While each period is historically unique, veterans and scholars of the civil rights movement say there are some important similarities between the era of Jim Crow and racial segregation and our current moment. One similarity, as author and professor Joshua Clark Davis notes, is the role that local law enforcement plays in enforcing regimes of racial oppression and attacking the movements opposed to them. But, as civil rights Icon Judy Richardson argues, there are also critical similarities when it comes to organizing and executing successful resistance efforts then and now. In this extended episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Richardson and Davis about the hardwon lessons from the civil rights movement that must be applied to the growing anti-authoritarianism movement today.
Guests:
- Judy Richardson is an American documentary filmmaker and civil rights activist. She was an early participant in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) from 1963 to 1966 and was mentored by Ella Baker. Richardson was the educational director for the PBS docuseries Eyes on the Prize, widely recognized as the most important documentary ever produced on the Civil Rights movement, and she co-edited the book Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts By Women in SNCC. She was a distinguished visiting lecturer of Africana Studies at Brown University.
- Joshua Clark Davis is associate professor of US history at the University of Baltimore. He’s the author of multiple books, including Police Against The Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back, a retelling of the civil rights movement through its overlooked work against police violence—and the police who attacked the movement with surveillance, undercover agents, and retaliatory prosecutions.
Additional Resources:
- Joshua Clark Davis, Princeton University Press, Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back
- Judy Richardson, “SNCC changed me forever”
Credits:
Producer: Rosette Sewali
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you allwith us on this podcast. We’re going to journey back to the Civil Rights Movement in America to not onlyrecall the importance of that struggle and how it changed the trajectory of our country, but also to look atpolice and political re oppression today. That in part, is a result of the pushback against the advancementsmade by the Civil Rights Movement that smashed racial segregation and opened the doors of equality inAmerica. We’re joined by Judy Richardson and Joshua Clark Davis. Joshua Clark Davis is an associateprofessor of US History at the University of Baltimore. His latest book is Police Against the Movement.We’re telling the story of the 1960s civil rights struggle to its work against police violence, and it’s really a pre-history of both Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements that emerged over a half a century later.
He’s also the author of From Head Shops to Whole Foods, an Exploration of Black Book Sellers, naturalFood Stores, feminist Enterprises, and other businesses that emerged from the movements of the sixtiesand seventies. He’s an award-winning researcher winning awards from the Full Bar program, the NEHPublic Scholars Program, and is written for the Atlantic, the Nation Slate, jackin, Washington Post andTeam Vogue. And Judy Richardson was the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,known then as sncc, where she risked her life to in segregation and face down racist power in Georgia,Mississippi, and Alabama. From 1963 to 1966, Judy Richardson still fights for a better world and hasbecome an award-winning author and producer. She produced the Frederick Douglass Visitor Center filmfor the National Park Services. She’s currently working on four museum films, including those for theCivil Rights Museums in Memphis and Atlanta. And in 1968, she co-founded Drum and Spear Bookstore,one of the largest African-American owned bookstores in the country, which she was an associateproducer, education director for the seminal PBS series. Eyes on the Prize, she continues to producedocumentaries and is a co-editor of the book, hands on the Freedom Plow Personal Accounts by Womenin sncc. She’s a member of the SNCC Legacy Project Board and a visiting professor at Brown Universitywith an honorary doctorate from Swarthmore College.
So I want to welcome you both.
Judy Richardson:
Thank you.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
So I’d like to begin with both your reflections as a historian, but your reflections, Judy, as someone wholived through the Civil Rights Movement, to give our audience a sense of what that was like, what itmeant to be in the Civil Rights Movement, what we faced. I want to bring that forward to what we facenow, but talk about what it was like to be a young woman, a young person facing down, the police, facingdown segregation in the South in our country.
Judy Richardson:
Well, I think it’s very important to connect us, and because of SNC was the only youth-led civil rightsorganization working in the south at the time. We had grown out of the sit-in movement, so it was DianeNash and John Lewis and Marion Barry, and a number of other folks. But we were all, as I was 19 yearsold when I come in and I’m coming off of Swarthmore’s campus. But what was amazing to me, it’s notjust the staff people whom I joined when I first come into Cambridge, Maryland and then go into thenational office, it is also the local people who really guided and guarded us. And the guarded us is alsoequally important. I mean, when we go into Mississippi, when Bob Moses goes in, he’s going into anorganization that is started by returning World War II veterans, the Regional Council of NegroLeadership.
It’s Medgar Rivers and Amzie Moore, and a number of folks who were much more at risk than I wascoming out of Tarrytown, New York. I mean, I could go back home. What was amazing to me is thatthese are people who had experienced lynchings, who had experienced all kinds of incredible violence,and not just physical intimidation, but also economic because they were landowners. They were deniedloans for the crops. So I come in and certainly we experienced a lot of violence. I was shot at, I was jailed,it was all of that. But what gave me the courage was not just all of these young people who surround me,and it’s like, okay, if they can keep doing it, then I can keep doing it. It wasn’t just that. It was also theselocal people in hands on the Freedom Flower are 52 women. Their stories of being in the movement.
