Ep. 22 – Civil Rights Historiography: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Ezra

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Welcome to race in democracy. We are here with Dr Michael Ezra, professor of American multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University and the editor in chief of the Journal of Civil and Human Rights. Ah, Professor Ezra. Michael, Thank you for coming.

[0:00:36 Michael] Ah, thank you very much for having me here.

[0:00:39 Peniel] I want to talk to you today about a lot of things, but certainly your role is editor in chief of the Journal of Civil and Human Rights. You’ve also edited a book, The Economic Civil Rights Movement. African Americans in the Struggle for Economic Power. And what’s interesting is that right now, this year is the 4/100 anniversary of 16 19 and Jamestown. And when we think about the civil rights movement, this idea of black citizenship in the freedom struggle in a lot of ways, this year is the year that people like Malcolm X used to say 400 years of racial oppression in the United States, and the idea of the civil rights movement was to try toe transform citizenship, tried to transform American democracy and I want to ask you about the historiography of the civil rights movement and how it’s currently being sort of expanded and innovated by really a plethora of new scholars. I mean, on some levels, there’s a lot of intersectionality we’re seeing on some levels. Um, people are talking about structures on other levels people are bringing in the environment feminism, mental health issues, LGBT key issues. So I want to start with that. General, what do you see in terms of some of the new cutting edge directions that civil rights, The story ah, graffiti is going into and really the at the local regional, national but global level two because the journal you edit is global?

[0:02:06 Michael] Yes. I think that the key development that we’re seeing in the literature right now has to do with international is, um you see people connecting the US freedom struggle toe other struggles worldwide and not really in terms of just making analogies between the two, but actually seeing how certain key actors, internationally built coalitions between freedom struggles in different countries. So a lot of the civil rights of story Ah, graffiti is kind of going back and retelling the story that previous scholars told, but in a more complex way, that kind of fills in not only the international dimensions but what you said before the intersectional dimensions. We’re seeing a lot of work now on sexuality and gender in particular. And feminism in particular kind of a male dominated version of the civil rights movement is now being redone and taking into account a no more people who were hidden in the history originally.

[0:03:04 Peniel] And when you think about that male dominated version, um, certainly people like Malcolm X Martin with the King lead that that kind of historiography. What do you think the impact is of sort of this shift or this disruption? And certainly we’re thinking, Ah, whole set of people We think about the dark end of the street about, you know, situating rape at the center of the civil rights movement and bringing it back in terms of chronologically to the 19 forties. The work of Keyshia Blaine, The Work of Rhonda Williams. There’s all this different work that centering black women as organizer’s activists as interlocutors. What do you think the impact is?

[0:03:46 Michael] I think the key will be when people envision us the civil rights movement and the rank and file as women. I think that, um, any freedom struggle in U. S. History has had women’s component to it, and that was missing from the literature for quite a while. I think it’s gonna get people to reflexively think of women as leaders in ways that they haven’t before. And I think that will resonate all the way up to the U. S. Presidency. Probably

[0:04:15 Peniel] now, gender is just one of the issues because Jean Theo Harris has the new book out on, You know, you know, sort of a beautiful, difficult struggle. Andi really gets into all these different misconceptions that she argues misconceptions about gender but also about violence versus non violence misconceptions about how much white support there was for the civil rights movement. Misconceptions about local versus national struggles. I want us to tease those things out as editor. What are you seeing in terms of even both what you’re publishing books that are being reviewed, what’s on the cutting edge when we think about civil and human rights because on some levels, even how are we conceptualizing that because I want us to talk about Jackie doubt hall in the long civil rights movement, and it kills saying and and black is the country, and he talked about a long civil rights era. My own work has talked about a long black power movement. Camo Z. Woodard has talked about a long black freedom struggle with Jean Theo Harris. Soon Diatta change. Wa has talked about critiqued the long civil rights movement along with Clarence Laying. So how do you conceptualize the civil rights movement

[0:05:31 Michael] that dimensions while that the temporal dimensions that you that you’re talking about, I think now can be stretched into the 19 eighties and 19 nineties, and I think, trying to connect the present to the civil rights movement, I think there still is a disconnect in the scholarship and that people are trying to a, I think, apply civil rights strategies kind of unsuccessfully to the present in in ways that aren’t necessarily strategic oversights, but that people don’t have the historical texture of understanding what really happened during the civil rights movement in a way that makes it inapplicable to the present. Thes new histories begin to dig up nuanced that suddenly people realize what was happening in the past is also happening in the present that the older histories that are less complex wouldn’t reveal to people in the present.

