Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang

For the Black workers at the center of Lang’s study, the civil rights movement was a node in a network of a broader freedom struggle that went beyond merely desegregating public accommodations and securing the right to vote. Louis used the civil rights movement to pursue access to stable high-wage jobs, to challenge the prerogatives of management, to defend themselves against the effects of automation, and to increase their community’s overall social wage. He reminds us that in many important ways, the civil rights struggle was a class struggle. This well researched, engagingly written and carefully argued book demonstrates the centrality of working-class politics to the Black freedom struggle in St. In Grassroots at the Gateway, Clarence Lang makes a greatly needed contribution to helping us remember what we have been led to forget. The common-sense memory of the Black freedom movement that prevails in our society translates collective challenges to unjust structural and systemic power as largely therapeutic exercises that purged the nation of its prejudices. Popular memorials constantly recall the campaigns to desegregate lunch counters and open voting booths, but ignore collective mass mobilizations for jobs and justice. We are encouraged to forget that the civil rights movement was part of a broader Black freedom struggle that sought class justice and the radical reorganization of society itself. In museums and memorials, in civic celebrations and schoolbooks, in punditry and many different forms of popular culture, rhetorical fabrication undermines historical investigation. In our time, the Black freedom movement of the mid-20th century is now both well remembered and selectively forgotten. REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING are not only things that people do they are things that are done to them. Louis, 1936-1975Īnn Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009, 324 pages, Daniel Bensaïd: The Power of IndignationĬlass Politics & Black Freedom Struggle in St.Dennis Brutus: Honored by the Enemies He Kept.Celebrating the Past-the Legacy of the Free Speech Movement.California Crisis Hits, Fightback Erupts.Race & Class: Obama Forgets Black Community.

Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang