Aldon Morris’ Origins of the Civil Rights Movement seeks to advance and validate the idea that the struggle for civil rights that began in earnest in the mid-1950s was a grassroots, bottom-up phenomenon, rather than a movement initiated and supported primarily by outsiders - particularly white, Northern liberals. Pursuant to this premise, Morris takes us through the primary events of the decade ending in 1963 pointing out along the way the important local figures who inspired and fomented the activities previously thought to have been instigated by external influences.

Morris also seeks to promote a new synthesis of social movement theories which he calls the "indigenous approach." This viewpoint combines elements of Max Weber’s theory of charismatic movements and resource mobilization theory with a concentration on the latter.

It is the purpose of this essay to examine these two goals and point to a few problems with Morris’ approach. In regard to the first goal, I believe that Morris largely succeeds, though he does so at the expense of achieving complete intellectual honesty. To whit, there are occasions on which Morris blurs distinctions or stretches a point to fit his theory, orders his presentation of the data by virtue of convenience rather than by chronology, and dilutes the impact of several phenomena rather than formulate his theory to fit the facts. This is particularly true of his treatment of Martin Luther King, Jr.

As to the second goal, Morris’ theory does cover the details as he describes them, but ignores inconvenient circumstances and passes quickly over aspects of the movement that can best be explained by political opportunity theory. This is odd, considering that Morris frequently describes the very political considerations and notes their influence, but he does not credit the theory in his theoretical overview.

Adam Fairclough notes the importance of the political environment on the early civil rights movement:

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Smith v. Allwright (1944), which declared
that political parties could not legally exclude... [blacks] from primary elections, the
number of registered black voters rose dramatically.... By 1952, despite the fact that
local white officials controlled the registration process, more than one million blacks
had become registered voters... one black adult in five.

This, and other factors, such as the virtual cessation of lynchings, improvement in the pay for black teachers and the building of new schools, and the appointment of black policemen in Southern cities, "including Montgomery" led to what Fairclough describes as optimism among southern blacks "that whites would listen to their appeals for fairer treatment with sympathy." (Fairclough, pp. 21-22) This is the environment in which the early events Morris describes took place, but none these factors are even mentioned in Morris’ book

I will summarize the majour points of the book, pointing as I go to the areas in which I see problems with Morris’ argument. I will then close by attempting to fit political opportunity theory into Morris’ indigenous approach by proposing an alternate summary of the work that Morris could have achieved by taking political opportunity theory and King’s primary leadership role into account.

Morris begins by describing the essential aspects of Southern black culture that will play such an important role in his understanding of the events he describes later. Chief among these is the black church. Morris contends that "the black church functioned as the institutional center of the modern civil rights movement." From the churches were drawn the majority of the movement’s leaders, the churches were a ready source of fund-raising potential and, organizationally, they were both independent of the "white power structure [and] skilled in the art of managing people and resources." (Morris, p. 4)

That the movement’s leaders should come mainly from within the pre-existing church structure is only natural. The black minister was almost universally respected within the black community. That they were independent of the influence of whites is a point Morris himself undermines, but not entirely. It is safe to say, however, that whites were largely indifferent to the goings on of the black church prior to the civil rights movement. That many black ministers carried a message of endurance in preparation for salvation hereafter suggests that the white community may even have found the black church to be a beneficial institution, but Morris does not touch on this. Regardless, the church would not retain this privilege once the movement began.

As the clear center of the movement, the church was a threat. But, and again Morris misses this point, no power structure in America can attack a Christian church. Instead, the forces of the status quo chose to attack a secular organization, which also predated the 1950’s: the NAACP. Morris attributes it founding to "displeasure over the accommodationist politics of Booker T. Washington" and the influence of W.E.B. DuBois and Monroe Trotter. (Morris, p. 13)

Described as a highly bureaucratized organization, Morris’ treatment of the NAACP is, throughout the book, contradictory. One the one hand, they frequently appear as a force advising against direct action and dissent but pop up as players in any number of individual dramas, an inconsistency for which Morris entirely fails to account. Nonetheless, he makes a clear case that, as the pre-eminent civil rights group predating the movement, the NAACP was a majour force in the instigation of the movement, providing many of the movement’s leaders. It should be noted, of course, that a large number of the NAACP’s leaders and decision-makers in the South were also members of the clergy. Morris describes many such instances of overlap between the national and local groups, but does, insofar as this does not accord with his grassroots approach, he does not make anything of it. Fairclough in an essay entitled "The Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana, 1939-54" accounts for this better than Morris does,

Accounts of the NAACP’s effectiveness must take into account the segregationist
counter-attack known as Massive Resistance. In 1956, ultra-segregationists across
the South unleashed a campaign to smash the NAACP. This onslaught almost
succeeded. The creation of the SCLC, and the emergence of Martin Luther King Jr as
the pre-eminent southern black leader, were due in part - perhaps in large part - to the
repression of the NAACP. It was no accident that SCLC’s birthplace and heartland
was Alabama, where a state court injunction forced the NAACP to cease its operations
entirely. (Badger & Ward, p. 22)

Clearly, then, political opportunity played a role that Morris overlooks.

The first mass event Morris recounts is the Baton Rouge bus boycott of 1953. He then proceeds to demonstrate the parallels in the boycotts in other cities - Montgomery, Tallahassee, & Birmingham - that occurred later and are generally more celebrated. It is in this portion of the book that Morris’ thesis is the strongest. Clearly, these mass protests were fomented and carried out at the local level. The organizations that arose to manage them are the very heart of Morris’ indigenous approach. That they persisted afterward and that the successes and failures of each - particularly in respect to Baton Rouge - were capitalized on is a powerful argument on Morris’ behalf. No large, bureaucratized organization could have the flexibility and understanding of local conditions necessary to carry out a successful boycott. Only one of Morris’ signature "local movement centers" could do so.

However, his explication of this phenomenon includes one of his weakest arguments, that the leaders of these groups were uniformly chosen by virtue of their status as newcomers to the community. King himself likely met this criterion when he was selected to lead to Montgomery boycott, having only been resident for two years, but C.K. Steele "had been in Tallahassee for... four." (Morris, p. 43) Just how long one can have been involved in the community and still be considered a newcomer is an open question, but it seems to me that a resident of four years has had ample time to get deeply and intimately involved in the community. I believe he had to establish this point in order to dilute the primacy of charisma within the movement, and of Martin Luther King in particular.

E.D. Nixon, Treasurer of the Montgomery Improvement Association which organized the boycott, lends some support to Morris’ assertion that King was chosen because of his status as a newcomer. He stated that, "We needed a man who could meet with any group of people and King could do this.... He was not tied in with the city fathers; they had not had a chance to put their hands on him." But this is only one of the reasons why Nixon proposed King should be the President of the MIA:

Nixon nominated King for MIA’s presidency because he felt that the boycott needed
young, vigorous, charismatic and intelligent leadership.... Nixon knew that the success
of the boycott would depend largely on a black preacher who could communicate with,
motivate and inspire the masses.

Further, Nixon was much impressed with King’s speaking abilities, which he had seen demonstrated at an NAACP meeting in Montgomery in August 1955. So, while newcomer status was important, it was only one of several considerations that led to King’s being chosen. (Baldwin & Woodson, p. 51)

Having given an exhaustively thorough account of the formation of the local movement centers that form the backbone of his thesis, Morris moves on to describe the regional organizations that arose to afford intercommunication between those groups. Chief among them was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This group "was the force that developed the infrastructure of the civil rights movement and... functioned as the decentralized arm of the black church." (Morris, p. 77)

In describing the background that led to the founding of the SCLC, Morris explicitly denotes the importance of several historical phenomena. Among them were the rapid urbanization of blacks in the first half of the century (which he had earlier credited as a powerful influence in the formation of a group consciousness and social cohesion amongst oppressed blacks), the two world wars in which many blacks fought, and the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Having noted these and described them as crucial, he again fails to mention political opportunity theory, or any of the other factors highlighted by Fairclough, a majour oversight.

The SCLC quickly became the central motivating force of the civil rights movement. With Dr. King at its head and member organizations spreading throughout the South, it had both the charismatic appeal and the membership base to promote and sustain the movement. The chapters devoted to the relationships between the SCLC and the older organizations make this abundantly clear. A very efficient relationship soon developed among the groups with the SCLC planning and engaging in direct action, the NAACP handling the early funding and defending participants in court (Morris, p. 120), and groups like CORE undertaking the essential training in non-violent direct action.

