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Peter D. Blackmer, "Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" (UVA Press, 2025)
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B
Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Michael Stauch, and today I'll be talking to Peter Blackmore about his new book, Unleashing Black Power, Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long Hot Summers, published by the University of Virginia Press. Peter Blackmer is an associate professor of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University, and his research and teaching explore the ways in which black led grassroots organizing. Campaigns for self determination in the 20th and 21st century United States have shaped local and national politics through struggles for civil rights, human rights and political power in American cities. Peter, welcome to the show.
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C
Thanks for having me.
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B
Well, Peter, this book is full of great archival stories. So on pages 36 to 39, for example, you describe how the Harlem Tenants Rights Council took influence from a tenant movement in Scotland to guide their own struggle in Harlem. Elsewhere, you tell detailed accounts of of Mae Mallory's negotiation of black nationalist and communist ideology to come to her own distinctive political analysis. I was really impressed by those stories and I was wondering if you could start by telling an archival story from the research process that made a particular impression on you.
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C
Yeah, there's so much that I could choose from in this question because this book was the product of probably 10 years or more of archival Research from archives from New York to Detroit and many places in between. One that I think is always going to stick with me was when I started this project as an undergrad and coming across an audio recording of a forum hosted by the Militant Labor Forum in the spring of 1964 about what was so called the Harlem Hate Gang Scare, about this rumor that was designed to stoke fear into white New Yorkers, about an armed black nationalist gang of teenagers that were terrorizing white communities. And so I get into this in great detail in the final chapter of the book. But I first came across this in this recording of a forum when I was an intern at the Schomburg center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. And I heard QR Hand, who is an organizer with the Northern Student Movement, talking about this particular topic and his experiences in tenant organizing in Harlem and interactions with the nypd. And he was speaking alongside Malcolm X and William Reed, who and some other folks. And I remember thinking, like, Dang, this guy QR hand is really sharp. And about, let's see, probably 10 to 15 years later, I was sitting in QR hands living room in Vallejo, California. He's now joined the ancestors. But to be in conversation with someone and to hear some of the backstories behind this particular forum, which I won't get into here, but through his personal memories of it was kind of a full circle moment. And it was just really special to be able to hear directly from him about his memories of that particular forum, particularly since that was really what one of the archival finds that jump started this project.
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B
Yeah, that's amazing. I love that, the connection over that long term. And I think that those are some of the things that make it powerful and exciting to do this thing that we're doing. You said you wouldn't get into it, but I kind of want to get into it because the next question I had was, was how did you come to write this book? And if you could explain the intellectual journey that led you in this direction, you know, in terms of content, but also the conceptual framework and also, you know, as. As you've just described in this response, a little bit your own life history in the telling of the book. So. So tell us a little bit more about that.
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C
Yeah. So I came to this project as an undergrad at Wagner College in Staten island, and I was looking for a senior thesis project. I was a history major, and I started interning in public relations at the Schomburg. And so when I was there, when I wasn't giving tours of exhibits, when I had some downtime. It was really cool that my supervisors let me just venture off into the archives and go explore things. And so I got to the point where I decided that I was going to write my senior thesis, this is back in 2010 or 2009, about the causes behind the 1964 Harlem Rebellion. And so I pursued that project and finished the thesis. And I got to the W.E.B. du Bois, Department of Afro American Studies at UMass Amherst, where I was learning under folks who were intimately involved in this history. So people like Bill Strickland, who is the national director of the Northern Student Movement based in Harlem, or John Bracey, who was involved with the Revolutionary Action Movement and many other organizations, or Ernie Alle and likewise. And so through learning from these folks, the project is evolving. But ultimately, it's a conversation with Robin D.G. kelly, who was a writer in residence at UMass for, I think, a semester, who kind of gave me a spark to push this project in a different direction. Because I remember this conversation in class where he was asking us about our dissertation research projects and whatnot. And I said, I'm looking at the causes of 1964 Harlem Rebellion. He said, that's interesting. But you know what would be much more interesting is if you looked at the history of organizing in those years, rather than focusing on the forces of oppression to think more about how were people organizing to challenge these conditions that contributed to the emergence of the uprising. And that was like that light bulb moment for me that completely changed how I was thinking about not just the rebellion, but thinking about my dissertation and the kind of work that I really wanted to do. And so from there, the project really became more specifically focused on looking at the 10 year period before the 1964 rebellion to understand the evolution of grassroots organizing and black radicalism, to try to better understand how we get to this point in 1964 where the mass uprising breaks out. Because it was clear to me, it was becoming clear to me that by just focusing on the forces of oppression acting upon black communities in Harlem didn't tell the whole story of how we got to that point. So that's kind of where the basic evolution of the project, where it was coming from, how it evolved over time. And then there was just the long and arduous process of revising the dissertation into a book, which I thought would be a much shorter and easier climb than it ended up being, because I'm just very thorough in my work. And once I got back into revising and dissertation, it opened up some new areas to explore. Some things that I missed, and I was coming across new information in doing so that required some reworking and also a whole lot of cutting.