Joanne Christian Mass talks about how Mama Dolly, for example, who was in southwest Georgia, she’sstanding under a spotlight with a shotgun inside our black and white SNCC workers. But she is guardingthem so that any vigilantes who come near her are warned, look, if you come, you got to go by me. So itwas that kind of courage. So yeah, I can talk about what I felt being in jail. I can talk about maybe beingafraid and all of that, but it’s important also to get in the local people who were part of that.
Marc Steiner:
I think one of the things you said is really important people to understand, even though the movementitself in the South was nonviolent, when we protested, went to jail, we didn’t fight back. We stood to endsegregation, but the people around us, many of them, the farmers were armed and protected people. Andnot
Judy Richardson:
And not just the farmers. Not just-
Marc Steiner:
Farmers. I know not just the farmers. Right. The townspeople too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think people don’tknow that end of the story at all. It’s really important. Josh, let me turn to you. So you created this book,Against the Movement. Let’s talk a bit about what threw you into this and how it relates to what happenedin the South and where we are now.
Joshua Clark Davis:
So I started writing this book in 2017, and at the time, the Movement for Black Lives was reallyaccelerating and heating up. I had moved to Baltimore at the beginning of 2015, and then Freddie Graywas killed a few months later, and then the uprising and all those protests happened. And so that was kindof a front row seat to police violence, but also organized movements against police violence. And thething that really struck me was that a lot of the media around BLM was characterizing it as this is a newmovement that’s picking up, or the Civil Rights movement ended. This is continuing the struggle. This iscompleting the unfinished work of the Civil Rights movement. And it really got me wondering, okay, sowhat did the Civil Rights Movement do in the face of just suffocating police violence? Because we allknow these iconic images from Birmingham and Bull Connor’s henchman with the attack dogs or theEdmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
But I was wondering, is that really true that the Civil Rights movement didn’t really resist or protest orpicket or fight against police violence? And the more that I researched it, the more that I found actuallythe whole movement didn’t necessarily directly confront police violence, but large parts of it did,especially the more radical parts of the movement, especially SNCC C and especially Core, the Congressof Racial Equality. And they didn’t just focus on physical violence, but over time they expanded theirconception of violence to include trumped up felony charges, surveillance, infiltration, legal violence. Wecould call it state repression in some ways. They were building a lot on earlier critiques that were comingfrom communists and socialists from the Red Scare and even earlier. But also I think the big thing thatkind of struck me in doing this work was we think about state repression and the civil rights movement assomething that FBI did as something that Hoover did. And we have totally overlooked how much localpolice departments all over the country, south, north, east and West, were very eager to sabotage thismovement. Again, most often with kind of sophisticated trickery because they looked to Bull Connor andthey saw that he really embarrassed
Marc Steiner:
The head of police, Alabama.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Yes. The public safety director at Birmingham, Alabama, who infamously sent out attack dogs, told hismen to open up the fire hoses, attacked black children. It went not only on national tv, internationalimages all over the world today, we would call it going viral. And it just was a total defeat forBirmingham and a total victory in many ways for Dr. King and the SELC. Most police chiefs learn fromthat and said, we’ve got to do something much more sophisticated than that. So that’s where I came intothis book, and that was the story that I wanted to tell to reshape how we think about the Civil rightsmovement, to reshape how much they only endured police violence, but fought it. And to also reshapehow we think about state repression. It’s not just federal, it’s not just Hoover. It’s happening in local policedepartments all over the country and not just the South.
Marc Steiner:
So lemme do this in two parts here. I want to come right back to what’s happening now with repressioninside the police departments and red squads and what they did then and what’s happening now. But Iwant people to get a sense of how dangerous it was to be in the Civil Rights Movement. I remembered, Ithink if I have it correctly, somewhere of 64, it’d be three. It gets muddled sometimes in my head, but anumber of civil rights workers were killed, not just Goodman and Cheney, others were killed. It was adangerous, dangerous thing to do because you had the forces of the clan just to rave against you whothought of nothing but killing a civil rights worker. It meant nothing. I only people really understood thesense of real danger that people experienced and what risks they took to end segregation and end that kindof blatant racism in this country.
Judy Richardson:
No, absolutely. And I think it also in some ways goes beyond fighting against that segregation. Whatwe’re really doing is fighting to empower people who were powerless at that time, who had no voice. Andso it really is about gaining power in your communities. And the other part of that is that yes, it wascertainly targeted at people who were trying to get, I mean, one of the things that SNCC is focused on ishow do you get black people registered to vote without getting them killed?
