Dan Snow's History Hit - Black American Struggle: Riot or Revolution?

Episode Date: June 20, 2021

The 1960s and early 1970s saw civil unrest and violence in the United States on a scale not seen since the civil war between black residents and the police but was this simply rioting or a revolution? Dan is joined by Elizabeth Hinton associate professor of history, African American studies, and law at Yale University and Yale Law School. She ​argues in her new book America on Fire that rather than being a series of criminal acts, as it was often portrayed, this violence was more akin to an uprising against an unjust and overreaching state. Elizabeth and Dan discuss the causes and consequences of these uprisings including the militarization of the police and the failure to address the fundamental social injustices which were the root causes of the unrest. This is a fascinating episode that addresses vital issues that remain extremely current.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I've got Professor Elizabeth Hinton on the podcast today. She is a professor of African American Studies and Law at Yale University and she has published one of those books, one of those books that comes along every so often and changes the conversation. Changes the conversation about the past, which obviously therefore has a profound impact on the way we see and define things in the present. I recently published America on Fire, and in it she talks about black violence in the 1960s and early 70s, and the response from police authorities and government. And she goes further than authors I've read before. She points out this was violence on a scale not seen in the USA since the Civil War of the 1860s. She argues very convincingly these were not criminal

emotional outbursts. This was an uprising. This was a series of what you might call rebellions against the unjust, overreaching state. And it is best understood as such and also she points out that the reaction to it the militarization of the police the demonization of legitimate black demands for rights and equality is something that has endured and still shapes the conversation and shapes the official response to this day this is a huge subject it's a great honor to have elizabeth hinton on the podcast talking about it if you want to listen to previous episodes we've done in this kind of area, we've talked to many US and British academics about the struggle for civil rights. We talked to a member of the Black Panthers here in the UK in the 70s. And we talked to people about the history of police violence in the States at some length over the last year and a half. in the States at some length over the last year and a half. If you want to hear all that, best place to do it is historyhit.tv.

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It's in the glorious tradition of British armoured fighting vehicle production. We spend a lot of money on it. We're hoping it works. So see you at Chalk Valley. Please come and say hello if you're there. In the meantime, everybody, please enjoy this podcast with Professor Elizabeth Hinton. this podcast with Professor Elizabeth Hinton. Elizabeth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, Dan.

Your gigantic book starts in the 1960s, but can we just briefly talk about the stuff you address right at the beginning? The context going into the 1960s of penalizing Black communities, particularly in the South, through the law to try and sustain a system of white social and political supremacy? Right. So from the Reconstruction period, from the emancipation of 4 million slaves in the US following the Civil War on, most of the collective violence was perpetuated by white vigilante mobs who were hostile to integration and black mobility as millions of formerly enslaved people and their descendants left to the southern states for job opportunities and to escape the terrorism of lynching in the Jim Crow South for the industrial Midwest and the West, beginning with Wilmington in 1898, Springfield, Illinois in 1908, East St. Louis in 1917, where essentially

white mobs made Black families choose between being shot to death or burned alive. And of course, we just commemorated the 100-year anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. These were acts of collective violence that were meant to relegate the social order. And these white mobs were deeply entangled with law enforcement. And of course, this collective violence began to change in the 1960s amid the civil rights movement. So you talk about this upsurge of domestic violence between 64 and 72 in particular. What's the timing? What's the significance of 1964? What happens? So 1964 was the first major incident of what is called urban civil disorder or rioting. I choose that many of the people who

engaged in these forms of collective action understood these events as rebellions. And in Harlem in 1964, a 15-year-old black high school student was killed by a New York City police officer, and the community erupted for several days, burning buildings, engaging in confrontations with police officers, and looting. And that summer also witnessed rebellions in eight other cities. In Rochester, New York, the National Guard had to be called. And again, you know, this was the first time that Black collective violence emerged in U.S. history against exploitative and discriminatory and repressive institutions. of course, coincides with the flourishing of the civil rights movement and nonviolent direct action protests that had characterized much of the drive to dismantle Jim Crow in the southern states. It's so interesting to call it rebellion. It's so different to think about it in those terms because it's been couched by many white writers, politicians, both at the time and subsequently, as just criminality.

