After the Rebellion: Black Youth, Social Movement Activism, and the Post-Civil Rights Generation

6 Organizing for Change

142 > 143 relationships with indigenous activists, some of the affiliates struggled to make their projects appealing to local people and groups. Another challenge involved linking BSLN’s goals, objectives, and program with its local constituents, members, and affiliates. For nationallevel or federated organizations, this is not always an easy task since local affiliates may wish to safeguard their autonomy against the encroachment of national leadership. Groups like the BSLN need the support of local activists who are often the driving force behind national programs. These local support bases also allow a national organization such as the BSLN to recruit new members or constituents and develop alliances with existing groups and networks. However, synthesizing the goals of BSLN’s national infrastructure with local affiliates was difficult because some of its initiatives fell directly under the jurisdiction of the BCCC and CDF.2 As a result, BSLN members at the local levels were often forced to divert their attention away from community-driven projects and instead toward implementing the programs of its parent organizations. The BSLN’s experiences underscore the broader set of concerns confronting movement formations that have a national staff or governing structure, but attempt to develop decentralized, semiautonomous affiliates . These formations allow for the rapid diffusion of policy objectives, as their local affiliates can quickly mobilize constituents in various jurisdictions . Federated organizations that have decentralized structures also create what Polletta calls “free spaces,” or pockets of organizing for constituents lacking status-oriented credentials. These free spaces give “unqualified” activists the opportunity to articulate grievances that may be overlooked or shunned by the national body.3 In addition, activists can institutionalize identities and ideological preferences in local affiliates , as well as experiment with tactics that best complement the political cultures that circumscribe their organizing work.4 For example, activists belonging to national organizations may reside in communities with rich histories of environmental justice or feminist organizing, and thus are able to embed these identity-based grievances within local affiliates. Despite the advantages with these formations, it is common for divisions to emerge between national governing bodies and their local affiliates . As Reger suggests, affiliates may promote ideologies and identities that are distinct from their national groups.5 Managing national organizations , deciding which local grievances deserve attention, and raising 144 > 145 SNCC activist Charlie Cobb, who was mainly responsible for initiating the program,8 when he stated that the freedom schools were used to draw “the link between a rotting shack and a rotting America.”9 By the middle of the summer in 1964, the Summer Project had established forty-one freedom schools in twenty communities throughout Mississippi that enrolled over 2,100 students, with almost two hundred college students recruited to teach in the program.10 The prospects of utilizing the BSLN’s capacity to mobilize young people to coordinate a Summer Freedom School program was actually considered by Edelman just a few months after the BSLN’s founding conference. A similar initiative had already been in operation in the CDF–Marlboro County office, in her hometown of Bennettsville, South Carolina, which had a great deal of success in combating child malnutrition and teenage pregnancy. As early as September 1991, Edelman made inquiries to her staff about implementing a freedom school program. Yet Martin Rodgers, a CDF employee who participated in the BSLN’s founding meeting, advised her that logistical complications made it too difficult to implement a program at the time.11 Hence, Edelman and other crusade members delayed the creation of freedom schools until after the BSLN’s first full year of operation. Arguably, the freedom school proposal may have become more attractive to some BCCC members in 1992 and 1993 with Bill Clinton’s presidential election and the growth of the Congressional Black Caucus , which doubled in size as a result of majority-minority redistricting. Because of Edelman’s close ties to the Clinton administration, the BCCC was in a good position to influence national policy targeting child poverty reduction. Edelman had known the Clintons for some time due to First Lady Hillary Clinton’s association with the CDF. Clinton was a CDF staff attorney and, up until the 1992 presidential campaign season, the chair of the organization’s board. After Clinton’s presidential victory , Edelman was on a short list of candidates for a cabinet or senior staff position in the White House.12 The Clinton administration opted to appoint Donna Shalala, who also...