Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:35:48.514Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Structural Context of Novel Rights Claims: Southern Civil Rights Organizing, 1961-1966

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Francesca Polletta
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Theorists of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) have argued that the abstract, individualistic, and state-dependent character of rights makes them of dubious value for groups fighting for social change. Southern civil rights organizers in the early 1960s engaged in the kind of power-oriented strategy that CLS writers advocate in lieu of a rights-oriented one. However, the rights claims they made inside and outside courtrooms were essential to their political organizing efforts. Far from narrowing collective aspirations to the limits of the law, activists' extension of rights claims to the “unqualified” legitimated assaults on economic inequality, governmental decisionmaking in poverty programs, and the Vietnam War. What made possible this novel formulation was not only the multivalent character of rights but also key features of the social, political, and organizational contexts within which rights were advanced.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 367 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Law and Society Association

Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Linda Catalano, Lynn Chancer, Patricia Ewick, David Greenberg, Susan Silbey, Abigail Saguy, Amy Schindler, Marc Steinberg, Alex Vitale, members of the Lazarsfeld Law and Society Workshop, and two anonymous reviewers from Law & Society Review for valuable comments and suggestions, and Linda Catalano for able research assistance.

References

References

Belknap, Michal R. (1987) Federal Law and Southern Order. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Benford, Robert A. (1993) “Frame Disputes within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement,” 71 Social Forces 677–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breines, Wini (1989) Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962–68. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Burns, James MacGregor, & Burns, Stewart (1991) A People's Charter: The Pursuit of Rights in America. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Capek, Stella M. (1993) “The ‘Environmental Justice’ Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and an Application,” 40 Social Problems 5–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carmichael, Stokely (1971) [1966] Stokely Speaks. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Carson, Clayborne (1981) In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Clemens, Elisabeth (1997) The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States, 1890–1925. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cobb, Charles (1966) “Whose Society Is This?” in Thoughts of the Young Radicals. NJ: New Republic & Harrison-Blaine.Google Scholar
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1990) “A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Law and Politics,” in Kairys, D., ed., The Politics of Law. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Cruse, Harold (1987) Plural but Equal New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul J., & Powell, Walter K. (1991) “The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” in DiMaggio, P. J. & Powell, W. K., eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dittmer, John (1994) Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Dolnick, Edward (1993) “Deafness as Culture,” The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. pp. 37–53.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, Zillah (1990) “Specifying U.S. Feminism in the 1990s: The Problem of Naming,” 20 Socialist Rev. 45–56.Google Scholar
Evans, Sara, & Boyte, Harry (1986) Free Spaces. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, & Silbey, Susan S. (1998) The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Robert (1994) Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America. New York: Twayne.Google Scholar
Flacks, Richard (1988) Making History. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forman, James (1985) The Making of Black Revolutionaries. Seattle: Open Hand.Google Scholar
Freeman, Alan (1988) “Racism, Rights, and the Quest for Equality of Opportunity: A Critical Legal Essay,” 23 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Rev. 295–392.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter (1984) “The Phenomenology of Rights-Consciousness and the Pact of the Withdrawn Selves,” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1563–1599.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter, & Harris, Paul (1982-83) “Building Power and Breaking Images: Critical Legal Theory and the Practice of Law,” II Rev. of Law & Social Change 369–411.Google Scholar
Gabel, Peter, & Kennedy, Duncan (1983-84) “Roll Over Beethoven,” 36 Stanford Law Rev. 1–55.Google Scholar
Gerlach, Luther P., & Hine, Virginia (1970) People, Power, Change. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Gitlin, Todd (1987) The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam.Google Scholar
Haines, Herbert H. (1984) “Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights: 1957–1970,” 32 Social Problems 31–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Handler, Joel (1978) Social Movements and the Legal System. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Haskell, Thomas L. (1987) “The Curious Persistence of Rights Talk in the Age of Interpretation,” 74 J. of American History 984–1012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, Tom (1965) “SNCC: The Qualities of Protest,” 5 Studies on the Left 113–24.Google Scholar
Hayden, Tom (1966a) [1961] “A Letter to the New (Young) Left,” in Cohen, M. & Hale, D., eds., The New Student Left. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Hayden, Tom (1966b) [1965] “The Ability to Face Whatever Comes,” in Thoughts of the Young Radicals. NJ: New Republic & Harrison-Blaine.Google Scholar
Hayden, Tom (1988) Reunion: A Memoir. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Hayden, Tom (1995) [1966] “The Politics of 'The Movement,'” in Bloom, A. & Breines, W., eds., “Takin' It to the Streets”: A Sixties Reader. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Herman, Didi (1993) “Beyond the Rights Debate,” 2 Social & Legal Studies 25–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirsch, Eric L. (1990) Urban Revolt: Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-Century Chicago Labor Movement. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Alan (1990) Explorations in Law and Society. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Isserman, Maurice (1992) “You Don't Need a Weatherman but a Postman Can Be Helpful,” in Small, M. & Hoover, W. D., eds., Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Jasper, James M. (1997) The Art of Moral Protest. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Hank (1991) Tales of Nationalism: Catalonia, 1939–1979. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kazin, Michael (1995) The Populist Persuasion. rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G. (1990) Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Kelman, Mark (1987) A Guide to Critical Legal Studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
