Occupational Activism and Racial Desegregation at Work: Activist Careers after the Nonviolent Nashville Civil Rights Movement

Are social movements truly social? The prosocial and antisocial outcomes of social movements

“…For example, studies have shown that participants in left‐wing 1960s movements often went on to pursue careers in the so‐called helping professions; specifically, because participants internalized other‐oriented values through the course of their activism, they often pursued subsequent jobs in teaching, counseling, and social work (see, for example, Coley, 2018, ch. 5; Cornfield, Coley, Isaac, & Dickerson, 2018; Fendrich & Tarleau, 1973; Klatch, 1999; McAdam, 1988; Pagis, 2018). Sometimes, movement veterans have even engaged in subsequent “occupational activism”—“socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community” (Cornfield et al, 2018, p. 217)—as when graduates of the 1960s Nashville civil rights movement went on to promote racial integration in their own workplaces (Cornfield et al, 2018).…”

“…5; Cornfield, Coley, Isaac, & Dickerson, 2018; Fendrich & Tarleau, 1973; Klatch, 1999; McAdam, 1988; Pagis, 2018). Sometimes, movement veterans have even engaged in subsequent “occupational activism”—“socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community” (Cornfield et al, 2018, p. 217)—as when graduates of the 1960s Nashville civil rights movement went on to promote racial integration in their own workplaces (Cornfield et al, 2018).…”

The Making of a Movement: An Intergenerational Mobilization Model of the Nonviolent Nashville Civil Rights Movement

“…It was, however, more than an exemplary citywide movement that achieved local results. By design, the Nashville movement was the chief vehicle for developing, diffusing, and training activists (e.g., Freedom Riders) in the nonviolence praxis adopted in 1957 by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for deployment in the Southwide movement (Cornfield et al 2019;Halberstam 1998;Isaac 2019;Isaac et al 2012Isaac et al , 2016Isaac et al , 2020.…”

“…Du Bois in 1909, had championed civil rights and desegregation through litigation in the courts and was unsupportive of the SCLC's new tactical turn to a community-based praxis of nonviolent direct action following the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, although some local NAACP chapters did engage in nonviolent direct action (Chabot 2012). Second, many Black young adults were skeptical of the requisite, tremendous self-restraint required for engaging in nonviolent direct action in the face of the profound indignities and violence hurled by hostile Whites at the nonviolent protesters (Cornfield et al 2019;Halberstam 1998;Isaac et al 2012Isaac et al , 2016Isaac et al , 2020.…”

“…Accounting for the challenges of intergenerational mobilization, and thus accounting for the involvement of students in a movement planned by more senior adults, is an important task because the students were the youngest generation of Nashville-based activists who went on to diffuse nonviolence praxis throughout the South. Students emerging out of the Nashville civil rights movement were among the founders and early leaders of SNCC in 1960; were responsible for continuing a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)-launched Freedom Ride that had been halted in Alabama in 1961; and played a part in the Albany campaign of 1961-62, the Birmingham campaign of 1963, the March on Washington in 1963, the Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, the Selma campaign of 1965, the Chicago campaign in 1966, and the Memphis sanitation workers' strike of 1968 (Cornfield et al 2019;Finley et al 2016;Isaac 2019;Isaac et al 2012Isaac et al , 2016Isaac et al , 2020. Martin Luther King Jr. said the Nashville movement represented "the best organized and the most disciplined in the Southland" (qtd.…”