Date of Award

4-2018

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

First Advisor

Andrew Feffer

Language

English

Keywords

housing discrimination, employment discrimination, education discrimination, northern civil rights movement, Albany, police brutality, black organizations

Abstract

The North has a conflicted racial history, as it disapproved of slavery and Jim Crow, but kept blacks segregated institutionally and socially. Blacks have been marginalized and excluded from housing, employment, and educational opportunities throughout history, and demanded equality during the Civil Rights Movement. Fighting systematic racism in the North posed greater challenges for blacks, as northerners denied the existence of discrimination, and segregation was not legally enforced. Revolutionary groups strategized ways to overcome oppression, but were targeted by the police, government, and local politicians to prevent them from succeeding. The Brothers, a black male organization in Albany, NY, used peaceful, effective methods to combat discrimination between 1967‐1971. They ran for local office, scheduled community meetings, delegated with city council on neighborhood issues, established job training programs, helped locals improve their housing conditions through legal action, and created an after school tutoring program, all of which was described in their newspaper, The Albany Liberator. However, The Brothers faced increasing police brutality and pressure from the Albany machine, the notoriously corrupt city government. The machine excluded blacks from city employment, trade unions, public housing, and urban renewal. Years of oppression caused racial tensions to rise in Albany during the late 1960s, but the Brothers maintained that blacks would overcome systematic racism through entering politics, educating themselves, and using available resources. Though not nationally recognized, the Brothers were a model organization for blacks in the Civil Rights Movement.

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