[0:06:30 Peniel] When you say that, um, these contemporary move movements are trying to utilize that Are you thinking things like March for our lives or women’s march? Black lives

[0:06:38 Michael] test in general marches in general. And, um, trying trying to get definitive answers from government about issues that are more day facto than day jury.

[0:06:55 Peniel] Okay, what do you think about? Do you think of something like the moral Mondays movement will William Barber is trying to do in North Carolina? Um, what is non violent civil disobedience when you think about black lives? Matter? BLM in 2014. 15 stage, nonviolent demonstrations. But they did civil disobedience activists blocked whole highways in Miami, Washington, D. C. Other places. Sometimes it was very, very effective in terms of getting massive media attention, even leading to some public policy changes. Sometimes it hasn’t been as as effective. But what do you think that these young people are? They imbibing sort of ah, conventional narrative of the civil rights movement and not seeing sort of, you know, underneath sort of the underside of this, so they’re not able to sort of apply the right strategies. What do you What do you say?

[0:07:46 Michael] Yeah, I I can’t exactly answer the question, but I’ve been moved by. Ah, a theory by the founder of Occupy Wall ST Michael White, who talks about the end of protest and Kansi’s protest as a vehicle that takes a lot of energy and gets a lot of attention. And that usually doesn’t lead to policy change.

[0:08:09 Peniel] Wow. But what about the civil rights movement? In terms of doesn’t the movement short of sort of refute that at least not just the classical, but all the way into the eighties and nineties, like you were mentioning?

[0:08:20 Michael] Yes. And And the translation somehow between the past and the present make somehow doesn’t seem to be happening. In terms of that, the gains of the civil rights movement remain outstanding, rapid and transformative in a way that it doesn’t seem like any movement since have really achieved as much.

[0:08:45 Peniel] What about the movement to end mass incarceration in the sense that the president, who is not necessarily a big supporter of black people they just passed in the Congress just passed a bill in December. That’s really at least ratcheting down some aspects at the federal level of mass incarceration, and that was a sort of bipartisan bill. But you had activists like Van Jones and others who are really supportive of that now. There was criticism and push back of that. But certainly that’s coming out of not just BLM but coming out of a riel activist movement to sort of transform the Carcel stay. Angela Davis has been a big part of that. Michelle Alexander has been a big part of that, and in some levels they shamed conventional civil rights organization, Urban League and CP into saying, We’re gonna look at black prisoners, really for the first time, probably since the 19 seventies, the last time, except for this recent last 567 years, that as a nation we were looking and even the black community was looking at black people in jail and saying, Whether they’re innocent or guilty, they’re human beings who deserve good treatment. It was really, you know, we’re thinking about, uh, Black Panthers, but also Malcolm X King and Angela Davis, you know?

[0:10:01 Michael] Yeah. So, um, that’s a good point. actually that the move to end the caution. Allstate has its roots in the black power air in the long civil rights movement. And yeah, we’ll see about that. There are some encouraging changes, but ah, so felons are now being franchised again. But now there are some new laws being passed that says thes. People have to pay off all of their court fees before they would get the chance to vote. And I think Abram Kendis theory about how racism and anti racism work simultaneously in the country. Um, rather than there being some narrative toward progress or some narrative toward anti progress that happened at the exact same time that the more fierce racism exists, the more fierce anti racism exists. Anti racism cannot kill racism and racism cannot kill. Anti racism exists simultaneously. And I think you’re going to see this with this criminal justice reform. There’s gonna be some sharks who make a lot of money off of this through the ankle bracelets through the monitoring systems in which whole communities get turned into prisons, basically where people are being monitored and and find and watched Ah, and can’t leave their street. Basically, um, we’ll see where this reform goes in terms of whether it’s a positive change or not when drug legalization happens. Marijuana legalization It’s going to prevent a lot of people of color from being incarcerated for nothing. Um, but who’s gonna be making the money off of this?

