The Birth of a Movement: Rethinking the Rise of the Black Guerilla Family

• In Event: 463 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 16. Race, Ethnicity, and Resistance

Abstract

Social scientists traditionally characterize the development of organizations in prison as the product of stagnant protectionist and economic explanations, overshadowing how both cultural and structural forces explain the propensity for organizational formation within a total institution. Through an analysis of archival documents and interviews with socio-political activists, formerly incarcerated men, and organization members, this study reveals how frame alignment processes propelled the emergence of the Black Guerilla Family as a social movement organization. By tracing the historical process of organizational formation, I propose a theory of organizational development, which argues that apart from protectionism and economic incentives, inmate organizations form as the result of collective mobilization and active protest against a coercive, institutionalized form of prisonization by connecting their struggle to larger social movements challenging similar conflictual processes in free society.

Author

• Brittany Michelle Friedman, Northwestern University