stuff.

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So you can see that black

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and white activists are really arriving at this idea

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together that it's a joint vision,

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racially parallel organizing.

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So that's a long-winded way of saying absolutely not.

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My two central arguments in the book are that

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black power had a clear mandate for white

10:52.585 --> 10:56.635
activists, and that was that they should go

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and organize, against racism

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and for black self-determination within white communities.

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And then the second argument is that

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white activists not only heard that,

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but many of them really sympathized

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and tried to do something in response, right?

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So they heated that call.

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So we see this, I ended up, focusing on Detroit to try

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to give a kind of thicker, sense of

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what this movement of white, that the white fight

11:27.445 --> 11:29.365
for black power looked like,

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and just how many people were involved.

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So I argue that there was this critical mass

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of white people from all walks of life

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who heard this directive and tried to do something about it.

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Um, so I've talked a little bit about people against racism.

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It grew directly out of the Northern student movement,

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and it took a real educational approach.

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It what it called disorienting white people

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from their assumptions.

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So it did things like run freedom schools in

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Detroit suburbs.

11:59.385 --> 12:03.325
It also tried to interpret black rebellion

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to white Americans in various different ways.

12:06.385 --> 12:09.485
It supported black students when they put up a boycott

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of Northern High School in 1966.

12:12.825 --> 12:15.165
Um, and they also wrote about the myths

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of American history, right?

12:16.535 --> 12:19.565
Myths around reconstruction and slavery, et cetera.

12:20.145 --> 12:22.645
And then a final thing that they did was they really tried

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to raise the alarm bell about what they were seeing

12:25.145 --> 12:27.645
as the militarization of police in Detroit

12:27.905 --> 12:28.965
and around the country.

12:30.065 --> 12:31.085
So it's one

12:31.085 --> 12:34.085
of these early white led racially parallel groups.

12:34.545 --> 12:36.525
Um, it's trying a lot of different things.

12:36.595 --> 12:37.845
It's very experimental.

12:38.705 --> 12:40.765
By contrast, there's another white group

12:40.765 --> 12:42.085
that comes a little bit later

12:42.155 --> 12:44.845
that was called the Ad Hoc Action Group that was single

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issue focused, and it's,

12:46.995 --> 12:49.365
it's particular issue is police brutality.

12:50.145 --> 12:52.645
Um, so it gets started in May, 1968

12:52.645 --> 12:54.645
after this very extraordinary moment

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of Detroit brutality against the Poor People's Campaign when

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it's having a visiting contingent in Detroit.

13:01.925 --> 13:03.745
And what it really wants to do is it wants

13:03.745 --> 13:05.945
to lend the weight of white voices

13:06.605 --> 13:08.545
to the cry against police brutality

13:08.815 --> 13:11.985
because there was such a wall of white silence

13:12.325 --> 13:13.385
around the issue.

13:13.725 --> 13:16.025
And in fact, really a wall of white denial, right?

13:16.365 --> 13:20.025
The sort of go-to response from white people nationally

13:20.445 --> 13:22.185
and white officials in particular, which to,

13:22.285 --> 13:25.825
to deny the idea that police brutality existed at all.

13:25.995 --> 13:27.585
Right? And so

13:28.125 --> 13:30.985
ad hoc action group does some pretty extraordinary things,

13:31.565 --> 13:34.105
including organizing whole teams

13:34.325 --> 13:36.145
of white police observation.

13:36.805 --> 13:41.505
Um, so it trains, hundreds of white people

13:42.045 --> 13:45.025
and how to cop watch, essentially, right?

13:45.405 --> 13:47.625
So these are white folks who are trained to go

13:47.645 --> 13:51.185
and document, police interactions with the public,

13:51.335 --> 13:54.985
both at demonstrations, but also in everyday encounters.

13:55.525 --> 13:58.705
So, they would sort of follow cop cars

13:58.705 --> 14:01.505
around when they were on their kind of everyday patrols

14:02.005 --> 14:05.225
and keep their eyes and ears out for whether

14:05.225 --> 14:07.425
or not police were abusing members of the public.

14:08.045 --> 14:10.225
Um, and in moments where they saw abuse,

14:10.295 --> 14:12.385
they documented it both in note taking

14:13.085 --> 14:14.825
and with photographs,

14:14.885 --> 14:16.505
and tried to make sure that a larger part

14:16.505 --> 14:17.585
of the public knew that was happening.

14:18.365 --> 14:21.145
Um, so that's a kind of more single issue group.