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B
Yeah, no, I feel you on that. No, I love that story because it's rooted in the people, you know, the conversations with folks, John Bracey, Robin Kelly, and all those kinds of things. I think that's really amazing. And now, the next thing I wanted to follow up on, though, was a little bit about the title of the book. So it's called Unleashing Black Power. The subtitle is Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long Hot Summers. And I think that there's an argument embedded in every book, and the title is telling us that argument. So could you kind of, like, elaborate on the way that the arguments that you're telling us that you're kind of foregrounding with that title?
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C
Yeah, so this wasn't the original title that I had in mind for the book. The original title was the Whole Nation Will Move, and the same long subtitle. The press didn't think that that was evocative enough. And so it's like, all right, back to the drawing board. Where the initial one came from was a speech that John Lewis was giving in Harlem during the 196364 rent strike movement. And he said, paraphrasing here, that, you know, those of us in the south have been watching what's been happening in Harlem for a long time, because we understand that when the masses in Harlem get to moving, the whole nation will move. And so that was the initial title. But then I was on a flight, I think, to New York to do some research last year, and I was like, all right, well, since that title is not working, I need to come up with a new one. And so when I'm looking for that kind of inspiration, I'll usually go back to the archives. And so I was pulling up all my files on the computer on this flight, crammed into the seat, and I'm pulling up this letter from that Mae Mallory wrote in February of 61. And she's writing this as essentially an editorial to one of the newspapers in New York. It wasn't identified which one, but she's running a response to these mass disruptive demonstrations at the United nations in response to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. And so she is challenging some of the dominant narratives that the press is spinning, that politicians are spinning, that law enforcement is spinning about what happens during this disruptive demonstration, which maybe we can talk a little bit more about later. And she's Saying, like, rather than being kind of cowed by this negative press and publicity, she's saying, well, we dedicate ourselves to this task of unleashing this black power until the world is rid of white domination and exploitation. And so I'm rereading this, and I was like, may Mallory is writing this in February of 61. And I think that's historically significant because we know that the term black power doesn't just come out of nowhere in 1966, when Mukasa Dada or Willie Ricks and Kwame Ture, Stokely Carmichael drop it, as they put it, in Greenwood, Mississippi, during the Meredith March. So we know that the term had been used for many years before this by a number of activists, intellectuals, artists. But the way that Mae Mallory was conceiving of black power, I think, was really significant in this moment. And I think to get to the question is signifying of what I'm trying to do in this book, because one of the core arguments that I'm making amongst a few here is that black power was essentially emerging alongside the civil rights movement in the urban north in response to local conditions, to national and global movements, and to escalating state repression. So that argument in and of itself isn't new. It's not unique. But what I'm doing is grounding that progression in Harlem, which I read as being this really critical node in this broader kind of ecosystem that black power is emerging within in the early 1960s. And so what Mae Mallory was kind of had in mind, based on my reading of this letter, was very like. It's the kind of story that I was trying to get at in this book of not just like, this concept of unleashing black power, but how is this black power built in Harlem during these years? But another part of what she's writing in this letter, a key point that she's raising, is that black power, in her conception of it, was being chained down, in her words, by black moderates. And she's responding here to people like. Like Ralph Bunch and many other moderate black leaders who were really condemning black radicals who essentially stormed into the UN to disrupt the General assembly to protest Patrice Lumumba's assassination. And so after this, you know, the floodgates open. Everybody is coming for the folks who are involved. And so in this letter, you know, the same one where she's rededicating herself and her words to unleashing black power, she's really coming after black moderates and, you know, specifically, but also more generally, you know, the white power structure that is trying to repress this mounting anti colonial tendency in the black radical tradition. And so she's saying in this letter that she's dedicating herself and her organizations to building power amongst working class black communities in order to break free from white supremacy and to seize their own liberation. And so in that way, the title's also signifying the emphasis I have in this book on grassroots organizing and working class black communities and how local people in Harlem are really shaping the evolution of black radicalism. And oftentimes in defiance of moderates, power brokers, and in response to mounting state repression.
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B
Sure, sure. Well, I love. I love both titles and it's a tough choice, but I do. But I think it is great that it has the benefit. The one you've chosen, Unleashing Black Power, May Mallory, is at the heart of it. And it also has one thing that arguably the other one doesn't have is like a very specific concept, black power, that we can kind of really sink our teeth into early on. So I think it's great. It's really great. Now, moving on from that, though, Harlem is in the title, as you just mentioned. So I wanted to just ask if you could talk a little bit more about Harlem as the site of this historical inquiry and why Harlem itself is so important, and maybe also why Harlem is important to other books that focus on community studies and organizing traditions and things like that. What does Harlem as a site contribute to historians understanding of those things?
