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The Sixties: A Journal of History,
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Backing Dr King: the financial
transformation of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference in
1963
a
Peter J. Ling & Johannah Duffy
b
a
Department of American & Canadian Studies, University of
Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
b
Digital Resources and Imaging Services Trinity College, Dublin,
Eire
Version of record first published: 11 Dec 2012.
To cite this article: Peter J. Ling & Johannah Duffy (2012): Backing Dr King: the financial
transformation of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1963, The Sixties: A Journal of
History, Politics and Culture, 5:2, 147-165
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The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
Vol. 5, No. 2, December 2012, 147–165
RESEARCH ESSAY
Backing Dr King: the financial transformation of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference in 1963
Downloaded by [University of Nottingham], [Peter Ling] at 08:32 11 December 2012
Peter J. Linga* and Johannah Duffyb
a
Department of American & Canadian Studies, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK;
b
Digital Resources and Imaging Services Trinity College, Dublin, Eire
This article details how the fund-raising efforts of Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in the wake of the 1963 Birmingham protests transformed the finances of the SCLC. Having struggled to sustain itself
prior to 1963, the SCLC experienced a massive influx of donations. Contributions were sparked by outrage at police brutality in Birmingham but the impulse
to give had to be systematically channeled to optimize the windfall: rallies,
newspaper appeals and direct mail generated funds. Based on new archival
research, this article presents an analysis of the timing of donations which
shows that donations peak over a month after the media coverage of the children’s marches in Birmingham because it took time to organize the public
events that encouraged giving. The article also offers the first analysis of the
geographical distribution of donations, demonstrating the primacy of New York
and California as sources for SCLC funds. By examining the fund-raising events
in different cities, the ability of the SCLC to tap into church networks, union
supporters, and Jewish American groups of sympathizers is confirmed. At the
same time, it becomes clear that support is selective: not all black churches or
all unions gave. The SCLC had to work hard to secure church donations and
even within liberal unions such as the UAW, donations came primarily from
local branches that had mainly African American members. Jewish donations
tended to be from individuals rather than institutions. The article points out that
the loss of administrative staff over the course of 1963 weakened efforts to professionalize fund-raising, leaving the SCLC highly reliant on individual donations triggered by headline-grabbing public clashes. The protest style of
Birmingham was thus integral to the SCLC’s future approach to both the pursuit
of federal action and its own financial survival. At the same time, the article
links its discussion of the surge of donations to the SCLC to demonstrate that
the pattern of resource mobilization evident in relation to the civil rights movement in the summer of 1963 was distinctive. It marked a level of movement
development that was different from that evident earlier and the volatility of
support in subsequent years suggests that the emphasis on continuity within the
new scholarship of the “long civil rights movement” is mistaken. The breadth of
appeal of the civil rights movement in the summer of 1963 made it different in
character as well as composition from the March on Washington Movement of
1940 or the movements that supported Black Power goals in the early 1970s.
While the freedom struggle was long and continues, the movement of the
Sixties was distinctive and protean.
Keywords: civil rights movement; fund-raising; Birmingham protests; resource
mobilization; Martin Luther King
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
ISSN 1754-1328 print/ISSN 1754-1336 online
Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17541328.2012.721585
http://www.tandfonline.com
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148
P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
In the popular imagination, the civil rights movement may be linked firmly to the
Sixties, but many in the academy now contest this view. “The long civil rights
movement” has become the dominant scholarly model.1 Developed within the last
quarter-century through an emphasis on local people, and the distinctive dynamics
of continuing grassroots struggles in particular places, both North and South, this
school of interpretation has targeted the Martin Luther King-centered “Montgomery-to-Memphis” narrative on multiple accounts. The “real” movement, it argues,
did not emerge with King nor disappear with his death in 1968. It had been there
in countless acts of resistance before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat on a
Montgomery city bus in 1955 and it exists still in President Obama’s America.
While recognizing the long and complex history of the African American freedom
struggle, this article will argue the Sixties remain distinctive. The movement’s ability to press its insurgent demands was far greater in the summer of 1963 than it
was 20 years earlier during the “Double Victory” campaign or 20 years later when
Congress established the Martin Luther King national holiday. This breadth of
appeal, captured in the ability to raise funds from a national support network, made
the classic movement of the Sixties different in character as well as in composition.
The long freedom struggle had distinctive, short moments and in the Sixties, one of
these was the summer of 1963.
Although “the long civil rights movement” is the dominant scholarly paradigm,
this article is not alone in challenging it. Reminding us that social movements were
once seen as intrinsically short-lived typically lasting around six years, labor historian Eric Arnesen complains that the “long civil rights movement” framework blurs
important differences and its proponents are apt to give too much credit to Communist labor organizers, romanticizing the role of the Party while neglecting the
role of others.2 Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang similarly warn that if
the social landscape of oppression and resistance is undifferentiated, historians orientated toward movement politics inadvertently absolve themselves of the necessity of
critically assessing the unique, political, social and ideological climate of their own
time, and the limits and possibilities it poses.3
The “long civil rights movement” model ignores the unique features of the phase of
the freedom struggle from 1955 to 1968 during which King’s ability to reach out to
a national audience reflected the movement’s ability to be more than just a constellation of local struggles. As this article demonstrates, the civil rights movement in
the summer of 1963 (with the Birmingham campaign at its heart) was a more
widely resourced movement with an ability to mobilize on a national scale that
other phases of the struggle cannot match.
Many scholars would agree with the long civil rights movement historians that
the media-led celebration of King’s role has distorted our understanding of the
movement’s character, but part of this failing has been to overstate King’s popularity in the period before 1966. His ability to pitch his appeal for racial reform in resonantly all-American terms and his insistence that the struggle remain committed to
non-violence and racial integration is assumed to have excited consistent support.
Like Malcolm X at the time, revisionist historians see King as apt to cultivate his
interracial alliances rather than stridently demand racial justice, and his reward was
financial support.4 From this perspective, the puzzle seems to be why King
struggled so desperately to raise money and secure gains rather than how he did so.
