Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit

Say Burgin

Published by New York University Press 2024

Organizing Your Own

The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit

Say Burgin

In the series Black Power

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479814176.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

The fascinating history of white solidarity with the Black Power movement

In the mid-1960s, as the politics of Black self-determination gained steam, Black activists had a new message for white activists: Go into your own communities and organize white people against racism. While much of the media at the time and many historians since have regarded this directive as a “white purge” from the Black freedom movement, Say Burgin argues that it heralded a new strategy, racially parallel organizing, which people experimented with all over the country. Organizing Your Own shows that the Black freedom movement never experienced a “white purge,” and it offers a new way of understanding Black Power’s relationship to white America.

By focusing on Detroit from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, this volume illuminates a wide cross-section of white activists who took direction from Black-led groups like the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Organizing Your Own draws on numerous oral histories and heretofore unseen archives to show that these white activists mobilized support for Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions. It was a trial-and-error effort that pushed white activists to grapple with tough questions – which white people should they organize and how, which Black-led groups should they take direction from, and when did taking Black direction become mere sycophancy. The story of Detroit’s white fight for Black Power thus not only reveals a broader, richer movement, but it carries great insight into questions that remain relevant.

Author / Editor information

Burgin Say :

Say Burgin is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Dickinson College.

Reviews

Few have explored how white allies worked in solidarity with Black Power activists to develop campaigns parallel to their Black comrades’ organizing. No book has gathered their stories together and developed a coherent analysis of their diverse politics and activism like Organizing Your Own. As white allies wonder how they can best work in solidarity with struggles for Black Freedom today, the larger questions that Say Burgin asks remain urgent. How, she wonders, might we learn from these activists’ successes and challenges?

For anyone interested in Northern liberalism and the Black freedom struggle, this is a must-read. Burgin's study of white anti-racist organizing in Detroit shows how groups of white Detroiters took up the Black Power imperative and challenged the structures of job discrimination, media bias, political power, and policing in the city. In the process, they denaturalized the racial prerogatives of Northern liberalism, showing it as set of personal and policy choices.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: Rethinking Black Power’s Relationship to White People Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. “To begin to work in their own communities”: Creating the Strategy of Racially Parallel Organizing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	29
2. “Disorient whites from their assumptions about race”: People Against Racism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
3. “New White Consciousness”: The Detroit Industrial Mission Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
4. “We were trained to be like body cameras”: The Ad-Hoc Action Group Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
5. “It’s the struggle of little people everywhere”: The Motor City Labor League Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	179
Conclusion: The Racially Parallel Organizing Mandate and Black Power’s Legacy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	217
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Appendix: Groups Aiming to Organize White People Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Illustrations
- Other: 10 b/w images
Keywords: Black Power; Detroit; Northern Student Movements; City-Wide Citizens Action Committee; League of Revolutionary Black Workers; African American history; White Allies; segregation; Black freedom; 1960s; People Against Racism; policing; Detroit Industrial Mission; employment discrimination

eBook

Published: April 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781479814176