The Spokesperson Model of Narrating Black History Emphasizes Individual Rather Than Collective Struggle and Sacrifice
By Lacino Hamilton
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the individual most identified with the civil rights movement has suggested many times during his lifetime that he would rather be remembered as a drum major for justice than an important leader. However, the way he has been branded and marketed the past 50 years overshadows the important role of the thousands of activists, organizers, and ordinary citizens who also dedicated their lives to turning America’s democratic rhetoric into reality. Many of them continue to this day to serve as mentors and inspirations to a new generation of social justice warriors.
For every big event and larger than life personality memorialized from the civil rights era there were thousands of events and people that preceded and followed them, despite highlighting only a handful of events of people. Most notably the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott which is universally recognized as the beginning of the civil rights movement. Most people think that when Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus that there was a spontaneous combustion of protest, but that is not how it happened.
After the 1954 supreme Court decision Brown vs Board of Education, the landmark case striking down so called separate but equal racial discrimination in public schools, Montgomery activist Jo Ann Robinson, a member of the Women’s Political Council, penned a letter to the mayor of Montgomery threatening a bus boycott of segregated public transportation did not end. A short time later a young black woman named Claudette Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. Jo Ann Robinson became aware of the arrest but she and other organizers felt Claudette was an unsuitable spokesperson to rally around because she was an unwed pregnant 15-year-old. The assumption was city officials would turn the protest into a referendum on Claudette’s personal life instead of racial discrimination. “Moral purity” seemed to be a necessary precondition for the launching of anti-racist political campaigns.
A few months later Mary Louise Smith was arrested in Montgomery for the same thing, refusing to give her bus seat to a white passenger. Once again the assumption was that she would not be a suitable spokesperson for a mass boycott because one of her parents was an alcoholic. The concerned wasn’t simply that city officials would drag Mary and her family through the mud, but there were also concerns that the black community would not come out and support. Jo Ann Robinson and other organizers wanted to find someone who was beyond reproach, who could withstand the inevitable backlash and whose position in the community could mobilize the middle class as well as poor blacks who made up the majority of bus riders. Thus, Rosa Parks became a spokesperson and civil rights icon after her now infamous refusal to move to the back of the bus.
Rosa Parks was seen as the ideal person to rally around. She was from the working class but was an established figure in Black Montgomery middle-class. She was the leader in the local NAACP. she was a respected pillar in the black community. And there was nothing in her personal life that could be used to shift attention away from the real issue, racial segregation. After Rosa Parks was released from jail she was approached by Jo Ann Robinson and other local organizers asking her to be the protest spokesperson they had been looking for. Jo Ann Robinson called an emergency meeting of the Women’s Political Council, created flyers that had already been thought through, dispersed them throughout the black community that night, and the rest is, as it is said, history. Inaccurate history, but history none the less.
Rather than seeing Rosa Parks as the founder of the Montgomery bus boycott it is more accurate to see her as one of the many people that challenged segregation laws. More accurate to see her as an example of the spokesperson model. That is, an approach to activism where so-called exemplary people and situations are isolated and rallied around. For every Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , Rosa Parks, and any of the other handful of men and women from the civil Rights era who receive a disproportionate amount of credit for challenging state sponsored racial violence, there were thousands of people before and after then that challenged racial violence. Posing a handful of people and events in terms of “exemplary,” and “extraordinary” overshadows the fact that thousands of people, not just spokespersons are the decisive factor in social change.
the spokesperson model gives the impression that only people that create trending hashtags or lead large protest are dedicating their lives to turning America’s democratic rhetoric into reality, and that just isn’t true since the nation’s inception black Americans everywhere, men and women, of every socioeconomic class, from the illiterate to the scholar, from the radical political activist to the nonviolent civil rights activists, from those that assert only raw political power can definitively protect black lives to those that assert reforms is the solution, have been among the most vocal and determined proponents of social justice. This was true before the civil rights era, during the civil rights era, and it is true today. Black History is not about the inaccurate and misunderstood history of the handful of people and events, or just about the civil rights movement, but about tens of thousands of people who played crucial roles in the brutal journey from 16th century auction blocks to what law professor Michelle Alexander has referred to today as the new Jim Crow.
The spokesperson model of framing black history perpetuates a myth and a logic of mass passivity and docility. Historians and other narrators may write and speak from this perspective for strategic reasons– there is just so much to write and speak out about –but there is a problem when strategies misinform and paint the picture that the average person has no role to play in shaping reality or the reality to come. There is a problem with strategies paints the picture that spokespersons and not persons make history. And there is a problem when events and people wrote about and talked about the most are inaccurate. What does that say about events and people that receive far less attention, like Claudette Colvin and Mary Louise Smith? Over six decades of writing and talking about the civil rights movement, it remains one of the most misunderstood areas of American history. Absent a better understanding it is doubtful that 21st century America, whose racial landscape is socially and politically charged, will be able to cope with the challenges of achieving social justice for all people.
Lacino Hamilton, 247310; Marquette Branch Prison; 1960 US Hwy 41 South; Marquette, MI 49855
