Civil Rights Music

by Reiland Rabaka

  To put it plainly, white supremacist watchdogs eagerly surveilled and policed the music emerging out of black America during the Civil Rights Movement. As a result, radio station owners and managers considered the tragic (and awfully ironic) reality that inhospitable ears were among the thousands and thousands of radio listeners, and that even the anti-black racists and hardcore segregationists understood that black popular music, in this instance gospel music, was more than merely music and that it indeed does have extra-musical implications. Needless to say, the anti-black racists and hardcore segregationists stayed on high-alert and were primed and ever-ready to react and attack at even the slightest hint of civil rights sympathy or criticism of racial segregation, not to mention the broader national policies, programs, and practices of American apartheid. As a matter of fact, radio transmitters were sabotaged, radio lines were cut or otherwise vandalized, and blazing crosses were burned to humiliate and intimidate black-oriented radio stations perceived to be supportive of, or in any way aligned with the Civil Rights Movement. Therefore, right along with White Citizens’ Councils, the Ku Klux Klan, and other organizations of such disagreeable ilk, anxious advertisers and high-strung bureaucrats had to be appeased and assured in light of the political economy of the composition, production, distribution, and consumption of black popular music. In short, civil rights sympathy or unequivocal and unapologetic civil rights militancy was not simply bad for the artists health and well-being, but also bad for business, big or small, white or black, Northern, Southern, Midwestern, or Western.

  It seems more likely that non-professional and, therefore, non-commercial gospel singers, ensconced in their local or regional racially segregated enclaves, were able to take more artistic liberties and poetic license than more famous professional and high-profile gospel artists were in either composing or singing others’ civil rights-themed gospel (and freedom) songs. Also, it could almost go without saying that these mostly self-pressed and self-distributed gospel records were not subject to the same sort of severe censorship as those put out on the higher-stakes and higher-profile professional and commercial gospel scene. Logically, without the restrictions enforced on elite gospel artists with wider exposure, it seems to make perfect sense that it would have been these local, amateur and, therefore, incredibly obscure gospel singers with no major record label affiliation who recorded more or less explicit “protest” or “message” civil rights-themed gospel songs.

  We should be clear here, so that there is no misunderstanding surrounding the point that I am making: I am not in any way arguing that little-known local gospel singers were somehow more militant when compared with gospel’s professional and commercial glitterati. On the contrary, considering that the personal, cultural, and artistic barriers between the major gospel artists and grassroots gospel communities have always intensely overlapped, and considering the incessant disinclination on the part of record labels, radio stations, and sponsors to touch the politically and economically “toxic” race issue, it can be safely assumed that more overt civil rights-themed gospel songs would have been recorded if elite gospel artists had have been provided with the relative autonomy of local or regional self-production, self-pressing, and self-distribution. Concentrating exclusively, if not often obsessively, on explicit or overt protest (conceived of in the most conventional sense), it cannot be overemphasized at this point, simply does not enable objective interpreters of “gospel protest” to critically comprehend how golden age gospel music, in fact, subtly served as a mouthpiece for the core views and values of the Civil Rights Movement. Along with gospel, and in some senses sonically representing the secularization of the spirituals and gospel’s characteristic call-and-response, cry, scream, and shout sound, classic rhythm & blues also subtly served as a mouthpiece for the core views and values of the Civil Rights Movement. Consequently, let us now look at the new rhythms and the new blues black folk invented between 1945 and 1965 to encapsulate the ideals and ethos of the Civil Rights Movement.

  Notes

  1. For further discussion of black sacred song and, more broadly speaking, the African American sacred song tradition, and for the most noteworthy works which influenced my interpretation here, see Abbington (2001a, 2001b, 2009, 2014), Baszak (2003), T. Brooks (1984), Costen (2004), Cruz (1999), Darden (2004, 2014), Dargan (2006), David (2007), Epstein (2003), T. F. Jones (1973), Keck and Martin (1988), Lovell (1972), R. Newman (1998), Peters (1993), Reagon (2001), Rublowsky (1971), Schenbeck (2012), T. Smith (2004), Spencer (1988, 1989, 1990, 1994), Stone (2010), W. T. Walker (1979), and A. Young (1997).