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These assumptions are flawed. Although the response to Birmingham was great, the
tidal wave of donations and the coalition of conscience that would ultimately press
Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not come automatically. King
and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had to work hard to
channel public emotions into a pattern of financial giving and had to provide local
events that would act as focal points for both fund-raising and political lobbying.
Talking within earshot of an FBI agent in the spring of 1963, King’s closest
white adviser, Stanley Levison observed that the SCLC had underestimated the
financial costs of the Birmingham campaign. What is more surprising is that scholars have also neglected finance. There is a rich literature on the Birmingham campaign, the March on Washington, and many studies of King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech, but none currently that look closely at the flow of money to the SCLC.5
This is all the more surprising since, within the sociology of social movements, the
dominant paradigm has been one of resource mobilization.6 Its main concern has
been to explain the recruitment and retention of participants since movement members are its core resource. Using examples linked to the SCLC’s development,
Aldon Morris’s pioneering study of The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement
stressed how the civil rights movement grew from resources within African American communities, and Doug McAdam amplified their importance by demonstrating
that external support came in response to movement actions rather than as a precondition for such actions. McAdam also stressed the impact of changing political
contexts in which counter-movements simultaneously strove to organize resources
for the suppression of black insurgency.7 More recently, Joseph Luders has looked
at the economics of movement success, explaining through sectoral analysis how
different groups responded to protest with either intransigence or the realization that
reform might better favor their interests. Luders notes, for example, that during
April and May 1963 as the Birmingham protests peaked, downtown retailers estimated that they were losing $750,000 a week, a remarkable figure that underlines
the coercive character of nonviolence and the impetus behind the Birmingham
accord.8
Very few studies deal directly with the funding of civil rights organizations.
Herbert Haines’s analysis of changing funding patterns for the major civil rights
organizations argues that the movement’s perceived radicalization after 1965 operated to the financial advantage of the least radical organizations. Through what
Haines termed “radical flank effects,” the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) and the business-orientated National Urban League
gained while the direct action organizations – the SCLC, the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) – saw
income fall after 1965. Martin Marger has examined the NAACP response to the
challenge posed by new organizations between 1960 and 1973. He concludes that it
survived through increased professionalization, which saw a greater financial reliance on external foundations and corporations than on its indigenous membership.9
The durability of moderate civil rights organizations via professionalization has also
been linked to the suppression of mass insurgency.10 Co-optation is one of the ways
in which social movements die, and thus sociologists who document this phenomenon are implicitly arguing that the movement was not the multi-generational
phenomenon that advocates of the “long civil rights movement” propose.
In all these studies, research has considered the various organizations’ aggregate
funds, as declared in their annual reports, with special attention paid to especially
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
large grants or foundation awards. The smaller donations that yielded most of the
income for groups like the SCLC have not been analyzed. This oversight is readily
explained. Below the aggregate level, researchers are forced to deal with large
quantities of data, demanding many man-hours to input into a dataset for analysis.
At the same time, such data, particularly in social movement organizations in an
insurgent period, is likely to be inconsistent since standards of record-keeping and
archival survival can be good in certain periods, but poor in others. This makes it
easier to stick with aggregate data as the basis for longitudinal analysis, even
though such figures may give a false sense of precision.
Certainly, in the case of the SCLC, the financial records in terms of receipted
donations are fuller for 1963 than for subsequent years.11 Even in 1963, the records
are neither complete nor accurate. The SCLC records at the King Center have no
receipts for the entire month of November, for example, and the numerical sequence
within the receipt books suggest that over 4000 receipts have not survived. Furthermore, figures who are widely known to have been loyal backers of the SCLC, such
as singer Harry Belafonte, do not feature among the receipts, confirming the likelihood of cash donations that did not go through the process that handled the money
raised via direct mail and fund-raising rallies. Belafonte and other New York based
“angels,” such as Dr Arthur Logan and his wife Marian, were crucial to the survival
of King’s organization in its early years, and provided “emergency” funds at critical
moments.12 King had appealed to such figures ahead of the Birmingham campaign,
and again at the time of his imprisonment in April. The Logans, whose support was
recognized by Mrs Logan’s place on the SCLC Board, were friends of New York
Governor Nelson Rockefeller and King’s attorney, Clarence Jones has written that
Rockefeller provided a loan of $100,000 to cover the bail bond costs for the Birmingham demonstrators. Rockefeller’s bank agents required Jones to sign “a promissory note” and he drew on this daunting experience when he drafted the opening
section of King’s speech at the March on Washington.13 Yet no SCLC Treasurer’s
record documents the transaction.
Decades ago, African American scholars, like Robert Allen, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, and Manning Marable highlighted the role of philanthropic foundations and
governmental agencies in funding civil rights groups.14 They argued that this was
essentially co-optation, and grew as the threat of African American militancy escalated. Thus, the intervention of the Ford Foundation under former National Security
adviser, McGeorge Bundy, and the funding of Community Action Programs within
the War on Poverty after 1965 were designed to de-radicalize. They took civil rights
activists and converted them into community social workers on the payroll of a
foundation-funded or federal project. However, this was a phenomenon of the late
1960s. In the earlier period, foundation involvement was largely channeled into the
Voter Education Project (VEP) established at the instigation of the Kennedy administration in 1962. There were fears of co-optation when this was launched but its
immediate impact was to escalate rather than diminish movement activity.15
The Marshall Field Foundation had earlier backed the Citizenship Education
Program (CEP), an adult literacy initiative developed by the Highlander Folk
School. The southern use of literacy tests in voter registration gave adult literacy
efforts a direct political significance. When the CEP transferred to the SCLC in
1961, the grant could not be made directly because the SCLC lacked the required
tax-exempt status. Consequently, this program – the largest at the SCLC in 1963 –
did not generate income for the organization itself. The grant-holder was technically
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the Board of Home Missions of the American Missionary Association of the United
Church of Christ. Similarly, when the Taconic, New World, Stern and Field Foundations made grants to the VEP, they were made technically to the Southern Regional Council whose officers oversaw the work of the several civil rights
organizations. Thus, here too there was no direct flow of income to the SCLC.