14:21.365 --> 14:24.865
And then I guess the last example I'd throw out is most

14:25.035 --> 14:27.065
historians may not realize,

14:27.205 --> 14:30.705
but one of the most iconic black power groups,

14:30.885 --> 14:32.625
the League of Revolutionary Black workers

14:33.415 --> 14:36.105
organized a white parallel to its efforts.

14:36.405 --> 14:38.825
And that group was called the Motor City Labor League.

14:39.685 --> 14:43.825
Um, and the Motor City Labor League, tries to do

14:44.215 --> 14:46.745
what the League of Revolutionary black workers did,

14:46.745 --> 14:49.265
and that is to sort of organize the working classes.

14:50.005 --> 14:52.005
It does that in particular,

14:52.185 --> 14:55.085
in the white neighborhoods surrounding,

14:55.545 --> 14:57.365
el the Eldon axle factories.

14:58.025 --> 15:02.325
Um, and it's less successful in a lot of ways than some

15:02.325 --> 15:03.685
of the other groups before it.

15:03.905 --> 15:06.445
But it has this pretty remarkable history in particular

15:06.545 --> 15:10.245
of trying to use, health concerns

15:10.305 --> 15:12.685
and pollution concerns as a way

15:12.685 --> 15:15.605
of galvanizing white working classes,

15:15.825 --> 15:19.645
and getting them to see how they can build bridges

15:19.645 --> 15:22.125
and be in solidarity with black working classes in Detroit.

15:22.385 --> 15:26.655
So I would say that the relevance of,

15:27.475 --> 15:31.775
my book is sort of the reason that I started it, right?

15:31.995 --> 15:35.575
So hearing the ways that, the movement

15:35.575 --> 15:39.055
for Black Lives has been demonized as anti-white,

15:39.195 --> 15:41.495
was a massive, was a major motivator for me.

15:42.075 --> 15:45.295
Um, but then I think also everything really shifted,

15:45.325 --> 15:47.735
even though I was already writing my book by 2020,

15:47.735 --> 15:50.335
everything really shifted with 2020 because

15:50.335 --> 15:54.215
after the 2020 uprising, who didn't hear a call

15:54.275 --> 15:57.255
for white people to organize other white people

15:57.395 --> 15:58.775
or for white people to talk

15:58.775 --> 16:00.575
to other white people about racism,

16:00.915 --> 16:05.295
and that call just went from maybe kind of,

16:05.425 --> 16:07.855
known within progressive circles

16:08.315 --> 16:11.495
to mainstream in a much kind of bigger way, right?

16:12.115 --> 16:17.095
Um, and so I hope that the book really helps those of us

16:17.195 --> 16:19.735
who heard and sympathized with that call from 2020

16:20.035 --> 16:22.255
to see some ways that people have tried to do

16:22.255 --> 16:23.335
that before us.

16:24.375 --> 16:28.055
I think I really hope that people read the story

16:28.055 --> 16:29.135
that I'm trying to tell

16:29.355 --> 16:33.055
and appreciate the way that

16:34.035 --> 16:37.315
a sort of earlier white generation really tried

16:37.335 --> 16:38.835
and experimented, right?

16:39.335 --> 16:42.715
And so I hope that they gained some insight about organizing

16:42.835 --> 16:44.515
white people against racism.

16:44.935 --> 16:47.315
The questions, the pitfalls, the promise

16:47.545 --> 16:51.915
that this previous generation faced when trying to do

16:51.915 --> 16:55.715
that I, I think, are still really relevant to the kinds

16:55.715 --> 16:56.995
of questions and potential

16:56.995 --> 16:58.675
and pitfalls of this strategy today.

16:59.375 --> 17:03.315
So I'm not trying to convert the world necessarily

17:03.415 --> 17:05.835
to the idea of racially parallel organizing,

17:06.215 --> 17:08.275
but to see that it's been tried

17:08.935 --> 17:11.275
and to see what sort of worked, what hasn't,

17:11.655 --> 17:13.875
what's useful about the strategy, what's not.

17:14.575 --> 17:16.635
And I hope kind of attached to that, that people

17:17.465 --> 17:20.755
gain some courage from the experimentation

17:20.985 --> 17:24.395
that was really at play with this earlier generation

17:24.535 --> 17:25.635
and its story, right?

17:26.055 --> 17:27.475
It just tried a lot of things.

