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>> 47 2 The World beyond the Campus Some serious-minded adults gravely pronounced in innumerable articles, books and speeches, that ours was a “lost generation.” Such was the dismal future for the mass of the youth; but the outlook of Negro youth, what with all the multiple patterns of discrimination and oppression, was more hopeless yet. However, Negro youth, as the whole of American people, refused to accept such a fate for themselves. —Esther Cooper Jackson, This Is My Husband, 1953 When James Jackson died in September 2007 at the age of ninety-two, few contemporary activists acknowledged or understood his valuable contribution to progressive social movements, black radicalism, and the development of a black student and youth activist tradition in the twentieth century. Jackson was part of a small cadre of young black radicals who cofounded the little known, but no less important, Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) in the late 1930s. The SNYC was a social movement organization that provided a blueprint for black student and youth organizing two decades before the student protests of the 1960s. It was instrumental in linking the economic justice claims of the black working class with the civil rights demands of middle-class leaders, many of whom were drawn from the ranks of black colleges and advocacy groups. In a 1931 speech to his Virginia Union freshman class titled “The World beyond the Campus,” Jackson offered an important commentary on the prospects of movement activism among black students 48 > 49 Communist Party (CP), and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). This movement infrastructure was dynamic, routinely changing , and shaped by the shifting political, economic, and international contexts of the Great Depression and World War II periods, which further influenced the political orientations of black radical youth. More important, movement organizations in the 1930s and 1940s initiated community organizing initiatives and popular mobilization campaigns that pushed for civil rights, labor protections for black workers, and economic recovery programs. The first part of the chapter offers a detailed account of the emergence of black youth, movement formations in the 1930s, and why the social status of black youth was a central concern of black progressives during this period. I then examine movement activism among black youth, before and during World War II, with a particular focus on the activities of the SNYC. Afterward, I discuss the SNYC’s positions on the U.S. intervention in World War II and black conscription and explain how their views were influenced by the political and economic climates of the period. Finally, I examine the collapse of the SNYC organization, which was partially due to the anticommunist hysteria and the increasing shift among black leaders away from militant political action in the late 1940s. The Origins of Twentieth-Century Black Student Youth-Based Movements It is difficult to determine when black youth first became involved in transformational movements. Historian John Lovell insists that youth and young adults between the ages of ten and thirty made up a large segment of the black slave population in the mid-nineteenth century and were heavily involved in the slave revolts.3 Decades later, in the 1920s, students revolted against the conservative administrations, policies , officials, and philosophies at historically black colleges and universities .4 The 1930s also experienced an unprecedented rise of political activity and community organizing among black youth. At the beginning of the decade, the infamous Scottsboro case in 1931 helped to raise the political consciousness of many young blacks about the horrors of racial segregation. Similar to the Emmit Till incident two decades later, it hastened young people’s involvement in social and political activism. 50 > 51 twenty-seven black trade unionists from Chicago wrote several black state legislators explaining that “an examination of the records of the American Federation of Labor will show that it has always stood for justice to the Negro workers.”10 The trade unionists attempted to dissuade the legislators from voting against prounion laws after the latter group expressed concerns about the rampant discrimination in trade unions. Despite black protestations and vocal support from white progressives inside the AFL leadership infrastructure, racial exclusion was a way of life for most unions, partly because their autonomous structures allowed them to ignore directives from the AFL Executive Council. Further evidence of racial exclusion inside of trade unions was provided by civil rights and black radical groups in the 1920s. A survey of ninety-four unions administered by the Chicago Commission of Race Relations documented entrenched racism...

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