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C
So, I mean, first, as I mentioned earlier, I was drawn to working on Harlem because that's where I was working at the Schomburg. That's the personal side of it. But the historiographical side of it comes out of a recognition of Harlem's in many ways, like singular place in African American and diasporic history, culture, and politics. A point that I think really illustrates this is in the spring of 1964, members of Malcolm X's fledgling organization, the Organization of Afro American Unity, are writing in a planning document that, quote, harlem is the black world. And so they're recognizing Harlem's vital place in black history, culture, politics, not just in the United States, but throughout the African Diaspora. And I think this is really compelling because to this point, there's been a lot of local studies of the black freedom movement in various places. There's been a lot of anthologies and books that have focus on various aspects of Harlem's history, But there hasn't been the kind of deep dive into Harlem like as a vital space and site of the modern black freedom. Movement. And so that's part of the reason why I'm looking at this 10 year period from 1954 to 1964, which is generally considered, in Peniel Joseph's words, to be like the historic or the heroic period of the civil rights movement, kind of the brackets that we generally understand from Brown v. Board in 54 to the Civil Rights act in 1964, to see, like, okay, well, what was happening in Harlem at this time? Because in my reading of what happened, like this history in Harlem is that our understanding of the national black freedom movement is incomplete when we don't center Harlem because like, Harlem isn't just this, you know, geographic location, it's not just a neighborhood, but it historically has been this political training ground, the diasporic hub of black radicalism and cultures, and really a vital hub in the evolution of black radicalism in the 20th century, and so occupies this really important yet under studied place, not just in the modern civil rights movement, but also in 20th century black radicalism. So while I'm looking at this 10 year period, of course I'm stretching back before that into the 20s, 30s, 40s, the post war era to understand some of the influences and the origin stories, if you will, of different activists, organizers and institutions. Because what I think that this ultimately does when we center Harlem in this story is to really complicate some of the popular understandings that we have of the civil rights movement and the emergence of black power. So one of the things that, you know, I think Harlem really, just to give an example here, Malcolm X El Hajj Malik Al Shabazz is, you know, obviously very well known as a national and international theorist, organizer, activists within the Black freedom movement. But we can't understand Malcolm X's contributions to the national and global struggle for black liberation without understanding how his politics are being shaped through his involvement in local organizing in Harlem, through the different people that he's in community with, that he's learning from being mentored under to the organizations he is in coalition with in formal and informal kind of ways that Harlem is shaping Malcolm X's political evolution. And so we can't understand his impact on national and global black freedom struggles without understanding Harlem's impact on his politics. So that's largely why Harlem is the site of my inquiry. And there's been a lot of important books that have been written on looking at Harlem through the lens of the 64 rebellion to get into some of the systemic factors that precipitated the rebellion. And what I'm doing here is Something that I think contributes to a conversation and I think fills some gaps in terms of centering the perspectives of grassroots organizers, telling the story of this period through their lenses, through their experiences, and ultimately telling a different story about how we get to the rebellion in 1964. And, Doug, here we have the limu.
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A
Imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Libert. Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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C
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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A
Cut the camera. They see us.
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C
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty.
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B
Liberty.
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A
Liberty Savings.
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C
Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.
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B
That's great. I wanted to dig into a bit more of the origin stories that you kind of mentioned. And so I was wondering, you described the years from 1954-57 as kind of crucial in laying the foundations for the movements that followed. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? You talked a little bit about Malcolm X's contribution to this, but you also focus on Mae Mallory and Jesse Gray as other key figures. So could you expand a little bit about those two and their activism during 54 to 57 and how it's kind of doing the work that you're saying it does?
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C
Yeah. So when I first started this dissertation, I was like, where do I begin this? Like, I don't know. Like, you know, how to, you know, frame this? Because I've never written a dissertation before, let alone a book. And one of my mentors, Jim Smathers, was like, look, all books gotta start somewhere. Like, just pick a date and go with it. And so as I was doing more of the research, I was like, okay, 54 seems like a useful starting point, not just because of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, but also that that's when Malcolm X returned to Harlem to lead Temple number seven, actually, Mosque number seven in Harlem. And so those two things were enough for me to say, like, okay, this seems like a useful starting point. Brown v. Board happens. Malcolm returns. And also, Jesse Gray is really starting to build out his tenant organizing in Harlem in this time. And so, on the topic of Brown v. Board, from 54 to 57, there is increased energy and organizing work going into struggles to desegregate public schools in New York City. People like Ella Baker, Dr. Kenneth Clark had been organizing preceding the decision. And then by the time the decision comes through, the organizing infrastructure is already there, and it lends that kind of national weight. And leverage to continue building out local struggles to make the decision a reality in New York to desegregate schools. And so Mae Mallory enters the picture at this point because she is a mother of two children who are attending schools in Harlem that are shaped by symptoms of segregation, of deteriorating buildings, of unsafe conditions for students, of overcrowded classrooms, of under interested teachers. And so she immerses herself in this organizing network that people like Dr. Kenneth Clark and most particularly Ella Baker helped to shape through organizations like Parents in Action, which essentially it was like a training ground for local activists for parents to become engaged in the struggle to desegregate schools. And so Mae Mallory is coming into the picture and really like cutting her teeth as an organizer during this period in ways that lays that. In one way, it lays foundations for campaigns that she's getting involved with, particularly in 58, 59, through a historic boycott of junior high schools in New York. And that campaign was referred in the press as the Little Rock nine of Harlem, or AKA the Harlem Nine. But at the same time, through engaging in campaigns to get a new school for her kids, to challenge racist zoning policies, she is really gaining critical experience as an activist and as an organizer. And in the process, she is developing her political analysis as well through struggle. You know, it's often said that like, struggle is the best education. And I think her experience in these years really affirms that. But for Malcolm, in these years of 54, 57, he's coming back to Harlem. He had already had connections with people from a different period of his life, but when he comes back, he's able to build on some of those connections to reimmerse himself in the community of Harlem and more particularly in its black radical traditions. And so he is stepping back into this space in which black nationalist, pan African, anti colonial tendencies in black radical politics have been kept alive for decades by folks like Carlos Cooks or James Lawson, Porkchop Davis, Queen Mother, Audley Moore, Eloise Moore, Vicki Garvin, Many folks who recognize Malcolm's potential and possibilities as an organizer and are pouring into him and in doing so are kind of guiding his political evolution at this time. And with Jesse Gray, like in these years, he is transitioning from his involvement with the National Maritime Union during World War II, he's been involved with the Communist party and amidst the red scare, amidst McCarthyism in these years where, you know, there's anti communist purges within organizations including the National Maritime Union and the NAACP and many other organizations, Jesse Gray and Jack o' Dell are refusing to go Underground, they instead kind of shift their energies into tenant organizing. And so in these years, are kind of building out the organization of the Lower Harlem Tenants Council and are bringing to bear on their organizing work their political theorizing. That's shaped by Engels's writing of the housing question of seeing during their time aboard ship, visiting Glasgow, Scotland, where they got inspiration for tenant organizing as a political force, because a tenant movement had succeeded in electing political representatives in that city. And so in these years, they're essentially building out the framework for tenant organizing as a vital site of radical struggles. Essentially, you know, in these years, from 54 to 57, Jesse Gray and Jack O' Dell and a growing network of tenants rights activists are drawing from their training in the National Maritime Union, the Communist Party of learning, with people like Harry Haywood and Hugh Malzack and many others in the black left. And that is shaping their analysis of the housing problem as a problem of capitalism, of a problem of racism, of a problem of increasingly colonialism. And so in these years of building out the infrastructure and doing that through grassroots organizing, building by building, block by block, and in doing so, are building the kinds of relationships necessary to launch a series of rent strikes in the late 1950s and early 1960s as part of a broader tenant organizing movement within the context of the evolving black freedom movement as well.
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B
Sure, sure. No, I wanted to continue on that thread because your book does a really great job of linking up these struggles around education, housing, employment, police brutality to this rising anti colonial movement, especially in these descriptions of these struggles that you're talking about from the 1950s. Could you talk about how activists did weave together these distinct threads, and then maybe also about how international events played into that?
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C
Yeah. So this kind of comes back in some ways to the question about why Harlem. Harlem is a space that, for a number of reasons, has cultivated and sustained internationalist thought. So black internationalism, including and particularly anti colonialism and Pan Africanism, has really deep roots in Harlem. You know, in some ways, that is shaped by Harlem space in New York as an international city with deep histories of migration, both from the US south, from the Caribbean, and from elsewhere. And significantly, it's also located in New York, which is where the United nations headquarters is. So New York is significant and unique in that sense. And to put it plainly, when black dignitaries, heads of state, anti colonial leaders came to New York, whether to attend the UN or for other purposes, they came to Harlem because of Harlem space as a black capital in the United States, but also out of recognition for these Traditions of black internationalism, anti colonialism and Pan Africanism. And these tendencies in black political thought were really a core aspect of black radicalism in the mid 20th century. So organizations like the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, which is a descendant of the UNIA and Marcus Garvey, led by Carlos Cooks, and the United African Nationalist Movement, led by James Lawson, whether we're talking organizationally or the political culture of street speakers, community forums, things of that nature, really kept Pan African and anti colonial traditions alive in ways that were shaping popular consciousness in the 1950s and 60s. And so that's important to acknowledge before we get into the connections between, say, housing, education, employment, policing, because it's that kind of consciousness that is shaping how people are perceiving of the nature of the problems that they're experiencing in their communities. So, for example, Malcolm X, as I mentioned earlier, is very much steeped in these traditions. He's cutting his teeth as an orator in the same street corners where people like Cyril Briggs or Hubert Harrison or Bessie Buchanan, sorry, Bessie Phillips or poor Chop Davis or Queen Mother Moore, so many others had spoken and taught and stoked the radical consciousness of generations of Harlem residents. And so that's shaping how people are organizing as well. So while different individuals and organizations were focusing their attention and their energy on specific campaigns, whether that be around housing or education or employment, and policing was often one that linked all of these, which we can talk more about, many who were engaged in these struggles saw them as distinct but interconnected. So Mae Mallory, for instance, understood that her struggles against segregated schools were largely a means to an end of economic uplift for her children. So she wasn't in. She's very clear about this in her writings and in her oral histories, that she wasn't interested in having her kids just sit next to white kids in integrated schools. She was interested in black children having access to the same quality education that was being afforded to white children, because she saw that as a pathway for her kids and for other black children to secure better jobs and easier lives through education. So she understood these connections very clearly. And likewise, like when she was arrested on charges of welfare fraud, amidst these campaigns, she gains some real clarity about how policing and the criminal punishment system were used to suppress dissent. She saw this very clearly in how she later talked about this in oral history that's housed in the Moreland Spingar Research center, the Ralph Bonjourl History collection. She's saying, like, they did everything that they could to try to discredit, to repress me, because obviously I was doing Something that was challenging the status quo. And so she understood the inherently political nature of policing and the criminal punishment system. But ultimately, organizers who are working in different areas, whether we're talking about Jesse Gray with housing or May Mallory with schools in the late 50s or elsewhere, people understood that the common thread was power. Conditions in housing, schools, employment, policing, were caused by a white power structure that was containing and controlling the lives of black communities, which was not unlike colonialism throughout the global South. So that consciousness of anti colonialism, of Pan Africanism, helped to clarify the nature of those relationships. And ultimately that kind of contributes to an expanding organizing network of different activists and organizations that are very clearly locating their work, whether it's in solidarity campaigns or in addressing material conditions in Harlem within a global context in the late 50s and early 60s, while African people on the continent and throughout the diaspora are seizing their liberation through various means, including armed struggle, in what is ultimately like an era of global revolution.
