A video of the talk I gave at the Army Heritage Education Center in mid-March is now available online:
Perspectives: March 18, 2009
“Why the Civil Rights Movement was an Insurgency, and Why it Matters”
Mark S. Grimsley, Ph.D.
Harold K. Johnson Visiting Professor of Military History, U.S. Army War College
Most Americans fail to appreciate that the Civil Rights movement was about the overthrow of an entrenched political order in each of the Southern states, that the segregationists who controlled this order did not hesitate to employ violence (law enforcement, paramilitary, mob) to preserve it, and that for nearly a century the federal government tacitly or overtly supported the segregationist state governments. That the Civil Rights movement employed nonviolent tactics should fool us no more than it did the segregationists, who correctly saw themselves as being at war. Significant change was never going to occur within the political system: it had to be forced. The aim of the segregationists was to keep the federal government on the sidelines. The aim of the Civil Rights movement was to “capture” the federal government — to get it to apply its weight against the Southern states. As to why it matters: a major reason we were slow to grasp the emergence and extent of the insurgency in Iraq is that it didn’t –and doesn’t — look like a classic insurgency. In fact, the official Department of Defense definition of insurgency still reflects a Vietnam era understanding of the term. Looking at the Civil Rights movement as an insurgency is useful because it assists in thinking more comprehensively about the phenomenon of insurgency and assists in a more complete –and therefore more useful — definition of the term.
You can view a video of the presentation (and/or download it) if you visit this link and scroll down about halfway. It’s to the left of the presentation description.
14 Comments
So glad I got to watch this in its entirety. Excellent points throughout, you really helped widen my perspective of the whole of the movement. Thank you for posting the link, I will be sharing it with not only some of my friends back here at OSU, but also some of my family members and friends who remember living it.
Mark — excellent.
If I get a chance to revise that paper I will certainly rewrite the piece touching upon the Civil Rights Movement.
Al
PS It’s pronounced “No-fee”
Mark,
This is not pertinent to the original posting, but thought it worth bringing to your attention. Have you seen Richard Kohn’s _Tarnished Brass_ in the Spring ‘09 edition of World Affairs? See:
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20-%20Spring/full-Kohn.html
I’d be interested in your comments – and those of your seminar members.
The talk was extremely informative, interesting and insightful. Dr. Grimsley presented a very different perspective on something we “think” we understand. As I listened to his talk, I realized how little I really understood about the movement and its significance.
Mark,
Just heard about:
Patrick D. Jones. The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in
Milwaukee. Cambridge Harvard University Press, 2009.
So the labor movement would be an insurgency in your opinion? How about consumer rights?
Thomas – Did you watch the video of my presentation? If so, on what basis — on what specific part of the presentation — do you raise your questions? If not, why not?
You present a fascinating take on the civil rights movement that I, for one, have never heard before! I stumbled upon your site while researching content for our new website, timelines.com. Specifically, I was looking at information about the civil rights movement. Here’s a link to the “timeline” for the civil rights movement on our site: http://timelines.com/topics/civil-rights-movement. As you’ll see, many of the events are also tagged “African-American History” as well as with a few other items. Our idea is to create an interactive historical record of anything and everything, based on specific events that combine to form timelines. We’re trying to achieve a sort of user-created multimedia encyclopedia, in which no event is too big and no event is too small, and where each event can contain various types of resources, such as video, images, maps, etc., not to mention that they’ll represent various perspectives (unlike, say, wikipedia). It’s also a good way to direct traffic to your blog because your events will pop up along with anything else that’s thematically related. Right now I’m just getting out the word and looking for feedback. Soon, we’ll be adding a feature that allows users to embed the timelines from our site on to theirs.
Thanks!
The video links aren’t currently working. Will they be restored, or is the video or a paper available elsewhere? Thanks.
Still no luck on the video link.
I’m afraid AHEC has removed the video. On the positive side, the next issue of Military History Quarterly will carry my article on “Why the Civil Rights Movement Was an Insurgency.” It comes out in January, I think.
Update video links – (I have not tested these yet)
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/AHEC/mediagallery/videoGallery.cfm?id=32 – Whole series
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/AHEC/mediagallery/video/32_263.wmv – Download link
I found updated video links – (I have not tested these yet)
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/AHEC/mediagallery/videoGallery.cfm?id=32 – Whole series
http://www.carlisle.army.mil/AHEC/mediagallery/video/32_263.wmv – Download link
I haven’t had a chance to watch the video yet. But this idea of the civil rights movement as “insurgency” reminds me of a James Baldwin speech at Berkeley. You can view that video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Of0Abi10A