Conservative Currents in Black America: Grassroots Struggles Against “Black-on-Black Crime” and the Urban Crisis Post-1960s

Chanelle Rose is a professor of History at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. She specializes in Modern American history with particular emphasis on African American history, post-WWII America, Civil Rights-Black Power, tourism, conservatism, and urban history. Rose is a a 2025 recipient of Rose Library’s African American History and Culture Visiting Researcher Fellowship. 

There is a long history of distrust and suspicion toward African American conservatives within the Black community. Historically, they have been viewed as anomalies at best and “race traitors” at worst. Some might argue that, over the past few years, Black conservatism has become an increasingly politically charged term in parts of the Black community—especially since the election of President Donald Trump. His support from controversial Black figures like rapper and producer Kanye West or conservative author and podcast host Candace Owens has ostensibly deepened the hostility toward this political ideology. However, popular and simplistic views of Black conservatism often overlook its multilayered roots and complexities.

My current book project, tentatively titled Beyond Boundaries: Black Grassroots Conservatism and the Post-WWII Urban Crisis, 1960s–1990s, examines how the urban crisis serves as a critical lens for understanding the rise of conservative populism in Black-majority cities from the late 1960s through the 1990s. It challenges the prevailing narrative that conservatism in the African American community during the second half of the twentieth century was embraced exclusively by self-identified Black Republicans or intellectuals. Instead, the project highlights how a diverse array of grassroots actors—such as anticrime neighborhood groups, public housing activists, welfare recipients, and pro–school choice parents—emerged as both agents and symbols of Black conservative populism.

This project shifts the spotlight away from celebrities and more familiar figures like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or economist Thomas Sowell.  It foregrounds the activism of everyday people, particularly low-income Black women, who responded to a real crisis gripping their communities—rising crime, distressed public housing, inadequate education, poverty, and perceived welfare dependency. They embraced a form of conservatism rooted in empowerment through self-help, personal accountability, and entrepreneurship, viewing these as the most effective solutions to the challenges they faced. Many of the historical actors in my work criticized government bureaucracy and paternalism, but they also recognized the state’s potential role in improving their conditions and providing opportunities for self-sufficiency.

During my brief but meaningful research at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Book Library, I focused primarily on the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) records. The manuscript collection contained extensive information on the SCLC’s crusade against intracommunity violence, including pamphlets from their “Stop the Killing/End the Violence Campaign,” launched in February 1991. One pamphlet’s front page featured a bold headline: “(What We Must Do) Let Us TURN TO EACH OTHER, NOT ON EACH OTHER.” [1]  Additional campaign materials issued urgent calls to national government agencies, youth leaders, advocacy groups, and grassroots organizations “to take proactive initiatives to end the violent genocide of our people.”[2]

During the early to mid-1990s, the SCLC organized emergency summits on drugs and violence, created a Black-on-Black Crime Task Force on Violence and Spirituality, launched a gun buyback initiative, and established the Wings of Hope Anti-Drug Program. Some summit workshops on legislative issues explored the possibility of holding parents legally responsible for their children’s possession of weapons, as well as tougher penalties for juveniles who committed violent crimes. A letter from the Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta expressed outrage over the lenient sentences given to three young Black men convicted of murdering Black victims. While condemning the plea bargains for devaluing Black life, the letter clarified: “We are not advocating that young Black men be locked up for longer periods of time. What we are advocating is what God advocates—that Black life is just as sacred as White life.”[3]

The SCLC collection will significantly strengthen the second chapter of my book, titled The Contested and Forgotten War on “Black-on-Black Crime,” 1970s–1990s. In this chapter, I argue that Black anticrime advocates promoted a form of grassroots conservatism that emphasized individual behavior, tough-on-crime measures, and increased police protection. At the same time, they acknowledged the structural forces—or root causes—that contributed to crime, called for “law and order with justice,” and supported punitive policies that stressed personal accountability for African American perpetrators as a means of affirming the humanity of Black victims, particularly women and children. To date, most of my research for this chapter has focused on the period from the 1960s to the early 1980s, so the SCLC records offer valuable insight into the evolving nature of the crisis and grassroots responses in the 1990s.

