Toward Freedom Land: The Long Struggle for Racial Equality in America

Introduction

1 Introduction In the pages that follow I have assembled a selection of my essays on the “long” black freedom struggle. Written over the course of five decades, they exemplify my sustained interest in a cluster of themes associated with the struggle for racial justice and equality. In rereading these essays for inclusion in this book, I was sorely tempted to tidy up some of the prose, temper or amplify a few arguments , revise an outdated perspective, and generally make use of the wonderful scholarship on race done in the recent past. In part, because too many books of essays with the usual disclaimer of being just lightly retouched leave me wondering how much has been changed, and in part, to be fair to those who initially commented upon or criticized them in print, these writings, however vulnerable, are presented here as they originally appeared. They all deal broadly with the struggle for black equality, but written between 1969 and 2008, for different venues and purposes, they do not present a single coherent interpretation. Moreover, arranged chronologically by subject rather than by publication date, so as to provide a linear sense of that topic’s history, they sometimes counter and at other times echo one another. Indeed, I occasionally repeat myself in pieces written years apart and for different audiences. So did Mozart, but alas, the analogy ends there. The overlapping and interlocking, however, do mirror one historian’s effort to grapple with changing times and changing historical scholarship. They are, I believe, still of value as historical scholarship. It is my hope that in gathering together in a single volume works written for many journals or scholarly collections, some no longer in print, they will be more accessible to future generations of scholars. This volume also reveals (hopefully) the evolution of a mind. It can be read as an account of a historian’s growth or, at least, his changing views. It is evidence of how one historian confronted and articulated some 2 Toward Freedom Land of the attitudes and issues central to civil rights history during the past five decades. Like most others making their way in the profession, I always felt too busy, too eager for the next project, to indulge in introspection about past works. Reflecting upon oneself—one’s background, one’s experiences, one’s values—is not what historians generally are taught. We’re too self-conscious to bare ourselves before the gaze of outsiders . The chasm between recollections and truth, moreover, leaves me wary of distant hindsight. Still, assembling this volume left me no out. At the very least, however dimly apparent to me at the time, my general disposition to challenge dominant points of view and, in particular , my inclination to assert interpretations at variance with others writing civil rights history appear clear in retrospect. This contrariness may well be in my DNA, or in the New York City air. Then again, it might be the way I was brought up. Much as we can never fully free ourselves from the influence of the past, we can never fully free our view of the past from all that influences us. Extended, extensive verbal bouts are what I most remember of family life in my world as a child. Every Sunday, my immigrant father and my mother, who was the first in her family born in the United States, would gather with their many siblings. All lived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan or had recently migrated to other Jewish neighborhoods in the Bronx or Brooklyn. All worked in the needle trades. Drinking tea out of glasses, they lovingly (for the most part) sparred with one another about the week’s events. Some were communists in Ben Gold’s furriers’ union. Others, in David Dubinsky’s ladies garment workers’ union, claimed to be socialists. A few considered themselves Roosevelt liberals, and one, I think, a syndicalist . Whatever their politics, they all could talk, and talk. And did so. Some shouted. Some even screamed. None felt inhibited to dispute this or denounce that. And after the bickering came the inevitable good-bye hugs and kisses. I understood little of it other than the joy of the joust, the delight they shared in the tussle. A similar feeling of pleasure attended my immediate family’s squabbles. The tradition in which I was gratefully raised honored disputation . Although my father could neither read nor write, he carefully looked and listened and never...