Treasurer Ralph Abernathy was supposed to keep separate accounts of such funds
and maintain accounts of expenditures for the SCLC’s own operations. Thus, insofar as professionalization can be linked to the emergence of well-administered fundraising structures, tax-exemption, and the establishment of ties to philanthropic or
governmental institutions that can offset the volatility of public support to some
extent, the SCLC was some distance away from professionalism in the summer of
1963. In contrast, consider the Legal Defense, or Inc., Fund, which had separated
from the NAACP, and was arguably the most professional of the movement organizations. It had tax exempt status, and its income soared, as public support for the
legal defense of civil rights workers grew exponentially after 1960.
The SCLC’s best efforts to move to professional administration were evident in
1963. At the urging of Levison and New York based fund-raiser, Jack O’Dell, it
maintained donor records to develop more effective fund-raising operations. To
acknowledge and cultivate donors, the New York and Atlanta offices issued
receipts.16 Treasurer Abernathy had the SCLC accounts audited each year and made
a financial report to its annual convention, and this records the 1963 transformation.
To ensure the report was ready for the September convention, the SCLC ran its
financial year from August to August until 1965. At the end of August 1962 it
reported $186,040.38 as its income for the past year, but after expenses, only
$6,975.93 remained. Even this presented too positive a picture. The SCLC had
actually spent more than it received and thereby reduced its small reserves. This
hand-to-mouth financial position was the norm until 1963, and the way that the Birmingham campaign transformed SCLC finances underlines the exceptional character
of that time, and by implication, of the civil rights movement at that moment.17 By
looking at the geographical distribution of donors and the relationship of donations
to specific fund-raising initiatives such as mail appeals and mass rallies, one can
also see that the financial windfall was not simply a spontaneous reaction to the
Birmingham protests nor purely a measure of King’s public appeal. It was a product
of energetic fund-raising that entailed costs.
In September 1963, Ralph Abernathy reported the Conference’s income as
$735,534.02. For the first time, the organization’s income was significantly above
its operational expenses. This apparent “surplus” of $351,992.20 gave the SCLC a
platform for its operations that it had never known before. Even though Abernathy
cautioned supporters that most of this “reserve” ($263,358.84) had to be retained in
relation to bail bonds and other legal defense costs outstanding from the Birmingham protests, the fact remained that the SCLC had transformed its financial position. When planning the budget for 1962–3, the SCLC leadership had thought that
$300,000 was an ambitious goal, but now they had a “surplus” that exceeded that
goal.18
Abernathy’s report indicated the prime income sources (see Figure 1). Appeal
letters and Freedom Rallies drew in nearly two-thirds of the SCLC’s income
(31.3% and 30.3% respectively). A “general contributions” category of donations
that could not be linked to either direct mail appeals or mass meetings represented
27.8% of the total, and brought in well over $204,000, thus comfortably exceeding
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
Figure 1. Sources of SCLC income 1962–63.
Note: see note 18.
SCLC’s total income for the previous year. The financial windfall from the headline-grabbing demonstrations came chiefly from direct mail and mass meetings.
Benefit concerts which had been an important source of funds for the fledgling
SCLC continued to contribute 6.7%. Misleadingly, gifts directly from churches,
unions, and fraternal organizations were reported as far less important (1.7%). Only
gifts from these organizations that were not given in response to direct mail or in
the context of rallies were included by Abernathy in this category. In practice,
churches, unions, and fraternal organizations were important donor groups within
the direct mail and rally donation categories. Even SCLC Board meetings and its
annual convention raised more money (1.8% of the total), according to Abernathy,
than did churches, unions, and fraternal organizations. This dubious claim may have
been an attempt to conceal the organization’s reliance on churches and unions since
the SCLC occasionally received queries about its Christian sectarian status from
Jewish donors and it also did not want to signal its association with certain unions
such as the Teamsters, who were mired in controversy at this time. The sale of Dr
King’s books and other publications, which at this stage did not include revenue
from the “I Have a Dream” speech, added the final 0.4% of income for an extraordinary year.
To speak of a year, however, is to miss the true character of the surge in donations. In its quarterly report for the three months to 30 November 1962, the SCLC
calculated its income at $59,865.22. The next quarter’s income (ending 28 February) was similarly declared to be $68,247.69.19 Prior to the Birmingham campaign,
therefore, the organization was heading for an annual income that would probably
clear $250,000 and might hit its $300,000 target. According to the receipts for
donations received, the massive influx of money that Abernathy could record in his
annual report in late August was given not only after the Birmingham campaign
began in April, but more specifically in the weeks following Sherriff Bull Connor’s
decision to attack young demonstrators with dogs, water cannon, and clubs on 3
May. In three months, according to the donation receipts, the SCLC received over
$500,000 with a peak in June as its fund-raising efforts on the back of the Birmingham protests peaked (see Table 1).20
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The receipts are dated and so the flow of money to the SCLC can be monitored.
While in charge of the New York office, Jack O’Dell tried to improve its use of
direct mail and other fund-raising techniques. To gauge the effectiveness of different
techniques, he asked SCLC staff to record on the receipt what had prompted the
gift. This enables us to link donations to specific appeals. For example, the SCLC
paid for a full-page advertisement in the 7 May edition of the New York Times.21
Of the 5822 receipts issued by the SCLC in May 1963, about a third were attributed by its staff to the Times appeal. Most of these contributions were small (less
than $10) so they totaled less than a quarter of the $185,176 that came in during
May, and most of the respondents gave addresses in New York state. Together with
New Jersey and Connecticut residents, New Yorkers comprised 67% of these
recorded donors. Since the receipts record the addresses of most donors, we are able
to monitor the geographical distribution as well as timing (see Figure 2).
Residents of New York state dominated the giving in this vital three-month period after the May attacks on children in Birmingham. Of the $540,000 raised, New
York donations accounted for over 31%, easily surpassing nearest rival, California,
whose donations amounted to 17% of the total. Thanks to the 23 June march and
fund-raising rally in Detroit, Michigan ranked third with 14% of the total, and Illinois came next with roughly 10% because of similar fund-raisers in the Chicago
area. By virtue of rallies in the cities of Cleveland and Philadelphia respectively,
the states of Ohio (5%) and Pennsylvania (4%) were major contributors as well.