17:27.785 --> 17:30.075
It's threw so much against the wall just to see

17:30.075 --> 17:31.395
what would kind of stick, right?

17:31.455 --> 17:34.355
It didn't necessarily get hung up on this idea of trying

17:34.355 --> 17:36.795
to get it right or knowing what it was gonna do

17:36.795 --> 17:38.475
before it did it all the time, right?

17:38.655 --> 17:41.995
It, this earlier generation was really pretty amazing,

17:42.105 --> 17:43.555
both black and white activists

17:43.555 --> 17:45.755
because they tried so many different things, right?

17:46.495 --> 17:48.755
And I hope that that is motivating in

17:48.755 --> 17:49.755
And of itself.

17:50.525 --> 17:54.005
I think I also really hope that people get a different sense

17:54.005 --> 17:56.965
of the Black power movement from reading this book.

17:57.685 --> 17:59.085
I think the dominant narratives

17:59.085 --> 18:00.965
that we have about black power

18:01.545 --> 18:03.165
and solidarity that we live

18:03.165 --> 18:05.005
with today just are not serving us

18:05.145 --> 18:06.725
and the current political moment.

18:07.465 --> 18:08.685
And in part that's

18:08.685 --> 18:11.565
because we have this idea that black power was insular,

18:11.835 --> 18:15.205
that it didn't really invite coalitions, that it didn't have

18:15.765 --> 18:19.525
a vision for how a multiracial nation could

18:20.425 --> 18:22.915
forward the politics of self-determination.

18:23.775 --> 18:24.795
Um, and so I hope

18:24.795 --> 18:28.075
that people come away from the book seeing a broader,

18:28.505 --> 18:32.835
more multifaceted, more welcoming, more powerful,

18:33.695 --> 18:37.475
and more multiracial black power movement.

Exploring White Involvement in Black Power Movement

00:00:00 - Organizing Your Own is my first book, but it isn't a revision of my dissertation. It's a wholly different project from my dissertation. but from my dissertation, I knew that white people had been involved in the fight for black power in the us and this was in the front of my mind as I was teaching students in 2000 17, 18, 19. and my students were talking to me about the movement for Black Lives and how it was being demonized as anti-white, as though it didn't have a set
00:00:36 - And I sort of related to them about the history of the Black Power Movement being demonized and villainized along the same lines, right? That there had been this whole narrative of white people getting kicked out and things like that. And my students really helped me to see just how relevant and important that history was, and how timely. So that was really one important source. and then another was having been a community organizer in Pittsburgh many,
00:01:09 - I participated in and helped to lead some workshops on anti-racism for white radicals. And from doing some of that work, I knew about this sort of longer lamentation, that white people didn't really have a lot of, models from history, or examples to look from in history for how they should be anti-racist and live in an anti-racist kind of set of politics.
00:01:39 - for many years had been the desire that maybe someday I could contribute some history on white anti-racist solidarity and activism. And so both of those things were really present in my mind. but I've always been a lover of black power history. and I was teaching a lot around the civil rights and black power movements, and that's where my dissertation had focused as well. And so all of this sort of congealed probably in about 2019 or 20. and that's when I pitched the book to NYU
00:02:12 - I did a lot of work in particular, kind of putting together the connective tissue between different white anti-racist groups. I did a lot of that work through oral history. So that involved, right, reaching out to a lot of elders, sometimes sending emails to the wrong person over and over again. but then elders and movement veterans really connecting me to other people. So there was what they call in sociology, right, that snowball method of meeting people to interview.
00:02:44 - of people, some with individuals. And probably the single most important thing, about some of those oral histories was connecting with elders who hadn't told their story but had archived it for decades. And so, through the process of doing oral histories and meeting a lot of elders, I met people who had boxes and boxes or folders and folders of stuff that they had kept in their attics and in their filing cabinets for decades and decades.

