Abstract:
Every aspect of American politics is always connected to economics to some extent. How an economy functions and changes are integral to the start of revolutions. The interests of groups are shaped by the question of how their economic well-being will be affected, and as a result, impact the way politicians and legislators tend to themselves and the public. There was a period, prior to the passing of the Civil Rights Act, in which it was economically favorable to keep African-Americans oppressed and segregated. However, the eventual passing of the act poses the question: What changed? Race in America seems to be a tool used to distract the people and set groups against each other while those in power balance policy in their favor.
In a broad review of American history, revolutions can seem explosive and quick. In actuality, revolutions are a complex, multi-step process that flares up, achieves fractions of their goals, and lies dormant for some time before societal conditions give rise to them again. Economic conditions impact social conditions which then impact our politics. Class struggle is also a constant and driving factor of revolution, as seen in the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement.
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The Civil War’s unfinished goals presented themselves as the social consequences predominantly seen in the South, which fueled the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. How the relationship between class and race shaped the Civil Rights Movement is something to be explored through the use of Nelson Peery’s book, The Future is Up To Us.
Focusing on both the general trends of the South and a specific case of Birmingham, Alabama through the use of Diane McWhorter’s book, “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution”, I will explain the movement’s fascinating history. I will elaborate more on the process of a revolution, and prove how economic interests are always at the heart of those movements. Thinking about the current implications of the intersection between economic conditions and race will shape the conclusion of this paper.
What Composes a Revolution
As stated by Nelson Peery, “A revolution...begins with the emergence and eventual supremacy of a new means of production and ends with the consequent reorganization of society”.1Innovation in a society’s means of production is sure to impact its economic system. To further explain what this new change really means for society, Peery uses an analogy in which he likens an economic system to a machine. When a new part is added or subtracted, the system no longer works. Like a chain reaction, a change in the economy forces a change in society which forces a political revolution.
To understand how this applies to the revolutionary change of the Civil Rights era, one must recall the events that produced the Civil War. The creation of industry in the North allowed for the mechanization of slave labor, which meant that slavery was no longer necessary and African-Americans were driven into the cities post-abolition. The economic revolution in agriculture was the foundation for the social revolution later born as the “Freedom Movement”.
How Class Struggle Drives Revolution
Class struggle can be defined as a “fight to overthrow a social system and create a new one”. The original system that worked for the South was slave labor as it was extremely profitable for those with access to exploitable land. However, the technological advancements in the North that allowed for industrialization made the agricultural labor of the South the inferior system. The North’s new advantage helped it gain momentum for the abolition of slavery, a huge threat to the South’s economy.
As a result, the Civil War ensued. It would be inaccurate to characterize the war as strictly a fight between the forces of a unified North and a unified South. There existed a struggle between classes in the South, and it was the white elite that was most reluctant to release their grip on the slave labor system that had allowed their wealth to accumulate. “Ten percent of the Southern population owned seventy percent of the arable land in the South”, so there was a large gap in wealth dictated by one’s geographical location.2 The Southerners not opposed to the North’s cause were the poor whites, those who lived in the foothills and owned small farms. This class of folk could not and did not benefit from plantation slave labor and as a consequence were most harshly hurt by the war.
One’s morality is always somewhat directed by the prospect of economic well-being in the long run, and there came a point when all those poor families wanted was for the war to end. Peery writes, “As that dribbled down to the blood and misery and destruction that the Civil War really was, people began trying to look out for themselves...Read the letters of the wives of poor whites to their husbands on the front. The women and children were starving. I don’t mean uncomfortable, they were starving”.3 It has also been discovered that the desertion rate of the Southern armies was about fifty percent higher than that of the Northern armies, proving that the strongest forces fighting for the South were the ones who could afford to and had the most to lose.
The conflicting interests of classes in the South ultimately weakened its cause and allowed the North to come out victorious. In the Civil War, class struggle aided the success of the industrial revolution and the consequential liberation of slaves. The effects of this feat created the conditions that led to the Civil Rights movement and critical events of 1963 Birmingham, which were the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and the killing of four young black girls. Ultimately, this catalyzed the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which brought closure to the vision of equality and freedom from the Civil War.
How the Outcomes of the Civil War Shaped the Civil Rights Movement
The abolition of slavery saw that there was immediate retaliation from the ruling class of the South. They were threatened by the entrance of African-Americans into society as members who could compete in the economy and would have to if they intended to survive. As the country moved into the Reconstruction period, a multitude of obstacles arose that prevented African-Americans from gaining stable socioeconomic footing. Despite post-war amendments granting slaves the right to vote, Southern states kept African-Americans disenfranchised through the implementation of poll taxes and literacy tests.4 Further retaliation was demonstrated through the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and “Jim Crow” segregation laws.
Northern need for the relocation of industry found it cheaper to settle in the South, wiping out sharecropping and forcing African-Americans into the cities. Obligated to aggregate into segregated communities with little assets, African-Americans were immediately put at an economic disadvantage and thus formed another poor class. The segregation of schools negatively impacted the quality of education for them, and the disenfranchising obstacles put into place prevented African-Americans from participating in politics and being able to vote for policies that would raise their standard of living.
Although the rich class of white Southerners was most opposed to the abolition of slavery, a threat was posed to the poor white class as well. Poor whites wanted the war to end because it had strained them financially, but were also unappreciative of the amendments resulting from the war. Those already struggling to get by did not want more participants in society to compete against. This is how racist sentiment was created among the majority of the Southern white population.
In this period after Reconstruction and prior to the Civil Rights movement it is clear to see how racist sentiments would follow the threat of economic competition. In order for people to unify, an outsider must always exist or be created. The outsider to the South’s white folk were newly freed African-Americans. The bourgeois class took advantage of the poor’s fear of African-American advancement to intensify hatred and violence toward them. In the United States, racism became a color issue in order to propagate an “us versus them” mentality and villainize blackness. It distracted from the root of the problem, which was that the capitalistic circumstances of owning plantations and slaves allowed for a disproportionate amount of people to accumulate wealth while the rest were forced to compete for too little.
The conditions that led to and the passion behind the leaders of the Civil Rights movement were a culmination of the offenses and blatantly unfair treatment of an entire demographic of people for too many years.
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