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B
Right, right, right, right. No, I think that's a really great way of conceptualizing all of these different, how these local movements around education and housing and everything are connected to this rising anti colonial movement. I'm curious to have you say more about the way that the global struggles are also contributing to a radicalization of the movement. And maybe here this would be a time to talk about the assassination of Lumumba and the UN demonstration. So just. So in what ways is that so? One of your arguments is that there's a radicalization process underway here. How does that work with these global events?
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C
So as I mentioned earlier, Harlem was, because of its singular place in history, and is this site of deep traditions of black radicalism and internationalism, draws the attention of global anti colonial leaders when they come to the United States, many of whom had already had relationships in Harlem, Kwame Nkrumah being one most notably. But I'm saying that because personal experience and personal relationships are a really important factor in shaping the popular consciousness around anti colonialism and building these connections and better understanding Harlem's place within global anti colonial struggles. And so key examples of that is when people like Fidel Castro come to Harlem during trips to the UN or people like Nkrumah come to Harlem could go on and on with the number of different anti colonial revolutionaries that spent time in Harlem amongst the people. But those experiences that the masses of people were turning out for, to see them speak or to just like welcome them to Harlem really made that personal connection very like, concrete for folks. But also the experiences of activists and organizers who were of building personal relationships Whether that was in Cuba or in drc, made solidarity campaigns much more tangible. And so when after the Cuban Revolution, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, working alongside the revolutionary government, organizes, arranges for a group of black activists and intellectuals to visit Cuba to spend time seeing the aftermath of revolution. And so people like John Henrik Clark and Amiri Baraka, then known as leroy Jones or Sarah Wright, and of course Robert F. Williams, are spending time in Cuba. They're learning about revolution directly at its source. And so Baraka writes about this in a piece called Cuba Libre, saying that this experience in Cuba made revolution tangible, made it concrete. Whereas before it had been somewhat of a romantic notion, now he was actually seeing what it meant in real time. Through this trip, people like Julian Mayfield and John Henry Clark are also writing about their experiences in Cuba. But incredibly profound for the radicalization and the political organizing of activists, intellectuals and artists, but also with the drc, organizers like Rosa Guy were building relationships with delegates to the United Nations. Rosa Guy was fluent in French and so was able to communicate, became kind of a translator in some ways, and a link between Congolese delegates to UN and black radical communities in New York, whether that's in the Lower east side or in Harlem, as a member of the Harlem Writers Guild. And so for members of the Harlem Writers Guild, for different black artists, intellectuals, activists, they felt this personal connection to what was happening with the counter revolutionary assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Given the background of Pan Africanism, anti colonialism in Harlem, given these growing personal connections and relationships to revolutionary anti colonial struggles, begins to continues to build popular anti colonial consciousness. And so people have been organizing in solidarity with the Congo for months preceding Lumumba's assassination. So people like Abby Lincoln and Maya Angelou and Rosa Guy, particularly black women, were leading campaigns to try to protect Patrice Lumumba, try to demand that the United States and the United nations intervene and protect him and his new government from the reactionary attempts to overthrow his government. So this organizing really culminates in the early winter of 1961, once it becomes clear that Lumumba had indeed been assassinated. So even before this was popularly announced, Rosa Guy had heard about this through her connections with Congolese delegates. And so her Maya Angelou Abbey Lincoln organization called kawa, organized a mass demonstration at the United nations in February of 61. This is drawing support from a range of different organizations and different networks of activists. And ultimately, I won't recite the whole history of this or like the blow by blow of what happens in the United nations, but essentially a group enters into the assembly and turns it out, disrupts the proceedings. You know, is calling the UN and the US rightly like killers, you know, pointing the finger again rightly, at the United States and the United nations for being complicit, if not directing the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. And they turned the place out. And May Mallory is there in the assembly. People are practicing self defense against the guards and police inside and outside, Amiri Baraka and Mae Mallory. And Baraka's telling of it got into a scuffle with the police outside. So practicing self defense against police repression outside of the United Nations. And this was a significant moment for a number of different reasons I get into in the book. One of this is it draws the lines very clearly between grassroots working class black radicals and middle class black moderates in terms of how people are responding to this. The police are in. The FBI and the CIA are of course trying to pin this disruption on the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X. But Maya Angelou and Rosa God go to Malcolm in the aftermath and say, like, what do we do about this? I'm worried that if we don't build some sort of sustained organizing campaign that we're going to lose some momentum and ultimately people might turn on each other. And they essentially ask him, like, look, we want your guidance, we want your support. And Malcolm says, look, I can't get involved in this, but I also won't denounce you. And so the NYPD and the FBI and politicians are trying to pin it on Malcolm and the Nation of Islam. And he refuses to take the bait to clear the name of the Nation of Islam by denouncing the people who disrupted the United Nations. And that was a really important practice of solidarity. He was still being constrained in terms of his politics by Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. But at the same time says, look, we had nothing to do with this, but I'm also not going to denounce this basically just demonstration against the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. And at the same time, Ralph Bunch and JFK and Mayor Wagner, anybody you want to name is writing into the New York Times, is lambasting and denouncing the tactics of this demonstration. It's a national story, international story ultimately, because this is happening in the United nations and people like James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry are writing the rebuttals in the New York Times and taking folks to task. Lorraine Hansberry goes so far as to like, apologize to Lumumba's widow, Pauline Lumumba, on behalf of African American people in the United States for the comments of Ralph Bunch. And Baldwin is trying, as he is wont to do in these years of explaining to popular audiences what's happening. And so there's this battle in the press and over what this means, what it represents, what it signifies, and to reject these dominant narratives that are trying to criminalize this form of protest.