Further underlining the importance of metropolitan based rallies, donations from the
St Louis area explain Missouri’s ability to match the contribution level of New Jersey (roughly 3% of the total). New Jersey donations, alongside the 1% of the total
received from Connecticut, reaffirm the centrality of New York in the fund-raising
story. Thus, an analysis of the donations underlines the centrality of the New York
fund-raising operation and of specific events like rallies in channeling funds to the
SCLC in the aftermath of the Birmingham protests.
The addresses of donors also confirm emphatically that the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference did not rely financially on the South. In the three-month
surge period of May through July 1963, 14 southern and border states plus the District of Columbia yielded just 5% of SCLC’s burgeoning income (see Figure 3).
The low contribution rate reflected the widespread hostility of the white South and
the extreme poverty of African Americans in the rural South. But the intensity of
local protest activity was also significant. In the summer of 1963, numerous southern communities had their own protests. Money could go directly into local campaigns, and this was the safest response. In areas of the Deep South, like
Mississippi with its State Sovereignty Commission spies, signaling support for Dr
King by writing a check or money order and mailing it to the SCLC in Atlanta was
risky, given the surveillance within banks and post offices.22 It was far more sensiTable 1. Donations in three-month peak of 1963.
Month
May
June
July
Note: See note 16.
Amount
$185,176.52
$208,432.47
$147,192.29
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
Figure 2. Leading donor states in 1963.
Note: See note 12. NY = New York; CA = California; MI = Michigan; IL = Illinois; OH =
Ohio; PA = Pennsylvania; MO = Missouri, NJ = New Jersey; MA = Massachusetts; and IN
= Indiana.
Figure 3. Southern donations.
Note: See note 16. MO = Missouri; DC = District of Columbia; MD = Maryland; AL =
Alabama; VA = Virginia; TN = Tennessee; FL = Florida; GA = Georgia; KY = Kentucky;
TX = Texas; LA = Louisiana; NC = North Carolina; AR = Arkansas; SC = South Carolina;
and MS = Mississippi.
ble to give via the church collection plate, and this was the most common fund-raising method for local protests.
At the same time, events in Birmingham exacerbated African American discontent in non-southern cities as well, and the prospect of racial disturbances nationwide
was a vital factor in forcing the Kennedy administration to introduce civil rights legislation. In cities like Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Phila-
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delphia, de facto school segregation, employment and housing discrimination, and
police brutality were the targets of local protests, but fighting local issues did not
prevent African American communities from rallying to raise money for the southern
Freedom struggle.23 In fact, support for the southern struggle sometimes elicited
greater communal unity than did local campaigns. In Detroit, for instance, the massive June march down Woodward Avenue prompted local people to hope that their
leaders would maintain this dramatic solidarity. Similarly, the Los Angeles mass rally
brought demands for a more active movement to address local racial injustices.
The so-called “Freedom Rallies” were lucrative fund-raisers for the SCLC. Within
the receipt records, I have identified 25 such events in the period 3 May to 1 August
1963, and collectively they yielded over $211,000 (see Figure 4). Rallies held in the
aftermath of the dramatic Birmingham clashes raised the bulk of the money placed in
this category for the entire year in the SCLC accounts. For example, on 14 May, hard
on the heels of the 11 May Gaston Motel bombing, King flew to Cleveland, Ohio,
where the SCLC had organized two events: an afternoon meeting at St Paul’s Episcopal church in Cleveland Heights and an evening rally at Cory Methodist with King’s
speech relayed to the nearby churches of Greater Abyssinia Baptist and Greater
Friendship Baptist and St Mark’s Presbyterian. The local African American newspa-
Figure 4. SCLC freedom rallies in 1963.
Note: See note 16.
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
per, the Call and Post reported that nearly 2000 people “over-crowded St Paul’s sanctuary, hallways and every available place” and the evening crowds were even larger
with traffic congestion for miles around the venue and many reports of people who
wanted to attend but were unable to get close to any of the churches.24
The Cleveland rally yielded over $22,000, more than half of which came from
cash donations at the above events. But the day’s success was not left to chance.
The SCLC’s Carole Hoover, whose father was a pastor in the city oversaw preparations. Prior to King’s visit, letters in his name went to local pastors and civic figures
on 2 May alerting them to upcoming rallies and inviting churches to arrange for
their congregation to attend and to bring a “Dollars for Freedom” offering. In a follow-up letter dated 10 May, the SCLC tried overtly to tap the wave of sympathy
generated by Birmingham. “The struggle here has been intense,” Cleveland’s clergy
were reminded. “Nearly 2500 men, women and children [have] submitted to arrest
and jailing.”25 When specific church donations are added to the money taken in
cash at the church rallies themselves, it emerges that 80% of the total came from
this source. Thus, the church contributions via Freedom rallies were the product not
of spontaneous giving but of planning, and active cultivation.
The major rallies such as the Los Angeles rally held at Wrigley Field on 26 May
and the Detroit rally of 23 June hosted at the city’s Cobo Arena had significant
church involvement, although its full scale is hard to gauge because the bulk of the
money raised came from cash collections. The LA event, for instance, had a single
check from rally organizers for $25,000, but of the $2653 received from other
donors only $75 was not from churches.26 Similarly, roughly 80% of the more than
$57,000 raised in Detroit came via two checks from the rally’s organizer, the Detroit
Council for Human Rights (DCHR), headed by gospel showman and pastor of New
Bethel Baptist, the Reverend C.L. Franklin (father of Aretha Franklin).27 Franklin
symbolized the active church support, which was supplemented by the United Auto
Workers (UAW) union. The UAW nationally gave significant aid during the Birmingham campaign.28 However, despite Walter Reuther’s conspicuous presence in
the front line of the Freedom Walk, UAW support for the Detroit march came not
from the national union but from the local black caucus, the Trade Union Leadership
Council (TULC), whose efforts were orchestrated by Robert “Buddy” Battle.29
Thirty separate donations came care of Battle’s address, including one from the
TULC itself and small personal donations from his close UAW allies Hodges Mason
and Horace Sheffield.30 All three were thorns in the side of the UAW’s predominantly white, national leadership. The largely African American UAW Local 3 at the
Chrysler foundry provided the only other sizeable union donation at the Detroit rally,
and at rallies in New York, Ohio, and Virginia the UAW locals that gave all had a
significant African American membership.31 Thus, a closer analysis of donations
illustrates how SCLC fund-raising captures not simply an emotional reaction to the
images from Birmingham, nor solely the activation of a social network of black
churches but highlights the racial tensions within a major liberal union, whose
national leadership remained wary of white rank-and-file racial animosity. Despite
the significance of the UAW as a model of the interracial unionism that is central to
the story of the long civil rights movement, images of the Freedom Walk in Detroit
show an overwhelmingly African American event that drew relatively little, visible
support from the white auto-workers of the Motor City’s suburbs.
