In “Living in the Future: Utopianism and the Long Civil Rights Movement”, Dr. Victoria W. Wolcott examines various utopian communities, arguing that, “although each had its own unique history, they were ‘utopian’ in their rejection of gradualism and their demands for immediate change… The activists who inhabited these communities were neither racial liberals employing moral suasion, nor were they part of the communist Left. Rather they were socialist in orientation and deeply influenced a generation of activists in the interconnected labor, civil rights, and peace movements” (p. 2). She traces connections between workers’ collectives, cooperative movements, the followers of Father Divine, fellowshippers, and pacifists. Dr. Wolcott notes, “Three central tenets united the activists who demanded immediate change in the face of racial and economic inequality. They believed in building cooperatives as an alternative to capitalism. They practiced interracialism in their religious worship, social activism, and communal housing. And they developed a form of Gandhian nonviolent direct action that was more aggressive than the passive resistance promoted by the traditional pacifist peace churches, such as the Quakers and Mennonites” (p. 2). Dr. Wolcott notes that these organizations played a key, if overlooked, role in the twentieth-century civil rights movements and their ideological impact continues to appear in utopian fiction of the twenty-first century (p. 15-16).
Of workers’ cooperatives, Dr. Wolcott argues that “the hope of social unionism and workers’ education” was “that by living and working together, solidarity could be forged” (p. 24). Further, specifically addressing Brookwood, “This vibrant interracial movement helped to ‘labor’ American culture, placing working-class intellectuals at the center of the cultural Left” (p. 32). Dr. Wolcott concludes, “Labor interracialism was not the liberal integrationism of racial moderates, who called for gradual change through moral suasion. Rather it marked a radical and immediate break from the current system” (p. 53). Turning to cooperative farms, Dr. Wolcott argues, “Cooperation, across racial lines and against a corrupt agricultural system, fueled a successful utopian experiment in labor interracialsm that lasted two decades before virulent white backlash brought it down” (p. 56). Describing the movement’s shortcomings, she argues that many “cooperators understood that racial and economic justice were lined, but that they prioritized the needs of the cooperative over full interracialism” (p. 73). Following the teachings of Father Divine, the Divinites “moved from the labor and liberal interracialism of [Divine’s] peers to embrace a fully utopian interracialism, blurring boundaries of race and gender in a cooperative society” (p. 88). The movement incorporated elements of cooperatives, Gandhian nonviolence, and New Thought. Where fellowshippers “echoed the liberal interracialsim of the YMCA and YWCA” in the 1930s, “by the late 1950s, fellowshippers were actively engaged in nonviolent direct action, supporting the growing civil rights movement in multiple ways” (p. 118). Finally, Dr. Wolcott argues that “radical pacifists demanded ‘freedom now,’ rejecting the gradualism of racial liberals. They were socialists who believed in building cooperatives as an alternative to capitalism while rejecting the Communist Party’s sectarian politics. They practiced utopian interracialism in their religious worship, social activism, and communal housing. And they developed a form of Gandhian nonviolent direct action that was more aggressive than the passive resistance promoted by the traditional peace churches” (p. 148).
Throughout her work, Dr. Wolcott draws links between the utopian movements and better-known people and organizations, including Bayard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). She complicates the narrative of the Civil Rights movement to include less-familiar groups that played a critical role in the ideological development of civil rights organizations. “Living in the Future” is a critical read for civil rights historians and those interested in the role of utopian thought or religion in twentieth-century social movements.
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