Right, exactly. And so that's one of the really important correctives I'm trying to make in the book and with this research. I mean, from Harlem on, Lyndon Johnson said this violence has nothing to do with civil rights, even though in all of the rebellions, the factors that made people feel as though they had no recourse but to take violent action were rooted in the same grievances of the mainstream civil rights movement. That is protection from white supremacist terrorism and end to police brutality, but also job opportunities, expanded educational programs and robust public school systems and decent housing. I mean, this was also occurring at a time when much of the housing stock in the urban United States was completely

dilapidated. Slum landlords kept homes in horrid conditions that were often overrun with vermin and rats. And these incidents, just like, again, the civil rights movement, were rooted in a call for political and economic inclusion in American society. And in distancing this political violence from civil rights protests and labeling it criminal, then the solution that Johnson and other policymakers embraced could not go beyond greater law enforcement penetration, more police, more surveillance, and later the expansion of the prison system you see as a brit i was reading your book and thinking about the similarities and differences between the experience of the uk and northern ireland as well where although of

course it became heavily militarized there was an attempt to deal with underlying issues as well i think it's such an interesting kind of parallel story. But just also, I'm very interested by a lot of the rioting you mentioned, the rebellious activity was taking place in northern cities. Now talk about why when we're primed to think of the most egregious forms of white supremacy going on in the southern states, why do we see these insurrections taking place in northern cities? Well, so a couple of things. I mean, in part, it's because, you know, white vigilante violence is not relegated to the South. I just mentioned the violence in East St. Louis in 1917 and other cities. I mean,

white supremacist violence is a nationwide problem, even though in some ways we see more incidents of lynching in the South. But the entanglement between white vigilante organizations and law enforcement extended to northern cities. And when we see this kind of coalesce and when police in the post-war period, but especially from the mid-1960s onward in the context of the war on crime, when police begin to assume many of the previous functions of the white mob, it sets a kind of cocktail for a new kind of political violence. And I think the other really important thing that the book shows and that my research shows, and it's clearly laid out in a 25-page timeline of Black Rebellion that's a sort of appendix to

the book, is that Watts in 1965 and Detroit and Newark in 67 and the hundred some cities that erupted after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. The news coverage focused on these incidents in large cities in the Northeast, but rebellion was incredibly widespread. I mean, there's a narrative that the Southern movement was completely nonviolent. And we see in places like Greensboro, North Carolina, and Columbus, Georgia, cities in Mississippi and upper Florida, that residents in the Southern states too are engaging in political violence as a way to secure civil rights and equal rights. And again, that political and economic inclusion in American society. I'm really interested in the politics of it. At what stage

did the political incentives become aligned around actually, rather than dealing with some of the underlying causes of this violence, to see this kind of dark electoral possibilities of militarizing the police, talking about law and order, dominating white suburbs electorally? Where does the political jigsaw of this start to come together? So we see some of this today. There is a tendency that anytime people are protesting for racial justice, the response on the part of authorities to say that this is criminal, that this is violent, and that it needs to be policed. So even beginning in the 1950s, when civil rights demonstrators are protesting to desegregate institutions, especially in the southern states,

many southern Democrat politicians are saying this is criminal, that the nation is descending into chaos. But what's really interesting is that by the mid-1960s, again, in the aftermath of the violence during the summer of 1964, the Johnson administration calls for a war on crime in March 1965, which is a complement to the war on poverty, part of Johnson's Great Society. address some of the root causes of racial discrimination and inequality and violence and the programs of the war on crime, which began an unprecedented investment at the federal level into local police forces. I mean, never before had the federal government involved itself in policing and issues of court systems and prisons directly before this moment. And of course, it's coinciding with the height of progressive social change and the civil rights revolution. And the programs of the war on crime, especially during the Johnson administration, began to expand police forces in communities