One obstacle to SCLC fund-raising efforts in the South, compared to elsewhere,
was the difficulty of finding a venue for a Freedom Rally. These were more likely
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to be available in a Border State like Missouri.32 On 28 May, a Freedom rally was
hosted by the Tabernacle Baptist church on Washington Boulevard in St Louis.
According to the St Louis Globe-Democrat, it attracted 3000 people, in numbers so
large that the crowds spilled into the vestibules and basement of the church. While
the rally had a fund-raising target of $10,000, it actually raised $12,554.44 or 77%
of Missouri’s contribution to the SCLC in the post-Birmingham period.33 Donations
from churches and clergy made up well over $10,000 of that total, and this meant
primarily African American Baptist congregations. The Missouri example thus confirms the impact of rallies as focal points for giving. More money is raised as a
result, even though the success builds on an already existing network of African
American churches that might be assumed to be supportive of King in particular.
The rallies also confirm that Abernathy under-reports the SCLC’s reliance on financial support from churches and unions that came via the rallies.
Examining the fund-raising effort more closely in individual centers reveals the
importance of unions and churches. However, there were other support networks. In
Maryland, 69% of the money raised in this three-month period came via the fundraising efforts of local Annapolis businessman Joseph Sachs, thus tapping into a
Jewish social network rather than a church one.34 In Alabama, 71% of the money
was raised at a mass rally in Tuskegee. With its historic black college and medical
center, Tuskegee was a unique community in the state due to its large black professional class and its mid-June rally was a more secular event.35 Secular or religious
in tone, rallies had a major impact on fund-raising levels. Even in the South where
fund-raising was slight, rallies contributed significantly to the totals.36
Fund-raising events in New York tended to attract a wider variety of contributors than just churches or unions. In early May 1963, an established SCLC supporter, the white businessman, Noel Marder of the Educational Heritage
Corporation, visited Birmingham and on his return persuaded baseball legend Jackie
Robinson to join him in launching a fund-raising organization for the Birmingham
struggle, called “Back Our Brothers.” Published appeals asked donors to send contributions to Marder’s business address in Yonkers, and the organization had a
celebrity-studded lunch at Sardi’s restaurant to make plans for a benefit dinner. The
Amsterdam News reported that attorney Arnold Forster of the Anti-Defamation League had instigated a drive for funds at the luncheon itself and this explains the tranche of donations that the SCLC received by 19 May.37 By 3 July, when the “Back
Our Brothers” $100-a-plate banquet had been held, the SCLC had received a further
$10,506, principally a single check for $10,000 from Educational Heritage, which
presumably reflected the proceeds of the dinner.38
The SCLC receipts labeled as “Back Our Brothers” confirm the Jewish-African
American alliance on civil rights that is a feature of SCLC fund-raising in both of
its key states New York and California. The Amsterdam News reported in detail the
contributions given at the Sardi’s luncheon. For example, it stated that Jackie Robinson matched attorney Forster’s opening check of $200. African American businesswoman, Mrs Rose Morgan, gave $250 and the Bronx Club of Negro Business
and Professional Women gave $200 as did both Calvary and Grace Baptist
churches. Shad Polier, like Forster, a prominent American Jewish Congress member
and staunch NAACP supporter, gave $100, but these contributions were eclipsed by
$1000 checks from Bernard Singer and Irving Feder.39 Donations also came from
local African American leaders like Judge Amos E. Bowman, Harlem attorney
Lucille Chance, Assemblyman Lloyd E. Dickens, and civic groups like Dickens’
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
New Era Democratic Club and the YMCA, and from a Jewish social network centered on Mrs Marilyn Garfinkle of Pearl River, who, together with friends, gave
nearly $300.40 These Jewish donations, unlike the significant gifts from African
American churches, did not come from synagogues or Jewish social or civic clubs
but from individuals. This presents a practical difficulty in terms of identifying the
full range of Jewish donors. One may feel fairly confident that Mrs Garfinkle’s
friends: Ada Horowitz, Lilly Freitag, Lucille Levy, Gloria Weiner, and Roberta
Klingher were Jewish, but Anglicization of names means that this is not a sure
guide for all donations.41 Nevertheless, the main danger here is under-estimating
Jewish support. The recurrence of Jewish sounding names within the New York
and California donor lists is so extensive as to confirm that Jewish financial support
was significant, but it came via hundreds of small donations rather than via composite checks from Jewish institutions. This had implications for SCLC attempts to
build on the support it tapped during the Birmingham protests. To sustain Jewish
support would entail the cost of numerous individual mailings rather than the more
cost effective sending of the SCLC newsletter to a single institution.
