The Civil Rights Movement and Its Consequences

The one word which better than any other describes the position of Negro Americans in the South from the 1890s until the outbreak of World War II is powerless. ... Negroes were totally excluded from positions of decision making in all institutions. ... All public facilities in the region, including city parks and playgrounds, theaters, hotels, and restaurants were rigidly segregated — as was, of course, the entire school system. The disenfranchisement of Negroes was virtually complete.

— Everett Carll Ladd, Negro Political Leadership in the South, 1966

The civil rights movement in the South was considered one of America's most important periods of political and social readjustment in this century, and perhaps one of the most profound in the country's history. The movement represented the first major effort to gain greater equality for blacks since Reconstruction. Indeed, the primary assumption underlying the civil rights movement was that, once freed from overt intimidation and granted basic political rights, blacks would be able to translate those gains into political power and economic advancement. Political equality and the betterment of social and economic conditions for blacks were the foremost goals of the movement. Black political power was also seen as the fundamental precondition to advances in other aspects of life. "If Negroes could vote," claimed Martin Luther King, Jr., "there would be no more oppressive poverty directed against Negroes, our children would not be crippled by segregated schools, and the whole community might live together in harmony."

Despite this generally accepted formula for racial change, there is still widespread debate about the effects of the civil rights movement on the lives of black southerners. A longtime scholar of southern politics, William Havard, wrote in the early 1970s that "any middle-aged southerner can attest to the fact that changes have taken place in race relations in the South within the period of his adult experience that would have been inconceivable to his father, let alone his grandfather." In more specific terms, John Lewis, civil rights activist of the 1960s and later director of the Voter Education Project, contended that the black movement in the South has meant "not only the changes in the number of [black] people elected, in the breakdowns of barriers in public accommodations and desegregation, or in better jobs for blacks," but also "a new, recognized sense of black dignity and pride." These sanguine accounts suggest that a number of significant gains have taken place in the quest of black Americans for political and economic equality.

Other analysts, however, have disputed these views concerning the impact of the black movement. A dozen years after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the New York Times claimed that "the full potential of black political power in Dixie remains unrealized" owing to a lack of black political experience, organization, motivation, and economic power. Most noticeable has been the apparent lack of progress for blacks in the economic realm. Moreover, while Jim Crow may have died, subtle forms of racism continue to plague blacks. In the words of southern historian William Chafe, "inequality and discrimination still suffuse our social and economic system, buttressed by informal modes of social control even more powerful than the law." The question remains as to what effects the civil rights movement has had for southern blacks, and specifically whether or not increased black political participation has resulted in significant improvements.

The purpose of this book is to assess the impact of that movement and the role of black political participation in local communities in the South. Much has been written about the rise and development of the civil rights movement. The sit-ins and freedom rides, Martin Luther King, SCLC and CORE, Selma and Montgomery — all represent interesting symbols or tales of conflict in the struggle for change. Little attention, however, has been focused on the results of that movement in the lives of black southerners. Thus the emphasis here is on a neglected area of academic and public concern — the effects of black participation on the formation of local policies. In the process of exploring this issue, several basic questions will be addressed: What was the nature of the civil rights movement at the local level in the South? How much political, social, and economic change took place? How did these changes occur? Most importantly, why did these transformations take place, and what was the impact of various black political activities? The answers to these questions, of course, go well beyond the black movement and have important implications for political and social change more generally in the United States.

Forms of Political Participation

In both its philosophical and practical aspects, the civil rights movement in the South was concerned with increasing the extent and quality of black participation in politics. Political involvement, especially electoral participation, is considered the most fundamental element in American democracy. Through such participation all other rights theoretically are protected and each citizen is granted a potential influence in the determination of governmental policy. According to democratic theory, the political process serves as a conduit through which the needs of the people are communicated to the government, which in turn makes the key decisions as to how the benefits of society are to be distributed. Since public resources are scarce, the ability to participate in the process governing their distribution is of crucial importance. During the 1960s the black movement in the South raised anew the issue of whether political participation was an adequate instrument for alleviating serious inequities among American citizens.

What needs to be recognized about the civil rights movement, however, is not simply that it brought about greater political mobilization and increased participation of blacks. It should also be kept in mind that the forms of participation by blacks and other groups were in many cases new or used previously to only a minimal extent. For that reason, this study examines a broad range of strategies used and assesses their relative efficacy for bringing about increased equality for blacks in the political and economic sectors.

In terms of conventional strategies, the vote was long sought by blacks as the principal goal of the movement that culminated in the 1965...