Civil Rights Movement Theories

Years after the movement to obtain civil rights for black people in the United States made its most important gains, scholars are reaching for a theoretical perspective capable of clarifying its momentous developments. New theories of social social psychologists, but also among political theorists.

Of the many competing formulations of the “classical” social psychological theory of social movement, three are prominent in the literature on the civil rights movement: “rising expectations,” “relative deprivation,” and “J-curve.” Each conforms to a causal sequence characteristic of classical social movement theory, linking some unusual condition, or “system strain,” to the black socioeconomic status that occurred shortly before the widespread protest activity of the movement.

For example, the theory of rising expectations asserts that protest activity was a response to psychological tensions generated by gains experienced immediately prior to the civil rights movement. Advancement did not satisfy ambition, but created the desire for further advancement. Only slightly different is the theory of relative deprivation. Here the impetus occurred because a prolonged period of rising expectations and gratification was followed by a sharp reversal.

Political theorists have been dismissive of these applications of classical theory to the civil rights movement. Their arguments rest on the conviction that, implicitly, the classical theory trivializes the political ends of movement participants, focusing rather on presumed psychological dysfunctions; reduction of complex social situations to simple paradigms of stimulus and response but social movement is not. How can we know which strain will provoke upheaval?

These very legitimate complaints having frequently been made, it remains to find a means of testing the strength of the theories. Problematically, while proponents of the various theories have contradictory interpretations of socioeconomic conditions leading to the civil rights movement, examination of various statistical records regarding the material status of black Americans reported in the press; unsurprisingly, none correlates significantly with the pace of reports about movement activity.