- [52:21]
B
Yeah, no, that's, that's really helpful. I wanted to kind of, to continue on that thread. You mentioned some of the political differences that are emerging within and among black folks. And I think that there's a way to relate this to another one of the interventions that you're making, which is kind of about the timeline of the black freedom struggle. So I wanted to see if you could talk a little bit more about those choices, both dwelling on class differences and other types of differences, and then also what the, what you're doing by choosing the timelines that you're choosing to frame the book and how that relates to your overall argument about the importance of grassroots organizing that precedes the 64 uprising in Harlem.
- [53:12]
C
So, yeah, yeah. So particularly in chapters five and six, I kind of break from the usual approach in the rest of the book, which is taking a few years at a time and moving chronologically from 54 to 64, basically. But in chapters five and six, I look at the same two year, two, three year period in the aftermath of the UN demonstrations from 1961 and 1963. And Dr. John Henry Clark is writing in Freedom Ways that what the UN demonstrations really signified was the emergence of this, what he called the new Afro American nationalism that was being shaped by anti colonial struggles that was very distinct from the mainstream thrust of the national civil rights movement. And there's a number of, as he is describing this in Freedom Ways, like there's a number of different organizations that are involved. There's a number of different tendencies, but there were some common threads connecting them. So in these two chapters, I'm kind of using that as my reference point to kind of look at, okay, so what is the organizing landscape in Harlem in the early 1960s in the aftermath of the UN demonstrations, but also in the midst of the escalation of the Southern civil rights movement, because in this period we're also talking about the emergence of SNCC in 1960 in the SIT in movements. We're talking about the freedom rides in 1961, of the March on Washington in 1963, the Birmingham Campaign earlier that year. So think, okay, so we're very familiar with what's happening in the south in these years. So what's happening in Harlem? So there's a number of distinctions here that we could talk about. I'll try to keep this relatively brief. But this internationalism that's being demonstrated through solidarity with Castro and the Cuban Revolution and with the DRC is representative of this growing analysis of Jim Crow north as a form of internal colonialism. People are understanding very clearly that conditions in housing, schools, businesses, policing, what have you, are largely being shaped by the control of these institutions by white folks outside of Harlem. So it makes perfect sense how one would come to a analysis of internal colonialism at this time, given that popular consciousness of anti colonialism and internationalism is being stoked at this time through publications like Liberator, through the Crusader, through the popular culture of Harlem, through street corner speakers, public forums, you name it. It's also being characterized by this growing embrace of self defense and self determination. There's not a uniform but a large popular rejection of nonviolence, of integration, and of largely a framework of civil rights as being insufficient for achieving black liberation. So whether we're talking about Cuba or we're talking about ongoing anti colonial struggles, people are seeing that revolution was succeeding oftentimes through armed revolutionary struggle and are drawing ideas from that. And at the same time, on a national level, organizers in Harlem are organizing actively in solidarity with Robert F. Williams, Mabel Williams and the Monroe NAACP chapter in their struggles against Jim Crow in North Carolina and very particularly against Klan violence there. So Mae Mallory is in the thick of this organizing to spread the word by disseminating the Crusader publication in Harlem to generate mass support and solidarity with the Williamses. And Monroe. And she, alongside others, are forming new organizations and coalitions to raise money for Monroe to buy weapons to send to Monroe to send supplies, you know, you name it. And this is really representative of this growing embrace of self defense as a legitimate tactic in struggles for black liberation. And for Mallory at this time, like she's trying, like in her political evolution, is trying to parse out and figure out how self defense factors into revolutionary struggle. And so there's these debates playing out in the Liberator. People like Harold Cruz chiming in on these debates about the meaning of what's happening in Monroe, its potential significance for revolutionary struggle, what is the place of self defense as a tactic within liberation struggles. We also see this insistence on black leadership of independent black organizations. This really comes to a head during the solidarity campaigns with Monroe. And I'm not going to get into the sectarian details here. You can read a little Bit about it in the book. But one of the key splits between the Monroe Defense Committee and the Committee to Aid the Monroe defendants is over black leadership of these organizations. So the Committee to Aid Monroe Defendants is largely run by white socialists, whereas the Monroe Defense Committee is largely being led by black nationalists. And so this is a moment that's signifying this growing insistence and really demand for black leadership and organizations that are working towards black liberation as an expression of self determination, as threads and tendencies within black radicalism. And at the same time, by 1963, we see the formation of independent black political parties with the Freedom now party based in Harlem. And so a growing rejection of the two party system, a disillusionment with a Democratic party, and the insistence on forming political formations that are led by and responsible to and representative of black communities. And so that's happening in a number of different ways. And this evolution is also shaping the approach of national civil rights organizations that are trying to do their work in harmony Harlem. So the Congress of Racial Equality CORE really revives itself on a national level through the Freedom Rides. And that is drawing more local people into the chapter in New York that had kind of been kept out of it because of class politics, restrictive membership policies, white