During 1963, Jack O’Dell had been working in SCLC’s New York office. His
main tasks there included refining the mailing lists for appeal letters, which
included incorporating purchased lists of names from “liberal” sources into the list
of past donors. Once the Birmingham clashes had triggered the massive surge in
mailed contributions, O’Dell and his colleagues, notably Adele Kanter, struggled to
ensure that donors received a prompt acknowledgment and that checks were processed quickly. At the same time, O’Dell was trying to refine the appeal letters in
consultation with professional direct mail companies. Jeffery Fuller of the Reply-OLetter Company wrote to the SCLC’s Executive Director in August to check on the
success of an unspecified mail shot that the company had put together for the SCLC
at the start of the year. Fuller mentioned that he continued to work as editor of the
American Civil Liberties Union’s monthly newsletter, indicating that the SCLC was
seeking to draw on the practical experience of other advocacy groups reliant upon
voluntary contributions. Although O’Dell’s work at the SCLC was clearly focused
on the practicalities of fund-raising, his past record as a Communist sympathizer
was all that mattered to the FBI.42
The issue of Communist influence came to the fore in the weeks after Birmingham as the Kennedy administration reluctantly accepted that civil rights legislation
was needed. When King arrived at the Justice Department on 22 June 1963, Assistant Attorney General Burke Marshall urged him to sever ties with O’Dell and Stanley Levison. Later the same morning, Marshall’s boss, Bobby Kennedy made the
same argument, and finally when King went to the White House, President Kennedy took him into the Rose Garden and pointed out that public exposure of King’s
association with O’Dell and Levison could adversely affect efforts to pass a civil
rights bill and damage not just King, but the entire movement. A week later, believing that King was not going to make the break, the FBI leaked materials to friendly
editors, and a story describing O’Dell’s past appeared in the Birmingham News on
30 June. In response, King felt compelled to sack O’Dell and to try to conceal his
continued association with Stanley Levison by conferring with him via intermediaries. O’Dell’s departure was a blow to the already over-stretched office in New York,
and when the departure of Wyatt Tee Walker as executive director followed, any
hope of the SCLC’s running a resilient and systematic fund-raising operation
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The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
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seemed to disappear. The strain of 1963 in terms of protest and fund-raising was
underlined by King’s hospitalization for exhaustion at the end of the year.43
Office managers, Adele Kanter and Ruth Bailey strove hard to keep operations
going, but they never showed the interest in developing a sophisticated, self-perpetuating fund-raising operation that O’Dell had. The FBI’s surveillance team overheard Stanley Levison lamenting that the financial return on mail appeals, which
had been as high as $1 for every letter sent, had fallen to 50 cents by December
1963 and was continuing to fall, being 33 cents by May 1964.44 The SCLC’s overall financial situation in 1963–4 showed an income of $626,758 but expenditures
totaling $677,381. The shortfall was met from reserves. Direct mail appeals continued to provide one-third of SCLC income, as did those mailed contributions that
came in spontaneously. Compared to the previous year, there had been a sharp fall
in money derived from rallies, which now yielded only 11% of the total compared
to nearly 30% in 1962–3. However, the fall was partly due to the correct allocation
of funds received from churches, unions, and fraternal organizations since their contributions rose to 8% of the total as compared to 1.7% the previous year. Similarly,
the lasting effect of the March on Washington was evident in the enhanced income
from the sales of Dr King’s books and recordings, which now comprised 4% of
total income.45 Nevertheless, administrative problems were growing at the SCLC.
Alongside his formal audit of accounts, accountant Jesse Blayton felt morally compelled to write a lengthy letter detailing the multiple failures of the SCLC to implement the practices that he had recommended a year earlier.46
The following year, 1964–5, donations soared due to the huge national outcry
generated by the Selma campaign. The SCLC decided to move its annual convention forward in 1965 and this resulted in hastily created partial accounts for the previous 10-month period (1 September 1964 to 30 June 1965). Despite the shortened
year, Abernathy reported that income was $1,576,171, staying ahead of the SCLC’s
much increased expenditures of $1,429,787. In a far more narrative report than was
usual, he insisted that the SCLC’s considerably expanded staff was modestly paid
and stressed that the bulk of the money raised, over $1 million, had gone into the
twin priorities of voter registration and direct action. He specifically noted the
SCLC’s fund-raising and public relations departments’ coordinated efforts, which
had entailed the mailing of over 2,300,000 appeal letters. This was almost certainly
said to mollify those Board members or supporters who would gasp at the reported
expenditure of over $130,000 on fund-raising and special promotions. After all, as
recently as 1960–1, SCLC total expenditures had been barely $139,000. The
recorded expenditure also showed that the falling yield per direct mail item, which
had worried Levison in May 1964, continued. By July 1965, the return stood at
around 11 cents per letter.47 It also confirms that despite the appearance that the
SCLC automatically profited from high-profile campaigns such as Birmingham and
Selma, the undeniable clamor had to be directed and cultivated into actual donations
by the SCLC, and this entailed costs.
In the years that followed, the SCLC made repeated, but largely unsuccessful,
efforts to rein in costs; each department within the organization was required to file
its own budget and to monitor costs on a monthly basis. The gap between income
and expenditure nevertheless continued to grow. King’s decisions to campaign in
Chicago against northern racial injustices and to speak out sharply against the Vietnam War also alienated contributors so that in the months leading up to his death in
April 1968, the SCLC was an organization in financial crisis. However, rather than
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P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
ascribing these difficulties exclusively to King’s policy decisions in the wake of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, it is important to place them in the context of the financial transformation of the SCLC in the three months that followed the dramatic Birmingham clashes of May 1963.
In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King had defended his nonviolent strategy. In particular, he spoke of the “creative tension” that the nonviolent demonstrations had generated in order to elicit both local negotiations with the white civic
leaders in Birmingham, and more importantly, bolder federal action in the form of
the civil rights bill introduced in June 1963. However, as King looked back on the
lessons of the Birmingham campaign, he could not fail to recognize as well that
public revulsion at segregationist brutality had also generated financial support on a
scale the SCLC had never experienced before. As he toured the country in the
weeks following the Birmingham clashes, the press reported the enthusiastic crowds
that he attracted and frequently gave details of the money given at specific events.
