Social movements as schooling for careers: career consequences of the Nashville civil rights movement

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on social movement schools shows that movements often facilitate the schooling of their participants, while scholarship on the biographical consequences of social movements demonstrates that movements influence their participants’ subsequent careers. To date, however, few studies consider whether and how the schooling functions of social movements shape participants’ later careers. In this article, through a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of the careers of 23 student participants in the Nashville civil rights movement of 1958–1961, we show that participants who enrolled in James Lawson’s workshops in nonviolence and who served in the core cadre of the movement’s Student Central Committee – two important forms of social movement schooling – pursued careers in organizing and electoral politics. In contrast, participants who did not enroll in Lawson’s workshops and who were not part of the core cadre of the Student Central Committee tended to pursue careers as social service workers or businesspeople. The article extends our knowledge of the impacts of social movement schools and suggests directions for future research on the biographical consequences of social movements.

KEYWORDS:

• Social movements
• civil rights movement
• social movement schools
• biographical consequences
• work and occupations; Nashville

Acknowledgments

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 thank the following people who played important roles in the project: Kathy Conkwright (videography), Roosevelt Noble (videography); Cathy Kaiser (interview transcription); Stephanie Pruitt (Center for Nashville Studies, Vanderbilt University); and students in several Vanderbilt University seminars.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example, Isaac et al. (2016, pp. 167–170) show that participants in Lawson’s workshops reported a greater level of activity in the Nashville movement than people who only participated in one-off workshops organized at venues such as the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee.

2. The concept of habitus is closely associated with the work of Bourdieu (1990) and has been extended to social movement studies by Crossley (2002), who defines habitus as ‘perceptual and linguistic schemas, performances and desires, know-how, forms of competence and other such dispositions’ that can orient activists in their social movement pursuits (pp. 171–172).

3. Although Lawson followed a pathway similar to Lafayette and Vivian and pursued a lifelong career in organizing, we do not include him in this student subsample given his role as a teacher and mentor, rather than a student and mentee, in the Nashville movement.

4. We also considered alternative explanations, such as whether participants were able to leverage social capital they acquired through the movement in future job searches. We did not find much support for this alternative explanation, although Burks-Brooks did go into business with her spouse whom she met through the movement.

Additional information

Funding

We 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.

Notes on contributors

Jonathan S. Coley

Jonathan S. Coley is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oklahoma State University and Deputy Editor of The Sociological Quarterly. His research focuses on social movements, politics, religion, and sexuality. His book Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2018. He has also published articles in journals such as Social Forces, Socius, Social Currents, Mobilization, and Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Change.

Daniel B. Cornfield

Daniel B. Cornfield is Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University and Editor-in-Chief of Work and Occupations. He is the author of Beyond the Beat: Musicians Building Community in Nashville (2015) and Becoming a Mighty Voice: Conflict and Change in the United Furniture Workers of America (1989) and is working on a book with Larry Isaac, Dennis Dickerson, and the Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. on the origins and impact of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement.

Larry W. Isaac

Larry W. Isaac is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies, and Chair of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. He is past editor of the American Sociological Review and past president of the Southern Sociological Society. Larry is the author of numerous articles on political processes, social movements, historical sociology, and social change. He is currently working on a co-authored book on the Nashville civil rights movement (with Dan Cornfield, Dennis Dickerson, and James M. Lawson, Jr.).

Dennis C. Dickerson

Dennis C. Dickerson is the Reverend James M. Lawson Chair in History at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Out of the Crucible: Black Steelworkers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875-1980 (1986), Militant Mediator: Whitney M. Young, Jr. (1998), and African American Preachers and Politics: The Careys of Chicago (2010). Cambridge University Press published his newest book, The African Methodist Episcopal Church, in 2019.