Black Leadership Matters: An Organizational and Political Comparison of Black Lives Matter and the Civil Rights Movement

ABSTRACT

As the Black Lives Matter movement develops and seeks policy change, the movement has received comparisons to the civil rights era of the 1960s. This paper compares the two movements’ organizational structures and leadership. Using the civil rights era as a test case, I provide theoretical and empirical arguments about the challenges faced by Black Lives Matter and suggest that the movement would benefit from a more formalized hierarchical structure. I conclude that the likelihood of political success depends upon a social movement organization’s leadership, whose capacity for articulating goals, identifying opportunities, accessing policymakers, and maintaining authority within the organization impacts political responsiveness.

KEYWORDS:

• Black lives matter
• civil rights movement
• leadership
• organization theory
• social movements

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John C. Koehler

John C. Koehler is an assistant professor of political science and public administration at Texas A&M University-Central Texas. His research and teaching interests include American politics, presidency, elections, constitutional law, political theory, and foreign policy. Dr. Koehler is a graduate of Auburn University (PhD 2016), Florida State University (MA 2009), and Florida Atlantic University (BA 2007).