Although the SCLC attempted to publicize the enormous legal costs associated with
the Birmingham campaign, this could not eradicate the perception that Dr King’s
organization was enjoying a financial windfall.48 Within the African American
press, there was gossip about where all this money was actually going, although
usually the articles rebuked the rumor-mongers.49
The SCLC’s financial situation had been transformed by the public response to
the Birmingham campaign, although it had worked hard to capitalize on that
response. The response was most manifest among three groups – African American
churches, Jewish liberals, and organized labor – and the SCLC provided these sympathizers with ways to contribute via mail appeals and rallies. Contributors gave in
reaction to what they had seen, and via the opportunities the SCLC provided. But
in the majority of cases, the SCLC was unable to convert a one-time gift into a lasting commitment to the work of the SCLC. The direct mail appeals to previous contributors did not provide a continuing, reliable source of funds for future years. As
the lists of past contributors grew in number, the cost of mailings increased but the
return per item mailed, fell. To the dismay of rival civil rights groups such as
SNCC and CORE, King’s high public profile meant that their activities, such as
Freedom Summer, could yield donations to the SCLC, but to generate major surges
in contributions, the SCLC had to have its own protests (as Selma confirmed in
1965) as well as extensive publicity for its fund-raising calls. The Birmingham protests in this sense not only provided the strategic model for the SCLC’s subsequent
protests in terms of coercive nonviolence, but also established a volatile pattern of
fund-raising on which the SCLC precariously depended. While moderate civil rights
groups like the NAACP and Urban League sustained themselves through corporate
sponsorship and philanthropic grants, direct action groups like the SCLC were reliant on media coverage as a means of triggering fresh waves of potential contributors who they then had to corral. They had learned how to channel this response
more effectively through their fund-raising operations, but without dramatic spectacles to spark contributions, their income languished. The financial transformation of
the SCLC did not alter its aims in terms of its pursuit of racial justice, but the failure of its fund-raising professionalization efforts deepened its dependency on the
means of spectacular direct action.
The SCLC’s financial buoyancy during the summer of 1963 also signaled a new
point in the struggle. The change was evident in the national political mood, in the
spread of insurgency in communities north and south, and in the readiness of peo-
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The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture
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ple to give. At that moment, many more Americans than before wanted to feel a
part of the civil rights movement. This desire prompted them to send donations, to
attend rallies, to write letters, to volunteer, and in the case of nearly a quarter of a
million of them, to march on Washington. The donations they gave and the rallies
they attended were not solely related to the SCLC. All of the civil rights groups
were swept up in the energy of this moment. Yet while rich in promise, the moment
was intrinsically unstable; neither moment nor movement would simply continue.
The work of raising money, like the more heroic work of registering voters in the
Deep South or confronting discrimination in the northern ghettos, would occur in a
dynamic context that could launch or destroy social movements. The struggle would
be long, and within it, the movements would be protean.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of the Arts & Humanities Research Council of the
UK. Research Grant 119155 and Economic & Social Research Council Grant 451-25-4037.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement.”
Arnesen, “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement’.”
Cha-Jua and Lang, “The ‘Long Movement’ as Vampire”, 284.
Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots.”
For Birmingham, see Eskew, But for Birmingham; Branch, Pillar of Fire; McWhorter,
Carry Me Home; and Thornton, Dividing Lines. The Birmingham campaign is also
extensively treated in Garrow, Birmingham, Alabama, 1956–1963 and his Bearing the
Cross. There is also a literature on the campaign’s significance as an example of nonviolent protest: see Morris, “Birmingham Confrontation Reconsidered” and Colaiaco, “Martin Luther King and the Paradox.” For the March on Washington, see Gentile, March on
Washington and Bass, Like a Mighty Stream. For a sample of discussions of the “I Have
a Dream” speech, see Sundquist, King’s Dream; Miller, Voice of Deliverance; Hansen,
The Dream; and Jones, Behind the Dream.
See McCarthy and Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements;” Jenkins,
“Resource Mobilization;” and Polletta and Jasper, “Collective Identity and Social Movements.”
Morris, Origins of the Civil Rights Movement; McAdam, Political Process.
Luders, The Civil Rights Movement and the Logic of Social Change, 97.
Haines, “Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights;” Marger, “Social Movement Organizations.” Haines expanded his analysis in Black Radicals and the Civil
Rights Mainstream.
Jenkins and Eckert, “Channeling Black Insurgency.”
This article was written before cataloguing was completed on SCLC materials purchased
by Emory University in Atlanta. The finders’ guide made available in May 2012 indicates that further financial records have survived so that the archival record for the years
after 1963 is better than King Center records would indicate. The approximately 50
boxes of records in the Emory collection also indicate the scale of the work involved in
tabulating these data.
Belafonte gives some account of his efforts in My Song: A Memoir, 150, 251, 254, 258.
Jones, Behind the Dream, 73–7.
Allen, Black Awakening in Capitalist America; Hutchinson, The Myth of Black Capitalism; and Marable, Black American Politics.
For VEP, see Lawson, Black Ballots and Schmitt, President of the Other America, 47.
The receipts are in ring-binder receipt books ordered numerically in Boxes 66 to 68 of
the SCLC Papers in the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in
Atlanta. They were not included in the microfilmed SCLC Papers. Receipts for 1963 run
from receipt number 19611 to 42018 (22,407 receipts), but voided entries and gaps in
162
17.
18.
Downloaded by [University of Nottingham], [Peter Ling] at 08:32 11 December 2012
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
P.J. Ling and J. Duffy
the record mean that only 17,823 active records exist. References below give the receipt
number for specific donation.
Treasurers’ Report Fiscal Year Ending 31 August 1962 in Records of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, 1954–70, Part 2: Records of the Executive Director
and Treasurer (microfilm:1995), [hereafter referred to as SCLC Papers part 2] reel 18
sheet 273–8.
Treasurers Report Fiscal Year Ending 31 August 1963 in SCLC Papers part 2 reel 18
sheet 300; the proposed budget for 1963 is in SCLC Papers part 2 reel 18 314–15.
Treasurer’s Report for the 1st Quarter: 1 September 1962–30 November 1962, SCLC
Papers part 2 reel 18: 288–9 and Treasurer’s Report for the 2nd Quarter: 1 December
1962–28 February 1963, SCLC Papers part 2 reel 18: 290–1.
