THIS PROJECT IS BASED PRIMARILY on extensive archival research of several different collections of organizational records and personal papers of social work organizations and professionals. I also benefited from the generosity of a few individual social workers who shared papers from their personal collections, and was fortunate to be able to collect oral histories from some key figures in the development of Black Power mobilization within social work. In addition, I conducted participant observation at NABSW conferences to get a sense of how the historical legacy of the organization’s founding shapes the contemporary organization and analyzed secondary sources for historical organizations on other professions. I used theory guided process tracing (TGPT) to examine the ways in which movement gains became institutionalized within formal organizations (Aminzade 1993).
TGPT as a method requires that researchers construct “theoretically explicit narratives that carefully trace and compare the sequences of events constituting the process” under examination (Aminzade 1993:108). These narratives “allow us to capture the unfolding of social action over time in a manner sensitive to the order in which events occur. By making the theories that underpin our narratives more explicit, we avoid the danger of burying our explanatory principles in engaging stories.” Aminzade (1993) also argues that comparing sequences allows us to explore whether there are similar sequences across cases and to examine the “causes and consequences of different sequence patterns” (108). In this research project, I both traced the process of movement institutionalization and used the strategy of comparing cases to uncover the causal mechanisms that led to different outcomes in the two organizational movements.
The focus on organizational processes is particularly well-suited to historical sociological research. As Skocpol (1987) points out, “social relationships are the key objects of research, as embodied in networks, communities, associations, or large-scale complex organizations.” It is through these “concrete, relational units,” she continues, “that lived experiences and structural transformations meet.” These are the processes that are most amenable to historical sociological methods. This project seeks to explore this development by understanding how the intense transformation brought on by the civil rights and Black Power movements affected relationships and processes within the profession of social work to understand how institutional change occurs—or fails to occur—after a movement wave creates social change.
What I found is that institutional change happens because the struggle continues. All Americans were not willing, enthusiastic participants in the rights revolution and were certainly not interested in anything called “Black Power.” Black people embedded in social institutions had to continue to push the contexts of their lives to catch up to the new black identity being forged in the Black Power revolution. Their stories are at least partially told in the documents of organizations, in the meeting takeovers, in the letters between colleagues, in the transcripts of meetings and conferences, and in the newsletters and announcements they produced. These stories are an important part of how real change happens, or at least has the potential to happen, when a powerful social movement grips a society.
In order to trace the process of movement institutionalization in these cases, I carefully analzyed both organization-level and personal papers. Many of the collections I utilized are exceptionally complete and contain many different kinds of documents. I relied most heavily on the minutes or complete transcripts of committee meetings, staff meetings, special meetings, conferences, and training courses. I also studied written correspondence such as letters and memos, news clippings, publications (i.e. organization newsletters and mailings), written statements, and “sense of meeting” documents. I supplemented the official collections of organization and personal papers with the private (published and unpublished) collections of black social workers active during the period under examination.
Starting from a set of theoretical and conceptual ideas, I developed questions about the empirical case. Then, by scouring finding aids and through in-depth conversations with archivists, I made decisions about which boxes and folders to examine. I spent over a year exploring and re-exploring documents, starting with a preliminary scan of the relevant collections and creating a descriptive database system with FileMaker Pro to categorize each relevant document with a summary. I also photocopied hundreds of documents so that I would have my own personal “mini-collection” of sorts related to issues of race, social movements, and organizational change. Lastly, I took great care to engage the iterative relationship between my theoretical conceptions and what I could actually observe in the archives in order to feel confident that the questions I was asking, or what I was looking for, would help me to reach my project’s objectives before beginning the data collection in earnest. The database template is the outcome of that process.
Figure Ap.1 is a screenshot of the FileMaker Pro record template that is the result of my preliminary research, which allowed me to refine the descriptive and analytical categories I was interested in. The database allowed me to record the location of the document, check relevant categories, provide a summary, indicate whether I had a copy available, and specify what kind of document it was (e.g. minutes, letter, brochure, etc.). I also had space to provide initial thoughts and interpretations on the document. By the end of my research, I had a searchable database of hundreds of documents with a reference to it archival location and/or its location in my mini-collection.
Once the database and photocopies of relevant documents was complete, I conducted both inductive and deductive coding of the archival sources. The documents were analyzed by organizing them temporally, by organization, and by topic. This process tracing method involved creating timelines of “events” (e.g. meetings, speeches, mailings, letters, etc.) that related to issues of civil rights, Black Power, race in general, and/or dissent by black social workers for each organization to get a handle on what actually happened. Then, I reread the timelines more closely for recurring themes, ideas, and issues related to the topic at hand over time to decide how to organize the narrative and decide whether (and how) my analytic frames—relating to organizational theory, social movements, and race relations—related to the data.