  2. For further discussion of the heavenly salvation and earthly liberation leitmotif in “Golden Age” gospel music, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see T. L. F. Brown (2003), Burnim (1980, 1985a, 1985b, 1988), Castellini (2013), Darden (2004, 2014), Edwards (2009), Frederick (2009), Gallien (2011), Goff (2002), Harvey (1986), Hinson (2000), Maultsby (1981), McGregory (2010), Reagon (2000), Ricks (1977), J. Ryan (2008), Salvatore (2006), W. T. Walker (1979), and D. Webster (2011).

  3. For further discussion of freedom songs, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Baumann (2011), Bimmler (2008), Carawan and Carawan (1963, 1968, 2007), Castellini (2013), Dunaway (2008), Dunson (1965), Frederick (2009), Hampton and Fayer (2011), Kot (2014), Lincoln and Mamiya (1990), Lovell (1972), McCanless (1997), McGregory (2010), Payne (2011), Raines (1977), Reagon (1975, 1993), Sanger (1995), Seeger and Reiser (1989), W. T. Walker (1979), Watters (1971), Weber (2010), and J. E. Williams (2002).

  4. For further discussion of Stokely Carmichael’s early activism in the Civil Rights Movement, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Branch (2006), Carmichael (2003), Hullet and Carmichael (1966), Hunter (2006), and Joseph (2006b, 2014).

  5. My interpretation of Sam Block’s “Freedom Is A Constant Dying” has been indelibly influenced by Carawan and Carawan (1963, 1968, 2007), Lincoln and Mamiya (1990), Reagon (1975, 1993), Sanger (1995), and Seeger and Reiser (1989).

  6. For further discussion of African American gospel music, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Anderson and North (1979), Boyer (1979, 1985, 1995, 2000, 2001), Broughton (1985, 1996), Burnim (1980a, 1980b, 1985a, 1985b, 1988), Costen (2004), Darden (2004, 2014), Dixon and Rye (1997), De Lerma (1973), Feintuch (1980), Frederick (2009), Gilmour (2005), Goff (2002), M. W. Harris (1992), Harvey (1986), Heilbut (1982, 1997), Hillsman (1983, 1990), Hinson (2000), J.A. Jackson (2004), Kemp (2011), Lornell (1995), Marovich (2015), Mason (2004), Maultsby (1981), McGregory (2010), Pollard (2008), Reagon (1992, 2001), T. L. Reed (2003), Ricks (1977), Seroff (1985), Spencer (1990), S. Turner (2010), W. T. Walker (1979), Williams-Jones (1975), A. Young (1997), and Zolten (2003).

  7. For discussions of African American’s experience and endurance of American apartheid, racial segregation, racial violence (including the anti-black racist ritual of lynching), and outright anti-black racist terrorism from the turn of the twentieth century through to the Civil Rights Movement, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see first and foremost W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction (1935), as well as Ackerman (2014), Apel (2004), Apel and Smith (2007), B. E. Baker (2008), Berrey (2015), Blackmon (2008), Brown-Nagin (2011), Brundage (1993, 1997), Carle (2013), Carson (1981), Francis (2014), Garrow (1989), Harper (2010), Jeffries (2009), L. E. Hill (2004), G. Lewis (2006), Markovitz (2004), C. C. Miller (2012), Nevels, (2007), Payne (2011), Romano (2014), Shapiro (1988), Umoja (2013), Waldrep (2006, 2009), Williamson (1984, 1986), Wolcott (2012), and Wood (2009).

  8. For further discussion of African American migration during the early-to-mid twentieth century that significantly impacted the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement and its sacred and secular soundtracks, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Adero (1993), Arnesen (2002), Athearn (1978), D. L. Baldwin (2007), Berlin (2010), T. D. Black (
2003), Blocker (2008), Dodson and Diouf (2004), Fligstein (1982), Garb (2014), Gottlieb (1987), J. N. Gregory (2005), Groh (1972), Grossman (1991), Hahn (2003), A. Harrison (1991), Henri (1975), Johnson and Campbell (1981), Lehman (1991), Marks (1989), Painter (1976), Pleck (1979), Pruitt (2013), C. R. Reed (2014), Reich (2014), Sernett (1997), Tolnay and Beck (1992), Trotter (1991), Wilkerson (2010), and Woodson (1969).