Some of the major themes in the SCLC collection emphasize internal solutions to intracommunity violence, particularly those centered on personal responsibility and accountability. Notably, the aforementioned letter from African American clergy in Atlanta reveals anticrime activists’ frustration with the criminal justice system’s leniency toward Black offenders who committed crimes against Black victims. SCLC president Joseph Lowery similarly demanded justice for victims of Black-on-Black violence, but he strongly opposed Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson’s punitive approach to crime. In a letter to Jackson, Lowery criticized the mayor’s request for the state legislature to implement mandatory prison sentences and enforce the death penalty for individuals involved in illegal drug or gun sales as a strategy to reduce violent crime. Lowery voiced his firm opposition to both capital punishment and Jackson’s decision to convene an anticrime conference dominated by law enforcement officials. This tension between the civil rights establishment and Black urban mayors like Jackson highlights the emergence of a more conservative, neoliberal approach to crime among municipal Black leadership. While Black urban mayors often embraced market-driven strategies to revitalize declining central cities—sometimes at odds with the interests of their low-income constituents—a small but important number of inner-city residents supported their hardline policies on crime.

I also consulted materials from the Leon Sullivan Papers to further explore the deep-rooted self-help tradition within the Black community, a philosophy that gained renewed traction in the 1980s. In 1968, Reverend Sullivan delivered a speech titled “New Trends in the Development of Self-Help in the Inner City,” reflecting the era’s ethos of Black capitalism. He advocated for “people-led” and “people-developed” self-help programs in urban communities, asserting that such initiatives “cannot be superimposed on the people.” He urged Black urban residents, particularly those confined to the ghettos, to cultivate “Skill Power and Green Power, to break through the economic barriers that surround them.”[4] As the nation shifted to the right in the 1970s and 1980s, these ideas resonated with low-income Blacks seeking alternative ways to address the decline of postindustrial inner cities grappling with crime, drugs, and poverty.

Sullivan’s words echo the sentiments of the low-income Black activists and their conservative allies discussed in my book. Upon receiving the NAACP President’s Award in 1995, he reiterated similar ideas—now infused with a Black diasporic vision that promoted collaboration between African Americans and continental Africans. He reminded the audience that Black people “cannot succeed without God,” and emphasized that “economically we must wake up and work together and help ourselves.”[5]

The Bunnie Jackson-Ransom papers also provide information on the “University/John Hope Resident Management Corporation grant,” which will enhance my book chapter on the emergence of grassroots conservatism among public housing activists who led the resident management and ownership movement (RMC) of the 1980s and 1990s. Public housing activist Verna Mobley played a key role in the development of the RMC at the University Homes subsidized housing development, and the file includes several correspondences between her and community partners. Since Mobley supported former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America because of its conservative policies on welfare and crime, I hope to learn more about her activism through these letters.

Emory’s Rose Library has been vital to understanding the nuances of grassroots efforts to address intracommunity violence in metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Georgia. The SCLC collection, in particular, revealed critical insights into how individuals and organizations affiliated with the civil rights organization’s Stop the Violence campaign adopted a range of strategies—spanning from progressive to conservative. Additional manuscript collections at the Rose Library further illuminate the Black community’s long-standing self-help tradition and the impact of the resident management movement on distressed public housing developments. Understanding the wide range of responses to the postwar urban crisis in Black-majority cities illuminates the overlooked links between local activism and modern conservative populism.

Citations:

[1] Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Records, “Stop the Killing, Stop the Violence, nonviolence workshop,” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1993, Box 803, Folder 4, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University (hereafter Rose Library)

[2] Ibid.

[3] SCLC Records, Stop the Killing, End the Violence movement, Dayton, Ohio chapter, 1996, Box 592, Folder 1, Rose Library.

[4] Leon Howard Sullivan Papers, “New Trends in the Development of Self-Help in the Inner City” [circa 1972] Box 72, Folder 14, Rose Library.

[5] “We Help Ourselves,” NAACP Annual Convention, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 12, 1995, Box 88, Folder 10, Leon Howard Sullivan Papers, Rose Library.