Patricia Murphy: Custodian of Anti-Racism History

00:03:14 - so one particularly important person in this regard was, Patricia Murphy, Ms. Pat as I call her. so Ms. Pat, I met through another movement veteran named Frank Joyce. And after he introduced us, it became really clear to me that Ms. Pat had been the custodian for one of the most important groups I write about, which was called People Against Racism and its History For five decades. She had gotten a call in 1971 that the records
00:03:48 - that they were in this dumpster in an alleyway in Detroit. And she hopped in her car and Ann Arbor and drove to Detroit, and she saved those records and had been hanging onto them and taking care of them for five decades. So I go to her house and I meet her and interview her and Frank together. And then she, she allows me to see just years and years worth of paperwork that people against racism had done. And it just made an entirely different book possible for me. So, whereas before I was really combing through a lot of
00:04:22 - a few archival collections at the Ruther Library in Detroit, stitching together a lot of stuff from oral histories. When Ms. Pat sort of allowed me to look into the archive, she had just, a whole new chapters were possible in this book. so the oral histories were not a sort of separate source. They were Integra integrally connected to the archival material within the book itself. but having said that, there were a lot of archival collections that I dove into
00:04:53 - So the League of Revolutionary Black Workers Collection, a lot of personal papers from people who had been involved, like Sheila Murphy Cockrell, Ken Cockrell, Mike Hamlin, Joanne Castle, a bunch of individuals who had given their papers. and then in the end, I also was able to help people like Frank Joyce and Pat Murphy, give their records over to the Ruther too, so that hopefully other people can do, work on, on these important groups. But it was really, because elders in there,
00:05:28 - were so central to being able to, to write the, the exact book that I wrote. It really feels like the oral history and the archival work was a sort of, not separate, but really one in the same for this particular book. We, we have lived with this idea that in 1966, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNC, voted to expel all remaining white members. And this, has long been seen as Charles Payne puts it
00:06:01 - It's sort of seen as the moment where identity politics is on the rise, and it takes over kind of on the ground organizing in the Black Freedom Movement. And that in and of itself eventually helps this sort of shatter the kind of left liberal co left liberal coalition that undergirds liberalism in the 1960s, right? But we have kind of fundamentally, I argue, misread

Misunderstanding Black Power's Historical Context

00:06:32 - and in the shift towards black power more broadly. So the first thing I would say about that is that it's just not accurate on the face of it. So there was in 1966 within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a series of votes that took place that sort of heralded the arrival of black power. So in May, 1966, there's a vote, that brings in new leadership into SNC.
00:07:05 - of rural black organizing in the South. And that happens for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is the fact that it had become incredibly dangerous and a number of white and black people had been murdered in some of these areas, right? So it wasn't ideologically driven, it was driven by strategy, necessity and safety and the overall goals of the movement.
00:07:33 - that people think about in this regard, though, is the December, 1966 vote. And what happens there is certainly the one vote that takes place, where some SNC members, it's a vote of 19 to 18, vote to expel white members. But that vote is essentially voided very, very quickly as some veterans essentially threaten to leave the organization, they're very unhappy with the decision.
00:08:04 - that white people get kicked out. White people do not get kicked out in that moment. But actually there's a reaffirmation that happens at that meeting that black people should be in charge of SNC and that SNCC c wants to start really, really pushing white people to go and organize in white communities. So there's a reaffirmation of that kind of goal. So that's what actually happens on the ground with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. But the sort of larger problem with the myth of the white purge is that it allows us to imagine
00:08:39 - and ideologically driven black power movement than actually existed. And it really is the fundamental seed, for the myth that black power was anti-white, right? When in fact, what was happening was Black power was asking its white allies to do something different. And it had started to do that well before any of these votes. And in particular, what black activists were asking white people to do was to focus their organizing in white communities
00:09:14 - and racial inequalities in the US and that that's the reason they should go in there and change white minds and change white structures and change white institutions rather than coming into black communities and organizing there. So black power essentially had this vision that I call racially parallel organizing. And the vision said, why don't we try something new? Why don't we have it so that African American activists are going into black

Racially Parallel Organizing for Black Empowerment

00:09:44 - and economic power in those communities while at the same time white people are going into white communities to organize against racism there and trying to organize basis of support for black self-determination. And part of what I try to do in the book is not just look at the history of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, but also the history of the Northern student movement. And that's really important because it doesn't sort of have this mythologized baggage
00:10:13 - And in fact, if we look at the northern student movement, we don't see a kind of narrative of white hurt that centers that black power is sort of centered on. And in fact, we see in the Northern student movement that they're coming to the same strategy and ideas, but it doesn't have this baggage of the votes and all that kind of stuff. So you can see that black and white activists are really arriving at this idea together that it's a joint vision, racially parallel organizing. So that's a long-winded way of saying absolutely not.
00:10:48 - black power had a clear mandate for white activists, and that was that they should go and organize, against racism and for black self-determination within white communities. And then the second argument is that white activists not only heard that, but many of them really sympathized and tried to do something in response, right? So they heated that call.
00:11:19 - to give a kind of thicker, sense of what this movement of white, that the white fight for black power looked like, and just how many people were involved. So I argue that there was this critical mass of white people from all walks of life who heard this directive and tried to do something about it. so I've talked a little bit about people against racism. It grew directly out of the Northern student movement,
00:11:49 - It what it called disorienting white people from their assumptions. So it did things like run freedom schools in Detroit suburbs. It also tried to interpret black rebellion to white Americans in various different ways. It supported black students when they put up a boycott of Northern High School in 1966. and they also wrote about the myths of American history, right?
00:12:20 - And then a final thing that they did was they really tried to raise the alarm bell about what they were seeing as the militarization of police in Detroit and around the country. So it's one of these early white led racially parallel groups. it's trying a lot of different things. It's very experimental. By contrast, there's another white group that comes a little bit later that was called the Ad Hoc Action Group that was single issue focused, and it's,