  9. For further discussion of the second migration of African Americans between 1940 and 1970 that significantly impacted the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement and its sacred and secular soundtracks, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see L. Adams (2010), Askin (1970), Berlin (2010), T.D. Black (2008), Boehm (2009), Dodson and Diouf (2004), DuBose-Simons (2013), Flamming (2005), Fligstein (1982), Gill (1975), J. N. Gregory (2005), L. L. Harris (2012), A. Harrison (1991), Holley (2000), Lemke-Santangelo (1996), and Stack (1996).

  10. For further discussion of African retentions in African American religious thought and practices, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see L. E. Barrett (1974), Bascom (1980), Bastide (1971, 1978), Gomez (1998), J. E. Holloway (1991), S. A. Johnson (2015), J. M. Murphy (1994), Pitts (1993), Sernett, (1999), G. E. Simpson (1978), Trost (2007), and C. S. Wilder (2001).

  11. For further discussion of Du Bois’s distinct history of religion and sociology of religion, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Blum (2007), Blum and Young (2009), Dorrien (2015), Du Bois (1980, 2000), C. Evans (2007), Forney (2002), Hufford (1997), B. L. Johnson (2008), T. L. Johnson (2012), Kahn (2009), Levinson (2006), Savage (2000), Sinitiere (2012), S. J. Shaw (2013), C. L. Stewart (2008, 2010), Wilmore (1998), R. A. Wortham (2005a, 2005b, 2009), and Zuckerman (2002, 2009).

  12. For further discussion of the politics of the African American church, especially during the Civil Rights Movement, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see L. V. Baldwin (2010), Billingsley (1999), Dillard (2007), Findlay (1993), Friedland (1998), Glaude (2000), F. C. Harris (1999), Higginbotham (1993), Houck and Dixon (2006, 2014), London (2009), Manis (1999), McDaniel (2008), Murray (2004), M. Newman (2004a), O’Foran (2006), Owens (2007), Paris (1991), Savage (2012), R. D. Smith (2003, 2004, 2013), Smith and Harris (2005), C. Taylor (2002), White and Manis (2000), J. E. Williams (2003), and Wilmore (1998).

  13. For further discussion of the Black Women’s Club Movement, its origins and evolution, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my analysis here, see Bracks and Smith (2014), L. Brown (2008), Cash (1986, 2001), E. L. Davis (1996), Dickson (1982), Dublin, Arias, and Carreras (2003), Giddings (1984), Gilkes (2000), Guy-Sheftall (1990), Hendricks (1998), Higginbotham (1993), Hine (1997), Jenkins (1984), J. M. Johnson (2004), Logan (1995, 1999), Maffly-Kipp and Lofton (2010), McCluskey (2014), Royster (2000), S. J. Shaw (1991), S. L. Smith (1986), Terborg-Penn (1998), Waters and Conway (2007), and Wesley (1984).