that seemed prone to rioting and to militarize those forces with surplus weapons from Vietnam and U.S. interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America. So during this period, we begin to see police departments with armored tanks and bulletproof vests and riot control helmets and tear gas and helicopters, all of which were gifted or heavily discounted. Essentially, the federal government gave these local police departments coupons to purchase these weapons. And so policing really begins to change, especially in the low-income communities of color that are targeted for these new crime control programs by officials and law enforcement authorities at all levels of government.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're talking to Professor Elizabeth Hinton about Black violence. More after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that

inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. your book is so challenging in terms of recasting these as rebellions and and then it starts you thinking about what you know the police is a kind of military force and a complex counterinsurgency basically going over decades and in many ways lasting today because it made me think about part of counterinsurgency is often the internment of vast numbers of people, as you see from going back

to the British strategy in the Boer War in South Africa 120 years ago. And famously, the USA today has one of the world's largest prison populations. Is this something that you see is connected with the militarized nature of this conflict? Right. The fact that we are a mass incarceration society and that we disproportionately warehouse low-income, undereducated, and Black and brown people is our version of that internment. And we begin to see, again, you know, the insurgent threat was the civil rights movement, was Black rebellion in U.S. cities, and also, of course, in the mid to late 1960s and beyond. And this is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon, late 1960s and beyond. And this is, of course, a worldwide phenomenon, but growing student movements, revolutionary movements that ultimately were responded to with the expansion of American

law enforcement and this decision to expand police forces at the direct consequence to social welfare programs. I mean, the war on poverty never resulted in a job creation program for low-income Americans, but the war on crime resulted in a job creation program for police. These rising law enforcement programs and policing became the most implemented social program in low-income communities in the United States during this period and was, again, in response to the insurgent civil rights and radical militant demands coming out of communities of color, but also student groups and other radical organizations in the U.S. and the world. You know, I interview hundreds of historians on this podcast, and it's an interesting discussion. Some say, you know, history is something that we all too often drag into our contemporary political arguments, and sometimes history is best studied forensically in its own context. It's impossible to do that in this case. This is an of inequality in the U.S. and racism, history is vital. In fact,

one of my mentors, Manny Marable, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Malcolm X called Malcolm X, Life and Reinvention, he said for people who are concerned with the history of racism in the U.S., that history is a weapon in which we fight. And I think in order to understand how we got here, in order to push back against a lot of the pathological narratives and understandings about the vast inequality that exists in the U.S. today, we have to understand the ways in which socioeconomic development deeply, deeply is rooted in racial hierarchy and how that has played out historically. So I see history as an important tool and an important guide to think about how we might realize a more equitable future. And this book and my first book from

The War on Poverty or The War on Crime, The Making of mass incarceration in America, you know, really tries to trace the sets of decisions and the missed opportunities that led America to be the great incarcerator in the world. And if we can identify the decisions that brought us to this point, then I think it's also possible to identify the sets of decisions that can undo these harms and create a better society for all of us. Well, as you mentioned, creating a carceral state and militarized police forces at monumental expense, and yet the refusal to spend less money, presumably on programs that actually might solve the problem. Because you mentioned the 1968 Colonel Commission I'd never heard of, but that feels like a very important piece of history now.

Right. And actually, when you mentioned the kind of attempt to deal with some of the underlying problems in the context of the violence in Northern Ireland, I immediately thought of the Kerner Commission, because it's not as if alternatives weren't consistently presented to policymakers. And the Kerner Commission, or the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders was called by President Johnson in the middle of the rebellion in Detroit in 67. And Johnson charged the commission, stacked mostly with liberal reformers, to identify the causes and recommend solutions to respond to unrest, to prevent future rebellions. Because it seemed from the vantage of 1967 that this violence was getting worse and that it would surely continue. And the Kerner Commission said,