[0:11:39 Peniel] Okay, And this goes back to the economics that you talked about in the economic civil rights movement. I want you to talk about that. This book, the economic civil rights movement, African Americans and the struggles for economic power. What do you mean by the economic civil rights movement?

[0:11:54 Michael] Yeah, um, there’s a lot of ways to define racism and boil it down, but I always thought I always teach it at the end of the day as kind of, ah, political or economic imbalance of power along racial lines. That’s predictable, durable, reliable. You can count on it, and it’s usually profitable for somebody and usually not African Americans. When we wanted to do in this book, though, is figure out how black people resisted that and built up organizations, businesses, institutions that would empower them economically and then to see okay, what changes actually occur when individuals or groups get money. How does how does doing well lead to doing good in this country? And one of the theories of this book is that in order in the capitalist United States, maybe even in the capitalist white supremacist United States, the only way you can get ah white people to buy into a narrative of anti racism is by making it profitable. And so, at the end of the day, how would these African American Resistance fights transform Not only black people but white people.

[0:13:04 Peniel] And what did you find in terms of specifically when you like, who was able to successfully do that? Is that the Urban League? Is it the Congress of Racial Equality? Is it affirmative action? One contact a.

[0:13:15 Michael] Philip Randolph. I mean, during World War Two, convincing a president that that the key to the Freedom fight was employment during World War Two. That the most Democratic thing that Roosevelt could do was, you know, allow for a non segregated military industry. Essentially, so it’s it’s individual

[0:13:37 Peniel] remind our listeners. How did a Philip Randolph do that?

[0:13:39 Michael] Ah yes, A Philip Randolph IVs threatened to march on Washington well before Martin Luther King did, and a fillip on and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Ah brought into that idea. He did not want a Philip Randolph to lead this grand march to Washington, D. C. So he agreed to create the Fair Employment Practices Committee. And that led Teoh semblance of non discrimination in the military industry, which was still is the biggest employer in the United States. So ah, individuals like Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia, we talk about union leaders and the struggles they had to desegregate shop floors. Ah, Abram Candy has a piece on Richard Nixon and his stoking of black capitalism. So on the presidential level, individuals, organizations, all seeing capitalism sort of as a as a conduit to freedom.

[0:14:32 Peniel] Now, did it work? Because one thing we know in terms of Richard Nixon, especially during the first term in the 1st 2 years he talked about black power is black capitalism. But then soon enough, people like Arthur Fletcher became who was a special assistant black Republican became very, very disappointed and disillusioned because the Nixon administration received push back from whites, but also Jewish Americans and others who Nancy MacLean talks about this Other people talk about it, who were saying Hey, this is this is not gonna be fair to us, and and, uh, we need to slow this down. So was it successful?

[0:15:09 Michael] You take things like Soul City, North Carolina, You know, an independent black built town from scratch in the 19 seventies. And, you know, the town didn’t make it. But the idea that that means that the plan to empower people economically was unsuccessful. That’s not necessarily a corollary, because thes things have great symbolic importance. And also, some of these institutions are targeted for defeat by their enemies as well or neglect by politicians. So, you know, uh, there wasn’t sort of this kind of vertical and horizontal economic success that you might see with Garvey is amore with Nation of Islam, in which thousands and thousands of people become economically empowered through these projects. But at the same time, they send the message to people that economic power is out there to be got and that it can change people’s lives.