This is likely to be an under-estimate of the total actually received since the last receipt
for July is dated 12 July and there is a gap of 949 receipts unaccounted for before the
sequence resumes on 7 August. Nevertheless, it seems to represent most of the more
than $617,000 of declared income assigned to the last two quarters of 1962–3.
“Display Ad 137,” New York Times, May 7, 1963, 34.
Katagiri, The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.
For the Boston school desegregation battle, see Theoharis, “‘I’d Rather Go to School in
the South’.” For the northern struggles more generally, see Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty. Philadelphia represents a particularly indicative case study of rising northern racial
unrest: see Countryman, Up South.
“Dr King Overwhelms 15,000 Clevelanders,” Cleveland Call & Post, May 18, 1963,
1A.
“Martin Luther King to My Dear Brother-in-Christ,” 2 May 1963, SCLC Papers Part 1:
Records of the President’s Office, microfilm, reel 7, 387; “Martin Luther King to Dear
Pastor,” 10 May 1963, SCLC Papers Part 1: reel 7, 388.
The $25,000 check was sent by the rally coordinator African American Attorney Thomas G. Neusom (receipt no. 30718); see his cover letter SCLC Papers Part 2 reel 22,
22–3.
The two checks from the DCHR are receipted at 35022 and 35628 in SCLC Papers
Treasurers Records Box 67. Reverend Franklin’s role is examined in Salvatore, Singing
in a Strange Land.
The UAW had itself contributed $40,000 and had pressed other American Federation of
Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) unions to raise the remaining
$120,000 demanded by Birmingham city authorities in cash bail bonds before they
would release the arrested young demonstrators; see Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of
American Liberalism, 169–70.
For the role of Battle and other black UAW leaders in Detroit’s political battles, see
Buffa, Union Power and American Democracy.
Receipts sent care of Buddy Battle: SCLC Treasurers Records Box 67: receipt numbers
34827–33; 34835; 34839; 34842–5; 34847; 34851–5; 34984–7; 34990–1; 35000; 35003;
35006–7; 35009.
Local 3’s donation of $430 at the Detroit rally is receipt 35552. UAW Region 9 in New
York sent a check for $1,000 (receipt 35144). In mid-May, after the Cleveland rally, the
Ohio city’s Fisher Body Local 45 gave $520 (receipt 27684). Local 26 boosted the Suffolk rally in Virginia with a gift of $1000 (receipt 35145). All in SCLC Treasurers
Records Box 67.
For the local civil rights movement in St Louis and its class components, see Lang,
Grassroots at the Gateway.
St Louis Globe-Democrat, 29 May 1963, 1 column F, continuing page 6 column A.
For Sachs’ donations, see SCLC Treasurers Records, Box 67 receipt numbers 32897–
906; 32908–9; 32913–14; and 32916–19.
For Tuskegee rally, see SCLC Treasurers Records, Box 67 receipt numbers 33534;
33550–624; and 33886–97.
In Virginia, the rally was held at Suffolk. In Tennessee there was a mass meeting in
Memphis, and in DC, there was a rally sponsored by local Baptist churches.
“Birmingham Story Enrages New York,” Amsterdam News, May 11, 1963, 1 and 46.
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38. Forty-one donations are clearly linked to the “Back our Brothers” campaign. The
$10,000 check from Marder’s business address is receipted at SCLC Treasurers Records
Box 67, receipt 35173 on 3 July.
39. “Birmingham Story Enrages New York,” Amsterdam News, May 11, 1963, p.1, column
7. It should be noted that the existing receipts record only a minority of the reported
donations; for example Mrs Morgan’s for $250 at SCLC Treasurers Records Box 66,
receipt number 26750.
40. Bowman was eventually on the NY state supreme court (receipt 26742), attorney Chance
was president of the Harlem Taxpayers and Property Owners Association (receipt
26743), Assemblyman Dickens was an important ally of Adam Clayton Powell in the
late 1950s (receipt 26792) and helped to found the New Era Democratic Club (receipt
26753) that gave Harlem politico Percy Sutton his start. YMCA branches donating
included the McBurney branch on W. 23rd Street (34693) the Sloane House branch on
W. 34th Street (34698), the Westchester-Bronx branch (34694) as well as the Greater
New York consortium (34697). The Y donations were small totaling $35. All receipts in
SCLC Treasurers Records, Boxes 66 and 67.
41. Mrs Garfinkle herself gave two checks of $234 and $34 and mailed in 12 more from
friends (hers: SCLC Treasurers Records, Box 67 35192–3; her friends: 35175; 35177;
35179–83; 35185–9; and 35191).
42. “Letter, Jeffery E. Fuller to Wyatt T. Walker” (23 August 1963), SCLC Records Part 1
President’s Papers reel 7; for O’Dell’s work at SCLC, see interview notes, Taylor Branch
Papers, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
43. Garrow, FBI and Martin Luther King, 58–62.
44. Memo dated 19 May 1964, in Garrow, The Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI Files, microform reel 3 section 12.
45. Annual Financial Report 1963–4, SCLC Papers Part 2 reel 22: 71–6.
46. Fiscal Affairs of the Home Office, Southern Christian Leadership Conference Home
Office Atlanta, SCLC Papers Part 2 reel 18: 330–6.
47. “Financial Report Submitted to the Ninth Annual Convention of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference,” SCLC Papers 2 reel 18: 395.
48. “$300,000 Spent for Freedom Fight,” Baltimore Afro-American, 1 June, 1963, 12;
“SCLC Seeks Post Retraction on Dr. King Feature,” Atlanta World, 14 June, 1963, 7.
49. A.S. ‘Doc’ Young, “Negroes Here Speak Out,” Los Angeles Sentinel, 13 June, 1963, B1
and B4.
Notes on contributors
Peter J. Ling is Professor of American Studies in the Department of American & Canadian
Studies at the University of Nottingham. He is the author of Martin Luther King (2002) and
is currently completing a biography of John F. Kennedy.
Dr Johannah Duffy was research fellow on the AHRC funded project “Social Capital and
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference” between 2007 and 2009. She was
responsible for preparing the database on which this article is based.
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