Confronting Exclusion and Inequality: Legacies of the Civil Rights Movement

Session Submission Type: Created Panel

Session Description

The civil rights struggles for racial and economic justice in the 1960s both challenged and deepened limitations to inclusion and representation in the United States, with enduring consequences for democracy. This panel examines the many practices and institutions that curtailed the rights and opportunities of communities of color – and the complex agendas and legacies of organizations confronting those limitations.

Shamira Gelbman examines the role civil rights lobbyists and allied organizations played in shaping the civil rights legislative agenda of the 1960s, with particular attention to the issue of fair employment. Her paper offers new insights into the role of non-state actors in shaping civil rights policy. Kirstine Taylor examines the growth of the U.S. carceral system, arguing that its roots are to be found not in the explosive racial politics of the late-1960s and early-1970s, but in the efforts by southern states to expand economically by constructing an aggressive “law and order” regime. Michael Brown examines how the African American struggle for equal citizenship and equality of opportunity unfolded against the resistance of local white elites in battles for control over community action agencies in five deep South states in the mid-1960s. His paper explores the enduring implications of the southern War on Poverty for political and economic inclusion of disenfranchised and exploited groups.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Cosponsor

• Related Groups / Labor Politics

Individual Presentations

• Lobbyists and the Civil Rights Legislative Agenda, 1945-1964 - Shamira M. Gelbman, Wabash College

• The Political Economy of Carceral Development in the American South - Kirstine Taylor, Ohio University

• The Revolution Stalled:The Southern War on Poverty and Civil Rights Movement - Michael K Brown, University of California, Santa Cruz

Chair

• Paul Frymer Princeton University

Discussant

• Kimberley S. Johnson New York University