How do you get them registered to vote without getting them killed? And so because Herbert Lee hadbeen killed trying to register vote by his white neighbor who had lent him money for his farm, for HerbertLee’s farm, but says, if you don’t stop messing in this voter registration stuff, you’re going to get killed.And then he, the white person Hurst white state legislator in Mississippi blows Herbert Lee away in thetown square of Liberty, Mississippi. And this was a neighbor. So certainly there are attacks going againstthe movement and against us as civil rights workers, but a lot of times it was also random. I mean, therehad always been a history of random violence against black people because the whole point as it is todayis to say, no, you don’t even have to be doing anything. You don’t have to be doing anything that weconsider dangerous.
We are just going to arrest you, beat you up jail you just for being who you are because we want you toknow we have the power and we can then exert this violence against you at any time we feel like it.Which of course is what you’re seeing with immigrants, with undocumented workers and stuff. It is not,oh, you’re doing anything. It is, we have the power to take you out anytime we want to. And it’s thatrandom violence that we always also had to gear against and to protect ourselves and our mental healthagainst, which is, you keep going, you got to keep going. Otherwise they win and they can’t win becausethey’re wrong. So there was that part too.
Marc Steiner:
You want to add something, Josh?
Joshua Clark Davis:
I think the one thing I would add that was important for me in this research really to emphasize was asJudy just explained, there were just plenty of white people attacking the Civil rights movement. And it’sreally important to keep in mind how in many places law enforcement was colluding with so-calledvigilantes, and that was the case in the Freedom Rides. And certainly people on the Freedom Ridessuspected that when the police took their sweet time to show up after vigilantes greeted them at busstations and beat them to a pulp, but later federal courts confirmed this, yes, there was a degree ofcollusion between Alabama police departments and unquote vigilantes. Same thing with Goodman,Cheney and Schwar. You mentioned them. And so we often remember the civil rights murders as thework of maybe segregationist low nuts. The clan, the vigilantes, and we don’t adequately remember themas state supported acts of violence against the movement in Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was a localsheriff’s deputy who facilitated and assisted local clansmen from capturing Goodman, Cheney and schhoner. And one of them ended up going to federal prison. They could never get a murder conviction inMississippi state courts, but he was convicted of violating those three civil rights workers civil rights.And so again, our memory is of vigilantes loan segregationists, but we’re often leaving out the fact thatlocal law enforcement facilitated some of these very, very brutal and in some cases, lethal attacks.
Marc Steiner:
Go ahead, Judy, please.
Judy Richardson:
One of the really great things about Josh’s book, and I love this book by the way-
Marc Steiner:
It’s a great book.
Judy Richardson:
But one of the great things is that he points out what many of us understand now, which is it’s not just anindividual bad apple in a police department. It’s not just because a particular cop like Chauvin, that hebeats George Floyd and holds him down for eight and a half minutes. It’s not because he hasn’t hadenough sensitivity training, right? It is because there is a culture of racism that imbues that wholedepartment. And it’s one of the things we understood when we were going south. And it’s also what Iunderstood when I was working at the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in NewYork during the eighties, and Mrs. Eleanor Bumpers and Howard Beach and whatever, all of thatreminded us that it’s not just because a particular cop is in aberration, he or she is part of a culture ofwhite supremacy. And what’s wonderful about Josh’s book is he has this great scene because he storytellsas well.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, he does.
Judy Richardson:
So it’s not dry recitation of facts and stuff, but he has this wonderful piece where he talks about the NewYork Police Department, and of course we had to deal with them when I was there in the eighties with theCommission for Racial Justice. And they had all these protections around them, and of course they hadthe media supporting them. And most of the media, which Josh also goes into assumed that what thepolice were telling them was correct. They never checked with demonstrators or anyone else. But Joshhas this wonderful scene on Easter. It was annual breakfast of the police department. Yes. And that theybring McCarthy and Eugene McCarthy, the horrible red scare man. But maybe Josh can talk about that. Imean, I just love that scene. Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
Josh, go ahead.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Yep. Senator McCarthy, they brought him in one year, but the scene was basically, it was an EasterSunday roast that was hosted every year annually by Irish police officers in the NYPD. And it wastypically marching in uniform, it was drinking, it was eating a roast, but they started bringing in theseright-wing speakers. And in 1964, the commissioner came in to speak to all of them in its hundreds ofpolice officers in the newest Hilton Hotel in New York. And basically the commissioner said, you guyshave been working so hard, so valiantly, and there are these three so-called civil rights protesters who areunfairly attacking you. One of them was Malcolm X that he condemns. One of them was mostlyforgotten, but very fascinating tenant organizer named Jesse Gray.
And one of them was the chapter leader of the Bronx Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, and hisname was Herb Calender. And the commissioner in front of hundreds of police officers said, these threeguys are making your lives hell. And they are basically exploiting the good cause of racial equality toattack you all. Within weeks, the NYPD’s Secret Political Intelligence Unit, the Red Squad, the Bureau ofSpecial Services, hired two African-American police officers to infiltrate black activist groups. One ofthem, his name was Gene Roberts, and he was sent in to infiltrate Malcolm X’s Circle. If you’ve seen thehorrible pictures of Malcolm X’s murder, he is kneeling on the ground next to Malcolm X in LifeMagazine. He was working as his bodyguard. It’s pretty unlikely that he was involved in the assassination,but he was right there on the same day that Gene Roberts is hired by the NYPD and sent into theseactivist groups.
Another guy named Ray Wood was hired to go infiltrate Herb Calendar circle in the Congress of racialequality to go volunteer at that chapter to say, I want to make a difference to spy on him and to try to prodhim into self-defeating acts. They end up trying to do this crazy scheme to do a citizen’s arrest of theMayor of New York, Robert Wagner, and it lands Herb Calendar in the psychiatric ward at BellevueHospital and takes him out of the movement for almost a week. But it’s like that through line, that culturethat Judy was just referencing, it’s kind of all fun and games. It seems like it’s Easter Sunday Roast, buthow the commissioner uses that to kind of declare war on these activists, and then within a month how theSecret Red Squad is sending its people into these activist groups. You can connect the dots.
Marc Steiner:
And one of the things that I, as I was hearing in the book and thinking about our conversation today washaving these numerous flashbacks. Every city in America, almost every city in America had a red squad.They were setting people up across the country and charging them with all kinds of absurd charges andputting some people in jail. We had people here in Baltimore who actually were sent to jail because of theRed Squad back in the early seventies. So I mean, this piece of history about what the activists faced inSN C and Core and what happened as the movement grew and more folks organizing in cities is part of ahistory people don’t know and the dangerous people felt and how that really did change America. And inmany ways, I think what we’re facing today is part of a blowback against what happened then.
Judy Richardson:
No, absolutely. I mean, the folks in power now really do want to turn it back to basically pre 1940s andFDR and President Roosevelt. I mean, they want to turn it back to an all powerful white group, and weknow what that white group is. So I mean, I guess one of the things that I often get when I’m talking tostudents is that they don’t understand that we weren’t just talking about, well, we want to sit next to you ata lunch counter, right? It’s not just about that. It is about the vote, which of course we’re getting aSupreme Court decision, which will probably strike down the remaining the one final remaining stool inthe Voting Rights Act. That was the crown jewel of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And what they want todo is go back to a time where you did not have black and brown people in the numbers that we have.
And with any kind of power, they’re fine with folks working and working in their homes and working intheir fields. What they’re not happy about is having black and brown people particularly, or poor whitepeople in any positions of power where they are affecting change and where they are speaking forthemselves. So they want to go back to another time and they’re willing to do whatever it is. What’samazing to me, I think about this time, and it is different for me, is that you don’t even have moderateRepublicans. I mean, you don’t have anybody. They have taken off all the guardrails. You’ve got anabsolutely right wing Supreme Court. What is good about what we have now is we have a window, and itis a small window, but it’s a window where we know about the tools that we have used in the past. Andwhat I appreciate is that little by little you’re seeing people coalesce in the way that we did. For example,when you talked about the Red Square, one of the things Ms. Baker, and that’s Ms. Ele Baker, who wasour political mentor. She’s the one who brings all the young people together in 1960 that forms theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee sncc. And she was our excellence and organizer, and Joshmentions her in his book,
But what she kind of let us know is that we should not be afraid of the Red Scare. And so she was friendswith the Braden’s, a Carl and Anne Braden, and as a matter of fact, the only newspaper that was allowedto cover that first organizing conference in April of 1960 of S ncc of what Become s NCC was theirSouthern Patriot and other people. NAACP said, no, we don’t want anything to do with anybody whoseems to be tinged with the Communist Party. Same thing with SCLC, with sncc. We said, whoever willlet them come as long as they abide by our direction, the kind of things that we want to do and havedecided by consensus in our meetings. So Ann Braden for example, is she comes, she covers that firstmeeting. We did not have that, and I remember, I think it was Ms. Hamer, but it might’ve been Ms. Blackwell. When Bob Moses goes into Mississippi, one of the things hetalks about is how the FBI and others are saying, don’t work with those SNCC people because they’recommunists. And what Black Mississippians said was, honey, if these are communists, bring more of ’emwith us because they’re the only ones who are working with us. So they did not have that thing. Now whatyou get is Antifa, you get oh, Jewish voice for Peace and Antifa, and so all these people are terrorists, andso we’re going to lock ’em up. What the movement understood at that point is you work with the peoplewho are willing, who agree with your goals, who agree with the way that you want to move to change thisto a more righteous and just society. And so whoever will let them come.
