How Movements (Sometimes) Move: Base-Mission, Traveling Cadre, and Spatial Extension of the Nashville Civil Rights Movement
ISBN: 978-1-83797-934-9, eISBN: 978-1-83797-933-2
Publication date: 4 July 2024
Abstract
Knowledge of how social movements move, diffuse, and expand collective action events is central to movement scholarship and activist practice. Our purpose is to extend sociological knowledge about how movements (sometimes) diffuse and amplify insurgent actions, that is, how movements move. We extend movement diffusion theory by drawing a conceptual analogue with military theory and practice applied to the case of the organized and highly disciplined nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We emphasize emplacement in a base-mission extension model whereby a movement base is built in a community establishing a social movement school for inculcating discipline and performative training in cadre who engage in insurgent operations extended from that base to outlying events and campaigns. Our data are drawn from secondary sources and semi-structured interviews conducted with participants of the Nashville civil rights movement. The analytic strategy employs a variant of the “extended case method,” where extension is constituted by movement agents following paths from base to outlying campaigns or events. Evidence shows that the Nashville movement established an exemplary local movement base that led to important changes in that city but also spawned traveling movement cadre who moved movement actions in an extensive series of pathways linking the Nashville base to events and campaigns across the southern theater of the civil rights movement. We conclude with theoretical and practical implications.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgement
The first author acknowledges research support from the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Endowment, College of Arts & Science, Vanderbilt University, and we thank Logan Cromeens for helpful research assistance. We are deeply grateful to all interviewees, veterans of the southern civil rights movement, who gave so generously of their time and knowledge of “the movement.” Without them, so much would have been impossible including this project. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies, Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science, the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt endowment, and Vanderbilt Commons. We thank the following people who played important roles in the project: Kathy Conkwright (videography), Rosevelt Noble (videography), Cathy Kaiser (interview transcription), Stephanie Pruitt (Center for Nashville Studies, Vanderbilt University), and students in several Vanderbilt University seminars. This paper was initially prepared for presentation in the “Social Movement Strategies and Tactics” session of the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, 2022. Direct all correspondence to: Larry.Isaac@vanderbilt.edu. (ORCID: 0000-0003-2961-7509).
Citation
Isaac, L.W., Cornfield, D.B. and Dickerson, D.C. (2024), "How Movements (Sometimes) Move: Base-Mission, Traveling Cadre, and Spatial Extension of the Nashville Civil Rights Movement", Leitz, L. (Ed.) Strategies and Outcomes (Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, Vol. 48), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 11-38. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-786X20240000048002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Larry W. Isaac, Daniel B. Cornfield and Dennis C. Dickerson. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited