The Urban Context of Historical Activism

Naacp Depression Era Insurgency and Organization-Building Activity

Bibliographic Data

ID2277100
AuthorsTownsand Price‐spratlen (0000-0003-2611-5562, The Ohio State University, corresponding author), Townsand Price-Spratlen (The Ohio State University)
Year2003
Volume44
Issue3
Pages303-328
Publication date2003-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1533-8525.2003.tb00535.x
OpenAlexW1938986867
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited59

This article examines the contextual determinants of two types of NAACP activism between 1930 and 1939. They are the justice-oriented outreach of insurgency (e.g., a civil rights rally), and chapter-building activities (e.g., electing committee chairpersons). Activism is analyzed using a more diverse set of factors than previous research on the sociopolitical context of social movements. Specifically, I examine historical urbanization and prior racial institutional development in 136 urban counties of the United States, about 95% of the 1930 African American urban system. WLS regression is used to provide a strong statistical basis for understanding the structural power and liberation context of these two distinct types of activism during the uniquely constrained Depression Era. Both insurgency and chapter-building activities increased due to the expanding non-southern location of African Americans and the effects of WWI-era declines in the population of foreign-born hites. They declined as a result of extreme racial-occupational segregation in the local area and being distant from a predominantly African American county. The factors shaping the two types of activism were not equal, in part due to both shared and non-shared determinants. A particularly instructive finding was that wage growth served as a lever of social control, being negatively related to insurgency. Viewed together, the findings clearly point to the joint influence of economic and noneconomic factors in shaping NAACP activism during the 1930s, and enhance our understanding of the broader determinants of Africans activism generally

Context (archaeology) · Criminology · Development economics · Geography · Great Depression · Insurgency · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Demography · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Race, History, and American Society · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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