Marc Steiner:
I’m thinking about the moment we’re facing today, and I started really reflecting as I was reading the bookand thinking about our conversation today on the end of Reconstruction in America, when the dream ofproperty and voting rights for black Americans was part of a struggle, and hundreds of black folks werekilled in the South during reconstruction, and they ended reconstruction and began, I think about themovement that in this country from the thirties through the sixties and early seventies, it really changedAmerica ended segregation and sort of building a new world in this country or attempting to, and how justlike the end of reconstruction that was this pushback from what became the clan from these right-wingraces of the day in the 19th century is what we’re facing now. And I was just wondering, historically,thinking about the book that you wrote, thinking about the experiences that you’ve had in the Civil RightsMovement, how you talk to people now about what we face in terms of the history of the Civil rightsmovement and what happened before that, I think we’re in that moment and that’s critical, and it’s thatdangerous as it was at the end of reconstruction.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Right now, a lot of people are reaching back to the Red Scare to try to understand what’s going on withthe attacks on
Marc Steiner:
You talking about from the 1950s Red Scare.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Yeah, from the 1950s. I mean, that seems to be the historical comparison. Most people reach back to say,this is happening today. It’s the attacks on Antifa, the attacks on people who just won’t celebrate CharlieKirk, the attacks on a historian who attends a conference on socialism, and yet that’s important to thinkabout the Red Scare, but I think what’s also important to remember is those weapons of state violence thatthe United States government and local law enforcement used against communists in the Red Scare, theyused roughly the same playbook against the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. The difference is thattoday there’s this kind of political consensus, and it’s probably sincere on the left and not so sincere on theright, but the way in which the Civil Rights movement is upheld as one of the greatest acts of self-correcting democracy in this country, but the techniques of trying to slander people, of trying to get themfired, the techniques of surveillance, the ways in which local law enforcement are working with ice, inmany cases, the way in which vigilante right wing activists are often trying to get people into legal troubleor get them fired.
It doesn’t just go back to the Red Scare. It goes back to these weapons that were used against the civilrights movement. And we haven’t really had the same historical reckoning in this country about how locallaw enforcement attacked and sabotage the Civil Rights movement. When we talk about state repressionof the Civil Rights movement, we talk about Hoover versus King, the FBI versus certain groups, andthat’s not to diminish what they did at all, but we really kind of put this supernatural villain, j EdgarHoover, on this pedestal. It’s almost like he was so evil, and thank God that finally the FBI was takenfrom him literally when he died. And we haven’t really thought about how local law enforcement didmany of those same things. So today, I think one of the dangers potentially is to fixate exclusively on thefederal government and on Trump, and no way are we going to diminish that threat.
But if we don’t think about how in many cases local law enforcement and local officials are assisting themand sometimes even unwittingly, so I was hearing about how even in cities and states where they haveprotections where the sheriff won’t work with ICE or the police officers won’t have a rule against workingwith ice, they still have often collected data that ice, even without those authorities’ permission, may beable to access an online databases, license plate readers. So it’s almost like there’s an unwitting way inwhich local law enforcement may be assisting federal attacks on immigrants, on the activists who arestanding up with immigrants, things like that.
Judy Richardson:
Could I just also, just because you had mentioned reconstruction, and it’s not just the segregation, again,it’s about power, right? Because in reconstruction, one of the things you have is this finally black peoplegetting into positions of power. You had Lance k Bruce who was a US Senator. You had state legislatures,you had whole black communities. And I know because we’ve done a number of films for HistoryChannel and PBS on this, and what you had was really amazing communities, the people who had neverseen freedom before, never known it before, and they’re building 200, 300 member communities farmingthe land. They really have been promised the 40 acres and the mule. And so they have the churches, theyhave the schools. Those were usually the first two things that always go up churches and schools becausethey understood the need for education. But all of it is around how do we sustain ourselves and not onlysurvive, but also build communities and be able to protect ourselves.
So it’s not just, well, we were segregated, it’s also we are building power. That’s what seemed sodangerous to the white vigilantes, both state controlled, both those who are former Confederate officersand officials and whatever, and just regular white supremacists. That’s what was so dangerous for them. Itwas the building of power within these black communities. I would also mention what’s interesting whenyou see some of the tactics people are using now to try and monitor these ice arrests, and it’s similar to meof what we did when we were in sncc, which was the friends of SNCC organizations. So for example,when somebody would get arrested in Greenwood, for example, Mary Lane gets arrested, I would then, orsomebody in the national office in Atlanta would call Mrs. Shaw, a black woman in Chicago.