White Activism Against Police Brutality in Detroit

00:12:50 - so it gets started in May, 1968 after this very extraordinary moment of Detroit brutality against the Poor People's Campaign when it's having a visiting contingent in Detroit. And what it really wants to do is it wants to lend the weight of white voices to the cry against police brutality because there was such a wall of white silence around the issue. And in fact, really a wall of white denial, right? The sort of go-to response from white people nationally
00:13:22 - to deny the idea that police brutality existed at all. Right? And so ad hoc action group does some pretty extraordinary things, including organizing whole teams of white police observation. so it trains, hundreds of white people and how to cop watch, essentially, right? So these are white folks who are trained to go and document, police interactions with the public,
00:13:55 - So, they would sort of follow cop cars around when they were on their kind of everyday patrols and keep their eyes and ears out for whether or not police were abusing members of the public. and in moments where they saw abuse, they documented it both in note taking and with photographs, and tried to make sure that a larger part of the public knew that was happening. so that's a kind of more single issue group.
00:14:25 - historians may not realize, but one of the most iconic black power groups, the League of Revolutionary Black workers organized a white parallel to its efforts. And that group was called the Motor City Labor League. and the Motor City Labor League, tries to do what the League of Revolutionary black workers did, and that is to sort of organize the working classes. It does that in particular,
00:14:55 - el the Eldon axle factories. and it's less successful in a lot of ways than some of the other groups before it. But it has this pretty remarkable history in particular of trying to use, health concerns and pollution concerns as a way of galvanizing white working classes, and getting them to see how they can build bridges and be in solidarity with black working classes in Detroit.
00:15:27 - my book is sort of the reason that I started it, right? So hearing the ways that, the movement for Black Lives has been demonized as anti-white, was a massive, was a major motivator for me. but then I think also everything really shifted, even though I was already writing my book by 2020, everything really shifted with 2020 because after the 2020 uprising, who didn't hear a call

Rethinking White Engagement in Anti-Racism

00:15:57 - or for white people to talk to other white people about racism, and that call just went from maybe kind of, known within progressive circles to mainstream in a much kind of bigger way, right? and so I hope that the book really helps those of us who heard and sympathized with that call from 2020 to see some ways that people have tried to do that before us.
00:16:28 - that I'm trying to tell and appreciate the way that a sort of earlier white generation really tried and experimented, right? And so I hope that they gained some insight about organizing white people against racism. The questions, the pitfalls, the promise that this previous generation faced when trying to do that I, I think, are still really relevant to the kinds
00:16:56 - and pitfalls of this strategy today. So I'm not trying to convert the world necessarily to the idea of racially parallel organizing, but to see that it's been tried and to see what sort of worked, what hasn't, what's useful about the strategy, what's not. And I hope kind of attached to that, that people gain some courage from the experimentation that was really at play with this earlier generation and its story, right?
00:17:27 - It's threw so much against the wall just to see what would kind of stick, right? It didn't necessarily get hung up on this idea of trying to get it right or knowing what it was gonna do before it did it all the time, right? It, this earlier generation was really pretty amazing, both black and white activists because they tried so many different things, right? And I hope that that is motivating in And of itself. I think I also really hope that people get a different sense of the Black power movement from reading this book.
00:17:59 - that we have about black power and solidarity that we live with today just are not serving us and the current political moment. And in part that's because we have this idea that black power was insular, that it didn't really invite coalitions, that it didn't have a vision for how a multiracial nation could forward the politics of self-determination. and so I hope that people come away from the book seeing a broader,
00:18:33 - and more multiracial black power movement.

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