King, Mary (1987) Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Kinoy, Arthur (1983) Rights on Trial: The Odyssey of a People's Lawyer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kopkind, Andrew (1965) “Seat Belts for Mississippi's Five,” New Republic, 24 July, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, & Mouffe, Chantal (1985) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Lawson, Steven F. (1976) Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Lynd, Staughton (1984) “Communal Rights,” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1417–41.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, Jane J. (1986) Why We Lost the ERA. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massaro, Toni M. (1989) “Empathy, Legal Storytelling, and the Rule of Law,” 87 Michigan Law Rev. 2099–2127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masson, Dominique (1996) “Language, Power, and Politics: Revisiting the Symbolic Challenge of Movements,” 13 Alternate Routes 67–100.Google Scholar
Matusow, Allen J. (1984) The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1982) Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930–1970. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug (1986) “Recruitment to High Risk Activism: The Case of Freedom Summer,” 92 American J. of Sociology 64–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Michael W. (1994) Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McLemore, Leslie Burl (1971) “The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: A Case Study of Grass-Roots Politics.” Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Political Science, Univ. of Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle (1990) Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness Among Working-Class Americans. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Michels, Robert (1962) [1915] Political Parties. New York: Collier.Google Scholar
Miller, James (1987) Democracy Is in the Streets. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Minow, Martha (1987) “Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover,” 96 Yale Law J. 1860–1915.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Aldon (1984) The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Newfield, Jack (1965) “Revolt Without Dogma: The Student Left,” Nation, 10 May, pp. 491–495.Google Scholar
Oberschall, Anthony (1978) “The Decline of the 1960s Social Movements,” 1 Research in Social Movements, Conflicts & Change 257–89.Google Scholar
Parker, Frank (1990) Black Votes Count. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Payne, Charles M. (1995) I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, Paul (1979) “Organizational Imperatives and Ideological Change: The Case of Black Power,” 14 Urban Affairs Quart. 465–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (1994) “Strategy and Identity in 1960's Black Protest: The Activism of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 1960–1967,” Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Sociology, Yale Univ.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (1999a) “Free Spaces in Collective Action,” 28 Theory & Society 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polletta, Francesca (1999b) “Outsiders in Social Protest.” Presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Chicago (10 Aug.).Google Scholar
Powledge, Fred (1965) “Mississippi Aides at Voter Inquiry,” New York Times, 30 Jan., p. 10.Google Scholar
Robnett, Belinda (1997) How Long? How Long? African-American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodgers, Harrell R. Jr., & Bullock, Charles S. III (1972) Law and Social Change. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Rollins, Judith (1985) Between Women: Domestics and Their Employers. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Rossinow, Doug (1998) The Politics of Authenticity. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Rothschild-Whitt, Joyce (1979) “The Collectivist Organization: An Alternative to Rational-Bureaucratic Models,” 44 American Sociological Rev. 509–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheingold, Stuart (1974) The Politics of Rights: Lawyers, Public Policy, and Political Change. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Elizabeth M. (1986) “The Dialectic of Rights and Politics: Perspectives from the Women's Rights Movement,” 61 New York Univ. Law Rev. 589–652.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan (1988) “Deconstructing Equality Versus Difference,” 14 Feminist Studies 33–50.Google Scholar
Sellers, Cleveland (1990) The River of No Return: The Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H (1992) “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,” 98 American J. of Sociology 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, David A., & Benford, Robert D. (1992) “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” in Morris, A. D., & Mueller, C. M., eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Stavis, Morton (1987) “A Century of Struggle for Black Enfranchisement in Mississippi: From the Civil War to the Congressional Challenge of 1965—and Beyond,” 57 Mississippi Law J. 591–673.Google Scholar
Tarrow, Sidney (1998) Power in Movement. 2d Ed. New York: Cornell Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetreault, Mary Ann (1993) “Civil Society in Kuwait: Protected Spaces and Women's Rights,” 47 Middle East J. 275–91.Google Scholar
Tucker, Naomi, ed., (1995) Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, Visions. New York: Haworth Press.Google Scholar
Tushnet, Mark (1984) “An Essay on Rights,” 62 Texas Law Rev. 1363–1403.Google Scholar
Villmoare, Adelaide H. (1985) “The Left's Problems with Rights,” 9 Legal Studies Forum 39–46.Google Scholar
Watters, Pat, & Cleghorn, Reese (1967) Climbing Jacob's Ladder: The Arrival of Negroes in Southern Politics. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.Google Scholar
Weisbrot, Robert (1990) Freedom Bound: A History of America's Civil Rights Movement. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Williams, Patricia J. (1987) “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,” 22 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Rev. 401–33.Google Scholar
Yngvesson, Barbara (1989) “Inventing Law in Local Settings: Rethinking Popular Legal Culture,” 98 Yale Law J. 1689–1709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zald, Mayer N., & McCarthy, John D. (1980) “Social Movement Industries: Competition and Cooperation among Movement Organizations,” 3 Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, & Change 1–20.Google Scholar

Collections

Clayborne Carson Collection, Martin Luther King Papers Project, Stanford Univ., Stanford, California..Google Scholar
James Forman Collection of Audiotapes, Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Atlanta, Georgia..Google Scholar
Project South. Transcripts of interviews with civil rights workers and volunteers conducted by Stanford Univ. students in 1965. Stanford Univ. Archives..Google Scholar
Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944-1968 (1984) Microfilm. Southern Regional Council Papers, 1944-1968 (1984) Microfilm: Univ. Microfilms..Google Scholar
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Civil Rights Movement Collection. Madison, Wisconsin..Google Scholar
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972 (1982) Microfilm. Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Bryan v. Walton, 14 Ga. 185, 198 (Ga., 1853) Cox v. Williams, 4 Iredell Eq. 15, 17 (N.C. 1845) State v. Jowers, 11 Iredell 555 (N.C., 1850).Google Scholar

Statute Cited

42 USC § 1971, 1973 (1965)..Google Scholar