Who would then get on the phone to the sheriff in Mississippi in Greenwood and say, I know I’m callingfrom, and she always had a very proper voice, Mrs. Shaw. But anyway, she would say, I know that youhave Mary Lane in your jail, and she better come out the same way she went in, because at that point, youwant people to know you don’t get to just do whatever you want to do because you say, I have the powerand there’s nothing you can do about it. What we were doing with our friends of sncc, Chicago,Philadelphia, San Francisco, wherever we were, you would have people call in from all of these areas tothat sheriff and say, we know you have this person in your jail and we are going to be watching you. Andthat’s one of the things that you get now with these community and neighborhood alert systems wherepeople are using their thank goodness for cell phone cameras, getting the ice officials, getting whatever’shappening, not confronting them because then the person doing the camera will be arrested as well, butmainly recording what is going on. And that’s the kind of thing that we were doing even at sncc, what I’mhearing around in the DMV and what’s interesting is to see neighborhood watches and that they’re goingout and they’re saying the ice is on the corner and that people are then going out and recording and gettingthe names of the person that they have arrested. Those kind of small, it seems small, but it’s reallyimportant.
Marc Steiner:
I think what you just described is really critical. I mean on two levels. One is historically what happenedin the civil rights movement and how it was much more than people sitting at their lunch counters. It wasan entire universe connected across the country of people who were fighting to answer irrigation andfighting to protect civil rights workers. People don’t really realize it’s more than just the people who rodethe bus and did the voter registration across the country. And I think that there’s so many ways thisconversation can go there. I was been thinking of this a lot after reading the book, what that momentteaches us about what we face today and how to organize. Because I mean, if you think about Americanhistory, the reason I raised reconstruction before, a lot of it revolves around the emancipation movementsin the black world and repression against those movements. And whether it’s reconstruction or whetherit’s the civil rights era and now, and I think what we face now is probably the most dangerous moment inthe last 50 or 60 years in our country. It’s almost as if 1960s Mississippi is taking over America. So Iwonder what you both think about what that says to us and what does it say about what we face today andhow we have to organize.
Joshua Clark Davis:
I think one of the things that remains the same, and Judy was just talking about this, but it’s like thepeople who are pulling out their phones and videoing ice who were also videoing police in 2020 and overthe long course of BLM, a lot of people will think, oh, well that reminds me of the Black Panthers policepatrols. And it does. But one of the things I talked about in this book was that that idea was even olderand that you had folks from SNCC who were doing police patrols as much as a year before the Pantherswere in places like la. You had folks in Seattle doing that. I think the larger point is that, I mean, anylawyer worth their salt knows the law will not save you. However, I think we can probably all agree aswell that you cannot ignore legal tools and legal weapons and the way that the law can be used to destroymovements and the way in which sometimes and narrow opportunities movements can use a law todefend themselves.
One of the key parts of organizing today that you’re seeing is documenting, it’s researching. We’re livingin this world of what some people call big data policing. It’s the predictive algorithms, it’s the data mining,it’s the fake cell phone towers. It’s why organizers have to take technological steps to protect themselves.But it’s also why organizers really, it’s hard to do this. Movements move fast. Protests, rallies like you’vegot to show up on the day at the time you’re talking about people’s lives, like with Kmar, with any of thesefolks who are being disappeared. And research and documentation can be very slow work, but it’ssomething that movements are going to do with a view of long-term change. Because if you’re notdocumenting these acts of state repression and state violence, then there’s no hope of getting any recoursefrom the law. Again, the law will not save you or save us, but there still is this tremendous need to try tofigure out what the state is doing. And that goes at a pace sometimes that isn’t really the same pace as onthe ground organizing, but it’s something the civil rights movement was doing. It’s something the Pantherswere doing. It’s something even that communists were doing in the thirties and forties. We’ve got todocument what the state is doing against us and against other people, whether they are organized leftists,whether they’re people of color, whether they are black communities, brown communities, because wehave to tell this story also at the very least historically and maybe in some instances legally.
Judy Richardson:
Yeah, I absolutely agree with what just said. I would also say a lot of folks understand this is a differentmoment that it’s, I would say even more dangerous than what we encountered during the movement withall the violence. That was,
Marc Steiner:
Let me nterrupt for one second. Could you say something really powerful just, and I want to explore whatyou mean by that. I mean the danger people face we face in the civil rights movement was life and deathat times people were killed and beaten. So talk a bit about what you meant by that.
Judy Richardson:
Right, and just exactly where I was about to go ahead. Absolutely. For example, when we were there,there were certainly 63, 64, 65.
What you’ve got is exactly what you said, mark, which is that basically the white supremacists who reallycontrolled southern legislatures, and it was their delegations in the Senate and the US House. So it wasSenator Eastland and Senator Stanis. It was all of them. But now they control the White House, theycontrol the Supreme Court. They have a lot of the appellate courts. Now, the federal judiciary, when wehad DC disorderly conduct stuff, when it would go to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, we knew that wewere safe. That was the court of last resort, and they would always find for us, well, now that is one of themost, if not the most conservative courts in the whole appellate system. They have control of all threebranches of government now. And you also have no real independent Republicans. You had New YorkCongress people and you had California and some of them in the GOP who were Republicans, but youwould not have been able to get, for example, a Watergate prosecution now because all of them arelockstep with this idiots who was in the White House.
