Class Reading

Aldon Morris’s The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement is a history of the movement that focuses on its organization, maintaining that the complex organization that developed was the key to the successful momentum of the movement. The book begins well before the accepted beginning of the movement, when the NAACP was the force for slow change but he church was the institutional center of the black community. With the early bus boycotts, most notably in Montgomery, new protest organizations arose, as did the need for an organization of organizations, which became the SCLC. Christianity was further refocused as a social movement.

Morris then traces the growth of the non-violence movement with CORE and so-called halfway houses such as the Highlander Folk School. The sit-in movement began to take shape and a new organization of organizations took shape, SNCC. This form of protest was gradually molded into mass movements culminating with Birmingham.

Morris argues that the movement was successful because of the pre-existing social structure. Certainly, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a central figure, but not the key to understanding the movement. His thesis holds up to scrutiny though it might be generally accepted by now. The writing is a bit stiff and scholarly but The Origin of the Civil Rights Movement is a book worth reading to those who want a deeper look into the movement.