FIGURE AP.1 FileMaker Pro record template.
While my main data sources were primary documents, I also conducted oral history interviews with prominent activists in the movements under examination. I used these histories to triangulate findings, check facts and interpretations, and to shed light on participant perceptions. The interviews lasted between two and three hours, and covered respondents’ recollections of their involvement and the trajectory of their work in the NABSW and the NFS. I followed a simple interview guide to help the respondents recall specific events or issues. For the most part, however, the interviews involved long stretches of storytelling about the events from that period in their life. In all of the interviews, we also engaged in useful dialogue about the project itself and my interpretations of the events that they had been involved in.
Historians and social scientists alike have contested the merits of using oral history as a research method, but I believe that the method is particularly useful in triangulating data from archival sources when participants are available. In this way, oral histories are used less as a record of social fact than as a barometer of the validity of written sources. Though critics have argued that human memory is an imperfect record of the past, as Alessandro Portelli (1991) notes, “oral sources are credible, but with different credibility. The importance of oral testimony may lie not in its adherence to fact, but rather in its departure from it, as imagination, symbolism, and desire emerge. Therefore, there are no ‘false’ oral sources” (68).
Despite the potential pitfalls of oral histories, their use in this project has been extremely valuable. While the recollection of a few activists isn’t enough to analyze the development of a movement, it was critical for me to have their memory as a check against what I was seeing in the archives and my own interpretation of their thinking at the time. For example, my sense throughout the analysis of the primary documents was that these movements were very much male-centered and that there was some level of tension between men and women. In asking activists about the relationship between men and women during these campaigns, it became clear that, indeed, this was the case. Dr. Better would personally confirm this by discussing the fact that relations had seemed somewhat egalitarian in her recollection, except that women were never considered for leadership positions. It was important to me to verify if mentions of a demand for male leadership were, in this case, actually indicative of a larger gendered process in the movements. The oral history interviews provided that verification.
Moreover, while human memory provides an imperfect record of human history, when the question at hand is about participant’s feelings, perceptions, or reactions during historical events, sometimes memory is all we have. Therefore, there are questions for which there are no other sources but recollection. One case in point was that I had very little record of how TCM activists responded to Walter Smart after he was hired as associate director or once he was promoted to executive director. Only through my conversation with Dr. Karanja, who when asked what they thought of him said that they perceived him to be a “company man,” could I confirm what had been little more than an educated assumption on my part. Further, oral histories helped me to get a handle on what social workers at the time saw as important to explain the emergence of their movement. For example, all of the social workers I interviewed singled out the urban rebellions in the late 1960s as central forces in the impetus to organize.
In all, this methodological approach provided important insights into organizational dynamics during the period under examination. As organizational actors were navigating the tumult of uncertainty presented by both external and internal movement dynamics, they were constantly reviewing, reflecting, adjusting, and readjusting. Documents and the imperfect human memory cannot tell all, but it is possible to catch a glimpse of these processes through them. Organizational records do provide a story (though certainly not the only story) about organizational change. Through careful process tracing and strategic narrative construction analysts can piece together a picture of conflict in organizations. It has been my intention to do this as accurately as possible for the cases at hand.
ARCHIVAL SOURCES
Garland Jaggers Document Collection, published as an appendix to Jaggers 2003.
Lexis-Nexis Black Power Microfilm Series, accessed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Margaret Berry Personal Papers, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.
National Association of Social Workers and Predecessor Organizations, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.
National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers Records, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.
Shirley Better Personal Papers, Private Collection.
Verne Weed Collection for Progressive Social Work, Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota.
ORAL HISTORY RESPONDENTS
Shirley Better
Jay Chunn
Douglas Glasgow
Garland Jaggers
Sokoni Karanja (formerly Lathan Johnson)
ORAL HISTORY GUIDING QUESTIONS
Tell me a little bit about how you got into social work.
What was it like being a social worker during the civil rights era?
How do you think the Black Power movement affected social workers?
How did you get involved with the NABSW/TCM?
Why did you become president of the organization? (if applicable)
What were the major issues of concern during your presidency? (if applicable)
What is your take on why the NABSW/TCM was started?
What were the conflicts with mainstream social work that lead to the founding?
What were the conflicts between black social workers themselves about these issues?
Were the disagreements about issues or tactics?
Would you say there were disagreements between men and women?
Did most black social workers see themselves as activists during this period?
Was the profession in general leaning towards more social action or not?
In addition to forming new organizations, what other ways did black social workers challenge the profession?
In retrospect, how do you think the activism of black social workers within the profession changed social work as a whole, or did it?
Would you be open to follow up questions if they arise?
Anything else you want to tell me about this time in your life?