leadership that wasn't responsive to the communities that it was organizing within. And likewise, the northern student movement is entering into the fray around the same time as well in organizing tutorial programs to bring predominantly but not exclusively white college students into inner cities like Harlem or Detroit or Hartford and Philadelphia to essentially tutor black children to supplement the Jim Crow education that we're getting in segregated schools. And so both CORE and NSM are like, they're on their own trajectories here in chapter six that I'm covering. But a big point that I'm making in this chapter is that their evolution, not just in the local chapters, but as national organizations, is really being shaped by the participation of local people in Harlem who are seeing these organizations as potential vehicles that they can drive on the road to liberation, to put it in the words of Jimmy McDonald, but in doing so, like, you know, trying to steer that in a different direction. And so for core, we see like, you know, whereas Jesse Gray and the Lower Harlem Tens Council is focused on building power within black communities who want to stay in their neighborhoods, who want to stay in their homes to gain control over housing, ultimately fighting for community control of housing, fighting for collective ownership of housing is the end goal here. CORE is approaching housing through like a desegregationist mentality. They're focused on open housing campaigns. And that is prioritizing the interests of middle class black folks who can afford the cost of housing in majority white communities. But over the next several years, from 61, 63, their analysis is changing because of their place within Harlem and the participation of local people that are pushing them to reconsider some of those positions in politics. And likewise, as the northern student movement is getting more immersed in Harlem, are moving away from these tutorial programs as kind of like a social service framework. I don't want to reduce it to that, but just for the sake of this argument, and immersing themselves in like, very hyper local grassroots community organizing, building foundations for self determination in neighborhoods, and also really spearheading the emergence of the re. Emergence of rent strikes in the fall of 1963. So these tendencies of black radicalism are shaping the organizing approaches of local organizations in a variety of different way, while also pushing national organizations like CORE and NSM and the NAACP in some ways in directions to be more closely aligned with where the people were at in Harlem. And that has large bearings on the evolution of the movement more generally.
- [65:13]
B
Right, right, right.
- [65:15]
C
Yeah.
- [65:16]
B
So I wanted to. So as we move toward a conclusion, I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the conceptual work. Maybe one question about the conceptual work that goes into a historical monograph and then a related one about the direction of the field going forward. So if you could talk a little bit about was there a particular book or a set of concerns that you were working through as you were conceptualizing the book? And then also, what do you see as useful sort of historiographical questions or questions for scholars to pursue going forward?
- [65:58]
C
So on the first one, I was reminded of this at Asala a couple weeks ago because Professor Akinye Li Umoja referenced in a conversation, it was part of, I think, around a roundtable about black radicalism. And he was referencing a really important point that William Sayles made in his study of the organization of Afro American Unity, which is that for a long time, like movement scholarship, like scholarship on social movements has kind of been characterized by, like, a resource mobilization theory that, you know, social movements are built by people mobilizing the material resources within their communities. And one of the points that Sales is making that Professor Umoja was highlighting was the importance of ideological resources. And so that I read that book when I was doing my PhD and it stuck with me over the years because I think it helps us to make better sense of some of Malcolm X's significance as an organizer. Like, of course, was an incredible organizer. And part of what made him so effective was his ability to mobilize psychological, intellectual, emotional resources as part of this broader process of mental decolonization. Because what Malcolm X understood and what Sales was explaining in this argument was that once the. The mental chains of colonialism had been freed, that it would expedite the process of people engaging in organized struggle to overthrow white supremacy. And so that. That has stuck with me in terms of, you know, trying to approach this work in ways that make sense of how local people are, you know, how the political consciousness of local people is being developed over time, like whether or not they are involved in formal organizations. That has had an influence in this book, of how I was trying to understand, like, the channels by which radical popular culture was fostered and disseminated, whether that was through publications, whether that was through public forums, whether that was through street rallies and street corner speakers or engagement in organizations, trying to understand that process because of how significant it is to social movement development and evolution. So that was a particular book that I think influenced a big part of this. There's countless others that I could name, but I'll. In the interest of tama, I'll leave it alone. But in terms of set of concerns or historiographical questions, I was interested, and I think remain interested in centering these traditions and centering these histories of organizing ahead of these major confrontations with systemic racism, oftentimes in the form of urban uprisings or rebellions. And so there's been a lot of important work done on Harlem. And, you know, people like Michael Flam and Chris Hayes put out some important books that give that kind of blow by blow of the rebellion itself about the causes of systemic racism behind it. And that's part of the reason why I didn't go into the day to day of the rebellion in this book. I don't need to rehash the work that's already been done here. But what I'm saying is I'm trying to join this growing conversation that's pushing us to consider how do we get to these moments, Whether we're talking about July of 1964 in Harlem, or we're talking about the spring of 2020 with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, because I don't think we can understand those expressions in the short term. A singular act of police brutality or state violence or vigilante violence exist within a broader historical context. And so I'm more interested in, like, all right, so what was happening in the weeks, months, years preceding this that inspires this sense in people that they can and should do something about this particular instance and that, you know, it has as much to do, I think, with grassroots organizing as with state repression. And state repression, in my analysis, takes a number of different forms. That's not always the expansion of policing. That is a hallmark of it and something that I cover a lot in this book. But state repression also looks like empty promises of liberalism. It looks like putting forth policies and legislation that are intended to kind of release some of the steam to amongst the masses to say, like, see, look, we're doing something about this problem. Like, just leave it to us and we'll take care of it. Which ultimately, like, very rarely addresses, you know, the root causes of oppression and the material conditions in communities. And so I guess to kind of just put a pin in that. I'm interested in these ongoing conversations of how do we understand the recurrence of urban rebellions and uprisings, what they signify, where they come from, what their possibilities are for pushing us towards liberation in ways that center the experiences, the politics, the ideas, the strategies, the tactics of local people that have been working to address those problems in the years, months, days leading up to it, and how that also connects not just with local struggles, but within national and global context, because I don't think we can understand them as being distinct.
- [73:13]
B
Yeah, that's great. I really like. I think that's one of the big things that your book does, is it takes this moment of insurrection and then makes the claim, as you say, that it doesn't begin. These uprisings and cities across the countries in the 1960s don't begin with those single acts, but the rebellion that follows an incident of police brutality is linked to long periods of oppression and all this kind of thing. I think scholars have said that a lot, but this book really digs into exactly what preceded those sparks of uprising. So I think that's really exciting. I'm also glad that you mentioned the liberalism and the failure of liberalism as a key motivating factor. We didn't get to talk about it much, but that is a key analytical framework for the book. So that was really great. And the last thing I wanted to ask you is about directions for the field going forward, or perhaps it might be more useful to frame it as, what is Peter Blackburn doing next?
- [74:15]
C
Before I answer that question, I want to say I don't think that what transpires in Harlem in 1964 is necessarily a failure of liberalism. I think it's a consequence and a logical outcome of it. I think liberalism was Intended, as I'm reading it in Harlem at this period, to contained, to undermine and to suppress black radicalism. And so what we ultimately see, because a core part of liberalism in this period and today is using state violence to maintain a status quo. And state violence takes a number of different forms, but most significantly, policing that, you know, this was less a failure than a logical conclusion because the contradictions had become abundantly clear in Harlem by the spring of 1964 about what liberalism was and what it remains. As far as what I'm working on now is the next book project I'm going to take on is a history of the Northern student movement. And the reason for that is because Bill Strickland, who's now an ancestor, was my mentor in grad school and has remained a close mentor in the years since, really pushed me to do that. Other folks like Frank Joyce and Dorothy Dewberry in Detroit have been insistent and supportive of that. So I think there's a lot of. I mean, it's going to be a hard book to write because it's a national organization. And I'm not learning my lesson from this first project, which was if I were to do it again, I would have picked a specific organization, use them as a lens into looking at this period. But because I'm a glutton for punishment, I suppose now going to take on this project on a national organization. But I think it offers us a lot of. To think about, like a. It's, you know, an organization that has kind of been overlooked and often misunderstood in terms of, you know, its place within the black freedom movement. But I think it offers us a lot of lessons and important information, particularly about interracial organizing. So kind of building on some recent work by SE Bergen, I mean, organizing our own that's focused on Detroit, I'm kind of moving in this direction of like, okay, let's zoom in on the Northern student movement and, you know, write this history. So that's where I'm going next with that. One day I would like to write a book, a biography of Jesse Gray. That's long down the line, but I think likewise, he's somebody that hasn't gotten the kind of popular, let alone academic recognition that he deserves for his contributions to the movement. But also because I think it helps to present a fuller picture of the evolution of the black freedom movement from the post war era onwards through his involvement with World War II, with the CP, with tenant organizing. I think he's just a really fascinating figure that also offers us a lot of information and lessons about the mechanics of grassroots organizing as somebody who approached that in a really scientific kind of way. So that's where I'm going in the short term and hopefully in the long run.
- [78:18]
B
Well, that's great. I would look for I thought that the figure of Jesse Gray was a really fascinating one that I learned a lot about through the book. Thank you for your corrective on the uprisings, not as a failure of liberalism but as a logical outcome of them and whatever comes next. I'm looking forward to reading it for our listeners. Unleashing Black Power, Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long Hot Summers is published by University of Virginia Press and it's out now and available, of course, wherever fine books are sold. Peter, thank you again for being on this show today and I really enjoyed this conversation.
- [78:53]
C
Mike, thanks so much for inviting me for your questions. Enjoy being in conversation with you.