So it’s a very different ball game. And I think one of the things that we have to do is go outside of thenormal way that we usually organize, which tends to be kind of siloed within our own little group ofpeople and the folks we know. And we’re going to have to unite with a lot of different kind of folks whoagree with the kind of world we want this to be. And it’s not just in America, it’s not just in the us. It’s allover. Because of course, what happens here, as we’ve seen with Argentina, as we’ve seen with Brazil, theyare affecting other countries. And the absolute white supremacy that you’ve got now in Italy, it’s all over.And so we explore it. This country exports white supremacy. One of the films I’m involved in now is aJim Crow museum. And what’s amazing to me is that in the 1840s, Jim Crow, the one who starts the JimCrow caricature, he goes to London in the 1840s, specifically as Jim Crow, as a caricature of black peopleto go on the London stage because he wants to show the people Britain in the 1840s.
These are the kind of black people that you say should be freed. No, no. What he is doing is exportingwhite supremacy in the 1840s. And you can see in some of the newspaper reports of the time that thewhite Londoners are agreeing with him, oh, that’s what black people are like in the United States. What Ithink we have to do is start talking to each other and understanding that that whole thing, I know there’s alarger quote that people use, but I love the James Walden quote, which is, and he says this to AngelaDavis in a letter when she’s still in jail and he says, if they take you in the morning, they will come for usthat night. That whole idea that don’t think just because, oh, they say they’re going after Antifa or they’regoing after so-and-so or they No, and I never thought that I would actually quote Winston Churchill, buthe actually said Appeasement is like feeding the alligator and hoping you are the last one he eats because he will eat you.
There is a sense we got a little window now where we have got to come together and just forget all theold, whatever little barriers we used to have between organizing with each other. That’s why I likeIndivisible. That’s why I was on the last March. I would be on the next one, except that it’s during the timethat we’re going to be at politics and prose, but we’ve got to show up. So you do the demos becausepeople need to see, not that he cares, the people in the White House don’t care about us, but they do careabout folks who are in swing districts and when their people start really understanding what’s going on.And it’s also education. I think we need to also, in addition to not giving up on public education, we havegot to support our teachers. Our teachers are under assault and so are our librarians. We have got to go tothose board meetings, school board meetings, and anything that will protect these people who are tryingto teach the truth.
Marc Steiner:
So just to kind of bring our discussion to a close here, I could stay here for hours doing this. I think it’sreally important. I really want to pick up on what you were just saying, Judy and both of you were sayingabout what we do at this moment. You’re both historians, and I think that looking at, as I was sayingearlier, our history, what happened in reconstruction, what happened to us after civil rights, the change inAmerica, the explosion of a more democratic country after the civil rights movement that took place. Andthat’s why we’re having this pushback now. And one of the things that happened in the sixties and earlyseventies was organizing, whether it was in the south or working class communities here in Baltimore orToledo, wherever that was, wherever it is, people organize and build something. So I’m curious what as amovement elder, not you man, you’ll get there. Let’s just talk about what those lessons tell us about whatwe should be doing right now.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Well, first of all, Marc, thanks for saying I’m not old. I appreciate that.
Marc Steiner:
You’re not old man. I have kids your age.
Joshua Clark Davis:
My students would object to that very strongly. But I think tying some of these comments together, I thinkthere’s an argument to be made that most progress in America, in American politics have been inmoments where there was something kind of like a popular front where liberals were willing to work withleftists. I think that describes reconstruction. I think that describes how socialists and communists fromthe late 18 hundreds through the early decades of the 19 hundreds basically helped to shape theprogressive movement, how they helped to shape the new deal. And I think there’s a lot to be said. That’swhat happened in the Civil rights movement where radicals, some of them socialists, some of themcommunists, some of them non-aligned radicals like Ms. Baker, were able to get liberals who believed inthe system to listen and work with them. And a lot of times liberals will not do that. And I think that’sreally probably one of the few ways to get out of this mess. Now, where police violence is a perfectexample. Communists, socialists, non-aligned radicals were talking about police violence as far back asthe thirties. And most liberals didn’t want to have much to do with it.
Especially by the fifties. They said, that’s kind of a communist cause because once you start questioninglaw enforcement, then you’re questioning the government. But it was really the activists of the sixties, likesnick, like core, they weren’t necessarily socialists and communists and in most cases they were not. Butthey were willing to talk to them, to listen to them, to kind of take a don’t ask, don’t tell approach and tosay we’ve got to actually pull the best ideas. And many of them were very, very left wing, but it was kindof not getting wrapped up in these labels about organizing. And I think right now that some of what’shappening around the anti-ice stuff where there’s some really great organizations and kind of left groupsthat have been organizing around this for decades, and now we can question how long it takes somepeople to wake up.