  14. Nellie McKay, Gary Lemons, and Hazel Carby each bemoan the fact that there is a strong tendency in Du Bois studies to read him primarily as a “race man” and to discursively downplay his “feminist” and/or “womanist” discourse. In her essay, “The Souls of Black Women Folk in the Writings of W. E. B. Du Bois,” McKay (1990) claims that Du Bois was one of very few black men who wrote “feminist autobiography”: “More than any other black man in our history, his three autobiographies [Darkwater, Dusk of Dawn, and The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois] demonstrate that black women have been central to the development of his intellectual thought” (229, 231). McKay, who is a literary theorist and critic, argues that one of the reasons that so many Du Bois scholars read him almost exclusively as a “race man” is because they often overlook his “more creative, less sociological works, where most of his thoughts on women and his own fundamental spirituality are expressed” (230). “Few people, even those who have spent years reading and studying Du Bois,” quips McKay, “know that he wrote five novels and published a volume of poetry” (231). In “‘When and Where [We] Enter’: In Search of a Feminist Forefather—Reclaiming the Womanist Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois,” Lemons (2001) laments: Du Bois’s “womanist activism remains to be fully claimed by contemporary black men, as he continues to be viewed primarily as a ‘race man’” (72). What perplexes Lemons is the fact that the critics who elide and erase Du Bois’s women’s decolonization and women’s liberation work do not simply do Du Bois a disservice, but rob contemporary men, and men of African descent in particular, of an Africana male anti-sexist role model. According to Lemons, “not only” was Du Bois’s “conception of anti-racist resistance feminist-inspired, his worldview was profoundly influenced by black women” (73). Finally, in the first chapter of her book, Race Men, “The Souls of Black Men,” Hazel Carby (1998) offers contemporary academics and political activists a deconstruction of Du Bois as “race man” that acknowledges that he “advocated equality for women and consistently supported feminist causes” (12). Carby, who asserts that it is not her intention to claim that Du Bois was “a sexist male individual,” is not, however, as concerned with Du Bois’s “male-feminist” thought—although she certainly gives it a highly critical treatment—as with many black male intellectuals’ erasure and omission of his black feminist thought from their discourse on Du Bois and their obsessive concerns with “the reproduction of Race Men” (12, 25). She states: “If, as intellectuals and as activists, we are committed, like Du Bois, to struggles for liberation and democratic egalitarianism, then surely it is not contradictory also to struggle to be critically aware of the ways in which ideologies of gender have undermined our egalitarian visions in the past and continue to do so in the present” (12, my emphasis). Carby’s caveat, like the cautions of McKay and Lemons, essentially asks that we be cognizant of not only the “ideologies of gender” in the present, but also the “ideologies of gender” of the past, and how this specific species of ideology may have and/or, more than likely, indeed did influence the ways our intellectual ancestors theorized about this or that issue. In other words, we must make ourselves and others critically conscious of sexist sentiment in both classical and contemporary Africana decolonization and liberation theory and praxis. My work here, then, registers as an effort to simultaneously deepen and develop the anti-sexist aspects of Africana critical theory, and an attempt to move beyond one-dimensional interpretations of Du Bois which downplay the multidimensionality of his thought and texts. It is important here to note that because of the richness and wide range and reach of Du Bois’s thought, within Du Bois studies there are various research areas and agendas—for example, history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, politics, economics, aesthetics, literature, religion, education, and so forth. Depending on one’s intellectual orientation and academic training and discipline, his thought and texts may serve a multiplicity of purposes and may be approached from a wide array of discursive directions. Needless to say, my interpretations of Du Bois have been deeply influenced by my training in and trek through African, African American, and Caribbean studies (i.e., Africana studies), and specifically my specialization in African, African American, and Caribbean history, philosophy, political economy, and critical social theory. For further discussion of Du Bois’s contributions to black feminism, womanism, women’s rights, women’s suffrage, women’s decolonization, and women’s liberation, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Alston (2011), B. Aptheker (1975), Balfour (2005, 2011), Browne (2000), Dickerson (2008), Diggs (1974), Gilkes (1996), Gillman and Weinbaum (2007), Griffin (2000), Hancock (2005), Hattery and Smith (2005), J. A. James (1996, 1997), Lemons (2001, 2009), Lucal (1996), McKay (1985, 1990), Pauley (2000), Rabaka (2007, 2008, 2010a, 2010c), Staton (2001), Weinbaum (2001, 2013), and Yellin (1973).

  15. For further discussion of the, however subtle, politics of gospel music, especially during the Civil Rights Movement era, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see Burnim (1980a, 19
85a, 1985b, 2006, 2015), Darden (2004, 2014), Frederick (2009), Goff (2002), Heilbut (1997), J. A. Jackson (2004), Kot (2014), Marovich (2015), McGregory (2010), Reagon (1975, 1992, 2000, 2001), Seroff (1985), Spencer (1990), van Rijn (1997, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012), W. T. Walker (1979), and Williams-Jones (1975).

  16. In The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (1954), noted African American historian Rayford Logan (1954) famously referred to the decade closing the nineteenth century as the “nadir” of African American history, and his work, along with the work of several other scholars, has brought to light more than 3,000 documented lynchings and other forms of anti-black racist terrorism during this unfortunate era. For further discussion, and for the most noteworthy works that informed my interpretation here, see J. Allen (2005), Apel (2004), Apel and Smith (2007), Brundage (1993, 1997), Carrigan (2004, 2008), Carrigan and Webb (2013), Carr (2006), Chadbourn (1933), Finkelmen (1992), Goldsby (2006), Gonzales-Day (2006), T. Harris (1984), Ifill (2007), Leonard (2002), Markovitz (2004), Nevels (2007), Pfeifer (2004), Pickens (1921), Raper (1969), Waldrep (2006), and Zangrando (1980).

  Chapter 4