ABSTRACT
Introduction Historically the ‘crucible of race’ in the United States (Williamson, 1984), the South is undergoing a fundamental transformation in its Black-White divide. Immigrants from all over the globe, above all from Mexico and other countries in Latin America, are entering the region in record numbers (Capps, Fix and Passel, 2002; Greico, Elizabeth, 2003). Racial/ethnic diversification opens up the fixity of the south’s bipolar racial construct; however, it also raises perplexing questions for social justice activists and their organizations, virtually all of which grew out of or were profoundly influenced by the southern civil rights movement. How might activists’ strategies include new racial/ethnic groups, while still addressing the historically entrenched racism directed at African-Americans in the South? Can ‘civil rights’ encompass the goals and demands of diverse people of color in the region? In view of the workplace exploitation experienced by many undocumented immigrants, what is the potential for multi-racial/ethnic organizing among southern workers? In short, on what bases might Black and White southerners who are committed to social justice unite with new arrivals, especially working-class Latino immigrants? This chapter addresses such questions by drawing on the findings from a community-based research project, ‘Across Races and Nations: Building New Communities in the U.S. South’, involving the Center for Research on Women (CROW) in Memphis, the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee, and the Southern Regional Council, headquartered in Atlanta.1 The latter two collaborators are among the oldest region-wide social justice organizations in the south. Founded in 1932 as a popular education workshop center, Highlander supports efforts to build movements for economic justice and democratic participation. During the civil rights movement, Highlander offered a space where interracial groups could share stories of their struggles and generate strategies for resistance and change. The Southern Regional Council, founded in 1919 as the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, works to promote racial
justice, protect democratic rights, and broaden civic participation in the South. Together with CROW, an academically based research unit, these two organizations sought to identify points of potential conflict as well as collaboration between their historic constituencies (primarily African-American southerners and working class Whites) and new Latino immigrants. As director of the Center for Research on Women, I collaborated with the directors and staff of the Highlander Center and the Southern Regional Council in raising funds for this project and framing its initial design. I also served as the overall project director. Over the course of four years, 2000-2003, the three organizational partners analyzed national data on immigration and racial/ethnic change in the South, conducted interviews with some 177 individuals in the locations where each organization is headquartered, developed case studies of Latino immigrant settlement in Memphis and East Tennessee, and analyzed related struggles over the definition of ‘minority’ in Georgia. We also convened or participated in countless meetings of social justice activists who sought to address diverse issues-from racial profiling to access to driver’s licenses-arising in the new context, and documented examples of successful multi-racial/ethnic collaboration. The findings from the project, including our internal deliberations and reflexive analyses of each organization’s dilemmas in adapting to immigration and racial/ethnic diversification, form the database for this chapter. The findings are not necessarily representative of cross-racial/ethnic interactions or of social justice organizations throughout the region, but they do illuminate the dilemmas and opportunities that activists encounter in three distinct sub-regions of the South. Memphis, sometimes called ‘the capital of the Delta’, is a majority-Black city in the Deep South, and its history exemplifies the overt White supremacy and racial contestations commonly associated with this sub-region. East Tennessee, where the Highlander Center is located, is in the majority-White, heavily working class Appalachian South. Atlanta, a historic center of civil rights activism, is now a burgeoning megalopolis that draws migrants of great racial/ethnic and national diversity. Although the results of our research may not be generalized in any statistical sense, they point to a complicated range of factors that influence the prospects for multi-racial/ethnic organizing in these three distinct contexts. Of the many strategic approaches inclusive of new immigrants that have developed in the south since the mid-1990s, this chapter focuses on two of the most common: 1. Collaborations of color, in which activism focuses on common experiences
related to race discrimination (e.g., racial profiling). Such collaborations may also focus on apparently ‘race-neutral’ issues (e.g., the quality of public education), which are nonetheless inflected with race due to the realities of de facto racial segregation and other forms of White privilege.