if the federal government is really serious about addressing rebellion and preventing it in the future, then one, it needs to reckon with white racism. I think one of the most famous lines from the Kerner Commission report, which was released in early 1968, is that the United States was moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal, and really brought attention to white racism and the role of racism in creating the conditions that bred rebellion or unrest in the first place. And the Kriner Commission said, OK, if we want to stop rebellion, we have to go far beyond the war on poverty because the war on poverty did not, despite its grand rhetorical name, did not represent a major structural transformation. The Kriner Commission said we need to support a massive investment or like a Marshall Plan in low income urban areas. We need the private and public sectors to mobilize for job creation programs. We've got to completely overhaul urban public schools. Remedial education is not going to be enough to really change outcomes for poor people of color. We have to completely transform housing. I mean,

essentially addressing all of the major grievances of both the civil rights movement, again, and the urban unrest in thousands of American cities throughout the 60s and early 70s. And the Johnson administration, you know, Johnson himself never commented on the report. These recommendations were seen as too radical, and the federal government essentially ignored them. Despite the fact that the Kerner Commission's report itself was sold as a mass market paperback. Millions of Americans wanted to know and understand what was going on in the nation's cities. And instead of pursuing this path of expanding social welfare programs and providing for people's basic needs, the federal government instead supported the continued escalation of the programs of the war on crime, the expansion and militarization of police,

and then eventually, as we mentioned, you know, the vast expansion of the prison system and the increased reliance on prisons and police as a way to manage the material consequences of poverty and racial inequality as they appeared through crime and violence or social harm. When I give up this podcast, I'm going to start a radical political campaign that all public policy should be made by committees of experts like the Kerner Commission. And we've got so many examples here in the UK, who if they were implemented, we would be in a much better place than we are now. Exactly. I mean, that's kind of the tragedy of these stories and of the Kerner Commission stories. And it's one too, that, you know,

of these stories and of the Kerner Commission stories. And it's one, too, that, you know, in many cities following rebellion, state or local, what were then called human relations commissions would act in a similar way or come to similar conclusions as the Kerner commissions. They would study the larger socioeconomic causes of the violence, recommend structural solutions. And yet, again, and this goes back to why terminology is so important and the view of this form of political violence as criminal, what ends up getting implemented or embraced are police reforms, expansion of law enforcement. And we see this playing out again and again. And when writing the book, you just kept on wondering what would the U.S. look like today had that massive investment the Kerner Commission called for in 68 been realized? George Floyd and countless others would still very likely be with us. Last question. I've done several of these podcasts with experts on the history of policing in the US and it's an intractable problem because we're told again and again that policing is a

very federal, it's actually county and state, city level, it's impossible to intervene. And yet your book, decisions made at the very top seem to flow down just fine, trickle down just fine to different autonomous police forces all over the country. So if you can militarize a police force and do all the things that you've just described in this podcast, why can we not reverse that process? Exactly. And federal policymakers use this excuse too, crime control is a local matter, which of course obscures this history, obscures the ways that the federal government incentivizes and through grant programs forces state and local governments to make the crime control strategies that are developed at the federal level, at the national level, into local priorities. That is part of the fuel that has, or the climate that has made

mass incarceration in the U.S. possible. And I do think that in order to begin to undo the harms of these policies, the embrace of policing and surveillance and incarceration over social welfare programs for at least the last 50 years in the post-civil rights period. The decision to do that has just left us in this place where in many locales, inequality has been exacerbated. And it's up to the federal government to then provide that leadership in the other direction. And the history of the war on crime and later the war on drugs proves

that the federal government can act swiftly to completely reverse course or bring about an entire regime change when it comes to social policy, especially in low-income communities of color. Well, I've enjoyed this so much. Thank you very much. It's been a huge honor having you on the podcast. The book is called? America on Fire, The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about it. Thank you for having me. The honor is all mine, Dan. I feel we have the history on our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the end of this podcast. Most of you are probably asleep, so I'm talking to your snoring forms, but anyone who's awake, it would be great if you could do me a quick favour, head over to wherever you get your podcasts and rate it five stars, and then leave a nice glowing review. It makes a huge difference for some reason to how these podcasts do. Madness, I know, but them's the rules. Then we go further up the charts, more people listen to us and everything will be awesome. So thank you so much. Now sleep well.