This section of the book illustrates another lapse to which Morris frequently succumbs: a tendency to back up and insert data that supports his point outside of what is an essentially chronological structure. This habit often leads to confusion in that the information is given when it is most convenient for Morris rather than in the order that it occurred. The role of the movement halfway houses, for instance, began earlier than the founding of the SCLC, but is not included until three chapters have been devoted to the SCLC.

The role of the halfway houses in preparing the ground for the movement could perhaps have been better served in Morris’ account had he brought them in earlier. Rosa Parks’ role in the Montgomery boycott enters the narrative on page 43, but her attendance prior to that event at the Highlander Folk School is not mentioned until page 146 - and then only in a single sentence. Yet again, I believe Morris deliberately delayed the introduction of the halfway houses to bolster his thesis that the movement was mainly locally inspired. This is unfortunate because his thesis is a strong one and did not need to be protected from inconvenient data. It is entirely possible to give an honest account of the details without undermining his approach, yet he chose not to do so.

Morris is back on firm ground when he expands his scope again to the organization of numerous groups in the various Southern states and the part the SCLC played in assisting them. His description throughout of the activities of the SCLC is credible except in one regard alluded to earlier. Wishing, I believe, to focus primarily on resource mobilization and away from charisma, he consistently downplays the importance of Martin Luther King. The impression this book gives of King is as if he were a king on a chessboard - a vital piece which, nonetheless, has little actual power and is moved around according to the needs of the other pieces rather than being actively involved in winning. Morris explicitly states that King had "the ultimate power in the SCLC" (Morris, p. 93) and describes his function accordingly when he recounts the SCLC’s founding. However, through the remainder of the book, King is described as being primarily a fund-raising speaker and source of inspiration and little if any credit to King’s hand in planning actions or spreading the movement, except insofar as his name on the letterhead was useful in raising funds and credibility.

King has been traditionally understood as being the leader of the civil rights movement. The centrality the SCLC achieved in the movement under his direction should suggest that he was its guiding force. George M. Fredrickson notes that the "SCLC’s genius was that it could channel and harness community energies and initiatives to serve the cause of national civil rights reform." (Badger & Ward, p.221) But Morris’ theory does not allow for this. He seems to believe that any readily identifiable leader or organization, even an indigenously-produced one, will undermine his approach.

He cannot ignore King, though, when he turns, toward the end of the book, to the Birmingham protest of 1963. King’s active and direct role in every phase of that successful exercise is impossible to pass over as blithely as Morris does in regard to earlier events. Here he is unequivocally in charge. Indeed, King convinced Shuttlesworth to call off a Christmas, 1962 boycott, to be called the Selective Buying Campaign, until he could meet with them and plan a targeted boycott. In light of the fact that the Albany boycott had failed by trying to do too much, "King recognized the need to boycott the business sector and therefore put indirect pressure on the white power structure. King believed the merchants, suffering under a loss of black revenues, would force the politicians to negotiate the blacks’ demands for desegregation." (Garrow, p. 73)

It was clearly King’s vision that drove the Birmingham protest, as even Morris credits. This being the case, it leads me to wonder where this ability to plan and decide was acquired if not from having been the sustaining, leading figure behind the activities of the SCLC all along.

It is fair to say, I believe, that Morris has constructed a plausible explanation for his belief that the civil rights movement was mainly an indigenously-initiated phenomenon. I would assert, however, that he is not entirely confident that it stands up to scrutiny, which would account for the frequent evasions and oversights, as well as for the convenient diversions from the chronological structure that the book largely follows. His thesis would be improved if it allowed for political opportunity theory and did not commit itself to a focus on the local level even after events had clearly passed that point. Were I to write this book, it could be summarized as follows:

Historical circumstances had reached a watershed in the mid-1950’s. Blacks returning
from the Second World War and an increasingly urbanized Southern black culture had
forever changed the relationship of blacks to the oppressive environment of the United
States and the South in particular. After the Supreme Court overturned Plessy v.
Ferguson, the ability of blacks to alter their own circumstances was indelibly clear.
These historical changes led to the growth of an indigenous movement for civil rights
which, after several significant successes, grew rapidly to am internationally
recognized force for change. One of the early leaders of this indigenous movement
was the charismatic and oratorically-gifted Martin Luther King. Under his decisive
leadership, the civil rights movement and its characteristic non-violent, direct action
approach, grew into a national movement and changed the landscape of America.