Description
"Magnificent Militancy" analyzes social insurgency, radical freedom dreaming, political reform, and ideological constraint during the "Revolution of 1963." By attending to heated arguments about the meaning of civil rights and legitimacy of nonviolence among four circles of power that are often studied separately within the disciplines--the black freedom movement, print and broadcast media, official Washington, and public opinion--it draws attention to a watershed year in which the politics of inclusion and civil rights might have been more fully integrated with the politics of equality and full employment. Contingent decisions and disputed meanings change history in such revolutionary moments. Converging at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August, 1963, legions of grassroots activists from around the nation joined national leaders in demanding desegregation of southern public accommodations, the core of Kennedy's civil rights bill. At the same time, they demanded job creation programs and higher wages, equal acccess to workplaces and labor unions, affordable housing, integration of neighborhoods and schools, federal voting rights protection, and federal authority to prosecute police violations of civil liberties. But amid the noise of mounting white resistance and rampant fears of violence, the federal govermnment and the news media muffled and moderated public understandings of the movement's purposes. Powerful ideological actors fixed upon the March as a joyous epitaph for American apartheid, a vindication of American democratic freedom, and a rally in support of Kennedy's civil rights bill, instead of the radical challenge it was and still remains. Academic Year 2013-2014, Summer 2014