[0:16:05 Peniel] Well, I want to talk to you about then reparations in terms of this, you know, this is really a huge, huge topic. Historically but also contemporary. You know, we’ve got David Brooks of The New York Times coming out for reparations. Obviously, Tana HAC Coats in 2014 then writing for the Atlantic, had a major piece on Call the case for reparations. But there’s also a national coalition of blacks for reparations, and Cobra Mary Frances Berries has written about Callie House. My face is black. My face is true, Queen Mother. Oddly more goes from being a Communist socialist black nationalists, but really a big reparations leader. James Forman. Reparations from the United Church. Randall Robinson The debt. Um, now you know we’ve got Democratic presidential primary candidates saying that they’re either for it like Cory Booker Or that therefore HR 40 which is John Conyers Bill to study reparations. The congressman out of Michigan who introduced that bill in 1987 could never get funding and ballast for that bill. So I want to talk about reparations on and not reparations is some individual check Teoh African Americans. But reparations is something structurally that would finally really, uh, helped transform the imbalance that you talk about in the economic civil rights movement. What do you think and how feet how feasible it is, how feasible is it How would we do it? Ira Katznelson talks about this and when affirmative action was white, where we see specific moments in history, even beyond racial slavery, where they were set asides for whites that black citizens, including veterans, should have gotten but didn’t including we think about F A J Home Mortgages. And that’s the largest transfer from the state toe. Ordinary citizens in American history is giving people the capacity to buy their own homes and into two to bequeath that generational well, that’s how the white middle class was created. African Americans. Absolutely. We know empirically, we have the proof. Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier did not get the opportunity that could be part of it. That could be part of it. But what do you think about reparations?

[0:18:18 Michael] And Richard Rothstein? The Color of law is one of the latest books on this. Um, I think reparations is more a realistic possibility than ever before. Democratic candidates who really said they wouldn’t do it like Bernie Sanders and now finding out that they can’t say that anymore. They have toe say that they’ll study it, and I think this the disaster of 2016 for the Democratic Party seems to have, well, it’s a struggle within the Democratic Party. But it seems to have finally gotten some people in the party to admit that the heart and soul of the Democratic Party is African Americans and that they have to be put into the position of leaders of the policy debate. It doesn’t even have to necessarily be an African American candidate making the claims. But But whoever is the winning candidate has toe fully represent some kind of black perspective or the whole thing will collapse. And reparations, I think, is the biggest one of all. At the heart of it, it’s truth and reconciliation in the United States can’t happen without reparations. It’s reparations is common in the United States. Like you pointed out, there’s all sorts of the G I bill, you know, as a form of reparations, of a form of affirmative action, of a form of welfare, four white soldiers who deserved welfare in many people’s minds. So we’re talking about people. If you think about what that word means, you know, welfare people who deserve to have their interests look that seriously by the government and possibly assisted financially. Um people were never paid for slavery. That moral impetus is obvious. And, um,

[0:20:08 Peniel] also the wealth that racial slavery produced means Sven Becker, an empire of cotton, really gets deep into just the global financial wealth that was produced by racial slavery. And I think Becker, it’s were more than anybody’s along with Baptist really shows you that racial slavery impacted both the North and South equally because there was a supply chain of wealth that was being built off of the labor not just the labour, but also off of the bodies of of African American women, Children and men who were insured who represented collateral represented economic leverage and power. I think the new studies on racial slavery are unbelievably sophisticated and nuance and really have a lot of impact on the way in which at least I perceive the contemporary debate because it’s more than just about a salary. It’s about what wealth was generated, and once wealth has generated, the only way you can really have some kind of equitable distribution is toe. Think about large structures, you know, I think a way in which we think about repair and reparations, something like Medicare and social security are connected to that, too. But it’s about a rep, a reparative aspect on just citizenship in that case. But it’s racialized because whites really enjoy Social Security and Medicare disproportionately. All right, my, my final question, Professor Ezra, is when you think about civil and human rights in the 21st century, how do you think we’re gonna be defining that in the 21st century? Black lives matter. March for our lives, Immigration. LGBT Q. And how do you think scholars are gonna be approaching those issues?

[0:21:52 Michael] Well, I think reparations is one. That reparations is one that you could certainly talk about. But I actually think internationally is where scholars are going to draw their understanding of us morality. So I think, like, for example, the way America litigate it’s or adjudicates Israel and Palestine is going to be a crucial way that the American people understand themselves as Americans like the Iraq war, like 9 11 like World War two. So I think we’re in that era where immigration, where foreign policy questions really wind up defining who we are as a people.

[0:22:31 Peniel] All right. Thank you very much. Dr. Michael Ezra, who is Professor of multicultural American Studies, a cinema state and also the editor of the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and editor of the Economic Civil Rights Movement. African Americans in the Struggle for Economic Power and other books as well author of other books. Thank you for joining Us.

[0:22:52 Michael] Thank you. Thank you.

[0:22:54 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.