Raymond Gavins: It is my pleasure to welcome to the Institute this morning Robin D.G. Kelley whom I have known since his days as a postdoctoral fellow at UNC at Chapel Hill. He has also been involved in the conception and definition of this project as a member of the advisory committee or the board, or both of the Center for Documentary Studies. I have therefore known him and his wife and beautiful little girl for some time. 

Raymond Gavins: Robin was educated in California receiving his BA from long Beach California State University at Long Beach and his MA and PhD from UCLA after teaching in other universities including Southeastern and Emory. He moved to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he's associate professor of history and Afro-American Studies. 

Raymond Gavins: His list of grants, fellowships and awards is extensive and impressive, as well as his public and professional service. He is an active scholar doing a great deal of research and writing. 

Raymond Gavins: His book, Hammer and Hoe which some of you have in your possession at this moment was the winner of the first Elliot Rudwick prize of the Organization of American Historians. And we had a party at the OAH to celebrate a happy occasion. 

Raymond Gavins: He has a number of works in progress, and I'm sure he's going to some aspects of those works in his his presentation today. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Well, thanks, Ray, kind of a real kind introduction, you know? Today I'm just going to hopefully develop some kind of dialogue and give this really wild presentation. It's probably gonna be really bizarre, and, you know, that's just don't throw anything at me. That's, that's all I'm asking. And it's, it's basically kind of works in progress to rethinking African American politics. As most of you know, about this book on the Alabama Communist Party. In the process, as I began writing the final stages I began to, I mean, I like the book, but, but I, I sort of began become real subcritical of what I was trying to do. What I, what I set out to do was try to understand how working people, um engage in political struggle and try to capture working people, Black people's political consciousness. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And the Communist Party is one of those places where you find it. But as I began to do more work and began to read work by James Scott and E.P. Thompsons, the Making of the English Working Class and, and studies that sort of outside of American history, I began to sort of realize that so much of Black working class politics is outside of organizations. There's no question about that. Very few folks join organizations, I mean, in their reasons why. So what I wanna do is to suggest ways that we might develop a research agenda that could look at sort of everyday forms of opposition, resistance, political struggles that fall outside of the purview of the historians that fall outside of the documents themselves, that they kind of sit in archives. Anyway on the eve of, of the Second World War novelist, Richard Wright wrote which I think is some profound words, he said, quote, each day, when you see us Black folk upon the dusty land of the farms, or upon the hard pavement of the city streets, you usually take us for granted. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And you think you know us, but for our, but our history is far stranger than you suspect. We are not what we've seen. The passage constitutes one of the most critical observations about the nature of Black working class politics in the Jim Crow South. 'cause right here is referring to the quotidian political struggles of everyday life. He's pointing to the distinction between the various masks Black folk wear in their many efforts to negotiate relationships or contested power in public spaces, as well as to the private world, hidden behind the public gaze here in the homes, the social institutions, thoughts, language, and attire lie, the secret of the politics of the Black poor and the working class. Okay more significantly Richard Wright is referring to the folk and I put that in quotes, making spatial references to people who are best described as the urban or rural of proletariat. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: So, the line upon the dusty line of the farms, or upon the hard pavement of the city streets, with very few exceptions, historians have ignored the political struggles and thoughts of Black southern working people as a class. Rather than try to penetrate the world that left few written records, scholars have tended to collapse Black working class politics into the broader framework of the Black community. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Part of the problem, I think, is, is linked to the limitations of a race relations paradigm, which has been used to examine Black social and political struggles. Undeniably, the scholarship has been invaluable in terms of establishing the legal and extralegal impediments to Black freedom and self-determination, examining structures of oppression and White and Black perceptions of each other. In fact, the best of the race relations literature go a bit further and examine organized efforts on the part of the Black community to transform their circumstances, whether through institution building or direct political engagement with the status quo. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But race relations literature also tends to reduce African American political discourse to two interrelated bipolar paradigms. They have protests versus accommodation on the one hand, and integration versus various degrees of separatism. Now, these interpretive frameworks, which are only slowly fading from historical scholarships, not only minimizes or ignores class and general conflict, but does not allow for oppositional practices that are need of protest, nor accommodation resistant forms that can either be called integrationist or separatists. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Moreover, the failure to develop a class analysis of African American communities has led a number of historians to ignore interracial class differences in conflict or treat class distinctions as an aberration that has little impact on, you know, quote unquote Negro politics. Thus, mainstream Black organizations such as the NAACP are treated as, you know, representative of the African American community. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And part of the reason why I wrote this book on the Alabama Communist Party, was to challenge that, that idea. And I think it, it, there it is evidence that at certain moments, you know, the Communist Party had much more popular support in the Black community in the NAACP. In 1931, the NAACP had in Birmingham had a paid up membership of six, whereas the international labor defense had about three or 400 African American members. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But again, the perception is that African Americans, African, African American organizations are representative those organizations that that push certain policies rather than really looking at what people are doing, what, what they're supporting, and what people are dreaming what, what individuals are are doing in terms of not joining organizations, which is just as critical as who joins. Now by drawing examples from recent studies of southern Black working people, I like to sketch out a research agenda that might allow us to render visible hidden forms of resistance. Examine how class consciousness shapes political struggle and bridge the gulf between the social and cultural world of working class African Americans in politics. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: My suggestive remarks are partly indebted to political anthropologist James Scott, in the chapter you've probably all read on infrapolitics comes out of his book. Anyway, Scott argues that despite appearances of consent, marginalized groups challenge those in power by constructing and acting out a hidden transcript, a dissident political culture that manifests itself in the daily conversations, jokes, songs, folklore, and other cultural forms of the oppressed, and frequently surfaces as everyday forms of resistance, theft, foot dragging the destruction of property, et cetera or more rarely in the form of an open attack against individuals, institutions, or symbols of domination. Scott labels a whole body of behind the scenes political discourse infrapolitics, oppositional practices, which constitute the foundation of politics for all organized mass movements. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: These hidden forms provide the structural and cultural framework for the sorts of political actions. Social scientists generally examined. So I'm sort of doing a kind of a historical archeology here, looking at what lies beneath organized or even pon, what seems to be spontaneous forms of opposition in the Jim Crow South, where Black working people have been locked out of mainstream political institutions throughout most of the 20th century. The victims of legal and extralegal repression and have had to face racial as well as economic barriers to fair wages and decent living conditions. It should not be surprising that much of their oppositional practice remain largely at this level of politics. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Indeed, perhaps the most effective way to characterize the struggles of Black southern working people is by using metaphors from guerilla warfare. They were engaged in, in a protracted struggle constantly testing the limits, attacking vulnerable sites, making tactical retreats, challenging the powerful and small scale skirmishes. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And one place to, to begin is to look at the spaces in which Black working people create a dissident culture. Resistance to domination is always shaped by relations of power and informed by dissident subcultures. During the era of Jim Crow, Black working people carved out social space in which they could articulate the hidden transcript free from the watchful lie of White folk. These social spaces constitute partial refuge from humiliation and indignities a, a place where they could create a discourse, a hidden transcript that negates injustice. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The most obvious examples of such social sites in which Black people construct this dissident culture. This hidden transcript are in the homes, churches, bars, blues club, dance hall, social club, pool halls, barbershops, beauty parlors, et cetera. In the Black community, though often treated as two diametrically opposed cultural forms to call in responsive, a blues man's versus, or preacher's sermon articulate the grievances, struggles, dreams, and aspirations of subordinate groups of a of African Americans. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: They're not always articulating a radical voice and opposition to daily conditions of work and racism. And in the case of many churches some folks sat through sermons that preached against any form of resistance, at least you know, openly. But to sit in church and believe that you're closer to God than your White boss, or to, to hear how a protagonist and a blue song left the community, rather than take abuse or direct challenges to ideological hegemony. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now granted, you know, it doesn't always translate into action, but you know, to be able to think beyond what people think you think, you know, it's real not what we see. That's the line out of Richard Wright, you know, is a, is a powerful step. What it means is that, you know, despite the fact that someone like Limon in his book on Black Tennessee, or Howard Ritz's book on racial relations in the urban south, despite the fact that he kind of paints a picture of a Black elite that's active in a so-called lower class that has no, just sort of acquiesces as passive misses the point about what goes on in these hidden social spaces. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now, this is sort of the beauty of Larry Levine's book, Black Culture and Black Consciousness which to me is just a pioneering study of this hidden transcript. Earl Lewis is in their own interest, is a study of Black Norfolk during the 20th century, is another excellent example of, of how this hidden transcript is constructed and maintained. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And here, the roots of oppositional action, you know, you wouldn't have had civil rights movement because without this hidden transcript, you know, it was that hidden transcript that informed people's actions, you know, anyway, those in power explained an enormous amount of energy and resources trying to undermine social spaces they believe were subversive. So, question about this. This is why it was so important to disguise the intentions. For example, church meetings during a, a moment of, of uprising among African Americans were often seen as a threat to power and could eventually to immense violence. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: To give you some examples, which for those of you who have read in my book when the Sheriff Office Union first started, they had the meetings in churches the mere fact that local police officials kind of had a feeling that something was going on. They've broken the church, you know, they've murdered Ralph Gray, they shot up other people. And in some cases, during the Cotton Pickers strike in 1935, police invaded another church that had nothing to do with the sharecroppers Union beat up three women, one of whom was like, nearly a hundred years old because they feared that in these churches on this Sunday where people are praying that something's going on, you see, I mean, if something wasn't going on, if something, if these were not free social spaces in which a hidden transfer were created, then why would people in power be so afraid of a church meeting, of a sewing club or for that matter, even a blues joint? 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And also people who construct these or maintain these social spaces realizes that's why the sheriff opportunity Women's Auxiliary used euphemisms like sewing clubs to refer to their organization, to protect themselves to carve out space that could, they can call their own without molestation. The African Americans were very successful in terms of maintaining this dissident subculture for a couple of reasons. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: First, segregation ironically allowed for more quote unquote Black social space. Authorities understood this and spent a lot of time and money cultivating stool pigeons, for example, you know, informants who went out their way to try to, you know, tell folks what's going on in, in the Black community, tell people in power. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The history of stool pigeons and informants hasn't really been written. Nobody wants to touch it, you know, because that's the truth. I mean, it's, it's the sort of thing that's really necessary, but they don't wanna touch it. You know? Every, almost every major social movement involving Black folks, there's always been, you know, your Judas. I mean, that's a fact, but it's, it's an, it's an issue that needs to be examined scientifically, historically. And there's all kinds of evidence in police reports. And FBI reports, sometimes they mark out the name. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But the point is that there are people who inform, and there are reasons for that, you know? The second reason why they've been so successful is because much of African American oppositional culture was oral, and it was much easier to disguise and retain than say, written documents, which could be seized and taken, and oral culture moves. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Julius Scott, who's this, this brilliant brother godfather of my child is writing this book about the Haitian Revolution and how information about the Haitian Revolution read throughout the South through this oral culture. Real powerful. It means better than AT&T, you know, in terms of like getting the word out. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now, another place where we might find another site of work class resistance would be what I call the point of production or the workplace. Aside from, you know, organized labor struggles, what, what I think we might start paying attention to is you know, everyday forms of resistance at the workplace that manifests themselves in kind of unorganized forms. Like foot dragging, slow downs, theft and sabotage. I mean, you don't have to be a member of a union to engage and sabotage. You don't have to be a member of a union to like shuffle your feet a little bit, especially if you're tired, you know? Nor do you have to be a member of a union to to take a little from your employer, especially if you know you're being ripped off. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: A theft is a, a critical example. There's a lot of evidence of it. Domestic workers were adep at handholding or stealing from the employers coal miners and people residing near railroads appropriated chunks of coal and coke for the home ovens. And during the depression, they can home to torn apart by the poor, desperately need fuel. I mean, there's numerous examples that should be explored. Sabotage is an area that's probably the most underexplored of them all except for some studies of, of arson in the South. And some reference references to rural resistance strategies. Not a whole lot of historians have looked at examples of sabotage at the workplace. And this is kind of unusual, given two things. First sabotage is one of the most popular forms of working class resistance all over the world. There's been studies in South Africa, England, France, you know, Japan, Southeast Asia, everywhere you find examples of sabotage. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: So chances are, you know what happens here. Okay? The other more important example is that know sabotage has been a form of opposition and resistance among slaves, and there's numerous studies of that. Now, my question is, why is it that, you know, we have all these examples during slavery, and then once emancipation happens, Black people are so loyal, they're not gonna mess up anything. They're not gonna break any tools, especially if they're working for somebody who was like their previous master. Suddenly they don't want to touch it, you know? 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But see, that's not true. I mean, I'm convinced, and, you know, we don't have enough studies to prove yet, but I'm pretty much convinced that sabotage is taking place constantly throughout the 20th century when people get away with it. You know, if you're pissed, I mean, we've all sabotaged something in our lives as, as workers, you know, unless we really love our job, you know so, so (laugh) in some cases, you know, I think that this, this act of resistance is, is a reality which needs to be explored because it's proof of a working class oppositional consciousness, despite the fact that this same person might be a strike breaker, the same person might not be a member of the union. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now I should add though that looking at African American working class sabotage is a difficult conflict issue. And Joe Trotter's new book on coal miners in Southern West Virginia points out why it's difficult to do this. And he, he has three important points when you talk about the work habits of, of Black coal miners. First of all, African Americans in the minds hope that by doing the best job possible, it might remove the racial ceiling on occupational mobility. This is critical. That's why employers were not all that wrong when they said that, you know, Black labor is really sometimes the most efficient labor, most hardwork because it was this kind of underlying belief that if they work hard enough, possibly, you know, that might move up. Those people who didn't believe that usually did what they could to undermine the production process. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Secondly coal mining is a dangerous job. And it involved a number of people doing different things. And the jobs that a lot of Black coal miners did was hand loading. Now, sabotage in, in the depths of the mines could lead to injury and death of a fellow worker. And see, the whole purpose of sabotage not to hurt your workers is to hurt the employers. So it wasn't the best possible place. The coal mines, not the best possible place to engage in sabotage, unless it was something you do after, after work is over. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But the interesting thing about coal production, especially in the 20th century, is that a lot of mines were open 24 hours. You have people working night shifts. So it's not like you could blow up a mine and, you know, get away with it without hurting somebody. You know? I mean, this just sort of things in the back of, of Trotter's mind, in the back of my mind about why it would be difficult to always find examples of this. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The third reason is that coal miners, for the most part, had more autonomy and control than other industrial workers which means that they probably could control the pace of work more so that changed later with changes in production process. But by being able to control the pace of work, it may lead to less grievances. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: In any case, despite Trotter's examples and the difficulty of find, of finding sabotage in certain types of work, the fact is that sabotage was a reality in heavy industry as well as among household workers. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: I mean, Tara Hunter's research is brilliant on this score where the spitting and food accidentally scorching a meal was not uncommon. You know, we can't possibly believe that. It's just an accident that a domestic worker, by accident some saliva fell out of her mouth onto the plate. "Oh my goodness. Oh, I didn't mean to do that." You know, we can't imagine, for example, that it's an accident that someone would burn something in uh, in their employer's household and never burn anything at home, you know, maybe has to do with the differences in pots. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But the fact is that whether, whether we like it or not, sabotage was a reality. And it, what's interesting too, about, about race culture, ideology and sabotage is that African Americans who lashed out at property protected themselves sometimes by playing the fool, by using the dominant ideology of race on their behalf. They empowered themselves. And this is what I call the cult of True Sam Hood. you've heard of the cult of true womanhood where you know, basically the whole notion that women are a certain way, but the culture of true Sam is the same thing. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You know, you know, brothers and sisters could hide behind the notion that they're somehow shiftless, slow backwards by doing something, which they, I obviously know that what they're doing. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And by saying, well, boss, I didn't mean to do it. And this is an example of this in, in my book, um this's, this guy Otis Debar Levitt, who was involved in and this is not an example of sabotage, but an example of the cult of Hood in action, where a guy was a member of the Communist Party was involved in this big uprising, you know, was arrested. I mean, it was a big riot that took place. May 1st, 1913, was arrested not only for fighting police, but for carrying a concealed weapon, had a big old long knife, was taken out to the court. And he tells the judge, he says, "Well, boss I went down there, you know, thinking I can get a job. 'Cause they had these signs that said workers, workers of the world. So I went there to get a job, and next thing you know, police are beaten me. I don't know what to do." (laughter) And then homeboy got off $25 fine, okay? 

Robin D.G. Kelley: There's another brother that was down there, did the same thing, but instead he took, he took the other body. He says, well, you know, I'm fighting for the working class and whatnot. Blood got six months on the chain gang, you know, and he didn't even have a concealed weapon. All he did was he had a walking stick, you know? 

Robin D.G. Kelley: So, I mean, here's empowerment. For the judge. The judge is, is edified, because he's saying, well, of course this nigger is safe. You see, on the other hand, you know, the other dude who's not safe gets six months, you know, and, and he doesn't even know what's going on in this guy. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now, well, what happens? Otis Debar Levitt, who got $25 fines suspended sentence, was out in the streets the next day, organizing for the international defense, you see? So it's a way of empowering what, it's a way of empowering yourself through racist ideology and, and doing research for this kind of stuff. What you need to do, what, what, what it what it involves is, you know, looking at evidence in company, personal personnel records, landlord diaries, police reports that use terms like in that ignorant shiftless to prove that, of course, these Black people are in that ignorant shiftless. Well, I know that Black people not ignorant in that, and shiftless, at least not all of them, and not even most of them, you know, but, but the point is, is that that ideological cover allows people to move more freely. Anyway, although subterranean resistance, it's kind of everyday forms of resistance, was the most logical form of opposition, given the nature of violence, the power relations in the South, et cetera. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: There were, and we know this, you know, open confrontation this is what James Scott calls public declarations of the hidden transcripts moments when people are just ready to throw down, you know, ready to fight, you know, cuss out somebody. I mean, there are just explosive moments, and there are a lot of them. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: One example, Delores Janiewski wrote a book, Sisterhood Denied, which is about Durham, and she gives us one, several examples of, of how Durham's tobacco factories quote, you know, resentments if allowed to surface, could lead to arguments between workers or open defiance of a supervisor. And she also says, you know, sometimes knives would drawn, I mean, people would, would when they're pushed to the wall, would come out and battle you. But what I'm suggesting that it would be wrong to assume that these open declarations, you know, these willingness to fight on the, on the shop floor or in the streets, are somehow the real thing in terms of resistance, whereas hidden forms are, are false or bogus. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You know, the, the point here is that worker silence. What, what, what seems to be worker silence doesn't connote satisfaction while open defiance constitutes real active resistance. Rather, those explosive moments when a Black person risked employment or bodily harm, reflect an articulation of what had always been there behind the surface. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And it's not like one particular individual is, is braver than the other. The point is, is that there are moments when these things come up and people make their decisions about when they exist very carefully, is the shared grievances, which remain hidden from public view, articulated primarily in unmonitored social space. That's the glue holding together any collective organized movement. A final note, you know, is on, on this section of, of sort of resistance at the point of production, is that we should be cognizant of, you know, when we're looking at Black working class opposition, that the workplace itself is almost always segregated and tasks we're racially divided, placing Black folk in more unskilled, often dangerous positions. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And there are numerous scholars who point out this as an example of the segmented labor market. But if you examine what it means in terms of creating working class oppositional consciousness, the fact is Black and White workers do not, for the most part, work, quote unquote, side by side. And this is real common. You pick up a lot of work on Black and White southern working class history, and they'll say, you know, well, Black and White work side by side, so therefore there's a potential for class consciousness and whatnot. But that's not really the case. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The fact is, African Americans were forced into nigger work. They shared a specific set of experiences and grievances rooted in the specificity of the labor process, inequity in wages, and a collective memory of resistance. So, you know, if all Black folks are ham loaders in the coal mines and White folks are doing something else, then, you know, if there's a relationship between the labor process and consciousness, then the labor process in your case is hand loaded. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You know, it's, it's a Black job. So in terms of resisting resistance will take on a kind of racialized meaning. You're not talking about work class's talking about Black folk resistance because it's Black folks working as hand loaders. Now in addition to that, these same Black people generally tend to share the same neighborhoods, same social institutions outside of the workplace, all of which reinforce a kind of racialized class solidarity. Given the nature of segregation, the whole notion of a shared work culture that other historians have found elsewhere doesn't usually cross racial lines, because in essence, Blacks and Whites are not doing the same jobs in the social spaces. So what, what I'm challenging here is the notion that you can even find a tradition of interracial struggle in, at the workplace. You know, even labor organizations that are quote unquote interracial are not really interracial. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You're talking about Black and White unions within the same framework, but they're not really collectively interracial. And this is one of like, a huge mistake that I made in my own book. You know, I, I, I assume there was something there the period before the Communist Party I had this chapter, this prologue where I talk a little bit about this tradition of interracial collectivity. And then when you get to the Communist Party, I discover that the communist party's not really interracial. It's, it's a Black party and a White party, and Black folks turn the party to own advantage. So I'm thinking to myself, wow, you know, this is really unusual. This is amazing. But the fact is, is that if, if I had done research on 19th century Birmingham or early 20th century Birmingham, I probably would've found the same doggone thing, you know, that is a, a Black united mine workers and a White united mine workers. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You see? But see, I wasn't writing about that, and not to defend myself. I mean, you know, if you want tear out the prologue, you know 'cause I mean, I make the point about the comments part, but this is self-criticism. This is making a point about, 'cause the, the new research on southern labor history always makes that argument that somehow this is like interracial unity and stuff, and that the bosses are undermining it. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: That's bogus. I mean, I'm, I'm convinced it's bogus. You might find some examples, but those few examples don't make a movement. You see what I'm saying? Anyway, and I'll give you one quick example. James Green wrote a, an excellent book on grassroots radicalism in the Southwest. And he talks about this, the segregated locals, I mean, the argument that a lot of labor historians have is that, you know, Black workers resisted segregated locals, and that integrated locals are somehow better than segregated locals. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: But what he finds is that in the brotherhood of Temple Workers Union in 1912, which is an affiliated of the IWW and located in Louisiana, that Blacks in the segregated locals didn't wanna integrate but they were complaining that they did not have control of their finances. They paid dues, and that their local couldn't control the dues. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: So they have a line, like during the 1912 convention, Black delegates complained that they could not quote, suppress the feeling of taxation without representation. And in the end, the same local demanded that, and I quote, a Colored executive board elected by Black union members, and designed to work in harmony with this White counterpart would be established. Okay? The point here is that Black people didn't want an integrated local, didn't want empowerment. You know, it's not being relegated to your own local, in your own neighborhood. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Fighting for the rights of Black workers within the larger context was the issue. The issue was that Black folks are paying dues to an organization, and they don't have any say. So, you see, so what ended up happening was when they realized that they could not create a separate, you know, colored board that would, you know have that would be empowered to make those decisions that affect the union as a whole. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: They fought for integration, not because they wanted to be integrated, but they wanted to have some kind of empowerment within the union. So what it requires is rethinking the history of labor organizations in the South and rethinking it not from the perspective that somehow integrated local, the more progressive but from the perspective of what Black people in those locals are thinking. You see now, to go beyond the point of production and to turn to public spaces is also important. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: 'Cause the richest areas of Black working plastic resistance, I think, can be found outside of the workplace in public spaces that have been deemed White space. Now, here we're seeing working people as complex human beings whose concerns and dreams are not linked exclusively to the workplace. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The sort of sites of resistance I'm thinking about here are like street parks, sidewalks, public transportation, especially White owned business establishments and waiting rooms. And what's ironic about this is, you know, this is not new. The idea of studying resistance in public space is certainly not new. In fact, struggle for desegregation of the space is interested scholars for a long time. But what we do read about are well organized struggles with goals and spokespersons and organizations behind it, not the everyday posing the guerilla warfare that made mobilization of broader movements possible. Think of, think of the Rosa Parks story. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: I mean, it's become kind of mythical now where you know, as scholars we know better. But you know, when you see popular culture, you have, you know, a woman who becomes more elderly as time goes on, right? Who is just tired. She sits down and one day she's like, I can't get up. I don't feel like it. I'm not gonna get up. Bam, you have a movement out of nowhere. You know, she just stood up and just bam, you know? 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And see my point is that Black people had been resisting. Montgomery buses had been resisting on Birmingham buses, resisting on buses all over the country daily. Daily. And that was why the movement had so much resonance, okay? It was, it was that people knew, people experienced that people have done that. They stood against, you know, the police. But when someone says, okay, we're gonna boycott, it's because of their own personal experiences, collective memory of that experience and witnessing other people resist, that made a difference in terms of mobilizing the mass of the people. That was the critical issue. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The other thing about Rosa Parks, and this is just an aside, was that this is a woman who was a veteran of movement. At 17 years old, she was supportive of the international labor defenses, struggle to free this gospel board. She was secretary of the naacp, 1943. She had gone to Highland Folk School. I mean, everything. She was a veteran of the movement. You know, she wasn't like some old seamstress who just didn't feel like getting up. And that has something to do with like the sexism in the way in which some of our sisters have been written. But it also has to do with this idea that somehow grassroots people can't move, have no politics, have no conscience. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You see, now what I wanna do is, is turn to a specific example to, to make my point about public transportation and look at Birmingham during World War II. Now, it's no accident that public transportation became one of the most important sites of resistance during the war. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: First, as more rural residents moved into the city to take advantage of wartime employment, the sheer number of people moving to and from work over taxed are already limited feed to either street cars and buses. Battles over space, as well as the manner in which space was allocated, resulted in intense racial conflict. Second, public transportation, unlike a waiting room or a water fountain, was commodified space. When one pays for a service, that one depends on for her or his livelihood. There seems to be less willingness to accept certain forms of domination, particularly forms that affect one's ability to get his get to one's destination on time. I mean, getting to work on time is important. If, if the bus keeps passing you up, it kind of messes you up. I mean, it's kind of logical. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Finally, Birmingham's buses and street cars might be regarded as moving theaters. I like to use that metaphor. I think it's useful. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And here I'm using theater in two ways. One, as a site of performance, and two, as a side of military conflict. You know, like a theater. First plays of conflict, repression and resistance are performed, which passengers witness or participate in a wide variety of skirmishes that shaped the collective memory of the passengers illustrate the limitations as well as possibilities of, of resistance to domination and draw more passengers into this quote unquote performance. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Second, theater as a military metaphor is particularly appropriate in light of the fact that in Birmingham, at least all bus drivers and streetcar conductors carry guns in Blackjack, no question. And it's not like their guns didn't have bullets in it. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: I mean, they, they had weapons and they used them regularly to maintain order, I should say, maintain the social order. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Despite the repressive police-like atmosphere and public transportation. Black passengers, especially youth, still resisted of course, well over the course of 12 months, beginning September, 1940 1, 55, this is just one year period, 55 incidents were reported in which African American passengers either refused to give up their seats or sat in the White section. Okay? It's 55. That's based more than one a week. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: More importantly, in most incidents, the racial compartmentalization of existing space was not the primary issue. Rather, most Blacks who had no alternate means of transportation focus their complaints on the manner in which they were treated by operators and other passengers on issues like incorrect change, on, on the power of drivers to allocate or limit space for Black passengers. And the practice of forcing Black folk to pay at the front door and where they have to enter to the center doors. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: It was not uncommon for, for instance, for half empty bus or a streetcar to pass up African-Americans on a pretext. The space needed to be preserved for potential White riders, nor was it unusual for Black passengers to pay pay at the front of the bus and be left standing while she or he attempted the board at the center door. Black female domestics regularly of having been passed up by bus drivers resulting in their being late to work or leaving them stranded at night in hostile White communities. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: So here it's a question of bodily harm, you know, missing the bus potential bodily harm. Well, not every Black passenger was willing to breach the public transcript of accepted behavior. Many resisted constantly testing the limit to Jim Crow. Some Black men boldly sat down next to White female passengers and challenged the operators to move them with knife in hand. And there's numerous examples of that. Sort of Stagger Lee figures. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Others refused to pay their fare, or in fact, some cases there was incidents in which passengers would pay half their fair and say, well, if I'm gonna be Jim Crow, why should I give you the whole modern money? You know, which is really a powerful statement of protest. These people are not, you know, members of organizations, don't have any plans, sitting back there strategizing, but they're pissed. But everyday indignities. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Others refuse—others simply pick fights with bus drivers and White passengers. That was pretty common too. A slight majority of resistors were women who did not fit the prim and proper Rosa Park stereotypes. Dozens of Black women were arrested for fighting or cursing out the operator, and that was pretty common too. African American passengers adopted a score of other oppositional practices, many directed at the symbols of inequality and segregation. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The most common forms include hiding or moving the color dividers on the segregated buses. You know, they had those color dividers up which were movable, usually insisting on paying, paying part of the fare or holding the center door while dozens of unpaid passengers forced away into the bus. And that was pretty common. And, and, you know, the anonymity of of the crowd is amazing. 'cause once you've open that center door and you got like 30 Black folks squeezing in the bus, it's like, who can tell who, who, who didn't pay? Who did pay? And sometimes they force everyone get off the bus. But, you know, the situation's sort of amazing. Vandalism was also common. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Perhaps the most fascinating and often overlooked form of resistance was the use of sound to invade space designated for White people. Black passengers were rejected frequently from making too much noise, which in many cases turned out to be harsh words, directed at a conductor or a passenger, or a monologue about racism in general. One passenger on the East Lake western line, for example, was arrested after he quote, started talking in a loud voice of Negroes about White people. You know, it's a free country. He should be able to talk right in the back of the bus. Well, no, 'cause he's invading White space with his voice. You know, I mean, an analog might be, and if you to stretch it, you know, the brothers on the bus with boombox is invading space, you know? And in this case, some of it had real direct political resonance. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The critical point here is that self activity on the part of Black passengers, most of whom were poor working class force, mainstream Black political organizations, organizations to at least consider conditions on Jim Crow buses and street cars. Now, in this broader article I'm working on, it's about this particular struggle. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: What ends up happening is the NAACP had no interest in the struggle until the woman by the name of Pauline Cars was beaten up when she was thrown off the bus, beating up by a street car conductor. And it was the people on the buses that went to the NAACP and said, look, this is what's going on on the bus. You gotta do something. And half the people who run the NAACP don't ride the bus. They drive cars. I mean, you have people like Charles McPherson, you know, a very successful doctor, EW Tagger, a successful dentist. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Why should he ride the bus? When he has a nice car, you know, he, he's making it pretty well. So he didn't really know what was going on. Well, when the issue was brought up, they decided, okay, what we're gonna do is we're gonna at least investigate the situation they investigated and eventually dropped it. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: The other organization that was brought into this struggle during World War II was the Southern Negro Youth Congress. And they developed an organization to fight specifically around racism on common carriers, as they called it. But it kind of died out. But 'cause for the Southern Eagle Youth Congress, it was more important were other issues, not struggles on the buses. So my point is that there is a relationship between the self activity of the everyday and what organizations do. Organizations are sometimes brought into the fold by what everyday people do. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: It's just not a, a distinction. And to say that everyday form of resistance is irrelevant to real struggles, is missing the relationship between the masses of people and what organizations eventually are forced to do. Now, there's another story to this, another side to this issue, and that is what passengers resisted. The way they've resisted, tells us a great deal about how working class and poor Blacks viewed segregation. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: Now, this is critical, and and I'll probably be criticized for it, but I don't really care. Sitting with White folks for most Black passengers was not the issue. You know, it wasn't the issue. Rather, African Americans wanted more space for themselves. They wanted to receive equitable treatment with dignity. They wanted to be personally treated with respect. They wanted to get to work on time without having to be left standing in the rain. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And above all, they wanted to exercise power over institutions that controlled them, or I wish they were dependent. I was watching, this is a show that comes on BET with the kids. Yeah, it's, they're the ones who sponsored that, that magazine. And there's a sister on there who like interviews or has like a whole posse of kids. Yeah. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: And there's this one, this one episode where they were talking about sitting on the front of the bus and the kids kept saying, you know, Rosa Parks fought for rights to sit in the front and Black people still sitting in the back, you know, missing the point entirely. It's not about, it's about having the right to wherever you wanna sit. And, and a lot of these kids felt like they should sit in the front because we fought for that right. 

Robin D.G. Kelley: You know, of not realizing that the issues was power. And the issue was freedom to do what you want. And the issue was how you get treated. You see? But the way mass media kind of turned the right struggle around, missed that point. Anyway, the fact that most regular Black writers were not primarily concerned was challenging the idea of allotting separate but equal space for Blacks and Whites did not diminish and mitigate repression on Birmingham's public transit system. Their very acts of insubordination challenge the system of segregation, whether they were intended to or not. You know—