But it is important to try to reach people through narratives about things like how ice destroys families,how ice hurts children, how ice, yes, how it hurts everyone from all over the world. But there are somepeople who they’re going to listen more when we kind of take this approach of showing the human toll.And so I think that’s so important right now is finding ways in which hopefully people who are liberal,maybe left leaning, maybe even close to political middle, how are they going to finally be able to workwith people who are further on the left around some of these major issues, like the right of undocumentedpeople to just have lives in this country without having their families and their livelihoods totally just tornapart by being disappeared. So that’s one of my hopes.
Judy Richardson:
Yeah, no, I would agree. And I also think that we’ve got to start building increasing the reach of ourcommunities. I think some of us usually work with this group or that group, and I think we need tobroaden it so that you have more coalition building, you have more support of folks that normally youwouldn’t really be paying attention to. I think there needs to be more black brown coalition in that waywhen you have people like Anne Braden, you could say also Poor white, I’m not sure where that comesin. Although the new guy up in Maine who is running against Susan Collins is interesting to me. And thenalso there’s this group out called Red Wine and Blue. I always keep trying to call them red wine andvinegar, but it’s red wine and blue. And I go on their zooms.
Marc Steiner:
Would recall what Red wine and-
Judy Richardson:
Red wine and blue, and these are folks mainly white suburban women in Ohio who started off becausethey were upset about the book banning in their kids’ classes. And they’ve expanded now. And they alsowere very important in terms of in support of abortion rights and choice in Ohio. So they were doing that.But they do monthly zooms, but it’s local organizing. It is bring your neighbors in for a cocktail. That’swhy the red wine, right?
Marc Steiner:
Got you.
Judy Richardson:
Bring them in. Cause you cannot organize on social media. You can get people in for demonstrations, butthat is not the way you’re going to get long-term organizing. People need to see you. It’s one of the thingsthat we knew when we were in Mississippi, in Alabama, Southwest Georgia, wherever, that if people aregoing to trust you with their lives, and that’s what it’s coming to now. I mean because when you putpeople on a list and say, we are going to come after you because we are going to call you a terrorist noweverybody is at risk now. And so people need to know, I’m putting not just my life, but also my livelihoodand the live and livelihoods of my community on the line. I need to know who you are. I need to be ableto trust you. And I cannot do that if I only know you through Twitter or X or Instagram or whatever.Those small group community meetings are really, really important. That’s why like Teaching for Changeand in education project, again education. I go on there monthly meetings, they do a teach the BlackFreedom Struggle series because what we need to see is other people who are like us, but also to see us, tosee us and to feel a sense of community and that community is going to be really important movingforward.
Marc Steiner:
So much the two of you have done. So lemme just conclude this way. A, we’re going to talk some moreabout your book. We thinks moving and get deep into it. It’s important. B, I want people to really go backin history and think about where we came from, what we struggled for, where we are. Google oen, noprize. Look at the documentary series that Judy Richardson helped produce and make for this country towatch. And because we are facing a time of real danger and I think we have to rebuild the movement andit’s happening as we speak. And I think, so checking this book out, looking at that series from PBS andreally understanding what we’re facing that our two guests are talking about is really critical to where weare. So I want to think-
Judy Richardson:
Could I add one other thing, which is that we didn’t stop working. So SNCC people now have SNCC legacyproject.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah. Oh, please. Yes.
Judy Richardson:
Since it last, since 2014, I mean, we have been working with young activists. We did a project out at 2015at Duke University around voting rights with the larger piece of movement for Black Lives, talking aboutthe importance of the vote as one tool. Just one tool for gaining power, but it’s always thisintergenerational thing. We have three projects going now, a Mellon project. We have the toolkits that wedid through NEH before they shut off the money in the middle of as we were going into one of theHBCUs that we were working with. But we have a great website, which is SNCC legacy project.org andlots of information there as well as free downloads of the SNCC and grassroots organizing. I mean, thereare six wonderful organizing toolkits. Organizing kits.
Marc Steiner:
Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do. We have to conclude this conversation now, but we’re going totalk more about the SNCC Legacy project here on the Marc Steiner show and get these generationstogether. We’re going to talk more about your book here on the Marc Steiner show as well, becausebuilding this movement and fighting back and organizing for the future is really critical. The two of you’regreat examples crossed generationally of that. And I want to thank you both for spending the time with ustoday and we have more work to do. So thank you all so much.
Judy Richardson:
Thank you, Marc.
Joshua Clark Davis:
Thank you, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me thank Judy Richardson and Josh Davis for joining us today. And thanks to DavidHebden for running the program. Our audio editor, Stephen Frank, our producers Roset Ali, who aremaking it all work behind the scenes and everyone here at the World News will making this showpossible. Please let me know what you thought about, what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover.Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to JudyRichardson and Josh Davis for joining us today. So for the crew here at the Real News, I’m Marc Steiner.Get involved, keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
